Lisa Anderson Blogpost

In “Searching Where the light Shines: Studying Democratization in the Middle East”, Lisa Anderson tackles the difficult question as to why middle eastern countries continue to resist and reject democracy as a form of government. Anderson brings several points to the table as to why the Middle East is an enigma in the modern era of government. Anderson believes that political scientists are not investigating into this issue with a broad enough view as to what may be the cause. The Middle East is a challenge to fully convert each country into a democratic state as each country is so drastically different that the shoe of democracy does not always fit every foot. Religion, culture, history, geographical features. However, the largest factor is simply the people. Some people do not want democracy in their country and are satisfied with a republic or monarchy. However, many of these countries do not convert because it is not just the public who does not want it, but rather those who have power do not want to inherit democracy. The reasoning being, especially in a monarchy or dictatorship, that those in power are afraid to lose it. Going from being the sole leader of a country to having legislature would be incredible whiplash as now the leader or king can not solely make decisions for the future of their country. This is just one example of a broad reason as to why Democracy can not settle in the Middle East, yet Anderson states how political scientists, capable of observing these broad reasonings, can not see the full picture of the issue. She believes that political scientists make too broad of judgements towards the Middle East, chopping it up as basically being a single area, rather than many different developing nations with their own political issues. Civil unrest, poverty, failing economy to name a few. These countries are dedicating more time, effort, and money towards these issues rather than focusing on making the change to democracy. Change takes time and these other issues must be ironed out before that large change can occur. However, Anderson emphasizes the fact that the Middle East is always rapidly changing. So if the changes happening are rapid and small and constantly occurring, how does such a large shift such as converting to democracy even happen as all the focus is on these more minor changes. It simply does not happen, unless there is outside interference. An example of this is Israel. The United States has been funding the country for decades and because of the constant stream of money, Israel has managed to settle down and develop as a democratic state. The same can not be said for the remaining countries in the Middle East as many of them have had much more negative interference from foreign nations. Many Middle East states face constant conflict derived from within, but then interfered with by countries such as the United States or Russia. So while it may seem beneficial towards the countries to welcome the nations to help in the wars, these larger and much more powerful countries may take the opportunity to attempt and change the occupied nation into their own image (IE: Communism/Democracy). By forcing these ideologies onto a developing nation of whom may not want this change will certainly result in conflict and uprising against the occupiers. All this to say there are many more factors that political scientists do not firmly consider before coming to conclusions about the entire area of the Middle East. There are so many different things going on in these countries that would have to be accounted for in order to truly grasp why democracy is absent and can not be summarized with “They just don’t want democracy”. We can compensate for these problems in this course through accounting for more unseen reasoning in what occurs in the Middle East. Not everything is cut and dry, there is always layers as to why a nation, and in this case many nations, refuse to adopt something that would likely benefit them in the long run. We just need to understand the specifics of why these things are happening rather than making assumptions.

Now The Arab uprisings, which occurred due to continued unrest and noticeable corruption in the government, display that the people in the Middle East are for change. They had an uprising because there needed to be change due to the corruption and failing economy. So to go about this change, it can not be forced upon the citizens, but rather introduced. Get the idea into their heads and see how they respond to it and work with the public from there. Nobody enjoys being told what to do, and in this case what their government should look like. But people will work together and be motivated for change if these foreign nations primarily try and work with the people to improve their future.