Is democracy still a possible path to reform in the Arab world? | policy

The program was hosted by Dr. Al-Arabi Al-Siddiqi, former director of the Middle East Policy Program at the University of Exeter in Britain, who provided an in-depth intellectual reading of the path of democracy in the Arab and international world.

Al-Siddiqi believes that the start of his interest in democracy came from its absence in the Arab sphere, and from his academic experience in the West, which revealed to him that Western democracy itself is not ideal, but is going through profound declines and contradictions.

He based this vision on the “Vedam 2025” report, which showed that about 75% of the world’s people are experiencing democratic decline, including even well-established countries such as America, Britain, France, and Italy.

He focused on the impact of technology and artificial intelligence on democracy, explaining that the rise of machines replacing humans in many sectors will create new social problems, and that democracy has gradually lost interest in the humanitarian principle on which it was founded.

He stressed that the first version of democracy was innocent and was concerned with the unity of the state and the sovereignty of the individual, but in recent decades it has changed to become more focused on protecting sub-groups and identities, a shift that made it abandon much of its initial essence.

Al-Siddiqi moved to diagnose the Arab reality, and saw that democracy was not known in our region until its first innocent version, because Arab political societies remained haunted by the idea of ​​a central state, explaining that “obsession with the state” made the citizen unable to seize his independent space in society.

Subordinate citizen

He added that this excessive attachment to the state established the model of the “subordinate citizen” who expects it to distribute, control and rationalize, instead of participating in public decision-making, which paved the way for tyranny and weakened democratic awareness, and demonstrated that this rentier model in which the state takes care of everything kills the citizen’s political motivation.

Al-Siddiqi linked the failure of modern Arab experiences – especially the Arab Spring – to the continuation of that mental and political structure, explaining that the revolutions were an opportunity to rebuild the state on the foundations of participation, but they were aborted by the counter-revolution and the regimes’ fear of any change that would limit their hegemony.

He considered that the Syrian revolution is a blatant example of this confusion, as it used weapons against the state in a region that considers the monopoly of violence legitimate for the state, and found itself facing a regional and international system that is not receptive to any armed democratic change.

Regarding the decline in popular demands for democracy, Al-Siddiqi said that Arab societies internalized the West’s narrative that presents “stability” as the supreme value, so preserving it began to justify sacrificing freedoms. He recalled that this logic is the same that the West used in the 1950s to justify its support for coups against the emerging democracies in the region.

But he stressed that the comparison between stability and democracy is wrong, as people can aspire to stability without giving up their democratic rights. Indeed, in his opinion, true stability is only achieved by consolidating participation and good governance.

Regarding the axis of democratic culture, Al-Siddiqi rejected the statement that the Arabs are not prepared for democracy, highlighting that there are live spaces in the region that actually practice it, including elites, thinkers, activists, and journalists, but they remain limited and elitist.

Arabic model

He called for the search for a special Arab model of democracy emanating from cultural and civilizational specificity, and not a copy of Western experiences, stressing that the “Global South” – from Africa to Latin America – was able to invent diverse forms of democracy that are reconciled with their environments.

He pointed out that some Arab experiments, such as the Tunisian case, were capable of success due to social homogeneity and the presence of educated elites, but the failure of the elite to adopt “communicative rationality” prevented the sustainability of the experiment. However, he stressed that the democratic backsliding in the Arab world does not cancel out the gains that were achieved.

Regarding the Arab democratic model, Al-Siddiqi believed that it is possible to achieve if the region invests in its Islamic and Arab cultural stock, while developing education and scientific research in the areas of democratic transformation that are almost absent from our universities.

As for the dialectic of democracy and development, he considered the relationship to be complementary and not contradictory, as sustainable development enhances democracy and vice versa. He cited the experiences of Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia, which combined economic openness and political gradualism, calling for Arab regional cooperation that creates a common market that supports growth and democracy together.

He stressed that development without democracy produces dependent societies that guard the borders of others and do not have control over their decisions, noting that some Arab countries have turned into “gatekeepers” for irregular migration instead of being active in the path of development. Therefore, he believes that democracy is a basic condition for any real and sustainable development.

Islam and democracy

Regarding the issue of Islam’s relationship with democracy, Al-Siddiqi recalled Alfred Stepan’s theory of “double tolerance,” which was raised by the Tunisian experience, and is based on Islamists accepting the rules of the democratic game in exchange for the democratic system allowing religious people to participate politically.

He pointed out that the West is still not ready to accept political Islam, citing the experiences of Algeria and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), where international powers rejected the election results when the Islamists won, considering that this position reflects duality in the Western position on democracy when it does not produce results that suit its liking.

On the other hand, he criticized some Arab elites – Islamic and secular – who did not practice the required democratic humility, considering that the parliamentary system is the most appropriate for Arab countries because it promotes dialogue and prevents the personalization of governance. It was based on recent studies that show that countries with parliamentary systems are more stable and developed than those with presidential systems.

At the conclusion of the episode, Al-Siddiqi linked the Arab democratic scene to the repercussions of the “Al-Aqsa Flood,” considering that the genocide in Gaza revealed the fragility of Arab sovereignty and the collapse of the Western moral system that has always praised human rights.

He stressed that the Arab inability to stop the Palestinian tragedy reflects the depth of democratic decline, not only in the Arab world but also globally, because the Western regimes themselves have begun to suppress pro-justice protests, even in universities and stadiums.