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| Volume VII, February 2000, Number 2 |
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| Book Review |
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For a printable version of this book review, click here.
Legislative Politics in the Arab World: the Resurgence of Democratic
Institutions, by Abdo Baaklini, Guilain Denoeux and Robert Springborg. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner publishers, 1999. 278 pages. $59.95, hardcover; $22.50, paperback.
Thomas O. Melia
Vice president for programs, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs; adjunct professor, Georgetown University
In its most recent annual survey of "Freedom in the World," the New York think tank Freedom House declared that the world became notably more democratic in 1999, as civil liberties and human rights improved in 26 countries while declining in 18. "Most significantly," the report said, "the Islamic world, long resistant to democratic change, is beginning to show signs of liberalization that include modest democratic reforms and ... growing democratic ferment." While much of that good news was attributed to breakthroughs in Indonesia and Nigeria, the Arab Middle East came in for positive notice too. Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar were among the 26 countries whose scores improved on the previous year (though none were yet considered "free" countries).
Legislative Politics in the Arab World: the Resurgence of Democratic Institutions provides an excellent complementary perspective on the state of democracy in the Arab world at the end of the 1990s. In considerable detail and in six key countries, the book examines the legislature, an institution whose health and strength is vital to any modern democracy. The authors are highly regarded scholars of contemporary Arab politics; each is a widely published specialist on one or more of the countries studied. Each also has considerable experience working under contract to the U.S. Agency for International Development designing strategies or implementing programs intended to strengthen the legislatures examined here. The book presents in four chapters a "framework for analysis," followed by chapter-long case studies of Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, Yemen and Egypt.
As in the Freedom House survey, the overall tone is hopeful about the long-term prospects for democratic development in the Arab world. At the same time, Baaklini, Denoeux and Springborg articulate an appreciation for incremental change that may strike some activists in these countries as too accommodating of an undemocratic status quo or too patient with regimes that manipulate democratic forms to perpetuate themselves in power. "Reforms implemented in this gradual fashion are more durable," they write, "because they have been accepted and negotiated with those segments of society that have more to lose from democratization (i.e. ... the executive and the military). Although these forces are reluctant, ... the changes they do accept are less likely to be reversed." Even though the country-specific chapters note that time and again assertive legislatures (and democracy more generally) have been subverted by autocratic chief executives, they conclude that "the overall trend is positive and will continue to be so" (p. 249).
The book begins with a review of the rise and fall of academic attention paid to legislatures in the Arab world. A brief discussion of the behavioral revolution in political science in the 1950s and 1960s -- and the consequent loss of academic focus on institutions such as legislatures -- is helpful and underscores the significance of this work. Broader historical context is provided in a survey of political representation in the late Ottoman empire, before and after the sultan's promulgation of the 1876 constitution providing for an elected (and short-lived) Chamber of Deputies. It helped promote not only rudimentary standards of governmental accountability but the very notion of citizenship. From the time that parliament was suspended in 1878, until the Young Turks revived elections and legislative activity in 1908, reformers in the Ottoman empire organized their demands around the need for representative government. The political agitation of the 1920s and 1930s that helped galvanize Arab national identities and pave the way for eventual independence from Britain or France often occurred in parliamentary arenas. The subsequent marginalization of parliaments in the 1950s and 1960s by revolutionary, "modernizing" Arab regimes, often antagonistic to the West and its democratic forms of government, is also summarized.
The framework for analysis the authors present concentrates on the "institutional centrality" of legislatures and their "internal capacity." Centrality refers to the constitutional and political environments surrounding legislatures – de jure and de facto constraints on their freedom of maneuver – which define the outer boundaries of a parliament's possible influence and power. The more central a legislature is to the governance of a country, the more powerful it is. Capacity refers to those attributes that determine the extent to which parliaments actually fill the available political space: from the political will of parliamentary leaders to the organization's structure and procedures, staff competence and material resources on hand. Both centrality and capacity are essential for a fully formed and effective democratic legislature, though centrality seems to matter more. The authors conclude that a capable, well-endowed legislature (such as Egypt's) can do little of consequence in the absence of a broader democratic dispensation that enables the elected legislature to have a major role in public policy, that is, to be more central. Legislatures with minimal human and material resources, on the other hand, such as those in Yemen and Jordan (in this sample), can play a larger role in the governance of their respective societies because they have more centrality, though less capacity. Adapted from the earlier work of David Olson and Philip Norton, whom they cite, this is a useful framework.
Unfortunately, the clarity of the analytical framework is muddled to some extent (at least for this reader) by the use of three similar, overlapping yet inconsistent sets of classifications. In Chapter 2, the authors present their model of "negotiated transitions to democracy in the Arab world” in which the six countries are found to be variously located at Stage One, Stage Two or Stage Three. In Chapter 4, the legislatures are arrayed along a continuum of "institutional centrality” labeled Category One, Category Two and Category Three. (And whereas Stage Three is at the high end of a negotiated transition, when it comes to institutional centrality, Category Three is at the low end.) A few pages later, moreover, in summarizing the overall state of their development, the legislatures are described as Type One, Type Two and Type Three. In this paradigm, Type One is at the head of the class, describing those that "display the greatest potential for further development." In addition to leaving a reader puzzled about the several One-Two-Three classifications, this last and most important scale also conveys a subliminal message that "potential for further development” is as good as it gets in Arab legislatures. (Or would a more fully developed legislature be labeled Type Zero?)
Of the six cases studied, only Lebanon's Chamber of Deputies is considered by the authors to be both sufficiently central to the politics of its nation and capable as to qualify as Type One. Notwithstanding Syria's veto power on key decisions, Lebanon's political actors have arrived at a consensus on the rules of the game that in both theory and practice accords a central role to the Chamber. This body, moreover, actually has the capacity (including the political will) to hold the executive accountable to some appreciable extent. Ranked roughly in the following order, Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait and Yemen are considered to be Type Two. This means they possess substantial political influence, though their power remains circumscribed by hereditary rulers, constitutional limits, military or other executive-branch forces, or a dearth of material and human wherewithal. Type Three legislatures are wholly subordinate to the executive. Regardless of the resources available to them, they cannot legitimate government policies nor are they useful venues for dialogue or consensus building. Any influence they may exercise on public policy is solely at the discretion of the executive, as is true, say these authors, of Egypt.
The chapter on Egypt, rich in historical and political detail, underscores how sad and unnecessary it is that the political system there has deteriorated to its present sclerotic condition. The authors are clear about where they believe responsibility lies: "The nominal powers of the legislature are further constricted in practice by an executive that engages in dirty tricks and extralegal behavior" (p. 240). And yet critics and rivals of the regime continue to concentrate their demands for reform on the rules that govern access to parliament, which the authors say augurs well for future democratic development. "(A)lthough the stalled liberalization has undermined the status of parliament, that institution remains central to the political calculations and behavior of the government and opposition alike" (p. 222). The potential impact of citizen interaction with parliament is not examined, though in Egypt the Group for Democratic Development has begun publishing an annual assessment of the performance of the Majlis al Shaab in order to nudge it toward asserting its prerogatives.
The dramatic history of the ups and downs of the power of Kuwait's National Assembly in the four decades since independence is well described and evokes parallels with the long, gradual rise to centrality of the British Parliament at Westminster. Unfortunately, the chapter on Kuwait glides lightly over that country's policy of gender separation and so demonstrates one weakness of the book's analytic framework. The continued exclusion of all women from political life in Kuwait means that, no matter how central or capable the National Assembly may become, it does not qualify as a democratic legislature.
Jordan and Morocco illustrate a paradox that may be unique to the contemporary Arab world: constitutional monarchs in the 1990s at times became leading agents for democratization, when stronger legislatures appeared likely to lend greater legitimacy to certain policies or to counterbalance other forces. In each country, the king initiated liberalization measures in which the legislatures were the central beneficiary and then also curtailed trends toward democracy when it seemed to conflict with other goals, usually security-related. While this book went to press before the recent successions of new kings to the Moroccan and Jordanian thrones, both of whom are said to be even more inclined toward democracy than their fathers, the systems bequeathed to Abdullah II and Mohammed VI clearly leave them in command of the pace and direction of any democratic development to come. The two chapters here provide an excellent foundation for consideration of such political change and the role of the legislature in each case.
Yemen's uneven movement toward democratic forms since unification a decade ago goes widely unappreciated in the international community, so the treatment here will be helpful in conveying important elements of that story. One of the signal accomplishments of the Yemeni legislature has been the manner in which it has provided a structure for the integration of political Islam into an arena of public and peaceable give-and-take, compromise and consensus building. Jordan has a similar experience. In fact, one of the major points presented in the book's conclusion builds on this point: "Where Islamists have been allowed to take part in elections and gain access to parliaments, they have shown themselves to be responsible and willing to abide by the rules of the democratic game." In Lebanon, for instance, "Hizballah (the party of God), which was originally intent on turning the country into an Islamic state, found itself embracing Lebanon's multisectarian political system and playing by its rules. ...(E)ager not to endanger their status and influence ... they have shown themselves to be adept at the politics of conciliation and compromise and have played the role of a loyal opposition." Hizballah's continuing paramilitary violence toward Israel and its sponsorship by Damascus means it has not yet become just another political party. Yet the generally satisfactory experience of those Arab countries that have enabled Islamists to express themselves in parliaments stands in stark contrast to Egypt and Algeria, where Islamist political movements have been excluded from electoral and parliamentary life, and political violence has been a recurring plague. The role of democratic institutions in socializing oppositions and providing alternatives to violent confrontation has too often been overlooked in peace-making diplomacy in the Middle East. This book underscores the costs of this oversight.
For all of the book's many strengths, the authors barely mention the longstanding efforts of international donor agencies, private foundations and non-governmental organizations, as well as the Inter-Parliamentary Union and citizens' groups in several of the countries to strengthen the position of these legislatures. Though the authors acknowledge at the outset that they have participated in some of these programs, they do not incorporate into the subsequent discussion any consideration of the impact of these activities. One is left wondering whether the book's concentration on internal dynamics and constraints is meant to imply that there is little outsiders can do to affect the development of these legislatures. It may be they are unimpressed with the particular kinds of aid programs they have seen, which tend to focus on the internal capacity of legislatures rather than on the larger political environment that determines the body's centrality. I hope these three writers and others will one day soon examine whether outsiders' efforts to enhance the role of legislatures in democratizing countries do or do not actually help.
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