Regimes in the Middle East have been able to resist democratization not just because they are strong but also because their institutional structures allow them to split opposition movements, Ellen Lust-Okar said in a lecture last night.
Lust-Okar -- a political science professor at Yale whose research often focuses on the Arab world -- examined the rift between secular and Islamic reformists before concluding that democracy is not destined to failure in the Middle East and North Africa.
Autocratic governments are far more prevalent in the Middle East than anywhere else, Lust-Okar said. "Many states have announced major political reforms in the past 20 to 25 years, but most haven't accorded any more civil liberties to their citizens," Lust-Okar said.
According to the professor, many of the popular explanations for the prevalence of autocracy do not fully explain the unique failure of democracy in the Middle East.
The presence of oil in a nation, for example, can be statistically linked to a more autocratic government. "However, the Middle East has been far more resistant to democracy than other places that have oil," Lust-Okar said.
Lust-Okar dismissed the notion that Islam itself might hinder democracy, pointing to growing freedoms in non-Arab Muslim nations. The professor also contended that the ubiquity of authoritarian government was not due to a lack of desire for democracy on the part of citizens of Middle Eastern and North African nations.
"In a survey conducted in Algeria and Jordan, something like 90 percent of respondents saw democracy as a positive value," Lust Okar said.
In contrast, Lust-Okar described events in the 1970s that led to the greater ability of "state elites to split the opposition."
Two groups have resisted the rulers of most Arab nations -- secular groups that want greater rights and Islamic groups that want broader acceptance of Islam. Autocrats in the Middle East have largely succeeded in separating and suppressing both movements, taking action that has increased polarization and extremism, particularly in the Islamic movement, Lust-Okar said.
"In Saudi Arabia, for example, there is no room for Islam outside of the King," Lust-Okar said.
However, democracy is not doomed to failure in the Middle East, according to Lust-Okar. "If current obituaries of the radical Islamic movement are correct, there may be more interest in bringing [moderate] Islamic parties into the political system," she said. "Secularists and Islamists will join together to press for greater democratization."
Lust-Okar took questions from the audience after the main presentation. She questioned about links between Iraq and terrorist Osama bin Laden, expressed skepticism that connections between the two were particularly strong, maintaining that Middle Eastern autocrats have generally been unreceptive to extremist Islam.
"On the tape that just came out, bin Laden called the [Iraqi] regime corrupt and advocated overthrowing the regime," Lust-Okar said. "There's no evidence that there's love lost between Osama bin Laden and Iraq."
The lecture was the fourth in a series on Middle Eastern issues, with the next speech in the series to be given March 6 by Harvard professor Eva Bellin.
