Democracy, "Arab exceptionalism," and social science

Middle East Journal

Volumn 60, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 664-684

  Harik, Iliya ^a,b  

^a INDIANA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b International Resource Center for Democracy

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARAB WORLD; DEMOCRACY; ETHNOPOLITICS; ISLAMISM; METHODOLOGY; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR;

EID: 33750874745     PISSN: 00263141     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3751/60.4.12     Document Type: Article

References (122)

1. Freedom House started its extensive studies of democracy rankings of states on a world-wide basis in the early 1970s; see "Freedom House: A History," www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=249.
2. Freedom House's studies have been available in print since 1980; see Freedom House, Freedom in the World 1980: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties, (New York: Freedom House, 1980).
3. Starting in 2003, the publisher became Rowman and Littlefield. See also Polity IV Project of the University of Maryland (2003), www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity/index.htm.
4. For other cross-country studies, see Tatu Vanhanen, The Process of Democracy: A Comparative Study of 147 States, 1980-1988 (New York: Crane Russak, 1990).
5. See Alfred Stepan with Graeme B. Robertson, "An 'Arab' More than a 'Muslim' Democracy Gap," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 14, No. 3 (July 2003);
6. and "Arab, Not Muslim, Exceptionalism," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 4 (October 2004).
7. See also in the same issue, Stanford Lakoff, "The Reality of Muslim Exceptionalism;" the reader may find the discussion of Arab exceptionalism of equal interest in a special issue of Comparative Politics, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2004).
8. See also M. Steven Fish, "Islam and Authoritarianism," World Politics, Vol. 55, No. 1 (October 2002).
9. Surveys by Freedom House and Polity IV Project.
10. Freedom House started its extensive studies of democracy rankings of states on a worldwide scale in the early 1970s; see "Freedom House: A History," www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=249. Freedom House's studies have been available in print since 1980;
11. see Freedom House, Freedom in the World 1980: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties (New York: Freedom House, 1980). Starting in 2003, the publisher became Rowman and Littlefield.
12. For a different view that stresses comparative aspects of Muslim and/or Arab culture, see Heiner Bielefeldt, "'Western' Versus 'Islamic' Human Rights Conventions?" Political Theory, Vol. 28 (February 2000);
13. and Iliya Harik, Democracy and the Paradoxes of Cultural Diversity: Beyond the Veil of Difference, Letters from Byblos Series, No. 3 (Byblos: International Centre for Human Resources, 2003).
14. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls.
15. Also in Adrian Karatnycky, "The 2001 Freedom House Survey: Muslim Countries and the Democracy Gap," Journal of Democracy, Vol.13, No.1 (January 2002).
16. For an exception to such a dismissal of Arab democratizing advances, see Michael C. Hudson, "After the Gulf War: Prospects for Democratization in the Arab World," The Middle East Journal, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Summer 1991).
17. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls.
18. Also in Adrian Karatnycky, "The 2001 Freedom House Survey: Muslim Countries and the Democracy Gap," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 1 (January 2002).
19. Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999);
20. and Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945-1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
21. Vahanen, The Process of Democracy.
22. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Methodology," http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=35&year-2005.
23. Polity IV Project, "Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2002," (University of Maryland, College Park, 2003), http://www.bsos.umd.edu/cidcm/inscr/polity.
24. On FH methodology and the indicators, see Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Methodology," http://freedomhouse.org/ template.cfm?page=35&year=2005.
25. See for instance, Harik, Democracy and the Paradoxes of Cultural Diversity.
26. Russell L. Hanson, The Democratic Imagination in America: Conversations with Our Past (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 5-6.
27. Among the sophisticated cross-national studies, see David Beetham, ed., Defining and Measuring Democracy (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Modern Political Series, 1994), p. 36;
28. Lijphart, Electoral Systems and Party Systems.
29. Kuwait is one of four rare Arab states listed as Partly Free; the other three are Jordan, Morocco, and Yemen.
30. See Table in Adrian Karatnycky, "The 2001 Freedom House Survey: Muslim Countries and the Democracy Gap," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 1 (January 2002), pp. 99-112;
31. and Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Tables and Charts: Table of Independent Countries 2002," http://freedomhouse.org/ template.cfm?page=212&year=2002.
32. Freedom House, Freedom in the Middle East and North Africa, (New York: Freedom House, 2005), pp. 45-46.
33. See also Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Country Reports: Kuwait," http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&country= 1530&year=2002.
34. For more, see "Emirate of Kuwait: Legislative Elections of 5 July 2003," http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/k/kuwait/ kuwait2003.txt. This source estimates the number of eligible voters before 2006 to be 136,715, a figure that would make 16% of the total.
35. See the Table for the 2005 figures on Kuwait in the Freedom House survey published in the Journal of Democracy, Vol. 17, No. 1 (January 2006), p. 122. The same score of (4 and 5) remained unchanged.
36. Tansu Çiller, of the True Path Party.
37. The only irregularities are generally reported in the Kurdish areas of southeastern Turkey. For Turkey, see Sacha Guney, "Slipping to the Right? The Meaning of the Elections in Turkey," (April 2, 2004), http://www.counterpunch.org.Guney04022004.html.
38. For Kuwait, see Michael Herb, "Emirs and Parliaments in the Gulf," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 4 (October 2002).
39. Those restrictions were markedly reduced after 2001.
40. The same rating of 4 and 5 lasted from 1997-2002. See Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls.
41. Country Reports are a qualitative subset to supplement the quantitative assessment provided by the Freedom in the World survey.
42. For time series figures, see Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/ FIWrank7305.xls. Lebanon dropped only one point for "Political Rights" from 1982-1988.
43. See ratings for Lebanon in the time series chart since the 1970s, Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls.
44. For the change in 2006, see Arch Puddington and Aili Piano, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 17, No. 1 (January 2006), p. 122.
45. The discrepancies noted here are accepted without a question by Stepan and Robertson, see Stepan and Robertson, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 14, No. 3 (July 2003), p. 38.
46. For more information on advances made since the end of the Civil War and the limitations of democratic practices, see Theodor Hanf and Nawaf Salam, eds., Lebanon in Limbo: Postwar Society and State in an Uncertain Regional Environment (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2003).
47. Hanf and Salam, Lebanon in Limbo;
48. Oussama Safa, "Getting to Arab Democracy: Lebanon Springs Forward," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 17, No. 1 (January 2006).
49. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Methodology," http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=35&year=2002.
50. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Introduction," http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=129&year=2004.
51. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are considered by FH to be among the most oppressive of Arab regimes, yet to consider the degrees of freedom in Egypt - with an elected Parliament and opposition political parties and press - on the same level as in Saudi Arabia is a highly questionable assertion. See Adrian Karatnycky, "The Freedom House Survey: Muslim Countries and the Democracy Gap," in Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 1 (January 2002), p. 104.
52. Yemen has been ranked at 5 and 6 from 1994-2000, before it passed in 2003 to 5 and 5 ("Partly Free"). The reason for Yemen's improved record over the other six countries is not, however, clear. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls.
53. Described as "failed states," Norimitsu Onishi, "Ethnic Clenching: Misrule in Ivory Coast," The New York Times, (October 1, 2002), p. A10.
54. In fact, the same preferred treatment was given to those three countries in the Polity Project IV evaluations, see http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/ polity/.
55. See http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/freeworld/2004/countryratings/ liberia.htm
56. and Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls.
57. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls.
58. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Country Reports: Sierra Leone," http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page= 22&year=2004&country=3023.
59. The judiciary reversed at times major executive decisions forcing the latter to change the law, dissolve parliament, and hold a new election in accordance with constitutional law.
60. Jim Hoagland, "Squaring Islam with Democracy," The Washington Post, February 2, 2006, p. A14.
61. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls.
62. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Country Reports: Uganda," http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page= 22&year=2004&country=3049.
63. Statement by Jeanne Kirkpatrick. See The International Herald Tribune (May 14, 2003).
64. Note that Ambassador Kirkpatrick is listed in the FH 2002 Survey as one of their advisors. See "Freedom in the World: Survey Team," http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=36&year=2002.
65. Regarding irregularities in Uganda and statements by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, see Edward Kannyo, "Change in Uganda: A New Opening?" Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 2 (April 2004), pp. 133-134;
66. also Anne Mugisha, "Museveni's Machinations," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 2 (April 2004).
67. See also FH "Country Report" on Uganda: Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Country Reports: Uganda," http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&year= 2003&country=508.
68. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Country Reports: Uganda," http://www.freedomhouse.org/ template.cfm?page=22&year=2003&country=508.
69. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Country Reports: Uganda," http://www.freedomhouse.org/ template.cfm?page=22&year=2003&country=508.
70. Kannyo, "Change in Uganda," p. 133.
71. Polity IV Project, "Polity IV Country Report 2003: Algeria," http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity/Algl.htm.
72. Despite their withdrawal, one opposition candidate, Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi, received 12.5% of the national vote.
73. William B. Quandt, "Algeria's Uneasy Peace," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 4 (October 2002), p. 15.
74. Polity IV Project, "Polity IV Country Report 2003: Algeria," http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity/Alg1.htm.
75. Polity IV Project, "Polity IV Country Report 2003: Algeria," http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity/Alg1.htm. An example of skewed evaluation process in Polity IV Project is the case of Cote d'Ivoire, which is given a rank of 5 on a scale of 10, and that would place Cote d'Ivoire, under the Stepan and Robertson article, in the "electorally competitive" camp, while Algeria is excluded.
76. Arch Puddington and Aili Piano, "The 2004 Freedom House Survey," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 16, No.1 (January 2005), pp.106-107.
77. Though the published date is 2005, the note on p.107 states that the "ratings in this table reflect global events from 1 December 2003 through 30 November 2004." Cf. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Tables and Charts: Combined Average Ratings-Independent Countries 2004," http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=207&year=2004. In 1999, FH placed Algeria behind both Uganda and Haiti.
78. Robert P. Parks, "An Unexpected Mandate? The April 8, 2004 Algerian Presidential Elections," The Middle East Journal, Vol. 59, No.1 (Winter 2005), p. 99.
79. Statement made on the BBC, "Observers Praise Algerian Voting," http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3613805.stm, quoted by Robert P. Parks in "An Unexpected Mandate," p. 99, n. 4.
80. FH concurs that the campaign for election was very competitive and that "the electoral process [was] free of serious problems." Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Country Reports: Algeria," http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page= 22&year=2005&country=6681.
81. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls.
82. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Tables and Charts: Combined Average Ratings- Independent Countries 2004," http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=207&year=2004.
83. Emamanuel Sivan, "Illusions of Change:" Journal of Democracy, Vol. 11, No. 3 (July 2000), p. 75.
84. William B. Quandt, "Algeria's Uneasy Peace:" Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 4 (October 2002), p. 15.
85. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls.
86. In the 2000 Survey. See Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls.
87. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Methodology," http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=35&year=2005.
88. Djibouti is a pro forma member of the Arab League, but that does not make it Arab in language and culture.
89. See Table, Karatnycky, "Muslim Countries," pp. 108-109;
90. and Table in Arch Puddington and Aili Piano, "The 2004 Freedom House Survey," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 16, No. 1 (January 2005), pp. 106-107. The same remains true of the 2004 Survey, except that Russia and Djibouti were removed.
91. Emphasis added.
92. Karatnycky, "The 2001-2002 Freedom House Survey," p. 101.
93. Karatnycky, "The 2001-2002 Freedom House Survey," p. 101.
94. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Methodology," http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=35&year=2002. Emphasis added.
95. It is worth noting here that 6 out of 8 of the political rights criteria given by FH survey checklist pertain to elections. Starting in 2003, two more criteria were added to make a total of 10. See Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Methodology," http://freedomhouse.orgtemplate.cfm?page=35&year=2005.
96. Just as an example, FH hardly examines any scholarly works and lists very few. Moreover, rarely are sources in the native languages made use of, while reliance on foreign language newspapers and other media abound. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Sources," http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=37&year=2002.
97. Aside from Stepan and Robertson, see Daniel Brumberg and Larry Diamant, "Introduction,"
98. and Bernard Lewis, "A Historical Overview, " both in Islam and Democracy in the Middle East, Larry Diamant, Marc F. Plattner, and Daniel Brumberg, eds., (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003);
99. Eva Bellin, "The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective," Comparative Politics, Vol. 36, No. 1 (January 2004);
100. UNDP, Arab Human Development Report, (New York: UN Publications, 2002). References to FH Surveys are often mentioned in national American newspapers, political commentaries, and by government officials.
101. President of Freedom House and coordinator of its annual survey.
102. Karatnycky, "The 2001-2002 Freedom House Survey," p. 99.
103. http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity/. The authors draw up two separate sets of results, one based on Freedom House's survey and one on Polity IV Project, which they then compare.
104. Stepan and Robertson, "An 'Arab' More than 'Muslim' Electoral Gap."
105. Especially in the rebuttal article, "Arab, Not Muslim, Exceptionalism," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 4 (October 2004).
106. Stepan and Robertson, "An 'Arab' More than 'Muslim' Electoral Gap," p. 31.
107. Stepan and Robertson, "An 'Arab' More than 'Muslim' Electoral Gap," pp. 30-31.
108. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Methodology," http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=35&year=2002
109. and Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Methodology," http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=35&year=2005.
110. Stepan and Robertson, "An 'Arab' More than 'Muslim' Electoral Gap," p. 31.
111. Alfred Stepan with Graeme B. Robertson, "Arab, Not Muslim, Exceptionalism," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 4 (October 2004).
112. See also in the same issue, Stanford Lakoff, "The Reality of Muslim Exceptionalism."
113. Alfred Stepan with Graeme B. Robertson, "Arab, Not Muslim, Exceptionalism," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 4 (October 2004).
114. See also in the same issue, Stanford Lakoff, "The Reality of Muslim Exceptionalism."
115. Iliya Harik, "The Origins of the Arab States System," in Ghassan Salame, ed., The Foundations of the Arab State (London: Croom Helm, 1987).
116. The argument made by S&R that Arab countries that were under British rule refused to join the British Commonwealth is quite inadequate. Except for Egypt and Aden, British rule was very brief.
117. For details see Edward W. Said, Orientalism, (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).
118. A teleological trend is noted also by Guillermo O'Donnell, see "Illusions About Consolidation," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 2 (April 1996).
119. This tendency was given a boost by Francis Fukuyama's influential book, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).
120. Karatnycky takes Egypt and Saudi Arabia to task for having "permitted - some say encouraged - thebroad dissemination of anti-Western and anti-American views in their media and through Islamic clerics." Karatnycky in Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 1 (January 2002), p. 104. Since when has prohibition of anti-American and anti-Western views been a part of the definition of democracy?
121. In the sense that Karl Deutsch uses the term: widespread dissemination of the mass media, education, geographic mobility of people, various transactions, especially in the market place.
122. For the complexity of the transitional model, see Thomas Carothers, "The End of the Transition Paradigm," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 1 (January 2002).