Abu Aardvark

Arab political bloggers and political change

Charles Levison has an interesting piece in the Christian Science Monitor on the political role of Egyptian bloggers:

After government supporters attacked and beat protesters in late May, Egypt's blogging community led the effort to publicize what had happened.

"I had never heard the word blogger until May 25," says Rabab al-Mahdi, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo, and an opposition activist. "But now I know them well because of all the amazing coverage they had of the protests. My friends overseas all followed what happened through the blogs, because they have more credibility than the mainstream media."

Activists in Egypt rely on blogs like Fattah's to find out the time and place of future demonstrations, to learn who has been arrested and where they have been taken, and to debate the effectiveness of opposition strategies. In short order, Egypt's bloggers have become a political force, capable of more than merely commenting from the sidelines.

In early June, Fattah and two other bloggers decided they were tired of protesting in the same tired locations, with the same hackneyed slogans. Acting independently of opposition elders, they used their blogs to organize a protest in a working-class Cairo neighborhood, which attracted a respectable 300 people. The young bloggers' innovative logos, slogans, and choice of location prompted a sweeping debate among the Egyptian opposition.

Here's part of what I told Charles:

"Egypt's bloggers seem to have been able to make the transition from spouting hot air, to political organization and political work and that's impressive," says Marc Lynch, a political science professor specializing in Arab media at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass.

I have my doubts as to the short term political relevance of blogging in the Arab world -  I remember saying to Charles during our conversation that Egypt strikes me as the exception rather than the rule.  Translating the blogs into political activism is something which I don't see happening in a lot of other Arab countries (except for Bahrain, which gets a good sized box here, and Iran, which of course is not Arab). There are a number of nice, well-written, often fascinating blogs in many other Arab countries (in Arabic and English), but very few that I'm aware of are really political, and even fewer do anything like the political organization role that these Egyptians have pioneered.  It's hard to find a single Jordanian political blog, for example, despite the ferment in that country's politics over the last year. 

One other point is that in comparison to satellite TV, which has darn near universal reach now, blogs remain limited to a pretty small, elite sector in the Arab world.  This is not a problem when the goal is to organize a political movement or to connect with the international media - the things at which the Egyptian bloggers have excelled - since you don't need to reach a wide public to accomplish those things.  But it is a problem if you expect blogs to challenge the Arab "mainstream media" for the wider public. I'd wager that Arab political activists in other countries will start to imitate the Egyptian methods of networking and political organization through blogs ... even as governments will be ready to crack down.   

Meanwhile, Steve Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations has an interesting piece on a related theme in Slate (which marks a pretty serious upgrade in their usual Middle East coverage): 

Abdulhamid is also a blogger, who, along with many others in the region with access to a computer and the Internet, has been sharing his thoughts about the state of governance and politics in his society with anyone interested enough to read. The Middle East blogosphere is not only an important vehicle of protest, it has become an invaluable tool to analysts stuck in New York, Washington, and elsewhere who are trying to make sense of developments in faraway places. Yet there is a risk of assigning more importance to these accounts than they intrinsically deserve. In addition to being observers, analysts, and interpreters of events, bloggers are activists. This is not to suggest that the Arab world's talented bloggers are not to be trusted, merely that looking through the straw hole of the Middle East blogosphere may provide a distorted view of what's going on in the region.

Cook takes on a question with which the group at Carnegie have recently begun grappling: how do you measure political change in the Arab world?   It's a tough nut.  Cook echoes a theme I often repeat:

While some columnists and editorial boards prematurely proclaim the triumph of the Arab spring, there is a tendency to lose sight of the fact that the defenders of Arab regimes have time and again proved themselves to be smart, flexible, and exceptionally brutal when confronting internal challenges. It seems unlikely that the gendarme states of the Middle East will allow themselves to be disarmed without much of a fight. Arab governments tend to engage in a combination of repression and cosmetic liberalization in their efforts to preserve their authoritarian political systems. That's why the number of protesters in the streets, the staging of elections, or the ability of Arabs to say nasty things about their leaders—without getting arrested—are fairly crude metrics for measuring political change. Observers need to look beyond these types of developments. What really matters are changes to the institutional mechanisms of political control. Thus far, the leaders of the Middle East, despite becoming adept at the discourse of democratization and masters of tactical political openings, have taken very few steps to fundamentally alter the authoritarian status quo.

I prefer the phrase "nasty little weasels" to describe Arab regimes, but the point is the same.  Cook's piece also fits nicely in the Greg Gause challenge from yesterday.

Gause on Arab democracy

A while ago I pointed to an op-ed by Greg Gause arguing against the "democracy is the solution to terrorism" thesis.  The full Foreign Affairs essay from which the op-ed was drawn is now on-line:

But this begs a fundamental question: Is it true that the more democratic a country becomes, the less likely it is to produce terrorists and terrorist groups? In other words, is the security rationale for promoting democracy in the Arab world based on a sound premise? Unfortunately, the answer appears to be no. Although what is known about terrorism is admittedly incomplete, the data available do not show a strong relationship between democracy and an absence of or a reduction in terrorism. Terrorism appears to stem from factors much more specific than regime type. Nor is it likely that democratization would end the current campaign against the United States. Al Qaeda and like-minded groups are not fighting for democracy in the Muslim world; they are fighting to impose their vision of an Islamic state. Nor is there any evidence that democracy in the Arab world would "drain the swamp," eliminating soft support for terrorist organizations among the Arab public and reducing the number of potential recruits for them.

Even if democracy were achieved in the Middle East, what kind of governments would it produce? Would they cooperate with the United States on important policy objectives besides curbing terrorism, such as advancing the Arab-Israeli peace process, maintaining security in the Persian Gulf, and ensuring steady supplies of oil? No one can predict the course a new democracy will take, but based on public opinion surveys and recent elections in the Arab world, the advent of democracy there seems likely to produce new Islamist governments that would be much less willing to cooperate with the United States than are the current authoritarian rulers.

The answers to these questions should give Washington pause. The Bush administration's democracy initiative can be defended as an effort to spread American democratic values at any cost, or as a long-term gamble that even if Islamists do come to power, the realities of governance will moderate them or the public will grow disillusioned with them. The emphasis on electoral democracy will not, however, serve immediate U.S. interests either in the war on terrorism or in other important Middle East policies.

It is thus time to rethink the U.S. emphasis on democracy promotion in the Arab world. Rather than push for quick elections, the United States should instead focus its energy on encouraging the development of secular, nationalist, and liberal political organizations that could compete on an equal footing with Islamist parties. Only by doing so can Washington help ensure that when elections finally do occur, the results are more in line with U.S. interests.

Gause is right, I think, about the core claim.  There is very little evidence, and not even a great deal of logic, supporting the argument that democracy in and of itself will reduce terrorism.  Indeed, to the extent that democracy produces new political opportunities and incentives, it might even increase the appeal of terrorism for groups with extreme views but only minority appeal.   Such groups have great incentives to use violence in order to disrupt the consolidation of peace accords or of a democratic system - most "strategic" theories of terrorism consider "moments of opportunity" (i.e. just before elections, or just as a peace agreement has been signed) to be the most dangerous ones from a terrorism vantage point. 

Gause is wrong, I think, to conclude from this that democracy promotion is not a realistic or worthwhile goal. The rise of "democracy" on the Arab public agenda has already put radical Islamists on the defensive.  Ayman al-Zawahiri's last two tapes have both been defensive arguments, attacking democratic reform movements (especially Kefaya in Egypt) and articulating an Islamist alternative of jihad as the only route to reform.   In the absence of a democratization agenda, the Islamists would have much more of an open field, the opportunity to present themselves as offering the only positive program for a better future.

Even more, however, I think that Gause is wrong to cast this exclusively in terms of terrorism or even American national interests.  The demand for Arab democracy should be considered important because it is in an Arab demand, not because it serves an American national interest (see this classic Baheyya post and the discussion for more).   There is a significant internal demand for change - whether you want to credit this to Bush's invasion of Iraq or to long-gestating political movements and satellite television.   Two important things follow from this.  First, supporting Arab aspirations for democratic reforms is probably the single best way to push back against anti-Americanism in the region, since it aligns the US with rather than against popular opinion for the first time in a long, long time.  Second, not supporting those aspirations risks missing a rare window of opportunity, which might not open again for a while.  Even if there are real risks associated with pushing democracy, there are also real opportunity costs to not doing so. 

Finally, Gause's recommendations - build institutions and nurture liberal democrats first - sound good on paper, but in practice sound like more of the same.   Again, take Egypt.  You hear this from many Mubarak supporters and many worried "liberals" - Mubarak should win in September and then he can spend five years building the foundations of a liberal civil society so that liberals will have a real chance in the next elections.   Yeah, and Haifa Wehbi might be performing at my next birthday party.  I see no evidence that the Arab regimes - whether dinosaurs like Mubarak and Abdullah (Saudi branch) or younger ones like Abdullah (Jordan division) and Bashar - have any intention of doing anything more than prettying up the same old house.  No matter what kind of game they talk when they come to Washington for consultations, I have a very difficult time seeing them as stewards of meaningful reform.  They've been running the show for decades, and we've seen what they will produce. 

Bottom line:  Gause isn't just a friend, he's also an extremely smart, experienced, and incisive political scientist of the Middle East.  This is one of the strongest and best articulated Realist critiques of the democracy agenda I've seen.  As such, it's a good place to open up a serious discussion. (*)

(*) also, since I'm going to participate in a roundtable on democracy promotion in the Arab world at the American Political Science Association annual meeting in two weeks, it's a shameless bid to gather ideas.   Thanks for being used.

UPDATE: Gause reponds.   The rest is up to you!

As they say in England, its a "fair cop."  The strongest arguments for democracy promotion from an American interest point of view are to get on the front wave of what some think is an inevitable move in this direction.  I guess I have two responses:  1) maybe it isn't inevitable; and 2) I'm not sure, given how we have defined our other interests in the region (military presence in the Gulf, special relationship with Israel) along with our past support for some of the autocrats, that even if we did "go democratic" in a real way, that Arab public opinion would be less anti-American.  What is for sure is that more democratic Arab politics will be more Islamist Arab politics (not jihadist, but Islamist), and even the most democratic and peaceful Islamists disagree with a broad range of the American agenda in the region.

Your point that the democratic push has put the jihadists on the defensive is interesting.  But it supports my point (which you do not contest) that greater democracy will not necessarily stop terrorism.  I think that the salafi jihadist agenda is inherently limited in its mass appeal, so I am not sure that I am buying your corollary, that the jihadists would have more support if there were not a democracy push.  But that is something worth playing out.  The jihadis are big in Iraq, where there are democratic opportunities.  They don't seem to be that big in, say, Syria, where there are not.  Of course, the Asad regime killed lots of them back in the early 1980's, but it has been almost a quarter of a century since then.

You are absolutely right that my stance in the article is from an American interest/old fashioned Realist point of view.  If Arab democracy comes, more power to it.  It will be fascinating to study.  The U.S. shouldn't do anything to stop it (as if it could, except at the margins, if the train actually does leave the station).  I don't have anything against Arab democracy personally.  But I can't see how it would serve American interests the way that Washington defines them now.

You are also right that the "support the liberals" is pretty much the old saw.  But, to me, if the U.S. is going to go down this path, that is the strategy they should pursue.

Looking forward to your next birthday party, with Haifa Wehbi performing.