Introduction
The Middle and North Africa (MENA) region has for many years been considered as lying at the core of an arc of crisis. For long, many governments in the region coped with tremendous political, economic and social tensions by imposing authoritarian rule, a regime that established some degree of stability while at the time permitting overwhelming problems to simmer and fade away unaddressed. Rather than change, stasis operative condition dominated the political life. In some instances, this state of affairs was considered the best alternative that the international system could opt for. However, these MENA authoritarian regimes scammed to winds of radical political change starting from Tunisia to Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Libya among others. To this day, the outcome of this rapidly unfolding process still remains unpredictable. Every new political actor that emerged across MENA after the Arab Spring declared allegiance to democracy. In spite of this, it is clear that the anticipated liberalization remains unrealised dream to many civil societies that started and participated in the protest. In addition, it is not clear what kind of democracy has prevailed over the region. Hence, the Arab Spring remains a largely inconsequential series of protests that tell us little or nothing about the political future of the region.
Unlike other regions that have attained democracy through political revolutions, most parts of MENA experience continued resistance to democratization. The combination of fear of political Islam and the institutional structures behind the Secularist-Islam divide explains the variations in political as well as political liberties that exist across MENA. These fear ail from the 1970s events that revealed the potential for Islamists to back out on agreements they entered into with secularist democrats. The repercussion of the renege is that it has created an uncertainty condition wherein the secularist democrats question the intentions and the strength of the Islamists. Over the years, the incumbents who are keen to promote this Secularist-Islamists divide have to a great extent raised the spectre of Islamist threat across MENA. In most instances, they suggest to secularist opponents that they are better off with the devil they know (the authoritarian regimes) rather than the one they do not know (the Islamists). These institutionalized division efforts have widened the gap between the Islamists and the secularist democrats forcing both sides to mistrust each other. To a great extent, this division has been responsible for devolving most of these countries into chaos forcing them to restore autocracy in order to attain stability at the expense of democracy.
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In most parts of MENA, the civil society as well as opposition parties is characteristically weak. In addition, they continue to face persistent manipulation by the states. Over the years, the autocratic Arab regimes have been adept at manipulating the regions electrical process. They do so by establishing effective patron client list relationships as well as co-optation. After the Arabic Spring, some governments liberalized their authoritarian rule to co-opt and include the opposition. For instance, in Algeria did not embrace the radical political change. Since the Arabic Spring ended, the government has used a combination of pay raises, food subsidies, measured tolerance, and political concessions to check the public. In addition, the autocratic regimes have used their state corporatist practises to delegitimize the opposition political parties, trade unions as well as governmental organizations. This implies these organizations have not been credible in their activities on behalf of the members they represent; therefore, they are stripped of voluntary mass following despite being liberated from direct dependence on the states.
Unlike other regions, MENA world is the home to exclusively strong array of coercive institutions which for a long time have had the capacity as well as the will to repress any society oriented initiative. In most nation’s worldwide, military and security spending is one of the leading budget expenditures. In addition, most of their officers are in most instances deeply entrenched in a number of productive commercial and productive institutions. Unfortunately, the Arab Spring might have changed the national leadership of most countries in MENA. However, it did not change the nations’ old guards. For instances, since the Egyptians overthrew president Hosni Mubarak from power in 2011, they have held more than two presidential elections, and polls for both the upper house (Shura Council) and the parliament as well as three referendums. Nonetheless, despite this display of democracy, the security and military services remain the driving force behind the scenes. For example, the 2014 constitutions authorized the military courts to try civilians. In addition, new laws imposed firm restrictions of protests which is scarcely a democracy basis. Moreover, the fact that most of the countries in the MENA region have suffered international and civil wars has increased their dependence upon their militaries. Consequently, this has encouraged militaries systematic insertion in internal politics as well as domestic economy. Therefore, democracy proponents have no adequate means to overturns this old-guard and its deep roots in the national politics and economies.
The presence of rentier as well as semi-rentier states in the region has been an obstacle to realization of democracy in MENA. Most of these countries have very rich, thanks to their rich oil resources that fuel their economies. This rentier states have led to financial stability and independence to most regimes in MENA region. Despite the Arab Spring, most of these countries have been developing and implementing policies without consulting the public opinions. In addition, most systems in these rentier states comprise an essential part in which the rulers do not require to tax the citizens or even seek legitimacy of their policies via competitive political processes. As such, citizens in this state enjoy the state of the nation, particularly the economic stability and tax free life. Hence, there is limited interest in democracy or democratic socialization in many parts of the MENA region. In addition, the fact that these rentier states play an important provide oil that drives most industries in the globe endears them to almost all the democratic countries. Moreover, their moderate citizen treatment has them from societal pressures. As such, there are almost no grounds to challenge their sovereignty.
Cultural approaches have also been a key obstacle to the adoption of democracy in MENA. Most of the regimes are hereditary in nature particularly in the Middle East. As such, they are linked to cultural and traditional practises that the citizens have been practising for centuries. This cultural practise has cultivated sectarian interests across the entire region. Sectarianism has distorted democratic processes even in countries such as Iraq and Lebanon that were largely untouched by the Arab Springs. In both cases, the voters are not given the opportunity to elect candidates representing the common good, rather than the interests of the particular communities. In countries such as Jordan and Morocco, the uprising barely loosened the grip of the monarchs over political life in the region.
Conclusion
To this day, the Arab Uprising remains the only social uprising to have swept the entire MENA region. Despite the fact it changed most of the existing regimes, it did not achieve the expected results – democracy. With the exception of Tunisia, the social uprising only transformed the existing the existing regimes into new institutional patterns. The presence of weak opposition, the Islamic threat, rentier states and same old military and security service providers have inhabited democracy and influenced its resistance in MENA region. However, its barely seven years since the uprising started and democracy takes more time to attain. The countries need constitutional consolidation, consolidation of interest groups and political parties, consolidation of behaviour and democratic political culture to attain full democracy.
References
Stacher, J. (2015). “Fragmenting states, new regimes: militarized state violence and transition in the Middle East,” Democratization 22 (2), pp. 259-275.
Amel, A., and Giovanni, C., (2014). “The Study of Democratization and the Arab Spring,” Oxford University Press, pp. 10- 120.
