King's Dilemma: Bush, Arabs and Democracy

With President Bush in Saudi Arabia today, perhaps it's an appropriate moment to recommend reading a sobering paper from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace entitled Incumbent Regimes and the "King's Dilemma" in the Arab World. Issued last month, it is authored by two astute observers of trends in the Middle East, Marina Ottaway and Michelle Dunne.

The main question is, with most of the rest of the world now reaping the benefits of democracy, can Arab authoritarianism survive very much longer? In Saudi Arabia, for example, how long will an absolute monarchy continue to exist, one that is still very much an al-Saud family concern founded a century ago? How long will it be before al-Saud leadership at least passes down to the next generation of family members, considering that Saudi kings for a half century now have all been sons of Ibn Saud? In Arab republics like Egypt, Syria and Libya, how much longer can regimes dominated by security services hold sway? The issues are particularly pertinent for Americans these days, given how the Bush administration has now so publicly added democratization to the U.S. Middle East policy agenda. In a landmark speech during his current tour of the region, Bush addressed the "people of the Middle East" and declared: "Across the world, the majority of Muslim people live in a free and democratic society-- and the people of the Middle East must continue to work for the day where that is also true of the lands that Islam first called home."

In brief, Ottaway and Dunne are not optimistic that we'll see substantial political reform in Arab countries any time soon. They point out that despite a lot of big talk about change, top-down reform managed by ruling regimes has thus far brought "extremely limited results." In reality, they write, "they have taken at best timid steps, which are usually cancelled out by contradictory measures. With few exceptions even economic and social reforms have been limited." The authors note that hopes for real reform and an end to political stagnation rose a decade ago when power in five Arab countries--Qatar, Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain and Syria--was finally handed down to a new generation of rulers. Although they all see themselves as modernizers, the authors argue, "none pursued a transformational political reform agenda." The climate of optimism of a few years ago has faded, Ottaway and Dunne write. They predict that when in Egypt and Libya the modernizing sons of current rulers likely succeed their fathers, Gamal Mubarak and Seif al-Islam al-Gadhafy will be greeted with cynicism thanks in part to the dashed hopes for reform throughout the region.

Part of the problem, the paper argues, is the so-called "King's Dilemma," for which the Iranian revolution is considered the nightmare scenario. Many of the current Arab regimes understand the need to reform. But the "King's Dilemma" holds that limited reforms introduced from the top can increase rather than decrease bottom-up demand for more radical change. As Ottaway and Dunne say, "the unintended consequence of even cautious reforms may be an out-of-control change that wipes out the very ruling elite who initiated the reform."

The future challenge for the next generation of Arab leaders is that they will face the "King's Dilemma" in the age of globalization, when issues like political rights and economic development cannot be walled off thanks to factors including the Internet. Ottaway and Dunne conclude that "the most likely scenario for most countries appears to be continued political stagnation, with limited change, rather than an uncontrolled slide into an uncertain future." The authors refrain from speculating how much longer that will remain the case.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo