 Western Democracy Meets Eastern Challenges: An Interview with Marina Ottaway
Valentina Pasquali – Washington Prism Marina Ottaway is the Director of the Middle East Program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She specializes in democracy and post-conflict reconstruction issues, particularly on problems of political transformation in the Middle East and reconstruction in Iraq, Afghanistan, and African countries. Before joining the Endowment, Ottaway carried out research and taught at universities in Africa and in the Middle East, including the American University in Cairo. She is the author of nine books and has edited another five. Her most recent work, Beyond the Façade: Political Reform in the Arab World (edited with Julia Choucair-Vizoso), was published in January 2008. In her interview with Washington Prism, Ottaway explores issues of political transformation and democratization in the Middle East. Washington Prism (WP): You have studied political transformation in the Middle East for a long time. Why would you say democracy has not flourished in the Marina Ottaway (MO): This is a complicated issue and there is certainly more than one factor in play. I think that a very important element in impeding this transformation has been the nature of the ideas and of the political movements that have been at work in the Arab world. There have been three main ideological currents in the modern Arab world. The first was nationalism, starting in the early 1930s. Egypt was the more important example. This type of nationalism had a democratic connotation. This kind of democratic, liberal nationalism emerged because it was driven by the educated elites, the bourgeoisie. These managed to win the support from the masses, not because the masses were democratic or liberal, but because they were nationalist. By doing so, they created a combination of nationalism and democracy that was successful for a certain period of time. The nationalist-democratic trend died in the 1950s. In the post-war period socialism became the dominant ideology. Nationalism became coupled with socialism, whereas earlier on it had been connected to ideals of democracy. In the 1970s, the socialist wave also started dying out, beginning with the death of Nasser. Ever since then, the liberals, the educated, the intellectuals who have always been behind the liberal trend, failed to find a language that would speak to the Arab population. One of the tragedies in the Middle East is that Arab intellectuals have been unable to turn their message of democracy into something that the masses can relate to. To this day, it remains an elite ideology. As a result, once socialism died, liberals lost out the Islamists in terms of popular language and popular message. As a result, I think the reasons should be found in this history of the political movements in the Arab world and the failure to ever make democracy into a relevant ideology in and of itself, and not merely as an attachment to nationalism. I honestly don’t buy the argument that Arab countries don’t have a democratic culture. We can say that no country has a democratic culture before it turns into a democracy. All countries that became democratic were first authoritarian governments.
MO: The Bush Administration never stopped to think about what they were really looking for. In one sense, one could say that they wanted instant transformation, which turned out to be a very naïve expectation. They thought that if the United States put its foot down, if it told governments in the Middle East what to do and what they needed to change, all of a sudden change would happen. However, they never paused to ask themselves whether movements existed in these countries that could make the idea of democracy relevant. One must remember that democratic transformation needs a political process. It is not a question of individual thinking but rather of group activity. The Bush Administration never inquired whether there were organizations in the Arab world ready to put up the democratic agenda. And it is quite clear that these organizations didn’t exist. Secondly, the Bush Administration failed to recognize which were the best organized political movements and the best organized political parties and, therefore, who was likely to benefit the most from the democratic agenda. As soon as they faced the rise of the Islamists, they turned back. I still don’t understand how this happened. To me it’s a mystery that nobody ever predicted some of the outcomes. At the time of the elections in Iraq, the Administration was really upset at the emergence of religious parties. And I never understood why that would be, since, if you looked at the parties that made up the Iraqi National Congress, you’d have seen that they were all religious parties, like the Dawa or the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution. It was all spelled out in black and white. But the Bush Administration did not know what it was doing and the mistakes were blatant. WP: Is there anything in the agenda of democracy promotion that you think might be worth salvaging for the future? MO: The really important question now is whether the new Obama Administration can do something useful to promote democracy, but in a different way from Bush’s. I’m not sure that anybody knows what the U.S. can do. I think it would have to look for solutions on a country-by-country basis, searching for feasible next steps. For example, I think it would make sense for the U.S. to put pressure on Egypt so that it opens up the process of registering political parties. At this point it is impossible to have meaningful elections there, because the government has killed all the relevant parties. The only ones that are still registered, and are allowed to participate, are unable to win votes and their leadership has not been rejuvenated in a long time. The government has allowed them to survive precisely because they don’t represent a threat. But clearly, you can’t have meaningful elections if you don’t have working political parties. It seems to me that one concrete step we could take is to put pressure on the government to open up the registration of political parties and allow parties to function. However, this is not a recipe that is good for all countries. If you take the other extreme, the most difficult case, what exactly does it mean to promote democracy in Saudi Arabia? In the realm of what is conceivable, what could be a meaningful step that the Saudi Government could take in the direction of democracy? They, of course, are not going to proclaim a constitutional monarchy tomorrow. Honestly, I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that question. I don’t know. I find it amusing to hear all these people saying that Obama should not drop the democracy agenda, that he should continue promoting democracy in the Middle East in a different way. That is nice. But what should he actually do? This issue is very nebulous. I don’t have the answer. To me, it is a question of keeping a low profile and seizing opportunities when they arise, but it is nothing like the democracy agenda of the Bush Administration.
MO: In the paper you mention we were referring to a specific category of political parties -- Islamist political parties that already participate in the legal political process of the country. In other words, these are the parties that present candidates for elections. The best example would be Morocco, where the PJD, Party for Justice and Development, is the second largest in the country. Recently it started talks with the USFP, the socialist party, as they began to see that they might have something in common as far as their political agenda and, that cooperating in parliament would make them more effective. The Obama Administration should start treating these political parties like all other political parties. They should talk to them and maintain the same contacts they have with the other political organizations. They should make it clear that the U.S. recognizes parties that are non-violent political entities playing by the rule of the game, such as they are in their own countries. And this last caveat is important because one of the paradoxes of the U.S. policy toward the Middle East is that we expect these parties to be democratic when the countries in which they operate are not democratic. In any case, I think the US should make it clear that it considers them normal and legitimate movements. This would certainly help, it wouldn’t change everything, but at least it would represent a tangible step in the right direction. This is important as ever because many governments in the region are making it increasingly difficult for these political parties to compete. If this continues, the danger is that the more moderate voices within the Islamist parties, the ones pushing for open political participation, will be silenced. At which point we are going to have a more radical leadership emerging, which I don’t think it’s in anybody’s interest.
MO: It is hard to say what will happen with the Obama Administration because we don’t know yet who is going to control the Middle East portfolio. Certainly the Bush Administration did not get that these movements are not going to disappear. They are too popular for a number of reasons and they are not going to go away simply because the U.S. ignores them. The idea that merely supporting Fatah in Palestine while allowing Israel to fight Hamas -- because Hamas doesn’t recognize Israel -- would cause Hamas to disappear is just not proving to be true. Now, one must add that Hamas is an extreme example, for two reasons. 
“(The recent Gaza conflict) is essentially another chapter in the long saga, not a game-changer. Even Israel has been careful not to state that it is a game changer in the sense that Hamas will be eliminated” WP: Do you see any chance that Islamist political parties might at some point decide to recognize Israel? MO: Yes, absolutely, at least, within the framework of political movements, not the Jihadists. If there was an overall peace agreement, Islamist parties would accept Israel’s existence. I don’t think any Arab will ever accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel but they will adapt to its existence and to the fact that it is not going anywhere. Egyptians have not recognized the legitimacy of Israel, but they have recognized that, like it or not, there is a state there and that it is there to stay. They have learned to deal with it.
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