Export of democracy to the arab world

Essay from the year 2007 in the subject Politics - Other International Politics Topics, grade: 18/20, Vrije University Brussel (Université Libre de Bruxelles), course: Seminar, language: English, abstract: Western Initiatives in the last years and especially in the aftermath of 11 September 2001

multiplied and intensified (e.g. the U.S. proposal of a Greater Middle East Initiative, Barcelona

Process by the EU) in order to bring democracy to a region which by any definition has the Arab

World at its core and which in comparison to Eastern Europe and Latin America seems reluctant

to follow the common trend of establishing representative democracies as form of government.

Besides the ¿exportation¿ efforts also internal Arab political discourse generally endows

democracies with a virtually talismanic quality capable of solving all outstanding problems, as

Al-Azmeh rightly points out.

The Arab Word is stretching from Morocco in the west to Oman in the east including a variety of

different state structures (small city states like Kuwait , large states like Libya, extremely rich

and extremely poor regions)3 and is populated by heterogeneous ethnic groups (large Berber

minorities in the Mahgreb and Kurdish, Turkic and Armenian minorities in the Mashreq).

However big the differences may be two common nominators can doubtless be identified: Islam

and a democracy deficit . The questions arising are obvious. Is the message of the prophet

responsible that no stabile democratic government is in sight in the Arab World ? Is the deficit in

democratic ruling indeed a cultural and religious problem ? Is the Koran compatible with the

concepts of democracy ?