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Once again, the region of the Middle East and North Africa is the last space between the ranking of world regions in the Democracy index, published by the journal Economist Intelligence Unit of Economist. The figure for the region in the 2018 index was not different from the one reached in 2017, which is 3.54, the weakest geographical regions of the relationship, which arrived at the head of the North American region at 8.56.
This classification is due to the predominance of countries classified as totalitarian and authoritarian in the region, from 14 countries out of 20, the highest number of geographical regions compared to the number of countries involved. Among the region included Israel, according to the index, and excluding some member states of the League of Arab States Like Mauritania, which came from sub-Saharan Africa.
The continued decline of most Arab countries on this index raises several questions about the reasons for the absence of democracy in the region, despite all the positive expectations that the Arab Spring has brought to its beginnings, especially if the hope of the experience Tunisian is greatly reduced in Egyptian experience, the two countries that led the Arab revolutions In 2011.
No new .. frequent fall in the cursor!
No Arab country was included in the list of total democracies, which included 30 countries around the world, while only the second list was Tunisia, which ranked 63rd in the world and the first Arab, the only one Arab to rank among the first 99.
The Tunisian experience of delivering power remains the only Arab model after the 2011 revolutions
In the list of hybrid systems came four Arab countries, with Morocco (the second in the Arab world and 100 in the world), Lebanon (the third in the Arab world and 106 in the world). The rest of the other Arab countries have been included in the list of totalitarian regimes, the worst part of the index.
In the index, which ranked 165 countries and two territories, Syria was the second-lowest in the world, followed by Saudi Arabia (159th worldwide) and Yemen (158th worldwide). Kuwait reached the top of the Gulf States by 116, while Egypt was in 127th place.
Israel ranks first among the Middle East and North Africa in 30th place in the world. As usual, the Scandinavian countries have ranked the world index, respectively Norway, Iceland and Sweden, while North Korea has reached the general classification.
What are the reasons?
Professor of political science at the University of Kuwait, Shafiq al-Ghubra, mentions several reasons for the lack of democracy in the Arab world. Including the existence of a strong contrast between the changes that occur among young Arabs in the knowledge of rights and requirements, in particular the demand for a dignified life, and the structure of the Arab system, which suffers from calcification and vulnerability, so that it is not able to interact positively with this generation.
The reaction of a young Egyptian to drop the charges against former president Hosni Mubarak
Al-Ghabra stressed that the current Arab system does not meet the challenges of the times and that what has been done by some regimes of "modernization of the dictatorship, that is the modernization of the authoritarian form of the structure" has only led to more problems deep. Al-Ghabra denies that some circles state that Islamic extremism is one of the main reasons for the absence of democracy in the region, stressing that the root of the problem is the lack of real development plans, as well as the lack of a real culture of responsibility for the ruling elites in front of the population. politically.
Among other reasons, al-Ghubra in an interview with DW Arabia, is the existence of a huge oil wealth in some Arab countries, as the impact of this wealth negatively on the nature of Arab regimes, the dominant regime at the expense of the normal development of civil society. There is also another reason related to the Arab-Israeli conflict: the multiple clashes between the two parties have captured the Arab mentality and have alienated from democratic visions.
Is the Arab spring failing?
Democracy indicates that the instability that characterized the Arab Spring has made citizens of several Arab countries reluctant to seek radical political change and have reinforced the state of non-compliance with political reforms. The report highlighted that while there is a disdainful vision of electoral policies, even in those few countries where elections were significant, there is an increase in public interest in the protest, both in the traditional way and through the sites of social networks.
Some researchers suggest that the continuation of Assad is a sign of failure for the Arab spring
The professor of the University of Kuwait, Shafiq al-Ghubra, refuses to talk about the theory of the failure of the Arab Spring, stating that what happened in 2011 has given many indications that the Arab peoples are aware of the need to live in dignity as other peoples, including the region is full of flows that share the need for modernization, which has shown that it has no choice but to engage in a democratic project. The Arab Spring has also sent messages to the Arab countries that the reform project that had been promised for a while should be started.
But what happened was that the regimes did not absorb these signals, which led to the occurrence of heavily burned counter-revolutions and contributed to the destruction of many gains, especially the return to the absence of manifestations of political expression, says al-Ghubra. The speaker predicts that this reality will lead to a bigger explosion, that the Arab Spring may return, but more violently, more massive and more revolutionary, which requires the ruling elites, if they wanted to avoid this scenario to look for a new way of democracy, Modified, and change should also affect the ruling elites. "
Author: Ismail Azzam
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