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On March 8th, 2006 the Saltzman Institute hosted a
forum “Debating Democratization in the Middle East ” . See below for highlights or to access the entire
text.
Jack Snyder
Other factors that have been identified by a broad range of scholarship focuses on the per-capita wealth of the country as favorable towards peaceful and successful democratization, high levels of literacy, not being an oil-based economy, not being multi-ethnic, and having resolved the basic question of national self-determination, who is the nation that’s going to self-determine in the democratic process? If those problems are not solved a democratic transition is likely to stall out in the dangerous middle ranges of the process, and it’s more likely to be violent...The prescription that, Professor Mansfield and I have focused on in our book is to get the sequence of the democratic transition right, in particular to work first on building up the institutions that the state needs in order to be a meaningful democracy. Have a rational legal non-corrupt bureaucratic apparatus, then work on the rule of law in the activities of the state, and finally end with no holds barred multi-party competition in free and fair elections. If you get the sequence backwards, in our view the chances of violence increase.
Lincoln Mitchell
The institutional constraints on fair elections in most countries-these are the obvious ones-corruption, a blurring of the line between state and party, a culture of entitlement on the part of the ruling party, all of this make it difficult to support the developments of other kinds of democratic institutions. In my experience, when the rubber meets the road, the question of when to introduce elections as opposed to working on developing other kind of institutions is usually moot. The politics and demands of the people of the country mean that you kind of have to do both at the same time, which is not always easy. And in many cases, again, the question is not whether or not the international community should push for elections, but whether or not the international community should turn a blind eye when they are stolen. And this is a different question.
Full transcript of panel one "Democratization, Conflict and Development"
Amaney Jamal
How can we explain support for Hamas?...I think a lot in the media has been made out of the Palestinian National Authority and its levels of corruption...it’s very important, it’s pervasive. But nevertheless, we’re missing the big question, which is the peace process. Right? And I think you can't talk about a Hamas electoral victory without looking at the peace process and specifically the US role in that peace process. And the Palestinian people, however we want to measure or talk about democracy are basically responding to existing political realities and exercising a rational decision to vote for a government that will probably benefit them more in the long run that what Fatah has been able to produce and offer in the last decade or so. The Palestinian vote is about democratic accountability, it’s one about a government that can deliver. And for all practical purposes, Hamas has been delivering. If we look at what Hamas has done in Reza, it’s delivered. It’s delivered on social goods, it’s delivered on economic goods, it’s delivered in terms of practicing non-corrupt ways of governance in ways that appeal to a Palestinian electorate. I mean, Fatah has abused its power, but also Fatah has not been able to do anything in regards to the peace process. Things are much worse today than they were in 1993 in terms of where the peace process was, in terms of what the peace process was supposed to accomplish, and what the Palestinians see in Mahmoud Abbas is a debilitated complicit leader who basically needs to endorse Israeli and US interests and forget the interests of the Palestinian people.
Gary Sick
Condi Rice the other day made a speech saying we’ve got to promote civil society and get our organizations involved with Iran's, and we’re going to give seventy-five million dollars to be able to make that work. Well, we had an easier solution six years ago that, in fact, had some chance of success. But putting in the seventy-five million dollars and saying, basically, that we’re going to fund these organizations, every US institution, every US 501c3 organization now that tries to work in Iran is immediately going to be regarded as suspect, and no Iranian organization is going to be able to work with them simply because they’ll be tainted immediately as toadies of American imperialism, or whatever you have. The other thing is that the subtext of our democratization program is that it’s not really a democratization program. With regard to Iran, what we want is really what we wanted in Iraq, and that is we want to overthrow this regime. We want regime change. We’re not looking for democratization of this regime, we’re looking for the regime to be eliminated in one form or another, and I think all of you understand that when you set that up as your sort of irreducible minimum, that no matter what this country does, or what their leadership does, at the end of the day we’re not going to be satisfied until they’re gone, doesn’t give you a lot of negotiating room when you're trying to get them to change their behavior.
Link for full transcript of panel two "Electoral Developments in the Middle East "
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