The Foreign Service Journal, March 2007

M A R C H 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 61 resident Bush’s twin notions that democ- ratizing Iraq will have a ripple effect on the rest of the Arab world, bringing pros- perity and peace to the region, and that democracy is the panacea for Islamic ter- rorism, are unsubstantiated as well as grossly misleading. Even a cursory review of the Arab political landscape indicates that the rise of democracy will not automatically translate into the estab- lishment of enduring liberal democracies or undermine ter- rorism in the region. The same conclusion may be applied generally to the Muslim political landscape. In fact, given the opportunity to compete freely and fair- ly in elections, Islamic extremist organizations will most like- ly emerge triumphant. In the most recent elections in Lebanon and Egypt, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brother- hood, respectively, made substantial gains, and in Palestine, Hamas easily won the national parliamentary elections. That they did so is both a vivid example of today’s political realities and an indicator of future trends. And if current sentiments in the Arab states offer a guide, any government formed by elected Islamist political parties will be more antagonistic to the West than the authoritarian regimes still in power. In addition, there are no indications that democ- racy is a prerequisite to defeating terrorism, nor any empir- ical data to support the claim of linkage between existing authoritarian regimes and terrorism. An annual study con- ducted by the State Department, “Patterns of Global Terrorism,” shows that between 2000 and 2003, 269 major terrorist incidents occurred in free nations, 119 in countries considered partly free, and 138 in countries with authoritar- ian regimes. The study also reveals that during the same period there were 203 international terrorist attacks within India, a democratic state, while there were none in China, which does not meet most standards of a free society. These findings, of course, do not prove that democracies attract more terrorist incidents than do dictatorial regimes. But they do suggest that while mature democracies are more stable and generally avoid fighting one another, politi- cal freedoms in themselves do not automatically create a shield against violence and terrorism. France’s centuries- long tradition of democracy did not prevent fast-spreading urban unrest in 2005; until recently, Northern Ireland con- stituted another glaring example. Unless elections are pre- ceded by the building of democratic institutions and the effective encouragement of social and economic develop- ment, they will produce illiberal democracies akin to author- itarian regimes. Even if one grants the existence of a correlation between the democratic zeal of the Bush administration and the number of acts of terror committed during the same period, the administration’s efforts to fight terrorism by also pushing for democracy have failed miserably. A study on terrorism recently released by the State Department indicates that the number of terrorist incidents reached a new record of more than 11,000 attacks in 2005. Considering the dubious rationale for the war in Iraq and P ROMOTING D EMOCRACY IN THE A RAB AND M USLIM W ORLD T HE DEVELOPMENT OF TRUE DEMOCRACY IN THE M IDDLE E AST WILL BE SLOW , PAINSTAKING , EXTREMELY CHALLENGING AND , AT TIMES , VIOLENT . P B Y A LON B EN -M EIR Alon Ben-Meir is professor of international relations at the Center for Global Studies at New York University and directs the Middle East Project at the World Policy Institute. This essay is based on the author’s direct involvement in Middle Eastern affairs as both a researcher and mediator.