The Middle East and North Africa

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is often referred to as an exception to the democratizing trends that characterized global politics since the late 1980s. ¹ This is because the majority of the countries in the region have remained solidly authoritarian, often with the same families or ruling elites in power since the achievement of independence. This has begun to change with the Arab Spring of 2011, although the outcome of the uprisings in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen is still uncertain. The persistence of authoritarian rule has occurred despite, or precisely because of, the introduction of both economic and political reforms aimed at transforming the nature of political rule in a democratic direction. Interestingly, even countries that are considered regional exceptions because of their institutional democratic arrangements, such as Israel, Turkey and Lebanon, are controversial democracies at best and struggle to be unanimously accepted as full-fledged democracies. However, it is the Arab countries in the MENA region that truly have bucked the trend of democratization. The absence of successful democratizations so far should not, however, be equated with socio-economic and political stagnation, as the MENA countries have undergone profound transformations since the late 1980s.