Democracy Promotion and Islam — Part II

Political ‘Maturity’ & Democratic Modalities

By Michael Brenner                                        19/01/2009                                     Muslim India

One broadly pertinent factor to be taken into account in the assaying of democratic futures is a society’s ‘political maturity’. I use the term “maturity” advisedly in the sense of acquired knowledge through experience. This is unconventional. On reflection, though, it seems quite natural for a society’s experience with the conduct of its public affairs should have a bearing on its capability for sustaining a political system as singular as liberal democracy. In regard to the Arab Middle East, the salient fact is that for 400 years these societies did not govern themselves. Ruling power was in the hands of the Ottoman Empire for most of the period, followed by European colonialism. The brevity of self governance has implications for democracy.

There are features of a democratic polity are particularly difficult for a politically “immature” or “inexperienced” society to adopt.[i] First, liberal democracy (representative, constitutionally grounded democracy) is the only political system that has the individual as its cornerstone. The legitimized holders of power positions are chosen by individual voters, who are the only legally recognized sources of popular sovereignty. In addition, the securing of individual liberties is a primary objective of formal provisions limiting what government authorities can do. An individual focused polity corresponds to the prominence of the individual as a social construct, i.e. society is constituted around the individual. This may not be exclusively so, but at the very least the individual is not entirely subsumed within social groupings. The correspondence between society and polity in this respect is a necessary condition for a liberal democracy to take root. This is not the state of affairs in nearly all of the Middle East. The strength of kinship structures is one reason. Political history is another.

Egalitarianism is companion to individualism. Liberal democracies are egalitarian in the granting of political rights, and in the legal standing accorded individuals. This notion holds regardless of the degree of economic equality or social status. On that score, wealth distribution and social stratification vary markedly among established liberal democracies. Western societies do not have a monopoly on the idea of egalitarianism. It lies at the core of Islam as well. The concept of all being equal in the eyes of Allah is as pronounced in Muslim scripture as it is in the Judea-Christian tradition. Arguably, it has been more of a living precept in the Islamic tradition than in the former. It remains a reference mark in the collective discourse despite egregious deviations from the abstract ideal in practice.

Subordination to imperial rulers has stifled any possible move toward reifying the egalitarian principle in governance. For obvious reasons. Political egalitarianism cannot be reconciled with governing arrangements predicated on a basic inequality between the dominant ruling power and all members of the subordinate society. Furthermore, the emphasis on ascriptive groups as the building blocks of the public order assumes a differentiation both horizontal and hierarchical. Therefore, egalitarianism per se – like individualism – is a secondary consideration in the prevailing political discourse of the Middle East. Many people throughout the region do feel economically discontented, and deprived in the sense that the powerful take too large a part of society’s wealth for themselves. The latter is unearned and corruptly distributed; therefore, it is unjust. The notion of justice, in the Koranic tradition, refers primarily to individual virtue but it has a social aspect, too. ‘Right’ behavior in all matters, including economic dealing, is strongly enjoined. Thus, there exists a powerful impulse toward a purification of society, rather than its remaking, i.e. reform of public institutions along liberal democratic lines.

Democracy means limited government. That is true in the fundamental sense that the crucial role of legal stipulations in setting the powers enjoyed by office holders, along with prohibited actions, restricts the latitude of rulers. A polity so constituted is radical in the way that it places limits on what they can do. It is conservative insofar as it explicitly excludes some modes of political action by both ruler and ruled. Their formal legitimizes political institutions and practices, thereby transforming power into authority and obedience into citizen duty. In sharp contrast, imperial systems and the autocracies that succeeded them retain for the rulers significant discretionary powers as may be employed to maintain their position of dominance. Recognition of certain customary norms does represent the acceptance of some loose limits, as well as obligations. Yet such a polity leaves rulers with far wider prerogatives than they have in a formal, rule bound constitutional system – and it leaves subjects with few formal rights of citizenship. Most important, in the context of our thinking about democracy promotion, the legacy of imperial rule is the stunting of any earlier impulses that pointed away from authoritarian, highly arbitrary, forms of governance.

Moreover, the powerful lesson of the imperial experience is that a dominant/subordinate relationship is the essence of political life. It is natural and normal that an elite commands and the people obey. The derivative postulates are: (1) power differentials dictate who commands; (2) control itself legitimates rule over time; and (3) political virtue resides in the beneficent use of paternalist state power. Of Lincoln’s formulation of the democratic creed – government Of the people, By the people, For the people – only the last has been pertinent in the political history of the region.

Finally, liberal democracy is unique in producing a discontinuity of leadership. The selection of office-holders through periodic election means that there will be a turnover among those who exercise power. Under some constitutions, term limits are specified. Leaders will always be contested. Perforce, they necessarily will be attentive to how their policies and actions affect their political fortunes. As a result, some measure of policy discontinuity accompanies discontinuity of leadership – independent of shifting judgments among rulers as to what courses of action best serve the society’s needs. Here again, we detect a mismatch between the standard modus operandi of an imperial polity and a core feature of a democracy. The logic and outlook of the former has impressed itself on political leaders. So it has on the populace at large, too. Heirs to an imperial frame of reference, rulers feel instinctively that there is a congruence between democratic practice, on the one hand, and the uncertainties they seek to avoid as to who is in charge and what the populace can expect from their governors, on the other. These sentiments are integral to an Islamist tradition places emphasis on the unity of the community of believers while ever on guard against anything, anyone or any idea that can lead to disorder (fitna).

The four core components of a democratic polity are inter-related. They also are mutually dependent, but not entirely so. Or, to put it somewhat differently, one could imagine discrepancies and asymmetries. In many countries, generally free elections co-exist with the retention and use of extra-legal powers by a powerful executive. The intervening variables are: majorities responsive to minority rights; and, above all, an independent judiciary with the authority to weigh on the political process while protecting individuals’ civil liberties from abuse. That was vividly on display in Pakistan over the past year. In the Pakistani case, widespread commitment to the principle of legality embodied in the courts is partially a political cultural inheritance from the British Raj, one reinforced over the ensuing 60 years by practice.

Too, there is the affinity between a law-based system of rule and Islamic traditions. First, the Koranic affirmation that all are equal in the eyes of Allah is universally accepted if not necessarily followed. More than a vague ideal, it has greater saliency in Islamic culture than does its Christian counterpart. Second, the Law and its learned interpreters (the ulama) have always been honored. Indeed, one of Islam’s attractions in its spread beyond the Middle East was that it promised an ordered, just framework for conducting the affairs of society.

An additional consideration, pointing in the same direction, is that the conservative effect of law redounds to the advantage of an established ruler or regime. That is to say, every legal system as a buttress of the status quo in that it stipulates what types of political action are precluded as well as those that are permitted. Violent acts, in particular, are stigmatized as beyond the pale and prohibited. Moreover, their restriction is a Koranic admonition insofar as the Book set clear conditions in which violence is permitted as well as those in which it is prohibited. Other extra-legal actions are, too. Consequently, to the degree that the law thereby hardens political norms as to what is acceptable and unacceptable, a secure government leadership gains protection even as it may have its powers curtailed.

INTERIM ASSESSMENT

At the time of this writing in late 2008, the record of the West’s heightened campaign to promote democracy in the greater Middle East had become legible. More than six years of concentrated effort since the reconstitution of Afghanistan began in earnest, the contours of accomplishment and failure are clear enough for a preliminary assay. The several country specific initiatives of the strategy form a tapestry too rich in its particulars to be examined in detail. Still, certain broad conclusions can be drawn.

Imposing democracy from the barrel of a gun is an improbable undertaking-

Violence is the enemy of democracy. For democracy’s essence is wide agreement on the norms for conducting public life. That agreement is the basis for politics that excludes resort to coercive means. So doing presumes a basic accord that the status quo is minimally satisfactory in terms of both the condition of society and the methods for handling differences. Moreover, violence inflames passions in ways inimical to the restraint on ambition and action on which democracy relies. It propels the drive to power among victors; it stokes resentment and hopes for vengeance among losers. From a democratic perspective, each is a casualty of war.

If war is the enemy of democracy, civil strife is its nemesis. Foes - winners, vanquished, innocent victims - must live together. They cannot escape themselves, each other and the past. The deleterious effects for putting in place structures for peaceable intercourse are all the more severe where there is no previous experience of concord to look back on. In the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq, earlier periods of domestic peace were marked by autocracy or tenuous co-existence among semi-autonomous sectarian groups. The latter is true as well of Lebanon.

Democracy is an organic product-

That lapidary statement has two implications. First, it should be adapted to a local environment. Second, it fares best when cultivated by natives of that locale. These are banal truths. Yet, they are too often elided by aggressive external promoters of democracy. This is especially true in the Middle East. Understandably so. A light touch and an appreciation of socio-cultural distance mean uncertainty as to outcome and, most surely, a longish time frame. That is unacceptable when the stakes of foreign parties, the West, are high; when they see an immediate threat, i.e. transnational terrorism; and when democracy now has been posited as the sine qua non for ensuring a satisfactory state of affairs in the near future. Thus, we have the problem of American hyper-activism. Thus, we have the quandary of European hesitancy about what is the correct course and ambivalence about being forced by dint of circumstances to follow in the wake of America. Left to their own devices, most European leaders would concentrate on stability in the near term while making restrained attempts to encourage the lineaments of democracy, thinking and institutions.

These are attitudes and sentiments that few Europeans share given their keener awareness of rationality’s limits, of hopes dashed, of all that can go wrong in human enterprises, of the evolutionary character of social construction.

There are a number of concrete implications. One, the physical presence of a foreign power that has taken the liberty of casting itself as the benevolent tutor in democracy tarnishes both message and messenger. No people like being dictated to by others. This is doubly so when the tutor carries with it so much negative baggage as the United States does in the Middle East.

Displays of military prowess by external parties have the additional adverse effect of strengthening the conviction that only the powerful dictate policies and control the future. Unable to match the sheer force of the West, the United States and Israel especially, feelings of impotence nurture the dream of a savior - that is to say, the heroic figure whose steely will and inspiring mien can mobilize Muslims to thwart the foreign enemy. The keen sense of historical grievance, of the mythical past, and the lack of confidence in Islamic societies of their ability to build power through sustained effort a la China contribute to the living dream of the man on a white stallion. The point is not just to regain respect and righteousness for their own worth, but rather to regain the might that can give these aspirations tangible meaning. That calls for a hero. It is a yearning that too readily opens the way for a demagogue. Democracy offers but a pale substitute.

Democracy promotion is not a laboratory experiment that can be run, and rerun, as strikes one’s fancy-

A second implication of the “organic” proposition is that outside parties should avoid meddling in local politics once a constitution is in place. Elections must be free of interference by the tutelary power (where there is one) if they are to be true expressions of the popular will and seen as such. This rule has been routinely violated by the United States in Iraq. Washington provided money and technical advice to its favorites, especially the secular coalition led by Aliya Alawi. To no avail. The American Ambassadors, Khalilazad and Crocker, have been constant players in the innermost councils so as to broker leadership deals congenial to the United States. Those efforts are punctuated by the hortatory visits of senior officials from Washington. They undercut the principle of free and equal access to the polls. Moreover, those wielding governmental power lose authority and legitimacy. As a result, the underlying tension between security aims and democracy promotion is exacerbated.

In short, power politics and democracy promotion do not mix-

Finally, the ‘organic’ imperative of democracy development dictates that election results be accepted as authoritative, however unpalatable the winners may be. Democracy at the polls is not a principle you can discard when inconvenient. For an external party to do so means delegitimizing the very process one has lauded as the key to self representation and accountable government. This is what the United States has done in the Middle East, repeatedly. – with European Backing in Palestine and Lebanon. In Iraq, it has played favorites in the various ways just indicated. In Lebanon, it strives to depict Hezbollah as a non-Lebanese tool of Syria while backing Israeli and Lebanese attempts to suppress or to curb it. In Algeria in the early 1990s, it gave tacit support to the government’s cancellation of scheduled elections in expectation of a victory by Islamist parties. More recently, it lifted the pressure on President Mubarak of Egypt when the Muslim Brotherhood’s popularity became evident. Most egregious, is its attitude toward the electoral success of Hamas in the occupied Palestinian territories. Washington has been complicit with the Israeli government to annul the results of the free elections that gave Hamas a surprise victory over Fatah. Going well beyond withholding formal recognition, the United States actively has cooperated in a multifaceted campaign to topple the government. The European Union and constituent member governments have hewed to the American line. The strategy has included imprisonment of legislators and ministers, the draconian blockade of Gaza that punishes civilians, and the arming of Fatah militias for an armed challenge that failed when preempted by Hamas fighters. In Palestine, both American interests and the idea of democracy have fallen victim to ill-conceived, seemingly expedient actions.

To entangle support for democratic process with outcome preferences is to distort the very meaning of the political ideas supposedly being advocated. Perhaps the gravest risk is to reinforce already rampant impressions that elections are appealing only because they open an avenue to gaining power for oneself, one’s clan, one’s sect, one’s associates. It is a zero-sum contest – winner take as much as he can.

External parties should recognize that cultural distance is a serious handicap-

Societies differ in some fundamental attributes. Cognitive maps of how the world, and important segments of it, work are not the same. Nor are belief systems, historical experience, stratification systems and religious affiliations the same. That is why the saga of democracy is marked by a diversity of trajectories. That is why democracy of today in any given country is not what it was yesterday or may be tomorrow. That also is why the forms and modalities of what we call constitutional or liberal democracies do not match exactly. Prudence, therefore, is called for. It is a mistake to think in terms of templates; even worse to think of force feeding a country’s populace with a one size fits all model.

An extreme form of the last is visible in Iraq. The evidence to date is that for a foreign country volitionally to take custody of an ancient, complex society that is part of a distant and alien civilization is a recipe for failure. It is self-delusion to believe that America in Iraq, or in any power roughly analogous situation, can mold it to the former’s specifications.

Democratic development presumes a coherent society and a competent state-

That hard lesson should have been learned from experience in much of the post-colonial world, by no means in the Middle East alone. So, too, it is instructive to review the history of established democracies where we have a long record of the interplay among nationalism, state building and democracy. In all cases except the United States, a central state apparatus antedated moves toward democracy. Looking at current cases, it is doubtful that Afghanistan ever has had such, even during the period of communist rule and Soviet occupation. The closest approximation, ironically, was the Taliban regime that existed for six years. Iraq had a fragmented, weak state headed by a British imposed monarch from Arabia until it fell under Ba’athist dictatorship. The structures of governance they built were dismantled by the American occupation. The term ‘IRAQ’ itself should be read as a pronoun with multiple antecedent nouns. The consequence is that the West finds itself committed to constructing viable democracies where the cards are stacked against it, on this count alone. Viable states do exist elsewhere in the Middle East. All are under authoritarian rule with the exception of Lebanon. State building per se is an accomplished fact. It is the transformation of non-democratic polities that is the challenge.

By a coherent society I mean a society wherein the primary allegiance is to the country, i.e. the comprehensive social unit within its political boundaries. Plural identities and allegiances are compatible with working democracies. A casual survey confirms that proposition. Sects, clans, tribes, associations of all kinds are not in themselves antithetical to social cohesion, as witness India. It is where they compete with the larger collectivity in terms of loyalty, obligation - and are resistant to the setting/observance of common rules essential to a reasonably integrated socio-politico-economic entity - that particularisms militate against political coherence. On this score, there is great variation in the Middle East. It ranges from the tight bonds of national cohesion that characterize Tunisia and Egypt to a fractured Lebanon. It is largely a coincidence that the two places where the West in engaged in hands-on democracy installation, Afghanistan and Iraq, are close to the ‘incoherent’ end of the spectrum.[ii]

Obama Prospects

The candidate of hope’s electoral victory has lifted spirits of Europeans dreaming of a new era in transatlantic relations This promising vision has two foci: a renewed commitment to multilateralism as the standard modus vivendi in American diplomacy; and an end to America’s penchant for military action. The new administration’s actions will be watched most eagerly in the Middle East. The stakes there are as high as are Europeans’ expectations. They very well may be disappointed.

Obama will enter the White House with wide popular support and goodwill. He will have no specific mandate, though. His popularity will be based mainly on his personality and his being non-Bush. On foreign policy, the dispositions of public opinion are clear: do something to end the Iraq imbroglio but don’t do anything that embarrasses the U.S.; pursue a more multilateral tack but don’t forget American exceptionalism and safeguard our right to take action as we see fit; steer clear of open-ended nation-building projects, except where they create bulwarks against terrorists – e.g. Afghanistan; spent less money abroad, we need it at home; make us popular in the world again. Not much guidance there on how to untangle multiple, intersecting dilemmas in the Greater Middle East.

Obama will be handicapped further by the absence of a serious debate about Middle East issues that was strategic rather than tactical, and the consonant inability of the American public to understand the truly significant choices and trade-offs to be made. Neither he nor his advisors have any compelling fresh ideas; they have not rethought the premises of the American engagement in Mesopotamia or linked it a strategic plan for the region. Were civil strife in Iraq to grow, he would be at a loss to know what to do. On Afghanistan, here too he will follow the Bush line of increasing markedly American troop levels while attacking Taliban/al-Qaeda elements across the border in Pakistan. Were the situation to deteriorate within the country and/or in relations with Pakistan, he would be at sea. Getting out of Iraq with pride and interests more or less intact depends on regional agreements/understandings which will take time to mature – especially in terms of a modus vivendi with Iran. Engaging Iran will be his number 1 priority and his most demanding challenge. It is not self-evident, though, that he will move quickly unless forced to do so by dint of circumstance.

What can Europeans do? The short answer is: ‘not much.’ The United States is too big and too insular to be moved by the well-intentioned thoughts and actions of others. Still, there is room for influence at the margins. This is especially so with a foreign affairs neophyte who is inclined to favor change from the Bush stasis, and who is truly interested in working with other countries. What could count is helping to create circumstances conducive to Obama’s taking steps in the direction he already is inclined to go, above all in regard to Iran. That is to say, to move faster and further than cautionary instincts and constraints will incline him to do.

As to democracy promotion specifically, the tension between principle and pragmatic realities remains. Obama is drawn to the rhetoric of idealism, abroad as well as at home. At the same time, he is an instinctively cautious person who is conservative in thought and deed. Under Bush, the United States lost its balance in trying to reconcile the two. An inexperienced President Obama will be no more agile. Preserving the moral authority and credibility that remains to America, and the Western democracies generally, points to a strategy of restraint. Speaking sotto voce, keeping as low a profile as possible, encouraging local initiative, being sensitive to cultural differences, staying aware of the contradictions between those objectives served by stability and those served by pressing the democratic agenda – pose a formidable challenge to statecraft and to the persons conducting it. A congenitally pro-active America, an idealist America that still feels most comfortable with absolutes, will find it hard to meet that challenge. Here is where Europe potentially can exercise a healthy influence in line with its own acquired wisdom and predilections. Realizing that potential will demand a concentrated effort, and an independence of mind, that has yet to be seen.

[1]. Thomas Paine 1778, 1782, 1776. Quoted in Michael Scheuer Marching Toward Hell: America And Islam After Iraq (New York: Frees Press, 2008) pg.99. Scheuer also quotes Thomas Jefferson, “Paine thought more than he read.”

[1]. The term ‘civic millenialism’ was coined by Nathan O. Hatch The Sacred Cause Of Liberty (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977).

[1]. Guillaume Parmentier, “Europe and the Bush Doctrine,” Financial Times, March 10, 2005.

[1]. “EU leaders agree to weakened Mediterranean Union plan” euobserver 14.03.2008; “Brussels to keep control of ‘Mediterranean Union” euobserver 21.5.08.

[1]. The Arab Reform Initiative, a multinational consortium of institutes, is the prime source of empirical and analytical work on current conditions and developments. See, for example, “The Role of the West in Internal Political Developments of the Arab Region” by Osama Al-Ghazdi Harb May, 2007. A broad global perspective on the democratic wave is provided by John Markoff Waves of Democracy: Social Movements and Political Change. (Newbury Park, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1966). Also valuable are the contributions to: Rex Brynen, Bahgat Korany and Paul Noble, eds., Political

[i]. The Arab Reform Initiative, a multinational consortium of institutes, is the prime source of empirical and analytical work on current conditions and developments. See, for example, “The Role of the West in Internal Political Developments of the Arab Region” by Osama Al-Ghazdi Harb May, 2007. A broad global perspective on the democratic wave is provided by John Markoff Waves of Democracy: Social Movements and Political Change. (Newbury Park, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1966). Also valuable are the contributions to: Rex Brynen, Bahgat Korany and Paul Noble, eds., Political Liberalization and Democratization in the Arab World. V. 1: Theoretical Perspectives. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner; see especially contributions by Lisa Andersen and Michael C. Hudson.

[i]. An incisive appraisal of the skewed understandings that underpird the ‘war on terror’ is provided by Francois Burgat Islamism in the Shadow of al-Qaeda (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008 translation from the French original).

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Dr. Michael Brenner is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations. He publishes and teaches in the fields of American foreign policy, Euro-American relations, and the European Union. He is also Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. Brenner is the author of numerous books, and over 60 articles and published papers on a broad range of topics.