Anderson

Anderson argues that one of the major problems that faces political scientists in their analysis of the Middle East is a tendency to view the region through the wrong lens. As Western thinkers, we are prone to adhering to a strong tradition of political liberalism. That is to say that we tend to more or less assume that democracy is the end all, be all of political organizations. This is all well and good as long as we are analyzing states populated by other people prone to this assumption. However, this narrative of "democracy=good" breaks down when you start looking at societies that have different political and philosophical traditions.

Although I am not an expert Arab political philosophers, I have a hunch (based on the reading) that there is no direct equivalent to the likes of John Locke et. al. Without a similar tradition, it seems logical to think that democracy might seem a strange and foreign concept in MENA. Also, it is important to consider the difference in language. Whereas most European languages have similar roots and developed next to one another, Arabic and Farsi are descended from different sources and therefore give rise to significant differences in how it is possible to communicate ideas.

As far as our class is concerned, I think that the best way to address this tendency is to make a concerted effort to step away from the assumption that democracy is the best way to go, as well as acknowledge the different academic tradition that has shaped thought in MENA. This is likely to be uncomfortable as the virtue of democracy is something we tend to take for granted, and uprooting the notion of universal suffrage is likely to feel very strange. As Anderson puts it "We may have to search a bit more in the shadows, in the arenas of political life less well illuminated by conventional political science."

(This post refers to the following journal article by Lisa Anderson:

Anderson, Lisa. "Searching Where the Light Shines: Studying Democratization in the

Middle East." Annual Review Political Science9 (2006): 189-214.)