Arab MENA Countries: Vulnerabilities and Constraints Against Democracy on the Eve of the Global COVID-19 Crisis

The MENA region is characterized by numerous crises. These range from the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping through the region to religious fundamentalism, violent sectarianism, vast economic discrepancies, pressing environmental challenges, the intrusions of external actors in the region, and a debilitating authoritarian culture. All of these variables are exacerbated or ameliorated by globalization – a reality that no state can wish away. These challenges can be mitigated by political elites engaging in robust institution-building creating structures fit for purpose whilst at the same time laying the foundation of values amongst citizens like trust in those institutional structures.

The MENA region is engulfed in crisis. This predicament emanates from domestic factors like the artificial nature of the state and rentier economies to external actors supporting regimes against their citizens. As a result of this, several states are failing and are losing their sovereignty in the process. States, however, have been complicit in their own demise as they have eroded their own capacities to govern by nepotistic practices and by turning their citizens against them as well as supporting non-state actors in an effort to gain a strategic advantage in their region. State elites need to create more inclusive economies and polities and engage more constructively with their citizens who increasingly embrace secular and democratic norms if they are to survive this crisis.

Our exercise of standard development accounting attempts to arrive at a synthesis of the performance of Arab countries as they approach the abyss of the impending global economic recession and health crisis, connected with the Corona (Covid-19) pandemic. The choice of our indicators was guided by world system (Frank, ReOrient: Global economy in the Asian Age Ewing, University of California Press, 1998) and dependency approaches to development (Bornschier et al., Transnational corporations and underdevelopment. Frederic Praeger, New York, 1985); by later globalization-oriented debates about development (Tausch, Int J Heal Plan Manag 27(1):2–33, 2012a; Tausch, International macroquantitative data. Faculty of Economics, Corvinus University of Budapest. Available at http://​www.​uni-corvinus.​hu/​index.​php?​id=​47854&​tx_​ttnews%5Btt_​news%5D=​0&​tx_​ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=​31638&​tx_​ttnews%5BcalendarYear%5D=​2012&​tx_​ttnews%5BcalendarMonth%5D=​6&​cHash=​af8ef6888f7c9922​b83b113f71c1ca32​, 2012b; Tausch, Int Soc Sci J 68(227–228):79–99. DOI: 10.1111/issj.12190, 2018); and by indicators featuring internal, “home-made” restrictions on democracy and gender equality. The choice of our indicators was also guided by research on Islamism, and the issues of the way, religion, culture and values are structured in the region (Grinin et al. 2020).

Our data support the perspective of the UNDP Arab Human Development Report (UNDP, Arab Human development report 2016: Youth and the prospects for human development in a changing reality. UNDP, New York. Available at http://​hdr.​undp.​org/​en/​content/​arab-human-development-report-2016-youth-and-prospects-human-development-changing-reality, 2016) which diagnosed that, deficient as it may be, the state-led development model in the Arab world has expanded access to key entitlements and raised some levels of human development. Arab countries had a relatively low incidence of poverty and income inequality, shielding disadvantaged groups from some of the worst economic pressures of our times. On all accounts of standard development accounting (Grinin et al., Economic cycles, crises, and the global periphery, Springer, Cham, 2016; Tausch, Int Soc Sci J 61(202):467–488, 2010; Tausch and Heshmati, Globalization, the human condition and sustainable development in the twenty-first century: Cross-national perspectives and European implications. Anthem Press, London/New York/Delhi. https://​www.​scopus.​com/​inward/​record.​uri?​eid=​2-s2.​0-84939789242&​doi=​10.​7135%2fUPO97808572865​50&​partnerID=​40&​md5=​32618c3ba9b71018​53ea357f86de2703​. https://​doi.​org/​10.​7135/​UPO9780857286550​, 2012a; Tausch and Heshmati, Sociologia 44(3):314–347, 2012b), the performance of the Arab countries since the 1960s was mixed at best.

The multivariate indicator analysis of the development performance of the countries in the world system along seven different dimensions:showed that the global ranks of the Arab countries in this international comparison combining democracy, economic growth, environment, gender, human development, R&D and social cohesion ranged from rank 67 – Tunisia – to rank 167 – Sudan.

Our analysis of poverty gaps in the MENA region indicates that poverty gaps exhibit two trends in the region – a secular, long-run setback and decrease of the poverty gaps, measured by the three well-known World Bank purchasing power (PPP) benchmarks of 1.90$, 3.20$, 5.50$ a day, and a lamentable short-run setback and increase of the poverty gaps during the neo-liberal transformations of the 1990s and in the wake of the Arab Spring.

These setbacks in the 1990s and in the wake of the Arab Spring surely coincide with the statistics of unemployment, which closely correlates with the downswings in the economic cycle. This is especially true for the rates of youth unemployment, which reaches a staggering quarter of the entire age group.

Based on the extensive development accounting data collection contained in Tausch, 2019, we also arrive in this chapter at the following and rather depressing analysis of the development deficits of the Arab world: youth disempowerment, deficits in education, high unemployment and precarious jobs, the exclusion of young women, substantial health challenges, violent radicalization, patriarchy, low social and religious tolerance, inequality of opportunity in education, the challenges facing women, the effects of social and political conservatism, problems in the health sector, war and violent conflict, a high migration pressure, the flight of human capital, all these phenomena, mentioned by the UNDP Arab Human Development Report, 2016.

With the data of Barro and Ursua (Barro-Ursua macroeconomic data. Available at https://​scholar.​harvard.​edu/​barro/​publications/​barro-ursua-macroeconomic-data, 2011), and Barro et al. (The Coronavirus and the Great Influenza epidemic – Lessons from the ‘Spanish Flu’ for the Coronavirus’s potential effects on mortality and economic activity (2020). CESifo Working Paper No. 8166. Available at SSRN: https://​ssrn.​com/​abstract=​3556305, 2020), as well as Grinin et al. (Economic cycles, crises, and the global periphery. Springer, Cham, 2016), we deal in this chapter also with the comparative aspects and what economic science knows about the effects of both the Spanish Influenza pandemic from 1918 onwards and the Great Depression from 1929 onwards. Poor countries like Egypt recovered their income levels from pre-Great Depression levels only in the late 1950s. Based on the empirical relationship between income levels and pandemic fatality rates 1918–1920, we can assume that if the current pandemic repeats the patterns of the Spanish influenza, 1918–1920, fatality rates in the Arab world will be 1–2 percent in the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Kuwait, Morocco and >2 percent in Qatar, Yemen, Sudan, Mauritania and Comoros. Finally, we risk a prognosis on the overall societal effects of the pandemic. There will be rising income inequality over time. And the severity of the epidemic negatively influences international income convergence over time.

With the majority of the populations in the Arab world predictably becoming poorer still by international standards after the pandemic, and with income inequality predictably rising, we should finally look at another lesson of history, which might be deduced from the Barro and Ursua (Barro-Ursua macroeconomic data. Available at https://​scholar.​harvard.​edu/​barro/​publications/​barro-ursua-macroeconomic-data, 2011) data. In the United Kingdom, it took practically a decade to recover the pre-pandemic income levels, and in Italy, the crisis was even more severe, and Italian democracy collapsed and Benito Mussolini rose to power in 1922.

This chapter attempts to close a gap in the recent literature on Arab MENA countries economic development: how globalization affected human values in this part of the world.

First, we assess the overall picture of the degree of globalization according to the Zurich KOF-Index data series, affecting the MENA countries.

We then go on to use new comparable indices of global value development derived from the latest set of World Values Survey data and determine the Arab MENA countries’ place on a new factor analytical index of Global Civil Society, building on Grinin et al. (Islamism, Arab spring, and the future of democracy, Springer, Cham, 2018) and Solomon and Tausch (“The age of ignorance” and the civic culture of democracy: A multivariate analysis based on World Values Survey data. In: Islamism, crisis and democratization. Springer, Cham, 2020, pp 23–85). We relate these results (country factor scores) with macro-economic and social and political indicators, presented in Tausch and Heshmati (Globalization, the human condition and sustainable development in the twenty-first century: Cross-national perspectives and European implications. Anthem Press, London/New York/Delhi. https://​doi.​org/​10.​7135/​UPO9780857286550​. https://​www.​scopus.​com/​inward/​record.​uri?​eid=​2-s2.​0-84939789242&​doi=​10.​7135%2fUPO97808572865​50&​partnerID=​40&​md5=​32618c3ba9b71018​53ea357f86de2703​, 2012a; Sociologia 44(3):314–347, 2012b) and Tausch (Jewish Polit Stud Rev 30(1–2):65–225. Available at http://​jcpa.​org/​article/​migration-from-the-muslim-world-to-the-west-its-most-recent-trends-and-effects/​ (with data definitions and sources). Free data download available from https://​www.​academia.​edu/​37568941/​Migration_​from_​the_​Muslim_​World_​to_​the_​West_​Its_​Most_​Recent_​Trends_​and_​Effects, 2019a; Int J Heal Plan Manag, https://​doi.​org/​10.​1002/​hpm.​2781, 2019b), and the globalization indicators of the KOF-data series (Gygli et al., Rev Int Organ 14(3):543–574, https://​doi.​org/​10.​1007/​s11558-019-09344-2, 2019).

Our statistical calculations were performed by the routine and standard SPSS statistical program (SPSS XXIV), available at many academic research centres around the world, and we relied here on the so-called oblique rotation of the factors, underlying the correlation matrix. The SPSS routine chosen in this context was the so-called promax rotation of factors, which in many ways must be considered to be the best suited rotation of factors in the context of our research. Our comparisons reveal that the Arab MENA countries would be well advised to further social globalization.

Patriarchy has its origins in the Middle East. This legacy is still apparent in the Middle East where gender discriminatory legislation and attitudes remain the norm. What are the reasons for such misogynistic practices? For some scholars, the Islamic faith and related cultural practices lay at the heart of the problem. Others place their emphasis on more structuralist explanations such as economic considerations and ongoing insecurity in the MENA region. Despite the challenges confronting women, this chapter also maps the positive trends of a post-patriarchal order in the region. These include women taking up arms to defend themselves, political mobilization on the part of women as they challenge both authoritarianism and patriarchy and the rise of feminist Islamic scholarship. The momentum for a post-patriarchal order also exists because of changing inter-generational attitudes about the place of women in society. A younger, more educated generation holds less gender bias than their parents’ generation.

The politics of identity is a source of major conflicts across the MENA region. Rejecting essentialist notions of identity, this chapter argues that sectarianism only becomes an issue when it is instrumentalized by political entrepreneurs. It examines how sectarianism has played out in Syria and Libya as well as the quest for an independent Kurdistan. The chapter explores the different approaches adopted by MENA states to manage the politics of difference. These include secessionism, federalism, consociationalism and nation-building. Various country case studies are provided as each of these approaches is assessed – from Syria and Morocco to Lebanon and Oman. Ultimately, however, the politics of identity calls upon mature political leadership with a vision and intellect to forge inclusive nation-states in an increasingly fractious region.

Political Islam has been a major force across the MENA for much of the twentieth century. Reaching the zenith of their political ascendancy in the immediately aftermath of the 2011 Arab Uprisings, it is clear that Islamism is on the wane across the region. Opinion polls demonstrated that the Arab street, in particular the youth, are becoming more secular, less conservative in their attitudes and more suspicious of the role of religion in the public sphere. What is driving this disenchantment with Islamist parties relates to their aligning themselves with anti-democratic forces, the endemic corruption and nepotism they have demonstrated once in office, their inability to govern and their internal divisions.

Our multivariate empirics of the support rates for Political Islam in the region relied on data from the Arab Barometer survey (5). If the people of the entire Arab world had a free vote in a referendum, the following rules and regulations still would gain an absolute majority:

More than a third of Arab opinion still supports, among others, the following contentions:

From the Arab Barometer data, we constructed parametric and non-parametric indices of Overcoming Islamism and of Political Islam. The indices show a very high correlation with each other. The country values of the Index components are found in Table 7.2. Islamism is defined as high values along our 24 indicators across the board. Table 7.3 reports our UNDP-type Index “Overcoming Islamism” based on the valid country-level Arab Barometer results with 24 variables, aggregated with equal weights. Tunisia, according to Table 7.3, is the country whose population is rendering least support for Islamist worldviews, followed by Lebanon and Iraq. Yemen, Sudan and Algeria are the three Arab nations, whose population still lends biggest across-the-board support for the 24 Islamist positions under consideration here. We could show the close relationship between support of the most salient global Islamist leader today, Turkish President Erdogan, and Political Islam among the interviewed Arab publics. Support for Political Islam is also still very clearly connected to Anti-Westernism in the region. Political Islamist hatred against the West now also features the United Arab Emirates with its close cooperation with Western countries and its world class Universities as a victim of this prejudice. As a rule, the advancement of education reduces the extent of support for Political Islam.

A post-Islamist future beckons the region and those Islamist parties who make the successful adaptation to this new reality will thrive. Those who do not will be confined to the dustbin of history.

The triple challenge of climate change, increasing populations and rapid urbanization is creating unique challenges to MENA countries. Whilst coastal cities like Alexandria risk falling into the sea due to rising sea levels, the Dead Sea is drying up and Jeddah experiences annual floods. The challenges are made worse by government mismanagement through poor town and regional planning or looking for short-term solutions to waste-management as opposed to seeking more sustainable solutions. Environmental challenges can be mitigated through innovative forward-looking solutions with MENA states working in partnership with civil society, the private sector, neighbouring states, and international stakeholders such as the World Bank. Morocco’s partnership with the World Bank and the private sector to arrive at a more sustainable waste management system, Jordan and Israel working together to save the Dead Sea, and the nascent promise of the Nile Basin Initiative are all different facets of attempts at overcoming environmental challenges posed.

With the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping across the MENA region, how are the region’s governments responding to the threat posed. Some like the UAE have been ahead of the curve taking a slew of pre-emptive measures to minimize infections. Others, like Iran and Turkey, inadequate, delayed and fragmented responses have resulted in their becoming epicentres of the spread of the virus. War-ravaged Libya and Yemen, meanwhile, have no capacity to control the virus. Neither does Tripoli and Aden control the entire country in order to take the necessary steps to curb infections. What is needed are leaders with the necessary foresight to mitigate the impact of the virus whilst preparing for a regional and international order.

The Middle East North Africa region stands at the precipice of the proverbial cliff confronting numerous challenges. These challenges may be divided into three separate but interacting clusters: globalization, democratization and development. How the regimes respond to these challenges will define the future of the region for years to come.