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Contributions from
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Monitor
Challenging guidelines
Afghanistan: NGOs adopt code of conduct
AIDS drug:
Brazil achieves price reduction
US Congress slows down
Millennium Challenge Account
German development
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Pro-poor growth in practice
Military intervention hardly helps
G8 summit disappoints NGOs
GTZ attracts
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Generic pharma
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New EU trade
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Privatisation dispute misses the point
Scant participation
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8-9/2005
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[ Democratisation ]
Military intervention hardly helps
The democratisation of the Near and Middle East has been high on the international agenda since the Iraq War and the Broader Middle East Initiative of the US administration. At the same time, there have been encouraging recent signs of liberalisation and democratisation in some countries of the region (such as Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and Morocco). The elections held in Palestine and Iraq are also mentioned in this context (see D+C/E+Z, 2005:4, p. 140).
Where democracy gains a hold, that does not happen primarily for ethical or ideological reasons, but because democracy serves societally useful functions. If, on the other hand, democracy is not advantageous for significant sectors of a society, it is unlikely to become established. In June, Germany’s Development and Peace Foundation (SEF) held a conference in Berlin on democracy in the Arab world. Democratisation means that the former elites lose power and other actors gain influence. By threatening established power relations and triggering resistance, democratisation processes can have destabilising effects in the short and medium term. Furthermore, there obviously is no safeguard for the societal participation essential for democratisation in situations of civil strife as, for instance, in Iraq, where civil society and the political forces are constantly under threat.
Not only the Arab delegates at the SEF conference were sceptical about the idea of external enforcement or encouragement of democracy by military intervention. Wherever foreign armed forces do support attempts at democratisation, they often get entangled in contradictions. Security-motivated repression may thus undermine the desired potential for political participation. Means and ends become garbled, without burning questions of security and political control being solved.
Encouraging democracy in the Near and Middle East is welcome and urgent, as the recent Arab Human Development Report of the UN Development Programme has convincingly argued (see D+C/E+Z 2005:5, p. 183). However, democratisation must rely on domestic reform potentials, which are more likely to be weakened than strengthened by external military intervention.
Jochen Hippler
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