Even in the midst of tumultuous events it is not too early to start thinking about what comes after, and in particular how international policy-makers should best respond to and intervene in the coming Arab order.

The current signs are less than encouraging, in two ways. First, there is a tendency for political and media attention to focus on where the most dramatic action is, but then to move on quickly when it is over — the very time when sustained engagement (as now in Tunisia) is most needed. It is not enough to cheer for the revolution while it is happening. The aftermath, the transition process from authoritarianism to democracy, is the crucial moment; and this is when a country needs most help. This is also the time when people power alone cannot guarantee a change in the right direction, and when bad management in a critical period can backfire.

Second, the epic events in the Arab world reveal a potentially dangerous tension. Across the region, people seem to be craving freedom and democracy at a time when the west has lost interest in promoting these values. The east is looking west (at least in terms of its aspirations), but the west is looking away. Will the twain find a meeting-point in their objectives in the difficult period to come?

From romance to reality

What happened in Tunisia and Egypt, and may yet happen in the rest of the Maghreb and elsewhere in the Arab world, is the collapse of an order that had long had lost its legitimacy. The Tunisian experience is exemplary, in that the trigger for the fall of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali seems to have been a radical awakening of the population so powerful as to convince the president and his coterie that it was all over and that fighting back was useless.

The abstract and romantic part of the process is that many Tunisians’ dream of change and freedom to speak is being fulfilled — and that others in the Arab world are inspired to follow suit. But this phase, in Tunisia and elsewhere, is not the end of the story, but only the beginning. The hard reality of negotiating and creating a new order must follow, to fill the vacuum of power and build the institutions that can ensure better governance. This involves huge challenges and requires substantial support from outside.

The starting-point, in most of the Arab states, is that political society has been suppressed for decades and needs to be rebuilt from scratch. Even civil society, political parties and the non-governmental sector (where they exist) are compromised by having had to adapt to the realities of an authoritarian regime; they need help to move quickly towards a healthy pluralist environment.

The problems of transition are thus multiple. There are issues of transitional justice: what to do with the old regime and reform the security sector, how to promote reconciliation and allow society to move on. There are questions of fair democratic competition: after so many years when real politics have been semi-comatose the most effective operators are often Islamist parties, which in addition benefit from association with and protection from the mosque.

But addressing all these matters should be made easier by the fact that the impulse of the Arab revolts are for freedom, justice and accountable government. These values echo those espoused by Europe and the United States, and represent enough of a shared foundation for the western powers to be seen as supportive of the process.

The US and western Europe have significant experience in managing transitions; in the case of the Marshall plan after the second world war, it bound them together. The European Union on its own account has also led various transitions: in Spain and Portugal’s move from authoritarian rule, in the enlargement process that transformed east-central Europe. And the EU’s neighbourhood policy (ENP) is intended precisely to apply the lessons gained from enlargement to help reform the countries just beyond the union’s boundaries.

European security, in Javier Solana’s dictum, was best promoted were Europe surrounded by a “ring of well-governed states”. In practice, the ensuing approach developed bilateral “action plans” in collaboration with the regimes themselves. These plans will now need to be renegotiated with the Arab world’s ambitious agents of change that are now or will soon be in government.

The transition handicap

But precedents can mislead as well as guide. The post-1989 transition in Europe and the early signals of a similar process in the Arab world seem are likely to be different at the outset in three main ways. They can be characterised in terms of visions, competition, and timing.

Visions
Both sides of the European transitions at the end of the cold war had the objective that the post-Soviet states (as with Iberia and Greece a generation earlier) should move towards becoming liberal democracies, and ultimately members of the European Union bound by its institutional-legal framework and principles. Such consensus in or regarding the Arab world cannot be guaranteed, despite the consonance of values referred to above. The transition is also likely to feature a competition between visions, each presenting a direction and model to fill the vacuum created by regime collapse.

Some influential political currents are already calling for western-style democracies and governance. But there is also support for Islamists of various kinds; and remnants of the ancien regime will learn new tricks and use the new system to attempt a comeback (the examples of Ukraine and Lebanon show how this can be done). After so many years of semi-comatose political existence, it is only natural that at a certain point the awakening will be disoriented and look in different directions. What is needed is a mechanism to manage the diversity.

Competition
There will also be international and regional competition for influence in the Arab world during the transition. In the case of the enlargement of the European Union to the south and east, the European commission was alone in planning and implementing the required reforms; again, the Arab world’s inheritance means that no single legitimate authority is likely to be available.

Instead, there will be competition. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and Iran will probably step in to support different brands of Islam; there are already signs of that in Tunisia and Egypt. Al-Jazeera is attempting to take credit for the first Cathodic revolution; Syria claims the various risings to be in line with its own anti-American and anti-Israeli stance; Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei seeks to interpret the events as an Islamic revolution.

So the west will not have things its own way, and must focus soon on how best to support the transition. It is not true that a stance of non-interference and of leaving everything to homegrown reform is the best way to ensure a good outcome; on the contrary, this needs to be argued for, worked for, and paid for.

Timing
In one sense, the long-awaited Arab democratic revolution comes into being at an unfortunate time. The dominant mood in both Europe and the United States has been shifting towards more “realism” in foreign policy, effectively a willingness to engage and make deals with unpalatable regimes for the sake of stability and self-interest.

The corollary is a move away from a positive projection of democratic values, reflected in decreased emphasis on and funding of active democratisation projects. The reluctance to put these at the centre of foreign-policy objectives reflects the bitter legacy of the George W Bush administration’s “freedom agenda”. But it is not clear that a more distant and “realist” policy will serve the Arab peoples any better.

The new partners

Tunisia and Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen, Morocco and Libya are in transition — albeit at different stages, in different ways, and with (in all likelihood) different outcomes. The western perceptions of what is happening needs to change to take account of the movement on the ground. This is easier said than done: ideas and policies that have evolved slowly are hard to change, even when shown to be wrong or bypassed by history.

When events are moving so rapidly, last week’s questions can very soon look ancient. In the week after the Egyptian revolt erupted, much attention focused on the opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei (is he a strong leader, will he have the backing of the army, can he unify the opposition?). The questions were outdated before they were asked. If real change is to happen, there will be democratically elected politicians, not strong leaders; they will probably be elected by a small margin, not the classic 97.6% of the past. They will be criticised and contested; consensus and enforced national unity are depassé.

The Arab political awakening means that old words should acquire new values: political crises, some instability, paralysis, bickering mediocre and opportunistic politicians, are all part of the new good. Division is a sign of strength not weakness, for it means the system can absorb the various political currents. There will be fewer reliable allies, who can be tarnished — and become election losers — precisely for supporting a bad policy.

In the end, change in the Arab world means that western policy-makers have to change too. The west has preferred to work with dictators. When their Arab allies no longer fit that description, a new phase of history with all its challenges and opportunities will begin.

***

About this article — Creative Commons license

This article was originally published by Nadim Shehadi, and openDemocracy.net under a Creative Commons licence. It is republished here in accordance with the license.

Later, in November 2009 when election fraud had shocked me, like many others, I came across the article “Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East” written by Ellen Lust. Lust in this article tries to draw a picture of the relation between authoritarian elections and democratization processes in the Middle East. She claims that “Elections in authoritarian regimes [of the Middle East] not only fail to push the transition process forward, but tend to strengthen the incumbent regime” (Lust, 2009, p. 131). She argues that in authoritarian regimes elections are the mechanisms to create competition for access to the limited state resources. By this, she claims that the authoritarian elections reduce demands for change, and create a “Competitive Clientelism”.

Foto: Hamed Saber cb

Fra protestene i Iran i juni 2009.

Lust uses this concept to describe a mechanism where the voters will reduce their demands to interests which fit in the state’s limited resources. In other words, she considers that voters would support the parties or groups which can cooperate with the regime to deliver goods to them. Further, she argues that authoritarian elections only during economic or political crisis can lead to demands for change.

This, in my point of view, contradicts with Lust’s description of voters in “Competitive Clientelism”. How could voters in authoritarian elections demand change (which would lead to democratization) if they will only act based on their limited interests? Is it the political crisis that creates a condition for demanding change? Or does democratization from below create a political crisis, which in the next step might produce the conditions for growing demands for democracy on the surface?

Although I find “Competitive Clientelism” very useful in helping to understand the Iranian presidential election of 2009, I felt the need for some further discussion on the way voters and authoritarian electoral “games” were described by Lust. I use the concept of game in authoritarian elections to indicate that on the one hand these elections seem to be simulation of selections, and on the other hand these kinds of elections are more complicated than simple selections.

As Lust also gave attention to, some voters in authoritarian regimes would not accept the rules of the game and would refuse to vote. But some of the others who participate in authoritarian elections would, in my point of view, learn the rules of the authoritarian electoral games.

In this article, I will consider whether knowledge about the game and participation in the game (in combination with many other factors) would create a demand for change from below. This gives meaning to why authoritarian elections only in a period of economic or political crisis can lead to a demand for democratization. Here, I will use the Islamic Republic of Iran as an example to indicate firstly the way voters as political actors learn about their positions in the authoritarian electoral games. By this, I mean that voters would find a power (even if it is limited) in the game. Secondly, I am interested in indicating that the election system would create a Self for voters which contradicts with the principles of authoritarian regimes (by the concept of Self I mean that the experience of voting creates an individual understanding of being able to choose one’s own representative). In other words the practice of voting creates an individual experience that might be the basis of demanding democracy. This I have called in this article democratization from below.

When elections in political crises do not lead to change

Not all authoritarian elections in periods of political crisis lead to demand for change. Since 1979 a new system of theocracy with some democratic features has prevailed in Iran. On the one hand legislative and democratic institutions such as the parliament have been established, and on the other hand Velyat‑e Faqih, the leader of the Revolution, subordinate the people’s will by his ultimate rights (Eshkevari, Tapper, & Mir-Hosseini, 2006).

Between 1979 and 1989 there were continuous fights among Islamist groups and non-Islamist parties in Iran. While the Iranian people fought in battles with Iraq (in the 1981–89 war), radical Islamists established their power in the country by terror and imprisoning of political oppositions. During ’79 to ’89 many authoritarian elections were held, where people were supposed to choose selected candidates as president and parliament members. During these 10 years of internal and external political instability, none of the authoritarian elections led to a demand for change.

There should be many reasons for that. Voters might not have seen the election system as authoritarian. Or maybe elections were not understood as a correct way to change power, since the elections were not used by Islamists to stabilize their power. This also means that voters could not see their power in the election system.

Learning how to play the game!

In 1997 when the first post-revolution generation was ready to step onto the political stage by taking part in elections, there had already been some demonstrations at universities against the government. Youth, who were unhappy with the individual restrictions the government had placed on them, supported Mohammad Khatami in the election of 1997. Khatami supported peaceful relationships with Western countries, democracy, individual and civil freedom. “Iran for all Iranians” was one of his most known slogans in the election of ’97. On June 12th 1997, 79 percent of eligible voters participated in the election and by almost 70 percent of the votes cast Khatami was elected as the new president of Iran. The new generation of Iran was not the only attribute of the election. The Islamist groups that had been excluded from the powerful institutions of Iran had to mobilize people to reach the institutions. In other words, the Islamist opposition groups had to use the election system to gain power.

I believe it is crucial to ask what mobilized people. What were the voters’ interests? Can I claim that the speeches on democracy, individual and civil freedom mobilized voters? If yes, then I would argue that there already existed a huge demand for change and democratization from below in the society. In other words, the excluded Islamist groups and voters used each others interests to reach their own interests. This is what I want to call learning how to play the game. After twenty years of authoritarian elections, voters not only know the rules of the game, but also know more about the fights among Islamists. Since voters can see the oppositions’ need for their support, they recognize their power in the election system. Voters see themselves more as insiders, rather than outsiders in the authoritarian electoral games.

What moves in parallel with learning about the game is the experience of choosing one’s own representatives. Voters not only assume that they have some power in the game, but also they believe they are able to choose their representatives. We should also keep in mind that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the result of a revolution, where there was a belief that people should choose their government. The discourse of “nation’s will” was always powerful in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The experience of choosing own representatives

President Ahmadinejad’s national and international aggressive policies mobilized youth, women and middle class people to vote against him in 2009. The opposition candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi accused Ahmadinejad of making the Iranian people poor by his international policies. Ahmadinejad in return accused them of being corrupt.

Mousavi represented a coalition of different Islamist opposition groups with more reformist feature. Karroubi is known as reformist cleric.

After a few debates among the presidential candidates, it became clear that Ahmadinejad was supported by a generation of Islamists that believed that the Islamic Republic of Iran has chosen a wrong path. They wanted a new start based on their own understanding of the Islamic revolution’s goals. The opposition candidates argued that Ahmadinejad’s international policies are against the interests of lower-class families, and national policies are against the will of youth, women and middle class families.

This video documents in part the election campaign and mass protests:

A detailed discussion on corruption and internal fights among Islamists never were held openly in Iran before the presidential election of 2009. Firstly, this showed a huge political crisis among Islamists in the structure of power. Secondly, it revealed that both the government and the opposition groups needed to mobilize the support of the people to gain power. The video footage taken some days before the election showed that Mousavi had mobilized many people across the country. One of his best known slogans was “every Iranian is one campaign, every campaign is one leader”. While remaining silent could be an option for people, they chose to come to the streets and express their thoughts in rallies. This, among other things, indicates that people believed that they could have impact on the situation and might gain acceptance for their demands.

Despite the mobilization of the opposition, Ahmadinejad was announced as president for four more years. The post election protest which is today called “the green movement” started from the day Ahmadinejad was announced as elected president. The first slogan of the protest was “Where is my vote?” which people shouted in the streets. Only a few days after the protest started, demonstrations changed the focus from election fraud to Vali‑e Faqih Khamenei. Such chants can be heard in this video:

If authoritarian elections were only a system of Competitive Clientelism, then any political crisis in authoritarian regimes would only lead to another authoritarian election system. By this I mean that the lack of democratization from below would probably not change an authoritarian election system to democracy in any political crisis.

Here I have argued that the paradoxical nature of the authoritarian election creates a Self that grows against authoritarian ideology. This is not the political or economic crisis creating a condition for demands for change, but the demands for change that exists at the grassroots level. The demand for change can only lead to democratization, when the voters know how to use their limited power in electoral games. These voters who have started to believe in their power and formulate independent demands (independent from the authoritarian regime) know about the oppositions’ needs of support and mobilization.

In this article I have focused on a type of relationship between voters and an authoritarian election system that can lead to democratization. However, I believe that international and global forces should also be taken into consideration when we talk about the relation between authoritarian elections and democratization. How can we talk about an authoritarian regime, or any other regime, excluded from the rest of the world? Even if a regime tries hard to isolate the nation from the world, there will always be some international relations that have impact on authoritarian regimes and also the way authoritarian elections are perceived among the voters.

Foto: Hamed Saber cb

The text on the poster says: “Our demand: Referendum again”.

Literature:

Lust, E. (2009). Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East. Journal of Democracy, Volume 20, Number 3, July 2009, pp. 122–135.

Eshkevari, H. Y., Tapper, R., & Mir-Hosseini, Z. (2006). Islam and democracy in Iran: Eshkevari and the quest for reform. London: I.B. Tauris.