Mark	Article of 44

Democracy, "Arab exceptionalism," and social science. Iliya Harik. 
        The Middle East Journal 60.4 (Autumn 2006): p664(21). 

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Full Text :COPYRIGHT 2006 The Middle East Institute
 

This article deals with a cross-national measurement methodology of democracy as it is applied to Muslim and Arab nations by Freedom House, a major research organization. The results of Freedom House's studies show that Muslim and Arab states prove comparatively to be exceptional in being resistant to democracy. This article briefly examines measurement criteria then highlights the finding that the exceptionalism thesis propagated by the Freedom House project is the product of serious discrepancies in the measurement application.

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The quantitative measurement of democracy on a global scale may not be a new phenomenon, though in recent years it has come to attract widespread attention in periodical literature and official circles. Of the many interesting discussions resulting from the profusion of measurement studies, (1) the ones that revolved around Islam, Arab states, and democracy have received widespread attention in academic and other influential places, (2) in addition to being particularly relevant for comparative studies.

The issue of whether democracy is inimical to Islam, to Arab culture, or to both is a question that used to be relegated mostly to area specialists as a subject of particular regional character. In recent years the question has been thrown wide open to the mainstream of the comparative study of politics, a step that in principle guards against essentialist tendencies. Yet, in two of the social science measurement enterprises of a global nature, (3) more excitement has been generated regarding the political behavior of Muslims and Arabs with respect to democracy than about the soundness of the methodology and research that have produced the results.

This article will assess the findings reached by Freedom House (FH), one agency engaged in measurement on a worldwide scale, (4) and whose surveys have had the effect of propagating the exceptionalism thesis of the Muslim and Arab worlds. (5) As the thesis is briefly rendered by Freedom House, Muslim states in general stand out as having a greater democracy deficit than is the case in any other culture or region of the world. The democracy deficit is shown to be more acute among the subset of Arab countries, where democracy is totally absent in nearly all but a few of them that are considered partially free (4 out of 17). (6)

No expert on the Middle East would argue that the Arab states are firmly grounded in the democratic club of nations; indeed it is generally held that a small number of them rank amongst the top authoritarian regimes in the world, What is being questioned here is the wholesale indictment of Arab states as failing to meet any democratization standards to speak of, (7) thus paving the way to separate them as an exception even within the developing world. Freedom House studies try to show that even under permissive standards set up to accommodate the developing countries of Africa and Asia, only four Arab countries have been found to be partially democratizing. (8)

It will be argued here that (1) the denial of any democratizing trends in the Arab countries is a function of questionable measurement rather than of facts, and that (2) a more careful reading shows that many of them fall in the FH "Partly Free" category, comparable to a large cohort of developing countries. Not an exception, but much like other developing countries, most Arab states have since the 1970s been taking steps toward democratization in measures that vary in degree and extent from one country to another.

METHODOLOGY

One of the distinctive features of cross-national analysis on a global scale is its disaggregative nature. According to this method, an observer keeps a scoreboard on which each democratic attribute in a regime is assigned a numerical value. The system's ranking then is determined by taking the average score of all the considered attributes. Studies conducted by Arend Lijphart, (9) Vanhanen, (10) Freedom House, (11) and Polity IV Project, (12) for instance, have a disaggregative methodology in common. The underlying principle, of course, is that democracy is a complex construct and the value of each of its components can be assessed separately.

The FH method is designed to produce a three level classification scheme of the democratic rankings of countries. The outcome from the exercise is to designate which countries of the world can be classified as "Free," "Partly Free," or "Not Free." Democratic status is then determined by finding out the extent to which "Political Rights" and "Civil Liberties" in a country are adhered to. The first category is basically a measure of free and fair elections, while the second is a reflection of civil liberties enjoyed by citizens. It is basically a descriptive scheme.

The standard scale devised by FH for the measurement of "Political Rights" and "Civil Liberties" ranges from 1 to 7, where 1 represents a fully "Free" country (read democratic), while 7 stands for one that is fully "Not Free." Each one of the two categories is a composite of numerous indicators pertaining mostly to electoral issues and to citizen liberties respectively. A fixed number is then assigned by the researcher to each one of the indicators as a measure of representation of "Political Rights" and of "Civil Liberties." The final tally is based on the aggregation of specific scores assigned to a variety of indicators in each country. (13)

Viewing a democratizing regime through a disaggregative prism has some virtues, such as making it possible to highlight the internal discrepancies in the values a certain country attaches to different aspects of democracy. A regime may, for instance, get a high score on independence of the judiciary, a low score on freedom of expression, and a medium score on electoral competitiveness.

It may be in order to remember, however, that a descriptive narrative depends on the particular definitions that are adopted. With the onset of multiculturalism, for instance, there has been more compelling awareness that the basics of democracy may be more commonly shared across cultures than had been shown before (14) and that no one has a monopoly claim on the meaning of the phenomenon. As put by one careful student of the subject, the "struggle to control the definition or meaning of democracy in order to give legitimacy to institutions and practices 'in the name of democracy' is ... trivialized by objectivist accounts that focus on progress toward some transhistorical ideal of democracy." (15)

Another hurdle of analysis is the complexity of translating abstract theory to operational language. While the process is not impossible, it remains a delicate undertaking. For instance, given the large and diverse membership of the FH team of researchers, the extensive number and range of indicators, and the vast number of countries under consideration, maintaining uniformity in the application of standardized measures may become an illusive undertaking.

In brief, the complexity of the democratic phenomenon, the difference in theoretical perceptions, and operational complications make summing up the democratic standing of a country by a simple additive approach fall way short of scholarly standards. (16) However, the assessment that will be made here will examine Freedom House analysis on its own terms by taking the definitions and indicators as givens.

In this article, criticism of Freedom House's disaggregative approach to Muslim and Arab states will be confined to practical matters such as (a) failure to respect one's own standardized measures, (b) ambiguities arising from the subjective nature of evaluations, and (c) flawed comparisons.

THE EMPIRICAL CASES: COMPARATIVE DISCREPANCIES

The adequacy of the measurement techniques devised by FH may be tested by an examination of some specific cases, starting with Turkey and Kuwait. (17) The rank values assigned by the FH 2001-2002 Survey for Turkey and Kuwait (18) are identical: 4 for "Political Rights" and 5 for "Civil Liberties." In plain language, Turkey and Kuwait stood in the year 2001 on an equal footing with respect to the extent to which they partook of democracy. Both are judged to be on the weak side of "Partly Free" countries. Let us consider the facts.

Politically, very large segments of the population of Kuwait are excluded from the electoral process, and power is only partially vested in the people. Moreover, Kuwaitis have never enjoyed the right to elect the head of state; their voting rights are limited to the selection of members of the legislative assembly and municipal councils only. The Amir of Kuwait, who is the head of state, claims a hereditary right to the supreme executive office. The Prime Minister is similarly a designated member of the ruling family. Not all members of the cabinet though are members of the Sabah dynasty, and it has been the case that ordinary citizens could be and have been designated as state ministers. In addition, the formation of political parties in Kuwait is outlawed.

As for representation, large numbers of lifetime residents (the bidouns) in Kuwait, among others who have held Kuwaiti citizenship for less than 20 years, are disenfranchised. Of the remaining 45% of the population, women were still denied the right to vote in 2004 and were prohibited from running for political office. FH estimates that the popular vote involves "only about 15 percent of the country's 860,000 citizens." (19) In May 2005, women in Kuwait were given the right to vote and be voted into office for the first time, yet this momentous change in the electoral process made no difference in the score given to Kuwait for "Political Rights." (20)

In contrast to Kuwait, universal suffrage for both men and women in Turkey has been the rule since the 1930s. Moreover, a female politician was in fact elected as the head of a major political party and served as Turkey's Prime Minister during the 1990s. (21) Turkey, in addition, has had a multiparty system and lively trade union organizations for more than five decades. There are no Turks who are entitled to a hereditary political office. The President is elected by parliament, and the Prime Minister represents the majority party or a coalition thereof in parliament. The manner in which elections were conducted in Turkey had been judged by various observers to be mostly free and fair, much like in Kuwait. (22)

Turkey has imposed partial restrictions on the political rights of its sizeable Kurdish ethnic minority (23) (estimated at around 15-20% of the population). The Kurds were long denied the right to claim a national identity, but they did enjoy rights of citizenship and of holding political office. Military leaders still enjoyed political influence in the year 2001, but it had been greatly diminished. As unelected agents, the military's political role is in no way comparable to the extensive political jurisdiction of the ruling family in Kuwait. The question of why the FH instrument failed to register the structural differences regarding "Political Rights" and "Civil Liberties" in the two countries over a number of years (24) remains for the survey authors to explain.

However, the facts make it clear that contrary to FH assessment, the comparative democratic standing of the two countries varied considerably in 2001, and in no way could the two states have been viewed on a level of parity. In fact, FH "Country Reports," (25) which are short qualitative assessments of countries, clearly highlight the different levels of democratization in the two countries.

But suppose, for the sake of the argument, that methodical research based on assigning simple numerical values to political indicators actually added up to democratic parity. In that case, it would be clear that the numerical system employed is not sensitive to different levels of political exclusion. Moreover, one wonders what meaning would be left to the term democracy when such methods produce parity among objects which are at great variance with one another?

Consider another very plain case, the status of democracy in one and the same country, Lebanon, at different periods in time. Lebanon for most of the Civil War years of 1975-1990 was ranked by FH as "Partly Free" with a reasonably favorable rating of 4 for "Political Rights" and 4 for "Civil Liberties." (26) Yet, chaos and violence were the rule of the day for the whole war period, and formal government was all but a shadow of its former self. Power was in the hands of rival armed militias, shared in a tenuous way with the militaries of foreign interventionists, mostly Syria and Israel. Not once were parliamentary elections held for that entire period of 15 years.

This "Partly Free" assessment is intriguing since the most casual observer of that country could tell that there were no political or civil rights to speak of at that time. Matters become even more puzzling to see that the year when the peace agreement of al-Taif was reached, the Civil War ended, and constitutional government was restored in 1989, Lebanon's rank dropped from "Partly Free" to "Not Free," and its rating declined to 6 and 5 for "Political Rights" and "Civil Liberties" respectively. The demotion to a status of "Not Free" held steadily unchanged from 1992 to 2006, (27) a year after the Cedar Revolution of February 14, 2005 and the ousting of the Syrians. Yet, during the peace restoration period, parliamentary elections have been held routinely (starting in 1992) and their questionable quality has progressively improved, though by no means could they be compared to the high level of electoral integrity attained by the 1972 elections that took place immediately before the war period. Two successive municipal elections were also held during that period and were considered free and fair by friend and foe of the Lebanese government. A large number of political parties have operated legally and reasonably freely, in addition to flourishing civil society associations. The press resumed its old tradition of extensive freedom of expression and assertive character, with the addition of several privately owned TV and radio stations that broke the government monopoly on audio-visual communications. (28)

It is true that the authoritarian regime of Syria enjoyed a dominant role in the political life of Lebanon during the post-Taif peace period (after 1989). Syrian presence, however, did not prevent the free press, among others, from openly and strongly criticizing the government and its Syrian backers, nor did it obstruct the emergence of vocal opposition groups, some of whom were strongly anti-Syrian and others moderately so. Debates in Parliament were very lively, and the institution was legislatively productive during that period. While structurally the electoral contest remained distorted, it was still strong and quite competitive, resulting in the formation of strong parliamentary opposition. All the same, the Syrians were heavy-handed with the Lebanese political process. Syrian intelligence officers and their official Lebanese allies violated human rights, including kidnapping anti-Syrian activists as well as conducting assassinations. The number of those ugly infractions during the restoration period though was very small, with the exception of the year 2005. With all its faults, the post-Taif peace was a period of impressive stability and steady economic improvement, which by 2003 had reached a level of prosperity. (29)

Can one criterion, such as "undue influence by unelected agent," (30) namely Syria, trump all other activities of democratic developments? If that is the case, then FH should consider monarchical regimes in the Arab world, such as Kuwait, Jordan, and Morocco as "Not Free," which was not the case and obviously would not be true. Moreover, one would expect that systematic survey analysis such as the one under consideration would not be trumped by anecdotal and high visibility incidents. There can be no doubt that a measurement problem of awesome proportions has occurred here.

Freedom House refers to its evaluations as "the definitive annual comparative assessment of the state of freedom in 192 countries," (31) yet in the above-mentioned cases and many others, (32) the way the figures represent the status of democracy remain very problematic. More difficulties appear when one compares poor ratings given to some Middle Eastern countries such as Algeria, Egypt, and Lebanon with the better ratings for some West African states that have been suffering from civil wars, blatant dictatorships, and chaos. For a decade starting in 1995, those three Arab countries were ranked "Not Free" at 6 and 6 or 6 and 5, alternately. (33) By declaring them "Not Free," Freedom House makes an unequivocal judgment that none of these countries has experienced any semblance of democratization, though they are considered by most specialists to have been democratizing, even if not at an impressive pace.

Those same Arab states were contemporaneously ranked way behind such troubled and war-tom West African countries (34) as Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. (35) For four years (1997-2000) under the notorious dictatorship of Charles Taylor, domestic insurgency, and foreign intervention, Liberia was ranked by FH surveys as "Partly Free" at 4 and 5 for "Political Rights" and "Civil Liberties" respectively, higher than the above-mentioned Arab countries! (36) Sierra Leone was ranked at a very respectable level for "Political Rights" and "Civil Liberties:" 3 and 5, 3 and 5, and 4 and 5 respectively for the three tumultuous years (1998-2000) of military coups, civilian insurgency, and foreign intervention. (37)

Here is how those years in Sierra Leone are described in the FH qualitative "Country Report," for Sierra Leone, as distinguished from the quantitative Survey.

   Major Johnny Paul Koroma toppled the Kabbah government,
   [1997] established the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, and
   invited the RUF to join the junta. Nigerian-led West African
   troops, backed by logistical and intelligence support from the
   British company Sandline, restored Kabbah to power in February
   1998, but the country continued to be racked by war. A peace
   agreement in July 1999 led to the beginning of disarmament,
   but the process stopped in May 2000 with a return to
   hostilities and the taking of about 500 peacekeepers as
   hostages. British troops flew in to help, and disarmament
   resumed in May 2001. (38)

In comparison, of the three aforementioned Arab countries only Lebanon had experienced the intervention of foreign troops. Egypt may be classified in practice as a multi-party system dominated by a heavy-handed one party regime, but it enjoys stability, regularly held multi-party elections, a reasonably independent judiciary, (39) and has a relatively free and influential press. In the last parliamentary elections of 2005, the Muslim Brotherhood, the leading opposition party, "managed to quintuple its representation in Parliament." (40) Despite its bad reputation in the Western press, the Mubarak regime has introduced some electoral reforms including supervision of elections by judges and open competition for the office of president. That Egypt does not perform democratically at an acceptable level of honesty should not be an excuse to consider it worse than it really is and behind countries ridden by sedition and chaos. It is thus not clear how a country like Egypt by the last years of the 1990s could have been ranked behind Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

The discrepancy in standard applications turns up again when Algeria is compared with countries in other regions such as the three aforementioned West African countries, and Uganda. The misapplication of the standards of measurement to countries from different regions is instructive with respect to the "Arab exceptionalism" thesis. Let us consider the facts. Starting with the no-party system of President Yoweri Museveni, one finds that for three years, 1996-1998, Uganda was rated as "Partly Free" and given a reasonably respectable rating of 4 and 4 for "Political Rights" and "Civil Liberties" respectively. (41) Yet, the qualitative FH "Country Report" (not to be confused with the Surveys) stated categorically that "Ugandans do not have the right to elect their government democratically. The only open multiparty elections were held in 1961 in preparation for the country's independence from Britain." (42)

With respect to human rights, the head of the delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva in March 2003 described Uganda as a "worldclass rights abuser." (43) Amnesty International reports that restrictions on free expression and association got worse. Human Rights Watch tells of an increasing suppression of political liberties. (44) Even the Freedom House "Country Report" for Uganda in 2003 is critical: "the government liberally applies the charge of treason against nonviolent political dissidents." The "Report" adds: buttressed "by legislation limiting press freedoms, ... the government at times selectively arrests or harasses journalists. A sedition law remains in force and is applied selectively to journalists and other persons who hold views that are at variance with those of the NRM [the National Resistance Movement]." (45)

Yoweri Museveni came to power in 1986 as an insurgency leader and ruled Uganda without a constitution for ten years. Arguing that majoritarian democracy exacerbates religious and ethnic tensions in Africa, President Museveni substituted a "no-party" system with only one, supposedly nonparty political organization--the National Resistance Movement (NRM)--allowed to operate unfettered. (46) Fearing for his safety, his competitor in the last election found it necessary to flee the country. "In recent years," comments one observer, "state resources, including the police, have been thrown behind candidates running against critics of the regime or even against supporters of the NRM who openly dissent." (47)

A cursory comparison of Algeria and Uganda gives reason for questioning FH Survey ratings for both countries. Unlike Museveni, Algeria's president, 'Abd al-'Aziz Bouteflika, occupied no high political position when he ran for president for the first time in 1999, and had no armed movement to depend upon. He had benefited from the support of influential generals, but he was also known to have refused to run for president in 1994 on terms laid down by the military. (48) When he ran for the office in 1999, six other Algerian political parties fielded presidential candidates of their own and campaigned vigorously before making a tactical move to withdraw at the last minute. (49) Campaign rallies were allowed and different points of view were expressed in the country's vibrant and free press. (50) Polity IV Project, which like FH takes a stringent position vis-a-vis Muslim or Arab regimes, stated as much:

   [To] everyone's surprise, the 1999 presidential elections reflected
   an increased openness of the political process in Algeria. While
   most opposition groups eventually boycotted the polls, nevertheless,
   the voting process itself was relatively clean and press censorship
   was limited ... Widely viewed as Algeria's 'most sincere
   politician,' Bouteflika has shown independence from the military in
   the past ... The increasing autonomy of President Bouteflika from
   the country's traditional power-brokers may indicate that the
   military has finally decided to return to the barracks. (51)

Yet, Polity IV Project ranks Algeria in 2002 behind the troubled Cote d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone, and Liberia (52) while FH (53) ranks Algeria behind Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Uganda in 2004.

The discrepancy between the descriptive and the quantitative assessments made by Polity IV Project is similar to that made by Freedom House in its account of the 2004 elections. Algeria's 2004 presidential elections were described, in the words of a firsthand observer, as the "most competitive and transparent polls held to date, and have substantially moved Algeria to the forefront of 'democratizing' Arab regimes." (54) An international observer of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) stated that the elections were "one of the best ... not just in Algeria, but in Africa and much of the Arab World." (55) No change, however, was registered in the mill quantitatively based rankings and Algeria continued to be listed as "Not Free," (with a 6 in "Political Rights" and a 5 in "Civil Liberties"), (56) while Liberia and Sierra Leone were listed as "Partly Free," (5 and 4 and 4 and 3 in "Political Rights" and "Civil Liberties," respectively). (57) As for the advanced level of the Algerian press, according to an exacting critic of Algeria and other Arab countries, it was "one of the freest in the Arab world over the last decade." (58) Considering the extensive freedom the press enjoyed in Lebanon, Kuwait, and to a lesser extent in Egypt, this is not an inconsequential assessment.

When he ran for a second term in 2004, President Bouteflika was strongly opposed by top leaders in his own party, the Front de Liberation Nationale/National Liberation Front (FLN), which split during the elections. Among his rivals in the campaign was his former Prime Minister, Ali Benflis, a man of strong mind, mobilization skills, and integrity, who ran a vigorous but unsuccessful campaign. Though benefiting from the leverage of incumbency, Bouteflika's victory cannot be divorced from the relative success he has had in bringing the insurgency under control and restoring considerable stability to the country, not to mention his success in keeping the military brass at bay. The FLN party, to which he had long belonged, sided with his rival, Benflis, and he had to run under a different party flag. Eight parties were able to elect representatives in the National Assembly along with a few independents.

In sum, despite the notoriety acquired by Algeria for reversing the legitimate electoral victory of the Islamist movement in 1991, there was no complete break with the democratizing reforms introduced by President Bendjedid in 1989 and a marked improvement was noted by the 1999 elections. Algeria continued, in the words of a veteran observer, to show respect for the multiparty system and the remarkably free press. (59) While the FH surveys made frequent changes noting improvements in the rankings for Uganda and Liberia, the ranking for Algeria remained constant at 6 and 5 for "Political Rights" and "Civil Liberties" ("Not Free") for the last seven years, regardless of positive political changes in that country. (60)

At this point one may wonder why Algeria and five other Arab States (Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates) were given the same rating of 6 and 5, "Not Free." (61) It is common knowledge that Oman and the United Arab Emirates are traditional monarchies with consultative councils but no conventional representative institutions and that their people enjoy very limited political rights. On the other hand, Lebanon and Egypt have known constitutional governments and democratic institutions since the 1920s. In the last few years under consideration here Egypt, Algeria, and Lebanon have experienced strongly contested multi-party elections, while Oman and the UAE do not even have universal suffrage or political parties. During this same period, Tunisia, which has formal Western institutions, is still run in the pattern of a single party state. How can a carefully conducted study with a relatively sophisticated methodology fail to register the various levels of political rights and civil liberties in six states with vast political, social, and cultural differences?

The above-mentioned narratives are clearly at odds with FH's operational definition of the two categories upon which their understanding of democracy rests. The FH Surveys state that "Political Rights" refer to the freedom of citizens "to form political parties that represent a significant range of voter choice and whose leaders can openly compete for and be elected to positions of power in government." Civil liberties include "personal freedoms, and freedoms of the press, beliefs, and association." (62) FH rankings of the countries covered here do not respect those standard criteria, contradict basic facts in the "Country Reports," and are contrary to views advanced by scholarly writings.

The argument here is not that Arab countries have a stellar record of democratization, as indeed they do not. It is a matter of whether FH's quantitative measurement of democratization across the board is reliable at all. One is compelled to ask here: is it possible that there are standards of evaluations maintained especially for the Arab countries different from those applied to other regions of the world? Or are we to take these discrepancies as plain error? Until we know the answer, it will have to be maintained that many of FH's evaluations are questionable and that the same standards are applied to countries differentially without any explanation. In effect, not much confidence can be placed in their assessment enterprise on Arab states, a failure that infects the entire enterprise.

THE CONCEPT OF EXCEPTIONALISM

The concept of Arab exceptionalism seems to have a special power of attraction at Freedom House, a power that has proven to be contagious. The influential think tank tends to make an exception of Arab countries on every possible occasion. One of these is coverage of the so-called "electoral democracies." Out of the 121 countries in the world that qualified as "electoral democracies" in the 2001-2002 Survey, not a single Arab state is to be found. Yet one finds under that category countries such as Djibouti, (63) Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Albania, and the Gambia. (64)

"Electoral democracy" is a relatively ambiguous category introduced by FH separately from the three original classificatory categories. It is said to refer to "such democracies [that] afford considerable space for political opposition movements, provide opposition parties and viewpoints access to the media, and meet the minimum standard of a relatively fair vote count (65) in conditions of ballot secrecy." (66) Countries that "have poor human rights records, fragile, and incomplete democratic institutions" (67) may still qualify as an "electoral democracy." Moreover, FH maintains that the "presence of certain irregularities during the electoral process does not automatically disqualify a country, from being designated an electoral democracy." (68)

Under those permissive conditions, many Arab countries would easily qualify as "electoral democracies." It is hard to understand why countries with an electoral record of varying degrees of integrity, such as Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, and Yemen are excluded from the club. In the 2005 Survey, FH added a new restriction to considering a country as an electoral democracy, namely undue influence by non-elected agents. The new restriction would affect the qualifications of a large number of developing countries on the list of 121 "electoral democracies," not only Arab states.

The selective designation of states as "electorally democratic" plus the ambiguity of the term are reflected in the way some countries with relatively good scores on "Political Rights" failed the "electoral democracies" test, while other states with less competitive scores have passed unscathed (Tables 1 & 2). This is puzzling because the indicators for "Political Rights" pertain mostly to electoral performance. (69) Yet we see that some states that failed to measure up to the status of electoral democracies (Table I) had scored better on the electoral scale than the ones that had made it to the list. No explanation was given in the 2001 Survey, but the "Methodology" section in the 2005 Survey calls the ratings judgmental.

Also worthy of note is the fact that countries that had been designated as "electoral democracies" (Table 2) showed poorer records on "Civil Liberties" when compared to non-electoral countries (Table 1).

At times one is at a loss as to what is being measured, and, consequently, what is a reader expected to understand? If numbers lose their definitive advantage, then what is the point of quantitative analysis? In addition to the methodological difficulties, it is clear that serious questions surround FH's knowledge base regarding the Middle East in general and Arab countries in particular. (70)

In view of all the problems discussed so far, it would seem warranted to urge the scholarly community to apply further scrutiny to those surveys, especially now that Freedom House evaluations have acquired considerable influence in academic and official circles in the United States. (71) As FH evaluations stand now, they succeed mainly in confounding our understanding of comparative politics.

The conclusion of direct concern here, however, is that the questionable nature of the scores produced by FH undermines their claim to establish the Arab exceptionalism thesis on a scientific basis. Second, the attempt by Freedom House to show that the Arab states lag behind other developing countries with respect to democratization has been shown to be riddled with exceptional ratings. By unrealistically upgrading the scores for some developing countries and downgrading the ratings for most Arab countries, FH has unwittingly given more credence to the critique expounded in this essay.

THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE EXCEPTIONALISM THESIS BY COMPARATIVISTS

Inspired by Freedom House research results, Alfred Stepan and Graeme Robertson (henceforth S&R) set out to compare the electoral competitiveness of Muslim and Arab countries. Adrian Karatnycky (72) had earlier maintained that the democracy gap is most pronounced among Muslim countries, especially in the Arab world. (73) Stepan and Robertson, using the same FH findings on which Karatnycky relied, plus the ratings from the Polity IV Project, (74) reached the conclusion that the democracy gap highlighted by Karatnycky was confined to Arab states, while non-Arab Muslim states were found to belong to the group of developing countries. (75) While falling short of asserting an essentialist position, the authors give a boost to the Arab exceptionalism thesis, which may be summed up as the tendency of cohort states sharing cultural and/or ethnic commonalities to be resistant to democracy. In effect, a condition of "non-democracy" is associated with being Arab. The qualitative part of the study (76) by S&R makes it clear that being Arab is associated with a lagging record on democracy, though they do not impute any essential quality to that connection.

In short, both the quantitative and qualitative parts of the argument are overdrawn and are not any sounder than the Freedom House Survey results on which they heavily rely.

Operationally, Stepan and Robertson narrowed down the inquiry on Arab exceptionalism to "electoral competitiveness," with the expectation that if Arab countries are shown to be lagging behind on electoral competitiveness, then the democracy gap amongst them would have been proven. "Electoral competitiveness" refers in their usage to (1) countries in which "government sprang from reasonably fair elections; and (2) [where] an elected government [is] able to fill the most important political offices." (77) Carefully guarding themselves against possible misplaced charges, they explicitly state that their investigation "does not evaluate countries on a full range of democratic criteria." (78)

There are, however, two analytical problems in the S&R investigation which throw doubt on their conclusions. First, they adopt the FH Survey figures unquestioningly as one of the two data sources for their analysis. FH findings have already been shown to be at best ambiguous and at worst not adequately reflective of the facts. The second flaw concerns the indicators used for determining what measures up as "electoral competitiveness."

In deciding which countries are "electorally competitive," S&R rely on the figures reached by FH for "Political Rights," a category that is not necessarily equivalent to the "electoral competitiveness" that S&R are measuring. The checklist for "Political Rights" as it is spelled out by FH includes at least eight indicators, some of which are only remotely related to the S&R conditions for fair elections. Among the indicators in the FH checklist, one finds the presence of such variables as: "de facto opposition power," freedom from "economic oligarchies," "reasonable self-determination, self-government, autonomy, and participation through informal consensus in the decision-making process" for "cultural, ethnic, religious, and other minority groups." (79) Those are extensive social and political features that extend far beyond the S&R category of "electoral competitiveness."

In short, S&R "electoral competitiveness" and FH "Political Rights" are two different things, and the figure that stands for one cannot be used to stand for the other. Yet that is what S&R have done: adopted the numerical values given by FH for "Political Rights" as a basis for inclusion or exclusion of a country under the category of "electoral competitiveness." (80) The same numbers that are used in the two sets represent two different objects, and therefore any conclusions reached by S&R regarding the electoral competitiveness of Arab and non-Arab states alike must be misleading.

The fact that S&R have adopted numerical values assigned to a different object from the one they had set out to measure is compounded by the choice of a cut off point for inclusion in the "electoral competitiveness" category. The designated S&R figure for the cut-off point is the digit "3" found on the measurement scale of "Political Rights" in the FH tabulations. It would have been helpful if the authors had explained the basis upon which they had reached that practical rule of thumb. Left without explicit explanation, this figure seems arbitrary, especially since FH evaluators considered a score of "5" (see Table 2 above) and below as grounds for including a country in their "electoral democracy" category.

In short, the empirical data presented by S&R as evidence for the existence of Arab exceptionalism have been shown to be of misplaced application and dubious authenticity. The thesis of Arab exceptionalism, therefore, remains in need of serious reconsideration.

Aside from the technical points discussed above, the reader still needs to know how to view, according to S&R's account, regimes that have a vibrant political life and regular elections, but happen to be monarchies. By definition, Morocco, Jordan, and Kuwait are excluded pro forma by the proponents of Arab exceptionalism from being electorally competitive. Obviously, "kings" are not elected, though parliaments are. All three monarchies have parliaments and stage relatively fair elections for legislators, a fact that affects the formation of cabinets. Since the S&R article occasionally extrapolates from the electoral status of a country to democracy in general, (81) those three Arab countries seem to have been given a short shrift. Some clear democratic processes have been observed to be present in those monarchical regimes. In Morocco, for instance, the King asked 'Abd al-Rahman al-Yusufi, the leader whose party won a plurality of seats in the 1997 elections, to form a cabinet. Al-Yusufi served as Prime Minister for the subsequent four years. The history of parliaments in Kuwait demonstrates a clear influence on policy decisions and on national legislation. Moreover, civil societies in both countries enjoy extensive freedoms, not the least of which is a reasonable degree of freedom of the press. Whatever one's assessment of these facts may be, they deserve an appropriate place in the annals of democratizing countries.

While falling short of asserting an essentialist position, S&R nevertheless maintain that as a cohort of states sharing common cultural and/or ethnic traits, Arab states are resistant to democracy. In effect, a condition of "non-democracy" is associated with being Arab. The qualitative part of the article by S&R underlines that conclusion. (82) In order to stand to reason, a thesis of this nature must be based on a common trait that enjoys a politically strong impact, yet the authors reveal no such force binding Arabs together.

Being conscious of sharing an Arab political identity is a modern phenomenon and is as ephemeral as the sense of pan-African or Latin identity. Arabic speaking peoples are divided ethnically, culturally, and politically. Among the so-called Arab population, sub-Saharan African and Berber based ethnic groups outnumber the original Arabs who hailed from Asia. In fact, each individual Arab state has had a distinct identity based on separate origin, political history, (83) and extreme variance in per capita income, in ethnic mix, social norms, educational systems, and in many cases religious distinctiveness. The Arab geographic expanse is so vast and spread out that Arab countries facing the Indian Ocean have had very limited historical interaction with those facing the Mediterranean until the mid-twentieth century, and very little at that.

It is difficult to imagine how extremely diverse political and social systems such as those of Arab countries can produce a common attitude toward democracy or any other form of government. (84) Moreover, S&R have weakened their case for a coherent Arab political identity by taking Islam out of the equation.

In short, the term "Arab" is not a binding epithet; it is descriptive of diverse people and states whose language happens to be Arabic. Arabism by itself, devoid of Islamic contents, has very little political pull or effect. Nothing tangible in the idea of being Arab has been identified by the authors that can serve as a resistant force to democracy or for that matter as an attractive agent to some other political system.

It is also worth reminding ourselves here that Arab exceptionalism is a historical stereotype (85) that has long served as a camouflage for European cultural exclusion toward their neighbors to the east and south. Vestiges of that tension still pervade Western and Arab attitudes alike. Evidently not fully aware of the history of that idea, Stepan walked into the slippery ground paved by questionable quantitative data in circulation. The few pages of non-quantitative reasoning that he and Robertson provide, needless to say, remain woefully short of the task.

CONCLUSION: TELEOLOGY AND THE NEW SCIENCE OF DEMOCRACY

The preceding narrative goes beyond Muslim essentialism or Arab exceptionalism; it is a reflection of the mode of analysis advanced by an influential group of social scientists today. In the sixties, the standard wisdom was that social science research is governed by empirical findings. Today, some intellectuals and social scientists committed to democracy tend to look at the facts to see if they lead to where they should. If the facts do not seem to point in the expected direction, i.e. toward the advent of democracy, it is then concluded that something perverse must have affected the nature of the cases under consideration. When, for instance, high per capita income in a country turns out to be associated with democracy, the researcher is satisfied that things are in order; if not, the tendency is to assume that something must have gone wrong in the behavior of the subject under consideration. A clear example of the perverse slide away from the norm, we are told by Stepan and Robertson, is the case of the rich oil producing countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which enjoy a very high per capita income, yet none have followed the normal path toward democracy.

According to the teleological approach, (86) if modernization, high income, or virtue do not lead to the democratic objective then something deviant must have happened along the way. The political mood of the day informs the analytical mode. In the case of Freedom House Surveys, it seems to be taken for granted that the end of history is a full-fledged democracy. Anything short of that condition is considered a failure to fully appreciate freedom. In the process of looking for states that followed the true path and those that fell short, the vagaries of measurement take hold and facts are assigned weights by a subjective credit system which remains questionable.

The expectation that interacting social forces of modernization normally lead to democratic outcomes is a stressful and misleading exercise. Rather than enhancing free discourse and understanding, the approach tends to be a reflection of the researcher's knowledge base as it had been conditioned by his/her interest position in the order of things.

The predominant paradigm, which is employed in the teleological science of democracy, is linear with a political trajectory of progression from authoritarianism, to a transitional stage, to democracy. That paradigm, however, has not proven anymore successful than the comparable development model of the 1960s, which posited a linear course in the order of progression from traditional, to transitional, to modern society.

An increase in the income of Arab oil rich countries, coupled with societal skill in the distribution of largesse, and a strategy of coalition formation have rendered many Arab monarchies in the 20th century almost unchallenged. Why should anyone then be surprised if democracy is not the issue there? A reconsideration of the issue of democratic change in political and academic discourse has become more pressing in view of the widespread acceptance of the thesis that Western forms of democracy are where humankind is headed. (87) The FH exercises in quantitative measurement of democracy, it seems, tend to tell us more about how political regimes are viewed than what those regimes are about. Advocacy groups (88) with a strong arm in research and dissemination of information play a strong role in the propagation of a teleological bent in academic discourse. Their visibility and influence are clear, yet they have not achieved a dominant sway. Most of the literature on democracy today is procedurally beyond reproach and theoretically sophisticated. The remarkable advances in academic literature on democracy, however, have had less visibility in the public eye than has advocacy literature.

In its capitalist as well as its social mobilization (89) aspects, globalization poses a challenge to individuals and communities the world over. Elections may be considered as one of the features of the global challenge. Where elections are at their best, they tend to be characterized by a high voter turnout, low rate of structural coercion, almost no direct coercion, limited incumbency advantage, democratically arrived at electoral laws, open and free participation, relatively reasonable level playing fields, and an electoral arrangement that yields equally valued votes in one constituency as in another. It is clear that no country can have a perfect score on all or most of these counts; almost all countries fall in between the high ceiling of the ideal and a flat base line.

In practical terms, the classificatory category of interest would be that of the regimes in transition, the "Partly Free" in Freedom House parlance. Little is gained by classifying countries at the extreme ends, i.e., those considered by FH fully democratic or totally "Not Free." Declaring Saddam Husayn's Iraq "Not Free" and Sweden "Free" does not need going into the trouble of developing a complex methodology. The real challenge lies in providing functional definitions of high and low ranks of democratization, while never losing sight of the fact that all countries fall on a continuum rather than belong to exclusive categories.

Any measurement system that turns up a perfect performance under such a complex political process (90) must be essentially flawed. Relative conflict, coercion, and disruption are built-in features of all political systems, whether they are powerful and advanced like the United States or developing countries like Morocco and Mexico. To argue that some countries with an imperfect rating are resistant to democratic behavior due to their cultural peculiarities is to obscure the nature of the political process and ignore the basic social regularity that no country can be fully and flawlessly democratic.

(1.) Freedom House started its extensive studies of democracy rankings of states on a world-wide basis in the early 1970s; see "Freedom House: A History," www.freedomhouse.org/ template.cfm?page=249. Freedom House's studies have been available in print since 1980; see Freedom House, Freedom in the World 1980: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties, (New York: Freedom House, 1980). Starting in 2003, the publisher became Rowman and Littlefield. See also Polity IV Project of the University of Maryland (2003), www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity/index.htm. For other cross-country studies, see Tatu Vanhanen, The Process of Democracy: A Comparative Study of 147 States, 1980-1988 (New York: Crane Russak, 1990).

(2.) See Alfred Stepan with Graeme B. Robertson, "An 'Arab' More than a 'Muslim' Democracy Gap," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 14, No. 3 (July 2003); and "Arab, Not Muslim, Exceptionalism," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 4 (October 2004). See also in the same issue, Stanford Lakoff, "The Reality of Muslim Exceptionalism;" the reader may find the discussion of Arab exceptionalism of equal interest in a special issue of Comparative Politics, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2004). See also M. Steven Fish, "Islam and Authoritarianism," World Politics, Vol. 55, No. 1 (October 2002).

(3.) Surveys by Freedom House and Polity IV Project.

(4.) Freedom House started its extensive studies of democracy rankings of states on a worldwide scale in the early 1970s; see "Freedom House: A History," www.freedomhouse.org/ template.cfm?page=249. Freedom House's studies have been available in print since 1980; see Freedom House, Freedom in the World 1980: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties (New York: Freedom House, 1980). Starting in 2003, the publisher became Rowman and Littlefield.

(5.) For a different view that stresses comparative aspects of Muslim and/or Arab culture, see Heiner Bielefeldt, "'Western' Versus 'Islamic' Human Rights Conventions?" Political Theory, Vol. 28 (February 2000); and Iliya Harik, Democracy and the Paradoxes of Cultural Diversity: Beyond the Veil of Difference, Letters from Byblos Series, No. 3 (Byblos: International Centre for Human Resources, 2003).

(6.) Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls. Also in Adrian Karatnycky, "The 2001 Freedom House Survey: Muslim Countries and the Democracy Gap," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No.1 (January 2002).

(7.) For an exception to such a dismissal of Arab democratizing advances, see Michael C. Hudson, "After the Gulf War: Prospects for Democratization in the Arab World," The Middle East Journal, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Summer 1991).

(8.) Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls. Also in Adrian Karatnycky, "The 2001 Freedom House Survey: Muslim Countries and the Democracy Gap," Journal of Democracy, Vol.13, No.1 (January 2002).

(9.) Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); and Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945-1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

(10.) Vahanen, The Process of Democracy.

(11.) Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Methodology," http://freedomhouse.org/ template.cfm?page=35&year=2005.

(12.) Polity IV Project, "Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2002," (University of Maryland, College Park, 2003), http://www.bsos.umd.edu/cidcm/inscr/polity.

(13.) On FH methodology and the indicators, see Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Methodology," http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm ?page=35 &year=2005.

(14.) See for instance, Harik, Democracy and the Paradoxes of Cultural Diversity.

(15.) Russell L. Hanson, The Democratic Imagination in America: Conversations with Our Past (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 5-6.

(16.) Among the sophisticated cross-national studies, see David Beetham, ed., Defining and Measuring Democracy (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Modern Political Series, 1994), p. 36; Lijphart, Electoral Systems and Party Systems.

(17.) Kuwait is one of four rare Arab states listed as Partly Free; the other three are Jordan, Morocco, and Yemen.

(18.) See Table in Adrian Karatnycky, "The 2001 Freedom House Survey: Muslim Countries and the Democracy Gap," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 1 (January 2002), pp. 99-112; and Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Tables and Charts: Table of Independent Countries 2002," http:// freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=212&year=2002.

(19.) Freedom House, Freedom in the Middle East and North Africa, (New York: Freedom House, 2005), pp. 45-46. See also Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Country Reports: Kuwait," http:/ /freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&country= 1530&year=2002. For more, see "Emirate of Kuwait: Legislative Elections of 5 July 2003," http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/k/kuwait/ kuwait2003.txt. This source estimates the number of eligible voters before 2006 to be 136,715, a figure that would make 16% of the total.

(20.) See the Table for the 2005 figures on Kuwait in the Freedom House survey published in the Journal of Democracy, Vol. 17, No. 1 (January 2006), p. 122. The same score of (4 and 5) remained unchanged.

(21.) Tansu Ciller, of the True Path Party.

(22.) The only irregularities are generally reported in the Kurdish areas of southeastern Turkey. For Turkey, see Sacha Guney, "Slipping to the Right? The Meaning of the Elections in Turkey," (April 2, 2004), http://www.counterpunch.org.Guney04022004.html. For Kuwait, see Michael Herb, "Emirs and Parliaments in the Gulf," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 4 (October 2002).

(23.) Those restrictions were markedly reduced after 2001.

(24.) The same rating of 4 and 5 lasted from 1997-2002. See Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls.

(25.) Country Reports are a qualitative subset to supplement the quantitative assessment provided by the Freedom in the Worm survey.

(26.) For time series figures, see Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http:// www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls. Lebanon dropped only one point for "Political Rights" from 1982-1988.

(27.) See ratings for Lebanon in the time series chart since the 1970s, Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls. For the change in 2006, see Arch Puddington and Aili Piano, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 17, No. 1 (January 2006), p. 122. The discrepancies noted here are accepted without a question by Stepan and Robertson, see Stepan and Robertson, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 14, No. 3 (July 2003), p. 38.

(28.) For more information on advances made since the end of the Civil War and the limitations of democratic practices, see Theodor Hanf and Nawaf Salam, eds., Lebanon in Limbo: Postwar Society and State in an Uncertain Regional Environment (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2003).

(29.) Hanf and Salam, Lebanon in Limbo; Oussama Safa, "Getting to Arab Democracy: Lebanon Springs Forward," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 17, No. 1 (January 2006).

(30.) Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Methodology," http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=35&year=2002.

(31.) Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Introduction," http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=129&year=2004.

(32.) Saudi Arabia and Egypt are considered by FH to be among the most oppressive of Arab regimes, yet to consider the degrees of freedom in Egypt--with an elected Parliament and opposition political parties and press--on the same level as in Saudi Arabia is a highly questionable assertion. See Adrian Karatnycky, "The Freedom House Survey: Muslim Countries and the Democracy Gap," in Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 1 (January 2002), p. 104.

(33.) Yemen has been ranked at 5 and 6 from 1994-2000, before it passed in 2003 to 5 and 5 ("Partly Free"). The reason for Yemen's improved record over the other six countries is not, however, clear. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls.

(34.) Described as "failed states," Norimitsu Onishi, "Ethnic Clenching: Misrule in Ivory Coast," The New York Times, (October 1, 2002), p. A10.

(35.) In fact, the same preferred treatment was given to those three countries in the Polity Project IV evaluations, see http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity/.

(36.) See http://www.freedomhouse.org/researcth/freeworld/2004/ countryratings/liberia.htm and Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls.

(37.) Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/

(38.) Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Country Reports: Sierra Leone," http:// www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&year=2004&country=3023.

(39.) The judiciary reversed at times major executive decisions forcing the latter to change the law, dissolve parliament, and hold a new election in accordance with constitutional law.

(40.) Jim Hoagland, "Squaring Islam with Democracy," The Washington Post, February 2, 2006, p. A14.

(41.) Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls.

(42.) Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Country Reports: Uganda," http://www.freedomhouse. org/template.cfm?page=22&yea=2004&country=3049.

(43.) Statement by Jeanne Kirkpatrick. See The International Herald Tribune (May 14, 2003). Note that Ambassador Kirkpatrick is listed in the FH 2002 Survey as one of their advisors. See "Freedom in the World: Survey Team," http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=36&year=2002.

(44.) Regarding irregularities in Uganda and statements by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, see Edward Kannyo, "Change in Uganda: A New Opening?" Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 2 (April 2004), pp. 133-134; also Anne Mugisha, "Museveni's Machinations," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 2 (April 2004). See also FH "Country Report" on Uganda: Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Country Reports: Uganda," http://www.freedomhouse.org/ template.cfm?page=22&year=2003&country=508.

(45.) Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Country Reports: Uganda," http:// www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&year=2003&country=508.

(46.) Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Country Reports: Uganda," http:// www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&year=2003&country=508.

(47.) Kannyo, "Change in Uganda," p. 133.

(48.) Polity IV Project, "Polity IV Country Report 2003: Algeria," http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/ inscr/polity/Algl.htm.

(49.) Despite their withdrawal, one opposition candidate, Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi, received 12.5 % of the national vote.

(50.) William B. Quandt, "Algeria's Uneasy Peace," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 4 (October 2002), p. 15.

(51.) Polity IV Project, "Polity IV Country Report 2003: Algeria," http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity/Alg1.htm.

(52.) Polity IV Project, "Polity IV Country Report 2003: Algeria," http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity/Algl.htm. An example of skewed evaluation process in Polity IV Project is the case of Cote d'Ivoire, which is given a rank of 5 on a scale of 10, and that would place Cote d'Ivoire, under the Stepan and Robertson article, in the "electorally competitive" camp, while Algeria is excluded.

(53.) Arch Puddington and Aili Piano, "The 2004 Freedom House Survey," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 16, No. 1 (January 2005), pp. 106-107. Though the published date is 2005, the note on p. 107 states that the "ratings in this table reflect global events from 1 December 2003 through 30 November 2004." Cf. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Tables and Charts: Combined Average Ratings- Independent Countries 2004," http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=207&year=2004. In 1999, FH placed Algeria behind both Uganda and Haiti.

(54.) Robert P. Parks, "An Unexpected Mandate? The April 8, 2004 Algerian Presidential Elections," The Middle East Journal, Vol. 59, No. 1 (Winter 2005), p. 99.

(55.) Statement made on the BBC, "Observers Praise Algerian Voting," http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3613805.stm, quoted by Robert P. Parks in "An Unexpected Mandate," p. 99, n. 4. FH concurs that the campaign for election was very competitive and that "the electoral process [was] free of serious problems." Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Country Reports: Algeria," http:// www.freedornhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&year=2005&country=6681.

(56.) Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls.

(57.) Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Tables and Charts: Combined Average Ratings- Independent Countries 2004," http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=207&year=2004.

(58.) Emamanuel Sivan, "Illusions of Change," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 11, No. 3 (July 2000), p. 75.

(59.) William B. Quandt, "Algeria's Uneasy Peace," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 4 (October 2002), p. 15.

(60.) Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/F1Wrank7305.xls.

(61.) In the 2000 Survey. See Freedom House, "Freedom in the World Country Ratings," http:// www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/FIWrank7305.xls.

(62.) Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Methodology," http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=35&year=2005.

(63.) Djibouti is a proforma member of the Arab League, but that does not make it Arab in language and culture.

(64.) See Table, Karatnycky, "Muslim Countries," pp. 108-109; and Table in Arch Puddington and Aili Piano, "The 2004 Freedom House Survey," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 16, No. 1 (January 2005), pp. 106-107. The same remains true of the 2004 Survey, except that Russia and Djibouti were removed.

(65.) Emphasis added.

(66.) Karatnycky, "The 2001-2002 Freedom House Survey," p. 101.

(67.) Karatnycky, "The 2001-2002 Freedom House Survey," p. 101.

(68.) Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Methodology," http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=35&year=2002. Emphasis added.

(69.) It is worth noting here that 6 out of 8 of the political rights criteria given by FH survey checklist pertain to elections. Starting in 2003, two more criteria were added to make a total of 10. See Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Methodology," http://freedomhouse.orgtemplate.cfm?page=35&year =2005.

(70.) Just as an example, FH hardly examines any scholarly works and lists very few. Moreover, rarely are sources in the native languages made use of, while reliance on foreign language newspapers and other media abound. Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Sources," http://freedomhouse.org/ template.cfm?page=37&year=2002.

(71.) Aside from Stepan and Robertson, see Daniel Brumberg and Larry Diamant, "Introduction," and Bernard Lewis, "A Historical Overview, "both in Islam and Democracy in the Middle East, Larry Diamant, Marc F. Plattner, and Daniel Brumberg, eds., (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); Eva Bellin, "The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective," Comparative Politics, Vol. 36, No. 1 (January 2004); UNDE Arab Human Development Report, (New York: UN Publications, 2002). References to FH Surveys are often mentioned in national American newspapers, political commentaries, and by government officials.

(72.) President of Freedom House and coordinator of its annual survey.

(73.) Karatnycky, "The 2001-2002 Freedom House Survey," p. 99.

(74.) http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity/. The authors draw up two separate sets of results, one based on Freedom House's survey and one on Polity IV Project, which they then compare.

(75.) Stepan and Robertson, "An 'Arab' More than 'Muslim' Electoral Gap."

(76.) Especially in the rebuttal article, "Arab, Not Muslim, Exceptionalism," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 4 (October 2004).

(77.) Stepan and Robertson, "An 'Arab' More than 'Muslim' Electoral Gap," p. 31.

(78.) Stepan and Robertson, "An 'Arab' More than 'Muslim' Electoral Gap," pp. 30-31.

(79.) Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Methodology," http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=35&year=2002 and Freedom House, "Freedom in the World: Methodology," http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=35&year=2005.

(80.) Stepan and Robertson, "An 'Arab' More than 'Muslim' Electoral Gap," p. 31.

(81.) Alfred Stepan with Graeme B. Robertson, "Arab, Not Muslim, Exceptionalism," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 4 (October 2004). See also in the same issue, Stanford Lakoff, "The Reality of Muslim Exceptionalism."

(82.) Alfred Stepan with Graeme B. Robertson, "Arab, Not Muslim, Exceptionalism," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 4 (October 2004). See also in the same issue, Stanford Lakoff, "The Reality of Muslim Exceptionalism."

(83.) Iliya Harik, "The Origins of the Arab States System," in Ghassan Salame, ed., The Foundations of the Arab State (London: Croom Helm, 1987).

(84.) The argument made by S&R that Arab countries that were under British rule refused to join the British Commonwealth is quite inadequate. Except for Egypt and Aden, British rule was very brief.

(85.) For details see Edward W. Said, Orientalism, (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).

(86.) A teleological trend is noted also by Guillermo O'Donnell, see "Illusions About Consolidation," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 2 (April 1996).

(87.) This tendency was given a boost by Francis Fukuyama's influential book, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).

(88.) Karatnycky takes Egypt and Saudi Arabia to task for having "permitted--some say encouraged--the broad dissemination of anti-Western and anti-American views in their media and through Islamic clerics." Karatnycky in Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 1 (January 2002), p. 104. Since when has prohibition of anti-American and anti-Western views been a part of the definition of democracy?

(89.) In the sense that Karl Deutsch uses the term: widespread dissemination of the mass media, education, geographic mobility of people, various transactions, especially in the market place.

(90.) For the complexity of the transitional model, see Thomas Carothers, "The End of the Transition Paradigm," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 1 (January 2002).

Iliya Harik is a Professor Emeritus in Indiana University's Department of Political Science. He is currently Director of the International Resource Center for Democracy. His most recent books include Democracy and the Paradoxes of Cultural Diversity: Beyond the Veil of Difference, Letters from Byblos Series, No. 3 (Byblos: International Centre for Human Resources, 2003) and Al-dimuqratiyah was tahadiyaat al-hadathah [Democracy and the Challenges of Modernization: Islam and the West] (London: al Saqi Publishers, 2001). The author would like to thank Professors Ellen Lust-Okar, George Juergens, and Michael McGinnis for helpful comments on an earlier version of this essay.

Table 1
Countries with Relatively Acceptable Ranking on "Political Rights"
Judged by FH as Not Electoral Democracies
 
                            Political Rights    Civil Liberties
 
Antigua and Barbuda                4                   2
Burkina Faso                       4                   4
Central African Republic           4                   5
Lesotho                            4                   4
Tanzania                           4                   4
Senegal (1999 Survey)              4                   4
 
Data Source: Freedom House 2001 Survey, also available in Adrian
Karatnycky, "The 2001 Freedom House Survey: Muslim Countries and
the Democracy Gap," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 1
(January 2002).
 
NB.: A lower number reflects more "Political Rights" or
"Civil Liberties," while a higher number reflects fewer
"Political Rights" or "Civil Liberties."
 
Table 2
Countries with Worse or Comparable Scores on "Political Rights"
and "Civil Liberties" Considered as Electoral Democracies
 
               Political Rights   Civil Liberties
 
The Gambia            5                   5
Nigeria               4                   5
Russia *              5                   5
Turkey **             4                   5
Djibouti ***          4                   5
 
Data Source: Freedom House 2001 Survey also available in
Adrian Karatnycky, "The 2001 Freedom House Survey: Muslim
Countries and the Democracy Gap," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13,
No. 1 (January 2002).
 
* Zambia (5, 4), a score better than that of Russia, is
listed as not electoral
 
** Comparable to the Central African Republic in Table 1
 
*** 4 and 6 in the 1999 Survey

Source Citation: Harik, Iliya. "Democracy, "Arab exceptionalism," and social science." The Middle East Journal 60.4 (Autumn 2006): 664(21). InfoTrac OneFile. Thomson Gale. University of Texas at Austin. 15 Nov. 2006 
<http://find.galegroup.com/itx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=ITOF&docId=A154237550&source=gale&srcprod=ITOF&userGroupName=txshracd2598&version=1.0>.


 

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