Elections and Legitimacy in the Middle East

Abstract

Israel is an immigrant democracy, not unlike the United States; and its traditions and adverse circumstances have hastened assimilation and have softened the ideological differences so vocally expressed by its party system. In Turkey, democracy had to wait until a generation after it became a nation-state. Whereas the vast majority of voters supported moderate, centrist parties, the election system first encouraged majority tyranny and next gave exaggerated leverage to the extremist parties repudiated at the polls. These weaknesses of the political system—and periodic economic crises—gave rise to periodic military interventions but appear at last to have been overcome by the liberal and popular program of Turgut Özal. Elsewhere in the Middle East, the interlude of Western colonialism and the futile search for pan-Arab unity have delayed the advent of democracy; and in Lebanon, armed denominational rivalries have destroyed the political system. More recently, boundaries and regimes have stabilized throughout most of the region. Elections and parliamentary meetings have reflected the consolidation of Iran's charismatic revolutionary regime and the continuing quest of military or monarchic regimes in Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait for greater legitimacy at home and abroad.