Marcus Noland, "Explaining Middle Eastern

Authoritarianism." The paper uses a series of statistical models to

parse competing explanations for why Arab political regimes are both

unusually undemocratic and unusually stable. The democratic deficit is

comprehensible in terms of underlying structural factors: lack of

modernization, British colonial history, the democratic status of

neighboring countries, reliance on taxes for government finance, and the

Arab population share. Interpretation of the last variable is

problematic: it could point to some essential anti-democratic aspect of

Arab culture, though the small existing body of survey evidence does not

appear to bear this out. Alternatively it could be a proxy for some

unobservable such as investment in institutions of internal repression

that may not be culturally determined and instead reflect elite

preferences. As interesting as the hypotheses which received

statistical support are the one that did not, including the presence of

oil rents, the status of women, conflict with Israel or other neighbors,

or Islam.

 

With respect to the likelihood of liberalizing political transitions,

the models indicate that the odds on these occurring in any given year

are generally low-on the order of 5-10 percent in any given year-but

rising, as increasing levels of income and education erode popular

acquiescence to authoritarian governance. In this respect, the

distinction between the interpretation of the Arab ethnic share as an

intrinsic cultural marker and as a proxy for some unobservable is

important-if the former is correct, then one would expect the likelihood

of regime change to rise only gradually over time whereas if it is the

latter the probabilities may exhibit much greater temporal variability.

 

That said, the specific recent democratizing episodes in Iraq, Lebanon,

and Palestine, collectively labeled "the Arab Spring," each have

strongly idiosyncratic elements. Nevertheless, the advent of pan-Arab

media, such as the television stations al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, may be

contributing to a more genuinely pan-Arab cultural space in which

developments in one country have a more immediate and profound influence

on outcomes elsewhere within the region.

 

http://www.iie.com/publications/wp/wp05-5.pdf