A contrarian view on Arab democracy Capital Influx takes a shot at the Iraq Attaq[1], mocking the notion that Western-style capitalist democracy could realistically become widespread in the Middle East in the near future. I share her skepticism on this issue, though I think that some states (namely Iran and perhaps Iraq) could make the transition within a decade or so. But both of us take (took?) it for granted that democracy doesn't have much of a intellectual foothold in the Arab world. Jonah Goldberg has an interesting take on this assumption. He feels that "capitalist democracies" in the Arab world may not be such an alien idea after all:

JOKING ASIDE: ARAB DEMOCRACY [Jonah Goldberg] While the Iraqi election was funny and -- yes, yes, Stan -- Arabs and Democracy have a worse record than the Red Sox and the World Series, it is important to recognize what a staggering intellectual defeat such elections represent for anti-democratic Arabists and Islamists these exercises are. Hussein's supporters -- as with Yasser Arafat's -- feel the need to use the language of democracy to defend their positions. Arafat's flunkies, for example, constantly insist he's the "democratically elected leader of the Palestinian people" precisely because there is no other language in the world which confers the degree of legitimacy democracy confers. The official position of the Arab League is that Hussein, Ghadafy and Assad and the rest have been "elected" to their positions too. Even though we know it is a lie, it is great progress that these gangster regimes feel the need to lie in the first place. It is similar to the rhetoric of the Soviets who felt compelled to use words like "republic" and "democracy" even though that rhetoric didn't match the reality. Indeed, it was this disconnect which cultivated so much discontent among the captive peoples of the Soviet Empire. Think about it: If democracy were as totally and completely foreign to the Arab mind as some skeptics claim, then these regimes would see no need to go through the motions and pay lipservice to the concept in the first place. [emph. mine]

We can see a mild expression of this dissatisfaction with the electoral farces of undemocratic regimes in some of the cartoons of M. Kahlil, a cartoonist for the Arab News. And certainly Iranians and Iraqis realize that they're being sold a lie in Khatami and Hussein respectively. As long as the Islamists can be kept in check, perhaps this discontent could lead to real change - given an appropriate catalyst. True democracy might bloom after all in the deserts of the Middle East - albeit slowly! Incorrigible skeptics would do well to recall that democracy has taken flower in climates formerly thought inhospitable, such as Japan and Russia...albeit only after military defeat. [2] Is democracy even theoretically feasible from a human biodiversity standpoint? I'm pretty sure that the Iranians (who are Persians, not Arabs) have enough human capital to sustain a capitalist democracy. But that only takes care of Iran. A democratic Middle East is only possible if the Arabs have the human capital to sustain a capitalist democracy. [3] They had a shining civilization hundreds of years ago, but they currently have very high inbreeding coefficients. That's a technical term, but it means what you think it means: lots of cousin marriages and general clannishness/high incidence of birth defects. Inbreeding alone makes it questionable whether the Arabs have a large enough smart fraction. I suppose we'll find out... [1] Credit to Steve Sailer for this. [2] Though Russia is a semi-democracy right now, it's on the road to real democracy and far further along than anyone thought it could be during the Cold War. And though I count the loss of the Cold War as a military defeat, I don't think that's much of a stretch. [3] In my opinion, the jury is still out on the (modern) Arabs and on most ethnic groups other than sub-Saharan Africans. See here for justification of this statement if you find it outrageous: (first, second).