getting to pluralism: political actors in the arab world - Carnegie ...

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Transcript Not Checked Against Delivery in Arab countries. And right now, I think what is missing is a linking mechanism and that is reflected in the incapacity of liberals in political organization in the Arab world to build much of a constituency. MS. MATHEWS: I’ll pass it to Amr for a very quick footnote. Then we’ll go into the questions. MR. HAMZAWY: On liberalism in the Arab world, I mean, as Marina said, politics was more or less hijacked by non-liberal forces and movements starting 1940s and ’50s. And since then, we have been going through leftist, socialist, military, Islamist phases, and liberalism has disappeared from politics for different reasons. However, Tom, if you look outside the political scenes, you get a different history of liberalism. Liberalism still exists, and in fact, we are into a liberal revival in the Arab world. Look at the literary production; look at movies; look at cultural and artistic production; Arab intellectuals – it’s very impressive. I mean these are issues which we really have to keep in mind. I mean, I was not aware of how liberal the Arab literary scene has become before go to Beirut. I mean, what you read is impressive. I mean, this is by no means influenced by Islamist ideologies; by no means influenced by non-liberal notions. It’s influenced by liberalism – truly well-founded and grounded liberalism. MR. FRIEDMAN: Would you agree though, with Marina that it has no political engine right now to ride – no horse. MR. HAMZAWY: Right, right, it’s definitely – it stays outside the realm of politics. MS. MATHEWS: Okay, let me turn back. One, two, three. Maybe four. Up here. Q: Thanks. Gary Mitchell from The Mitchell Report. I want to – (inaudible, off mike) – democratization and Islamism were – (inaudible) – that Tom wrote in “Lexus and the Olive Tree,” in the chapter, I think, on “The Golden Straitjacket” – (inaudible) – oh, we need the second microphone. (Laughter.) I would paraphrase it by saying, I think you said in there, this is about countries that are getting ready to enter globalization. Tom said that if you do this, your economics get larger and your politics get smaller. And my question is, given what you described – when you were doing this I wrote down a note that said, where’s the energy gone? And you described that a lot of this energy has sort of gone into the social and labor and all that kind of space. And then, Tom, talking about Fayyadism, is it possible that there is good news; that where the energy is going is not in traditional political terms but in institution-building and other elements, or is that a pipedream? Q: Hi. Nadia Oweidat, the RAND Corporation; Oxford University. Given that the U.S. interference in Iraq actually motivated the only push towards democracy, why isn’t the U.S. being more proactive? MR. FRIEDMAN: Does proactive mean in trying to repeat that, or involved more in Iraq?
Transcript Not Checked Against Delivery MS. OWEIDAT: No, trying to influence – clearly regimes don’t listen to their people, don’t care about their people. They clearly care about the U.S. actions, so why are they not exploiting this? Q: Michael Lang (sp), Rethink the Middle East. Perhaps, because this is the United States, we assume that democracy is a good, is a virtue, and so I’ve missed largely from this panel about what difference would it make if Arab countries were democratic. We know that democracies can launch wars. We know that democracies can be corrupt. We know that democracies, including our own, can mismanage economies. So is it just, in and of itself, you want Arab countries to be democratic because you think that’s good, or do you have some – are you envisioning – what kind of difference could it make for the society, for the region, if they were democratic? Q: I just have a couple comments directed at Tom. I’m Joel Sawyers, Georgetown University. We entered into the realm of overgeneralization. For example, you mentioned Lebanon as a case where the moderates succeeded but they still need to actually govern. And by succeeded, you obviously referred to the elections. There’s only one smaller problem: that the Christian-Hezbollah March 9 th coalition actually won by 54 percent of the vote. The confessional system didn’t allocate those seats to them as it normally would in a normal democratic regime. So I think the facts here are important. The other thing – I kind of cringe when I hear of Salam Fayyad. If you go back to the archives, and hear talk about Mubarak, and how he’s a modernizer, he’s going to – this benevolent, liberal enlightened dictator is going to bring all this change to Egypt, it’s very similar to Fayyad. He has no democratic mandate, he was appointed by someone whose presidency is up, and he has zero support in the West Bank among the people except the only, the support – MR. FRIEDMAN: That, that’s, that’s patently not true. I mean, you can just look the latest polls by Shikaki. I mean to say he has zero support there? Patently not true. Not even close. Talk about overgeneralization. That one’s out of the ballpark. MR. SAWYERS: Alright, a plurality – he doesn’t even have that. He’s popular in Washington and maybe Ramallah. MR. FRIEDMAN: I’m afraid you’re not up-to-date on that. (Laughs.) MS. OTTAWAY: I think it’s wrong to state that it was U.S. intervention in Iraq that really provided the only support for a drive towards democracy. The debates concerning democracy, the debates concerning political change started well before 2003. It’s not that it came out of nowhere. What the U.S. pressure did, it did convince a lot of government to take some steps. But they took cosmetic steps, because the problem is – I think to me the lesson is very different than the lesson from the U.S. attempt to promote democracy in this countries; that unless there are groups in the country, unless there are political forces in the countries – and here we go back to the weakness of political actors – that can pick up the ball and run with it, it’s not going to make any difference because governments, yes they feel under pressure, and then they make a little concessions and then,
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