Given these failures of development in the region, the Arab world above all else needs to tackle the freedom deficit and its implied issues of governance if the region is to catch up with the rest of the developing world. The AHDR lays out the dimensions of good governance as objectively as possible. The reform agenda calls for: fair and free elections with “a solid electoral system that permits the peaceful rotation of power;” an elected representative legislature that can exercise real control over executive power; a constitution that effectively defines the rules of the game separating executive, legislative, and judicial powers; rule of law and autonomy of judicial institutions; local self-government; and reforms to invigorate civil society and guarantee a free press.

Achieving Good Governance

The question is no longer whether but how to engineer significant political change in the Arab world. Evidently the AHDR is articulating new dimensions of globalization-induced change. During the debt crisis of the 1980s, the region was called upon to remove trade barriers, plug up fiscal and current account deficits, stabilize macro-economic indicators, and reform the economy structurally through privatization. In addition, Arab countries are now being asked not only to implement economic policies that few understand, but also to engage in major public efforts of political reform. Backed by citations from the Prophet Muhammed’s son-in-law Ali (thus appealing to both Sunni and Shi’a Muslims), the AHDR calls, in essence, for the transformation of Arab regimes into constitutional democracies like those of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries.

The UNDP will continue its benevolent political intervention through the Program on Governance in the Arab Region (POGAR). UNDP-POGAR’s guidelines include a level of country-specific detail that the AHDR could not achieve. Mirroring the AHDR, UNDP-POGAR focuses on eight substantive dimensions of governance that embody the normative principles of participation, rule of law, and transparency and accountability. Although these standards apply as yardsticks for evaluating political institutions and practices, their relevance varies with the nature of the concrete theme. Thus, extending participation is the primary concern behind the themes of civil society, decentralization, elections, and the role of women in public life. Corresponding to the rule of law are proposals for the judiciary and constitutions, while legislatures and financial institutions are the primary foci of transparency and accountability.

UNDP-POGAR documents the practices of 20 Arab countries concerning the eight themes of governance. Because POGAR’s partners include the governments themselves, the descriptions are meant to be credible without being incendiary. Behind its reform agenda may lie the hope that publicity will gradually induce changes that will alter regimes by changing mentalities, concrete behaviors, and practices. The strength of this approach is that it enjoys legitimacy in the eyes of the concerned parties. POGAR is quietly expanding the scope of globalization, typically defined as the elimination of various state barriers, to include barriers of domestic government practices. It is thus more akin to Benthamite improvements of the early 19th century than to the rampant imperialism in the latter part of that century. In the spirit of the Enlightenment, good ideas and practices are expected to drive out bad ones, and significant changes, such as Bahrain’s new constitution, are visible to all to be criticized or emulated by the neighboring monarchies.

However, multilateral international and regional efforts to promote good governance may give way through gradual information exchange to more rapid regime change, either by US military intervention or by increases in domestic violence against regimes viewed as US collaborators. Globalization is now associated with regime change in the region, whether gradually through multilateral efforts or by more extreme methods. Underlying the clash between these alternatives is the conflict between the unilateralist tendencies of the Bush administration and the proponents—in the United States as well as in the international community—of the gentler liberal conception of gradual political reform through globalization.

Either way, the experience of globalization in the Middle East starkly projects the new dimension of regime change. If it does not happen spontaneously as a result of internal forces and regional “snowball effects,” as in Latin America and Eastern Europe, regime change may become directly associated with cruder forms of external intervention, which could have the unintended consequence of reversing globalization’s push toward economic convergence and political liberalization. Ironically, the region’s oil fueled the first truly global industry, yet the region’s resistance to externally imposed political change may set examples that others will emulate in opposition to a globalization perceived as US imperialism. Freezing processes of internal reform by forcefully imposing them on Iraq from the outside could have a domino effect well beyond the Arab and Muslim world, eliminating decades of progress in the Middle East.