Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Has the United States Poisoned Democracy?
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Amaney Jamal, Mark Tessler October 8, 2008

Has the association of democracy promotion with U.S. foreign policy, and especially with the occupation of Iraq, spawned a backlash and led ordinary Arab citizens to question whether democracy is appropriate for their countries? Certainly the United States’ lack of even-handedness in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long been a major Arab complaint, and more recently the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq have given rise to widespread anti-American sentiment in the Arab world. Associated with this is U.S. government insistence that its actions in Iraq are part of an effort to promote democracy in the Arab world.

To examine the relationship between anti-Americanism based on antipathy toward U.S. foreign policy, on the one hand, and views about desirability of democracy on the other, we analyze data from the Arab Barometer project. With scientific and administrative leadership provided by a team that includes prominent scholars from five Arab countries, as well as the present authors, the Arab Barometer carried out in 2006-2007 face-to-face interviews with large and representative national samples of ordinary citizens in seven Arab societies: Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, and Yemen. A total of 8,555 men and women were interviewed. Information about the organization, methodology and findings of the Arab Barometer may be found at http://www.arabbarometer.org/.
 
Three charts based on data from the Arab Barometer surveys are presented in order to assess whether and how anti-Americanism and judgments about U.S. foreign policy influence attitudes about democracy. The first chart examines the level of support for democracy in the seven Arab Barometer countries and shows that support is consistently strong. Respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the following statement, “Democracy may have its problems, but is better than any other form of government.” As shown in Chart 1, overwhelming majorities agreed: 74 percent in Jordan, 79 percent in Palestine, 92 percent in Morocco, 82 percent in Lebanon, 63 percent in Yemen, 69 percent in Algeria, and 85 percent in Kuwait. Other questions about democracy produced similar response patterns.

Chart 1: Support for Democracy in the Arab World

A second chart presents responses to a question about U.S. democracy promotion efforts. It asks whether respondents agree or disagree that “U.S. democracy promotion policies toward Arab countries are good.” This question was asked in five of the Arab Barometer countries, and in all cases but one those who disagree are much more numerous than those who agree. The percentage of respondents who disagree that U.S. democracy promotion policies are good ranges from 64 percent in Jordan to 73 percent in Algeria. The one exception is Kuwait, where only 38 percent take this position. This may be, in part, because people remember and appreciate the United States’ role in pushing out the Iraqi forces that invaded in 1990.

Chart 2: Views of U.S. Democracy Promotion Policies

The view that U.S. actions in the Arab world are not contributing to democratization hints at broader discontent with U.S. involvement in the region. Indeed, as shown in Chart 3, dissatisfaction with U.S. policy is strong enough to lead many Arab citizens to agree with a statement that asks whether “U.S. involvement in the region justifies armed operations against the U.S. everywhere.” Although this question was not asked or did not yield reliable data in two countries, Morocco and Yemen, responses from the other five Arab Barometers countries show substantial support for this proposition. Specifically, 61 percent in Jordan, 66 percent in Palestine, 67 percent in Algeria, 58 percent in Kuwait, and 37 percent in Lebanon believe it is legitimate, given U.S. involvement in the region, to use violence against the United States.

Chart 3: Are Armed Operations against the U.S. Justified?

We may now return to the question raised at the outset. Does the anti-Americanism evident in Arab judgments about U.S. foreign policy (which incidentally is not reflected in responses to questions that ask about American culture or the American people) incline ordinary Arab citizens to be less supportive of democracy? Although most Arabs favor democracy, Chart 1 shows that in some countries as many as one-third do not. Are these individuals disproportionately likely to be those who are most critical of the U.S.?
 
We test this proposition by comparing the extent of support for democracy among those who agree and those who disagree that U.S. involvement in the Arab world justifies armed operations. Such a comparison makes clear that the proportion of those supporting democracy is almost identical in the two categories. In other words, those who are angry enough at the United States to justify attacks on U.S. targets are just as likely to support democracy in their own countries as are those who do not justify such attacks. This is the case in all five of the countries for which Arab Barometer data are available. Thus, our data do not support the argument that Arab popular support for democracy has been undermined, and the concept itself has been discredited, by the anti-Americanism that results from Arab complaints about U.S. foreign policy.
 
Amaney Jamal is assistant professor of Politics at Princeton University. Mark Tessler is Samuel J. Eldersveld Collegiate Professor and vice provost for International Affairs at the University of Michigan.

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Comment on Arab Reform Bulletin

    February 9, 2010 - 3:42 PM
  • Hafed Al Ghwell says... [October 9, 2008 - 5:49 PM] I have two initial reactions to this piece. One, it seems to me that this analysis assumes that those who say they support "democracy" mean U.S or Western liberal forms of democratic frameworks, while many in the region would simply refer to Islamic forms of government as democratic. The second , and related , issue has to do with what aspects of a democratic governance framework the respondents mean when using the term democracy? Do they emphasize the issue of electoral participation for example? or do they emphasize issues such as accountability, legal guarantees for human rights, equality before the law or simply anti-corruption measures? From personal experience in the Mid-East, I find that many Arabs have quite different meanings for the word "democracy" than say an average American or European for that matter. The word itself has been quite a loaded one. And for it to be meaningful, we need to unpack it and contextualize it, we need to separate and identify clearly the aspects that relate to the form of governance, from those that relate to the issues of personal freedoms, legal guarantees, accountability, effective public administration, etc.
  • Daedalus says... [March 10, 2009 - 1:20 PM] It's ballots or bullets that determine the legitimacy of a government. You can also replace them the same way but you need rules. Otherwise it's one man, one vote, one time. Democracy never ends conflicts. It provides an alternative way for the settlement of disputes and a basis for human development. It manages and controls the power of the state by sharing it. Sooner or later all governments fail enough voters to bring about a change. The issues change from country to country. You can't export democracy. The idea is home grown. It deals with the issues that are important to you and reflects your society.

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