Rethinking Arab Democratization Elections without Democracy

by Sadiki, Larbi

• ISBN13: 9780199699247
• ISBN10: 0199699240
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-01-13
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The book unpacks and historicizes the rise of Arab electoralism, narrating the story of stalled democratic transition in the Arab Middle East. It provides a balance sheet of the state of Arab democratization from the mid-1970s up to 2008. In seeking to answer the question of how Arab countries democratize and whether they are democratizing at all, the book pays attention to specificity, highlighting the peculiarities of democratic transitions in the Arab Middle East. To this end, it situates the discussion of such transitions firmly within their local contexts, but without losing sight of the global picture, namely, the US drive to control and democratize' the Arab World. The book rejects exceptionalism', foundationalism', and Orientalism', by showing that the Arab World is not immured from the global trend towards political liberalization. But by identifying new trends in Arab democratic transitions, highlighting their peculiarities and drawing on Arab neglected discourses and voices, the book pinpoints the contingency of some of the arguments underlying Western theories of democratic transition when applied to the Arab setting. Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Official Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.

Author Biography

Larbi Sadiki is Senior Lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter.

Table of Contents

List of Tables	p. xvi
Abbreviations	p. xvii
Glossary	p. xix
Introduction	p. 1
Rethinking Democratization in the Arab Context	p. 7
Mapping out Arab Electoralism, 1998-2008	p. 60
Elections Without Democracy: The False Starts, 1975-97	p. 100
The Greater Middle East Initiative: A US Democracy Promotion 'Road Map'?	p. 145
Catalysts from Below: Democratic Transition and 'Bread Riots'	p. 199
Al-Jazeerah and the Internet as Sites of Democratic Struggle	p. 239
Conclusions	p. 272
Select Bibliography	p. 287
Index	p. 301
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