In her article ” SEARCHING WHERE THE LIGHT SHINES: Studying Democratization in the Middle East, Lisa Anderson explores the common misconceptions and inaccuracies of political scientists in studying the Middle East and its relationship with democracy.
There is a perception among many scholars that the path to an ideal society is one centered around democracy. She says that many believe in some form of modernization theory which states that as countries develop and industrialize with this will come democracy which will be the end place for a state. Anderson pushes back on this and states that democracy not the ideal path for every nation and that this is largely a western approach that doesn’t necessarily apply elsewhere. Another critique of Andersons is the idea that Islam is incompatible with Democracy. This is a false claim according to Anderson and through studies it can be seen that even before the uprisings there were positive views on democracy across all different demographics within this region. Another issue Anderson defines is applying principles from other countries to that of the middle east. The metaphor of searching for a key on the wrong side of the street simply because the lighting is better is something that is used. This is referencing the idea that just because there were waves of democracy in other parts of the world, what happens in one place can’t be used to explain what happens in other parts of the world. So, a lot of the research that is conducted in Latin America can’t then be applied to the middle east because there are different circumstances for each that can’t be generalized.
Avoiding or compensating for the problems of studying the Middle East can be achieved by gaining a better understanding of the region and the historical context of the MENA region. Not looking at things through a western perception or making assumptions based on religion, language, culture etc. This also means that in paying attention to this region apart from the rest of the world one must also understand the nuance within the region so that one doesn’t make generalizations about the whole region based off the actions in one or two countries.
When looking at the uprisings of 2011 we can see challenges to the previous lines of thinking that this region did not want democracy. Here we can see a mobilization of people to challenge the status quo which goes against the previous belief that people in this area didn’t want democracy because they thought it wasn’t compatible with Islam which we can see is false. The uprisings show though the complex nature of the area because different countries responded differently to uprisings and saw different results. We also have to be mindful that just because there were uprisings does not mean that those protesting are pushing for a western style of democracy and the actual desires for the people should be taken into account rather than a projecting of what people in the region ‘should’ want.
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