Middle East's Big Problem: Too Much Democracy

Robert F. Worth writes in the New York Times:

“Kuwait used to be No. 1 in the economy, in politics, in sports, in culture, in everything,” [Ali al-Rashed] said, his voice floating out in the warm evening air to hundreds of potential voters seated on white damask-lined chairs. “What happened?” It is a question many people are asking as this tiny, oil-rich nation of 2.6 million people approaches its latest round of elections. And the unlikely answer being whispered around, both here and in neighboring countries on the Persian Gulf: too much democracy.

Of course, Kuwait’s neighbors include Iraq (a democracy, whether the Times likes it or not–and get this quote: “There are Arab republics–in Yemen, Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Iraq and Tunisia–but despite their democratic forms, those countries have generally been more autocratic and repressive than the region’s monarchies.”). The article refers to Qatar, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi, which are neighbors in the sense of being downstream along the Arabian Gulf, but by that measure Iran (a theocracy that is most emphatically not a monarchy of any variety) is much more a neighbor, being just across the Shatt al Arab. Then there is this opinion offered as news:

All this has left many Kuwaitis deeply disenchanted with their 50-member elected legislature. The collapse of the Bush administration’s efforts to promote democracy in the region and the continuing chaos in Iraq, just to the north–once heralded as the birthplace of a new democratic model–have also contributed to a popular suspicion that democracy itself is one Western import that has not lived up to its advertising.

Apparently they weren’t disenchanted in 2006 when, as the article describes, they pushed through an “Orange Revolution” to expand their freedoms. Odd, when you think about it, considering that the “chaos in Iraq” is “continuing” at a fraction of what it was in 2006. Coincidentally, everyone Worth quotes gripes about democracy only to add that it’s “our last hope” or “isn’t the problem.” As Abe Greenwald points out, it seems the “only attributable monarchy-envy comes from Worth himself.”

Middle East’s Big Problem: Too Much Democracy

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