The region of the world that has most recently experienced widespread mobilization for democraftic changes is of course,

the Arab world. And the Arab world, until the Arab spring erupted, at the end of 2010, was a laggard among all the regions of the world. The only region of the world that did not have even a single democracy. And the region of the world that had some of the lowest levels of freedom of of any of the major regions. Why was there this gap? What, what explained it? Well there is a tradition among studies of the region that political culture had something to do with it. Now we go back to natio-, national character almost, in terms of arguments that Arabs or possibly even people brought up in Islamic traditions don't value democracy, don't understand it. And the most powerful statement, or one of the most powerful we have, is by the the great British scholar of the region, originally from Iraq, Elie Kedourie. Who wrote some few decades ago, the following observation. There is nothing in the traditions of the Arab worlds, which are the political traditions of Islam. Which might make familiar or indeed intelligible the organizing ideas of constitutional and representative government. The notion of popular sovereignty, the idea of representation of elections of popular suffrage. Of political institutions being regulated by laws, laid down by a parliamentary assembly, these laws being guarded by an independent judiciary. All these, in other words ideas and principles of democracy are profoundly alien to the Muslim political tradition. So that Elie Kedourie aduced was the reason why the Arab world was so far behind the rest of the world. In terms of movement toward democracy and freedom. Is the Arab democracy deficit or has it been until the Arab Spring. although so far very few democracies have emerged even since the Arab Spring. Has the Arab democracy deficit been a feature of Arab countries, or of Islam as a political tradition? There is a way to begin to test

Kendorie's thesis. And that is to compare the levels of freedom of Arab states who are Muslim majority countries in all cases, with non-Arab Muslim majority states. So, this is what, Alfred Stepan and Graham Robertson did in an article in the Journal of democracy some yeas ago. And I organize and slightly revised their data in this slide here. And we are looking here at 43 Muslim majority states, about half of whom are Arab League members, and half of whom are non-Arab states. And we can compute the average level of freedom on the freedom house scale of political rights and the other one of civil liberties. Average the two, and then take the average of that average, for these two sets of countries. Arab Muslim majority states, non-Arab Muslim majority states, and in this slide we do it for two years, 2006 and 2008. We see here that in both 2006 and 2008, it doesn't change very much. Arab majority muslim majority states had about a score of about five and a half on the freedom house scale. A pretty opressive score because seven is the worst score the least free. Where as the non- Arab Muslim majority states had a, level of freedom, that was significantly better, almost a point better in the scale, about four and a half. Moreover, as Stepan and Robertson argued, there has been quite significance experience with democracy among Non-Arab Muslim majority states. States like Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Senegal, Mali, Niger and Africa. Whereas up until the democratization of Tunisia in 2011, the only Arab state going back to the 1970's that had ever been a democracy, during this modern era, was Lebanon. Now of course, most of these Muslim majority states have had breakdowns of democracy, and there's been erosion of democracy in Turkey. Pakistan lost democracy and still hasn't recovered it. Bangladesh suffered a suspesnion as return to dmeocracy. Indonesia is a democracy but not without problems in terms of rule of law and political stability. and so there's movement back and forth,

Mali has suffered a military coup. Niger had one, and is returned to civilian constitutional rule. But the point is, we can't say that there's no tradition of democracy in the Muslim world, when we have so many cases of significant experiences with democracy. Now we can reorganize the cultural argument and say well, the problem with Arab culture maybe isn't that they have no appreciation with democracy. But perhaps its patrimonial relations of power, deference to a strong leader who almost owns the political system. And can decide who gets what in the distribution of power and resources and who cannot be challenged or held accountable. is the problem then, deference to authority, hierarchical social relations emanating deep from within tribal cultures. It's unlikely that this is the case, when we consider that the social relations of the Arab world, certainly could not be unfavorable in their traditional aspects of social hiearchy than we find in sub-Saharan Africa or parts of Asia. And if we consider that many Arab states are divided along ethnic or identity lines, Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain and Jordan. And we think that's the reason for the absence of democracy. Well certainly historically, you had more homogeneous countries like Egypt and Tunisia that were also, authoritarian. at the same time we can remark that one of the more ethnically homogeneous states, Tunisia, was the first among the Arab Spring states to have a breakthrough to democracy. It's most useful in evaluating the thesis that there's something different about Arab culture, to look at public opinion survey evidence. And fortunately, there has been a launch of an Arab barometer. in the first decade of the 21st century, led by among others the US based political scientist, Amaney Jamal and Mark Tessler. And they've asked in the Arab world, a number of the kinds of questions that have been asked in other surveys, of attitudes and values towards democracy in emerging market countries. So, for example, during the period 2003 to 2006, they asked this question. Would you agree or disagree that, despite

drawbacks, democracy is the best system of government? And they find that in each of five countries they surveyed during this period, Jordan, Palestine, Algeria, Morocco and Kuwait. Over 80% of the public said yes I agree, despite drawbacks, democracy is the best system of government. And then they asked, would you agree or disagree that having a democratic system would be good for our country. And in virtually every one of the countries surveyed, an even higher percentage said yes, I want democracy for my country. over 90 percent said so in Jordan, Morrocco, and Kuwait. The lowest figure was in Algeria, and that might have something to do with the fact that elections in Algeria in the early 1990s. Which were won by the islamist political party produced a kind of polical crisis, military intervention and then a decent into civil war. But even in Algeria during this period, over 80% said democracy woudl be good for our country. Now, let's look at the average for these five countries in terms of a number of other political behaviours and beliefs we could associate with democracy. For example, did they vote in the last election? Do they follow news about politics often? What do they think about political reform. Do they think it should be introduced gradually. And again would they favor the authoritarian option of having a strong leader who wouldn't have to mess with elections and parliament? Let's look at each of these measures and of course, they vary across the five countries. But let's focus on the average level of democratic orientation or support for each of these four measures. So first of all did they vote in the last election? 52% of those surveyed did. And it would have been higher except for the fact that only a quarter in Kuwait said yes, they voted in the last election. Of course, that might have something to do with the fact that they didn't perceive that the elected parliament in

Kuwait would be allowed to have much authority visa vie the emir of Kuwait. and the monarchical rules of a country. Next they asked, do you follow news about politics often? And 56% on average said that. Now when they asked do you think political reform should be introduced rapidly or gradually, 88% on average said gradually. So indicating they want reform, but they are concerned about instability. Finally, what about well, forgetting about elections and parliament, just having a strong leader decide things, only 17% on average embraced that authoritarian option. And nowhere in these five countries, did the percentage rise significantly above a quarter of those surveyed. One of the ways, that the Arab Barometer has sought to unlock the puzzle of attitudes and values toward democracy in the Arab world is to correlate attitudes about democracy. Whether people say democracy is always the best form of governor, government or not with another question that, taps their attitude toward political Islam. Do they think that men of religion should have influence over government and politics? And here we see the pattern in four countries that were surveyed more recently in the case of Tunisia well after the Arab Spring broke out. In fact, shortly after their Parlimentary elections. And in Egypt after the fall of Mubarak. In Jordan before the outbreak of the Arab Spring and Algeria shortly after the Arab Spring. We have four categories here combining the two questions. If people said that what they want is democracy, they preferred democracy but men of religion should not have influence over government. They're counted as secular democrats. If they prefer democracy but want Islamist authorities to have some influence over laws and government decisions. Then they're favored as wanting some degree of combination of democracy and Islamic rule. and then of course we can have a secular autocracy as the preference, or an authoritarian theocracy as the preference.

And we see here that the patterns are quite different across these four patterns. Jordan, where 80% want democracy, there's a more even division between those who want secular democracy, 44% of the whole sample. And those who want possibly an Islamist tinged or simply Islamic democracy. Maybe it's not really democracy we want, they want, we can't really know, that's 36%. But in Algeria, among the 85% who say that they want democracy, 65% want a secular democracy, only 20% democracy with Islam. That balance is very similar as you can see in Tunisia. And in Egypt, shortly after Mubarak fell, the balance was 51% for secular democracy, 27% for democracy with Islam. So another way we can get at this puzzle is to look specifically at those who, whatever their preference in terms of the political system are devout Muslims. We can ask whether they pray every day. Do they read the Quran every day? how pious and devout do they seem to be in their their personal lives? So here is what Amaney Jamal and Mark Tessler and their colleagues in the Arab Barometer have found. First of all, those who read the Koran every day, who seem to be personally very religious, are about as likely to support democracy strongly as those who are less devout. So, if you break people into groups, they read the Koran every day, they read it several times. Sometimes they read it, or rarely, or never. There doesn't seem to be much correlation between that measure and the likelihood of support for democracy. in fact, the Arab Barometer,scholars find that at least 85% of the Arab public in each of those categories of religiosity says, that despite drawbacks, democracy is the best system of government. So if you look at these five countries that we have reviewed. When you control for other factors, personal religiosity appears to have no effect on support for democracy by this measure, which is a pretty good measure of belief in the legitimacy of democracy. They conclude, Jamal and Tessler in their 2008 article, democratic values are present to a significant degree among

Muslim Arab citizens. Most of whom support democracy, and this is the case whether or not an individual believes that his or her country, should be governed by a political system that Isla, that is Islamic as well as democratic. And, as I've said, it's also the case whether or not they're personally religious. What we don't know, is what people have in mind when they say that men of religion should have influence over government, but they want democracy. How much is the emphasis on democracy and how much on Islamic authority, which are obviously intention. If the ultimate decisions are made, as in Iran, not by people who are accountable to their fellow citizens through elections. But by people who claim that they only have to answer to a higher authority, namely God. So, what can we conclude about Arab attitudes toward democracy? at this point as revealed through some of the surveys that have been done by the Arab Barometer. Well first of all the Arab Barometer scholars conclude the obvious. There seems to be, very broad, popular support for democracy. And, most people, do not believe that democracy is some western colonial implant, that's incompatible with Islam. We see and we don't fully have the means to evaluate yet that support for democracy does not necessarily mean secular democracy. Leaving open the question of what those advocates of Islamic democracy have in mind as their preferece. And finally, in some countries, particularly Jordan we've seen an even division of opinion on the question of how much of a role Islam should play in political affairs. But in the recent surveys there seems to be movement toward greater preference for a secular democracy. Weighing this public opinion survey data it is possible to view the Arab Spring in a less surprising light. And to see that it didn't come out of nowhere, but rather out of a gathering increasing popular aspiration to join the rest of the world. To join the third wave of democracy, and to have elected, accountable, free

government in their own country.