It’s hard to believe given the daily diet of bad news from the Arab world, but things may be about to get wors On top of everything else, demography is turning the region into a pressure cooker. Arab nations are already struggling to cope with explosive population growth, with a third of the region’s population under 15; the world’s worst regional unemployment level; rising inequality and falling living standards. Over the next 20 years, this tide of joblessness and poverty looks set to turn into a flood as the working-age population doubles, growing by over 100 million.
Everybody agrees that change is needed to stop this crisis in living standards becoming a crisis of stability. But what kind? Faced with Arab voters’ support for extremists and sectarians, from Hamas to Hizbollah, a consensus is forming that democracy may not be the best answer for the Middle East.
Many, on both left and right, argue the region simply isn’t ready for government by the people. Tribalism, sectarianism and endemic corruption have left Arab societies ill-suited to democratic politics. The region’s democracy movements remain confined to journalists and academics. Repression has driven a disenchanted populace into the arms of extremists. What the Middle East needs, so the argument goes, is to ‘do a China’, reforming economically from the top while keeping a lid on discontent.
But the Middle East is not the far east. Its economies are warped by oil and a fossilised bureaucracy. Its regimes are beholden to powerful vested interests and don’t have the will or the bureaucratic capability to drive change far enough or fast enough. And, even if they had both, the region’s economies lack the skills and competitive edge to grow their way out of trouble.
Only democratic change offers the hope of the pressure valve needed to head off catastrophe. In the short run, the status quo offers the best refuge for the rulers of countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. But long-term chaos is the likely price.
The two key questions are how to persuade the current regimes to take the lid off the pressure cooker, and how to stop it boiling over when they do. The answers are complex, often unpalatable, and will vary from country to country.
Reform will have to be about more than just elections. To decentralise power and create the basis for politics that transcend tribe and sect, countries will need to seed a diverse private sector and a vibrant civil society of non-governmental bodies such as unions and charities. This will require a delicate combination of reform from the top to get it started, coupled with pressure from the bottom to push it further. Phasing democracy’s introduction may help.
It will entail rapidly improving the delivery of responsive public services, especially education. Democratic reform will need to produce noticeable improvements in people’s lives – and a transformation in their skills and productivity – if it is to compete with the Islamists’ theocratic vision. Regimes will need also to engage what mass movements exist, and to strengthen their least extreme elements. This is no easy decision.
We should be under no illusions about many of the region’s Islamic parties. However, it will be essential to engage selectively with them, and to create incentives for the relatively moderate to deepen their equivocal support for democracy.
Finally, reformers will need to find ways to neutralise hard-line opposition and entrench change. Early reforms should build institutions – such as a free press, unions and parties – that will make clawing back concessions difficult and public. Deals may need to be done with opponents, as the ANC did in South Africa. Hardliners are likely to block change if they think it will end with them facing penury, or a firing squad.
So what should Britain do? We will have to strike a difficult balance between maintaining stability and encouraging steady, irreversible change. First, despite the risks, we must persuade, aid and pressure our non-democratic allies to open up their societies. Second, we must promote dialogue with moderate Islamic parties. Third, and most importantly, we must remain involved for the long run. The struggle for Arab democracy, like the struggle against terror, will be generation-long. And success in one will be intimately linked to success in the other. This is a difficult message for the British public to accept. It is nevertheless essential.