Democratic solidarity: Rethinking democracy promotion in the New Middle East

Abstract

This article aims to temper the cross-disciplinary enthusiasm for democracy-promotion programs in the light of the recent anti-authoritarian upheavals in the Middle East. It offers a wide-ranging critique of mainstream instrumentalist arguments (i.e. that democracy leads to peace, development, and justice), which are hampered by universalist generalizations about democratic government – in other words, by a tendency to separate democratic values and institutions from their orientation within particular political and historical contexts. In the place of such arguments, it offers an alternative model of democratic solidarity premised on the belief that the social construction of democratic norms – and especially the reflective processes that mediate their internalization – has a direct bearing on the legitimacy of political forms and decisions. Through a detailed analysis of the trials and tribulations of US democracy-promotion programs in the Arab and Muslim world, it further argues that the provision of any outside assistance to democratic transitions in the Middle East will need to involve the twin tasks of understanding the quite complex and contextual struggle for rights and freedoms in each particular society, and providing the necessary space and resources for achieving democratic legitimacy.