Secular Parties in the Arab World

Here's an interesting paper from Marina S. Ottaway and Amr Hamzawy: "Fighting on Two Fronts: Secular Parties in the Arab World":

Without strong secular parties, political competition in the Arab world could be reduced to a dangerous head-on confrontation between Islamist parties and the incumbent governments. Yet secular parties—a broad term referring to organizations that do not embrace a political platform inspired by religious ideals—are clearly facing a crisis in the Arab world as they struggle for influence, relevance, and in some cases, survival. . . .

Voters see little reason to support secular parties that offer neither the patronage of government parties, nor the vision and social services of Islamist movements. As a result, they have become second-tier actors who cannot compete successfully for voter support. Their leaders, in turn, feel victimized by authoritarian governments that allow little legal space for free political activity and believe they cannot compete with the grassroots mobilization by the Islamist movements. . . .

The crisis of secular parties is emerging as a major obstacle to democratic reform in the Arab world. “The weakness of secular parties is leading to a curious blurring of the lines between government and opposition, with many secular parties looking to the government for protection against the rise of Islamists, even as they try to curb the power of those governments.”

Trying to think in a bit of a comparative context, the question is what the social and ideological basis of an Arab secular democratic political party would be. The answer, typically, is "labor unions and socialism" or else in the case of the US Democratic Party "labor unions and a high level of religious pluralism." Nationalism could also plausibly work. And, of course, the Arab world used to be shot through with secular socialist and nationalist parties -- Nasserism and Baathism and the like -- but the US didn't like it very much at the time. And there's the rub.

Neither Islamism nor Arab nationalism nor aggressive socialism are the sort of things the US government is likely to be enthusiastic about, but it's very hard to imagine what the social basis of support for the sort of political parties Americans usually say they want to see in the Arab world would be.

Comments

All the U.S. asks is for the Arab world to create secular parties with three characteristics:

1) Complete & Total ideological support for American Domination of the Region;

2) Complete & Total ideological support for Libertarian-Corporatist Domestic Policies;

3) Broad support from any social institutions available.

Is this really too much to ask?

Posted by MDtoMN | May 29, 2007 1:15 PM

Political parties in the region have generally been weak since the 1950s. Monarchies cannot tolerate parties because it often forces the monarch to become overtly involved in politics as opposed to "hovering above." Thus parties are illegal in Kuwait and quite co-opted in Jordan. In the republican presidential regimes (Egypt, Syria, etc) revolutionary parties crushed or ran underground rival parties. Moreover, in all cases where we have "elected parliaments" in the region, legislation can only be introduced by the Prime Minister and all cabinet posts are appointed by the central authority. Strong party formation with legislative powers directly threatens incumbent (pro-american) regimes.

This does not mean there is no social base for parties. Indeed, what has operated as quasi parties in most cases are what are called al-niqabat, or professional associations. These institutional representatives of engineers, doctors, and so on have long storied histories, mobilize large sections of the population, and in most cases have freely elected their own representatives. In the last several years, Washington has uttered no protest to the crackdown on associational rights in Jordan and Egypt. It's easy to see why.

Posted by Pete Moore | May 29, 2007 1:57 PM

Arab nationalism under Nasser was PAN-Arab nationalism, not nationalism in the sense of say "Egypt first, other countries second" that we commonly associate with nationalism.

Nationalism is a somewhat new thing in many parts of the Arab world and could lead those countries to a much better place then they are in now. I wouldn't underrate it so quickly.

After all, nationalism at the expense of sectarianism would be an obviously good thing in most of those countries (iraq, lebanon, jordan, "palestine," egypt, saudi arabia, the uae for example, all of whom have serious internal division on religious/tribal/ideological lines)

Posted by Skyler | May 29, 2007 4:19 PM

Ask and I recieve. Tho I will presume my irrelevancy. I haven't much to say on this, the books on development are laying around waiting to be read, and the ME-watching blogs are studied. Democracyarsenal being a good one too rarely mentioned.

Umm, just a thought, the relative demilitarization of some of the players following the 1973 War may have made them more secure and stable rather than less. These are some sophisticated oligarchs.

Posted by bob mcmanus | May 29, 2007 4:33 PM

Not that sophisticated actually. Two points: Post 1973 led to massive external aid which actually strengthened these regimes...aid like oil has domestic political effects. Second, 1973 (and later Iran-Iraq) demonstrated to these regimes that actually being conquered in war would not be allowed. Thus much of the military spending that occurred after 1973 was directed toward internal regime security, not protecting the borders from invasion.

Posted by Pete Moore | May 29, 2007 7:32 PM