Modern Politics

Thorough and analytical, Legislative Politics in the Arab World is an important contribution to the study of electoral and legislative politics in Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, Yemen, and Egypt. The functions that the book serves are perhaps more useful in explaining legislative politics in the Arab world than those performed by the legislatures themselves in the resurgence of democratic institutions.

Part One situates the topic in comparative perspective and highlights the features of democratic transitions in Arab politics. It also outlines the functions of Arab parliaments and their role in the democratic process and presents an interesting typology of Arab parliaments along with an assessment of the institutional centrality and internal capacity of legislatures. Part Two is a detailed account of the six case studies. The concluding chapter summarizes the book’s main findings and looks at the prospects for democratic change.

According to the authors, the legislatures “have become central actors in the renewal of politics in the Arab world” (p. 6) after a long period of decline. Therefore, “their functions, procedures, strengths, and weaknesses should be better understood” (p. 6) within the framework of a “negotiated transition” to democracy or a “transition from above.” Six characteristics are identified to explain these “negotiated transitions” which differ from transitions to democracy in Latin America and Eastern Europe.

The book’s premise is that some democracy, irrespective of form and substance, is better than no democracy. Despite their limitations and setbacks, Arab democratic experiments, the authors argue, are worth exploring. Their distinctive features lie in “their incremental nature [which] militates against the political breakdowns that frequently take place when transitions are accompanied by a sudden shift of power that threatens entrenched interests and thus invites violent confrontation” (p. 44). Such gradual change should not be dismissed when compared with rapid transitions in other countries, for a “sudden lifting of political controls would probably transfer power to radical, anti-Western forces–not to committed democrats” (p. 45). Therefore, Arab democratic transitions should be “viewed in their own light” (p. 33). Although aware that incremental progress “is not unilinear and can be temporarily reversed,...[the authors] believe that the overall trend is positive and will continue to be so” (p. 249).

The authors’ persistent, though “cautious optimism” (p. 250) is a function of the flexible standards used to assess democratic development in all six countries. This, however, raises a number of questions. First, incremental change is not necessarily cumulative, as was the case in Jordan, Egypt, and Yemen within a few years, and as could be the case in other countries. Second, while accepting the pertinence of “negotiated transitions,” a vicious circle of inaction is not unlikely: the executive relinquishes power in return for multiple “services” deemed necessary by the regime; the legislatures in turn gain more power; the more power they exercise, the more threatening they are to the regime; the latter may intervene to make sure that this new-found power is within its threshold of tolerance and in line with the rewards of the exchange. Third, the linkages between elections and the legislatures’ performance are not sufficiently emphasized in the book. Free and fair elections produce free and effective parliaments, provided they have adequate constitutional powers. Otherwise, parliaments may score high in the functions they perform but the political system scores low in elections, as is most visible in Lebanon where postwar parliaments are more assertive than before but the democratic process–elections, political liberties, sovereignty–has greatly declined from that of the pre-war period. Fourth, notwithstanding the useful functions performed by parliaments, in authoritarian regimes, legislatures, like non-competitive elections, serve to extract support for the regime which usually outweighs the legislatures’ positive effects on the political process. Arab parliaments have been tolerated mainly because their usefulness for the maintenance of authoritarian power structures exceeds their contribution to democratic development.

The authors’ ‘negotiated’ optimism remains negotiable. It is doubtful that opposition leaders and political activists in Arab countries share the authors’ faith (and patience) in incremental democratic transitions. That only six Arab countries (out of twenty-two) have witnessed limited pluralism is little reassuring. But the authors are right to stress the non-static nature of Arab politics, and they have done a good job at that. Middle East specialists and policymakers will greatly benefit from reading this timely book.

Farid el Khazen
American University of Beirut

Five additional chapters on related topics fill out this small book. Two focus on geography: an interesting review of the evidence for the location of the storied ‘Caspian Gates’ of the northeastern Persian frontier and a meditation on the Persian Lut (the great desert which makes up the countr’'s ‘dead heart’). A chapter on “Persian Influences on Mughal India” argues that the Mughal Empire only flourished as long as Persian influence was strong. Like the others it relies on very old sources and stakes out some questionable positions–for example, that “Indian Islam is devoid of originality and new concepts” (p. 37). “Shi'a and Sufi” is the weakest chapter, referring to outdated secondary sources and full of questionable assertions, such as that Iranians were “proselytes of Islam at the point of the sword” (p. 53). The author, although he displays a wide familiarity with the travel literature, evidently does not know Persian or utilize any Persian sources.

The author’s sober writing style in the sections on diplomatic history is replaced by flights of fancy and hyperbole elsewhere. Thus he refers to the Turkman as “wild horsemen from the steppe” (p. 2), and to “the belligerent and crusading followers of the prophet Muhammad, imbued with religious zeal and proselytizing fervour” (p. 11). This sort of writing might be expected in a travelogue but not in a book with scholarly pretensions.

The problems of reprinting unrevised articles that are thirty years old are everywhere apparent. In Figure 1, a map of Persia, pre-revolutionary names are used for the Caspian ports (Bandar Pahlavi and Bandar Shah). Misspelled place names also occur on other maps. In an otherwise helpful chapter on “The Persian War of 1856-7,” care has not been taken to check the text against the original article, published in Middle Eastern Studies in 1966. This oversight has led to some errors that made the new version incomprehensible in places.

In sum, these varied articles do not fit well together as a book. The author, a lieutenant commander in the British Navy who died in 1991, is most at home in the nineteenth-century diplomatic material. The chapter on “Bahrain and the Persian Claim” should be required reading for Iranians. Overall, however, there is no good reason for its publication.

Lawrence Potter
Columbia University

[1] John Barrett Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 1795-1880 (Oxford, 1968).

An important contribution by Tibi is identifying some often-ignored distinctions. Basic to his analysis is the difference between ‘fundamentalism’ and traditionalism or conservatism: “Fundamentalism is not traditionalism” (p. 29). Instead, “fundamentalism…has been shaped by modernity itself” (p. 33) and Muslim fundamentalists are “by no means traditionalists but truly bizarre modernists” (p. 94). He argues against the assumption of some observers that Islamic fundamentalism or “political Islam” represents Islam. He emphasizes a “strict distinction” between “Islam as a religious belief” and “Islamic fundamentalism as a political ideology” (p. 13).

An important topic developed by Tibi is the definition of the place of democracy in the world order of the fundamentalists and in his own vision of the desirable world order. Tibi notes that many fundamentalists who define the ‘Islamic state’ utilize concepts like consultation (shura) to show that an Islamic state is democratic. However, Tibi argues that these thinkers do not show a sense of the real history of the Muslim community and that while “Islam and democracy can be reconciled,…a fundamentalist-democratic regime is a contradiction in terms” (p. 176). In this analysis, Tibi points to problems with the fundamentalist position, but in his own argument, despite the fact that he affirms that “[d]emocracies as social realities…are a modern phenomenon” (p. 180), he discusses historical experiences as if ‘democracy’ were a static constant throughout history. The currently existing democratic systems in the West have religious foundations in monotheistic traditions that, like Islam, affirm the absolute sovereignty of God. Tibi could do more to recognize, in this analysis, that the issues, problems, and contradictions that he describes are not unique to the Islamic tradition.

The Challenge of Fundamentalism deserves serious attention. It goes beyond the facile critiques of fundamentalists presented by many secular and ‘liberal’ analysts, who underestimate the importance of the cultural and religious dimensions of global life. Many may disagree with Tibi’s positions, but his conclusion must be examined and not ignored.

John O. Voll
Georgetown University