ABSTRACT
Since the 1970s, the Middle East 1 region has failed to keep pace with major global processes that have helped to promote dynamic developments in many other world regions. Among the most striking factors are a political, an economic and a securityrelated one. Firstly, the Arab World and Iran did not participate in the ‘third wave of democratisation’ (Huntington 1991): with the exception of Israel, within the boundaries of 1949, no democracy exists in the Middle East. Freedom House (2008) does not list any single Arab country as ‘free’. This finding is particularly intriguing because at the beginning of the twenty-first century – in contrast to the period before the third wave – quite a few democracies existed in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Thus, there is strong evidence that the supposedly Western model of democracy works outside the West – yet in the Arab Middle East and Iran, it has not yet gained ground. Secondly, apart from being a major supplier of world energy, the Middle East’s degree
of participation in the globalization process is very limited (Beck 2003): as a part of the world that has failed to transform its systems from resource-dependent to knowledge-based economies, the Arab Middle East and Iran lack attractiveness as an investment location beyond the oil and gas sectors. By attracting less than five per cent of global foreign direct investment, the Arab Middle East lags even behind sub-Saharan Africa (Brach 2008: 7). Moreover, the degree to which the Middle East participates in global communication is comparatively low: internet accessibility in most Middle East countries is lower than in other world regions and is often restricted by state censorship (ONI 2007). Thirdly, the Middle East as a ‘regional security complex’ (Buzan and Wæver 2003:
187-218) is characterized by a high degree of political violence involving all kinds of different levels and actors: The Middle East is the centre of international terrorism. Islamist violence is not only ‘exported’ to the US, Europe and other places, rather, most targets are situated in the Middle East itself. For the same reason, the region is the global centre of violent counter-terrorism. Moreover, the Middle East is among the very few world regions in which classic interstate wars still play a major role, most recently in 2003, when the US-led ‘Coalition of the Willing’ invaded Iraq. Finally, the Middle East is home to decades-old regional violent conflicts, particularly those over Palestine and Kurdistan.
