Export Of Democracy To The Arab World eBook

Essay from the year 2007 in the subject Politics - Other International Politics Topics, grade: 18/20, Vrije University Brussel (Universite Libre de Bruxelles), course: Seminar, language: English, abstract: Western Initiatives in the last years and especially in the aftermath of 11 September 2001multiplied and intensified (e.g. the U.S. proposal of a Greater Middle East Initiative, BarcelonaProcess by the EU) in order to bring democracy to a region which by any definition has the ArabWorld at its core and which in comparison to Eastern Europe and Latin America seems reluctantto follow the common trend of establishing representative democracies as form of government. Besides the exportation efforts also internal Arab political discourse generally endowsdemocracies with a virtually talismanic quality capable of solving all outstanding problems, asAl-Azmeh rightly points out. The Arab Word is stretching from Morocco in the west to Oman in the east including a variety ofdifferent state structures (small city states like Kuwait , large states like Libya, extremely richand extremely poor regions)3 and is populated by heterogeneous ethnic groups (large Berberminorities in the Mahgreb and Kurdish, Turkic and Armenian minorities in the Mashreq). However big the differences may be two common nominators can doubtless be identified: Islamand a democracy deficit . The questions arising are obvious. Is the message of the prophetresponsible that no stabile democratic government is in sight in the Arab World ? Is the deficit indemocratic ruling indeed a cultural and religious problem ? Is the Koran compatible with theconcepts of democracy ?