Undemocratic Arabia.(Other Countries)

Alfred Stepan and Graeme Robertson, "An 'Arab' More Than Muslim Electoral Gap," The Journal of Democracy, Volume 14, Number 3 (journalofdemocracy.org)

As the war on terror has brought the United States into closer engagement with the affairs of the Middle East, many Americans have come to examine the relationship between Islam and democratic governance. In reviewing the state of electoral politics in the world's 47 Muslim nations between 1972 and 2000, Alfred Stepan, a Columbia University professor, and Graeme Robertson, one of his graduate students, find that Islam itself seems compatible with democracy but that the Arab world has utterly failed in its efforts to establish competitive politics.

While Stepan and Robertson acknowledge that elections alone do not constitute democracy, they are a necessary prerequisite. Electoral competitiveness, the two contend, exists when the people can vote in free and fair elections and the governments they elect have meaningful political power. Muslim countries like Bangladesh, Mall, and Albania are "electoral overachievers" that have managed significant periods of democratic rule even though similarly poor countries typically fail at democracy. Arab ...