National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century

Working Paper No. 52

The Arab Spring and the Forgotten Demos

Nils-Christian Bormann, Manuel Vogt, Lars-Erik Cederman Center of Comparative and International Studies (CIS) ETH Zurich

February 2012

The Arab Spring and the Forgotten Demos1 Nils-Christian Bormann, Manuel Vogt, Lars-Erik Cederman Center of Comparative and International Studies, ETH Zrich

Abstract Revolutions are an uprising of the people against the ruling elites to bring about radical political change. But who are the people? The question of who constitutes the demos, the political community that rules itself, is crucial in many of the Middle Eastern and Northern African (MENA) countries that have been experiencing political upheaval during the Arab Spring. We argue that, in the age of the nation-state, the demos is often equated with an ethnic community leading to exclusionary political regimes under flawed majority rule in multi-ethnic states. Yet, the dimension of ethnic inclusion is usually ignored in common measures of democracy. We present new data which show that the MENA region has not only been the world's most undemocratic but is also the most ethnically exclusive and discriminatory. Moreover, ethnic exclusion is a strong and significant predictor of ethnic civil war in the region. Hence, even if states in the MENA region make the transition to procedural democracy, they will remain instable and conflict-prone as long as they are not built upon an ethnically inclusive notion of the demos. We end on a discussion of institutional remedies that promote inclusiveness and stability.

Paper prepared for presentation at the NCCR Democracy conference Transformation of the Arab World - Where is it heading to? on 27/28 Oct 2011. This article is based on research done in the project Institutional strategies for post-conflict democratization within the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research Challenges to democracy in the 21st century, and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Financial support by the SNSF is gratefully acknowledged. Corresponding author: Nils-Christian Bormann: bormann@icr.gess.ethz.ch

The people want the fall of the regime. Shared slogan of the Arab uprisings (Al Jazeera, 2011).

Introduction The revolutions known as the Arab Spring have been greeted enthusiastically in the West. The people of the respective country have quickly been identified as the driving force of democratic change. Praising the demonstrators in Tunisia where the will of the people proved more powerful than the writ of a dictator, Barack Obama expressed support for the democratic aspirations of all people in his State of the Union Address (The New Yorker, 2011). However, the trajectories of the popular revolutions have not been the same in all countries. In Tunisia and Egypt, the old dictators were toppled quickly while in several other countries, the kings, sheiks and other strongmen proved more resilient. In Morocco and Saudi-Arabia, the royal houses have gone on spending sprees to pacify their defiant youths. In Bahrain and Syria, brutal force is used to suppress the ongoing protests. Under NATO leadership, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and several Arab countries used UNlegitimized air attacks to help the Libyan uprising topple Ghaddafi. In Yemen, chaos seems to be the new order. While democracy is the desired outcome in all these states, students of Realpolitik have pointed out the possible dangers arising from unordered transition and the lurking perspective of takeover by Islamist fundamentalists like the Muslim Brotherhood. Thus, the United States has, in contrast to its rhetoric, supported the military leadership in Egypt where the revolutionary enthusiasm has notably cooled down. Similarly, the Yemenite uprising has been received more cautiously in the West as the state is already known as the home of alQaida fighters. One aspect of the Arab Spring that has so far received little attention is the question of the political inclusion of different ethnic segments of the countries populations. While it is obvious that the states in the Middle East and North Africa have failed to democratize, it is less well known that the region is also a laggard in terms of ethnic inclusion. Apart from the ethnically more homogeneous populations of Tunisia, Egypt or Libya, most states in the region are divided by ethnic cleavages. In contrast to the worldwide trend of forming ethnically more inclusive governments, many regimes in Northern Africa and the Middle East continue to rely on the dominance of specific ethnic groups at the exclusion of others that in some cases even constitute the majority of the population.

While democratization may increase the risk of conflict in the short term, we argue that in the long run, political stability is impossible to achieve without the democratic participation of the masses, and that ethnic inclusion is an essential aspect of this condition. Hence, while most research on democracy and democratization focuses on democratic procedures, we highlight the importance of an inclusive demos, i.e. the people of a given political unit authorized to participate politically. Since the North African and Middle Eastern region is one of the most exclusive and discriminatory parts of the world, one of the main challenges of the future will be the issue of ethnic inclusion. We argue that this question should be at the center of a discussion about the new political order arising from the Arab Spring.

The Democratic Laggard On the eve of the revolutionary movements, the Middle East was the most repressive and undemocratic region in the world. Whereas other parts of the world have successively caught up with the Wests high level of democracy, the countries of the Middle East and North Africa have experienced little if any democratization. Figure I shows that the Arab World is the only region where average democracy levels are below the midpoint of the standard Polity IV scale. In other words, more countries are tending towards strong autocratic regimes than towards democracy. This led some observers to postulate that Muslim culture is antithetical to liberal government due to the subordination of women (Fish, 2002; Karatnycky, 2002) and the lack of separation of the state and religion which impedes the development of a free civil society (Gellner, 1984). However, a more nuanced view would also acknowledge geostrategic interests. Western countries led by the United States certainly valued the long-time stability of the dictatorial regimes that are the worlds largest producers of crude-oil and were esteemed allies in the Global War on Terror of the George W. Bush Administration.

Average Democracy Levels by World Region

10

Democracy Levels

-5

-10

Eastern Europe Latin America Arab World Sub-Saharan Africa West Asia
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Year

Figure I: Development of Regional Democracy Levels over Time

It is less well known that Northern Africa and the Middle East are also laggards in terms of the political inclusion of ethnic groups. Figure II shows that, with the exception of this particular world region, all other parts of the world have made considerable strides towards more ethnically-inclusive political regimes. Indeed, the North African and Middle Eastern countries have not improved much since 1946 despite certain progress in the last decade. Moreover, these states do not only exhibit the highest levels of ethnic exclusion, they are also afflicted by the highest concentration of political discrimination along ethnic lines (see Figure III). For the measurement of ethnic exclusion and discrimination we relied on the EPR-ETH version of the Ethnic Power Relations dataset (Cederman, Wimmer, & Min, 2010). This dataset contains information about all politically relevant ethnic groups and their access to state power in countries around the world from 1946 (or the year of independence) to 2009. A broad distinction can be made between politically included groups and excluded groups.2 Simply put, the distinction rests upon group leaders access to executive power of the states government. Ethnic discrimination, which is as a subset of the more general category of political exclusion, is defined as the active and targeted discrimination of members of a specific

See Cederman, Wimmer, and Min (2010, pp. 100-101) for precise definitions of each category.

ethnic group with the intent of excluding them from political power based on their ethnic identity.3 Figures II and III display regional averages of ethnic exclusion and discrimination, respectively, calculated from the values of all states in the pertinent region. We can see that both ethnic exclusion and discrimination are highest in the Arab World. In terms of the broader measure of exclusion, three groups can be identified: The West is characterized by constantly low levels of ethnic exclusion since World War II, meaning that here the ethnic question can be considered as solved for the most part. Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe are situated at the intermediate level. Interestingly, the abrupt initiation of democratization in Eastern Europe also led to a considerable increase in ethnic exclusion in that region. Northern Africa and the Middle East are still clearly above these four other regions. The picture becomes even starker when we look at the more narrow measure of ethnic discrimination. The values in the Arab World are high above those of all other world regions. Ethnic discrimination is almost completely absent in the West, and while much progress has been made, for instance, in Sub-Saharan Africa, discrimination is actually more prevalent in the Arab region today than it was 65 years ago.

Ethnically Excluded Population by World Region

0.5

Ethnic Exclusion in %

Eastern Europe Latin America Arab World Sub-Saharan Africa West Asia

0.0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

Year

Figure II: Development of Regional Levels of Ethnic Exclusion over Time

This can be formal (by law) or informal (systematic practice). Indirect discrimination (disadvantages in the economic or educational sphere) is not included in this definition.
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Ethnically Discriminated Population by World Region

0.30

Ethnic Discrimination in %

Eastern Europe Latin America Arab World Sub-Saharan Africa West Asia

0.00

0.05

0.10

0.15

0.20

0.25

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

Year

Figure III: Development of Regional Levels of Ethnic Discrimination over Time

As we will discuss in more detail below, political exclusion or discrimination based on ethnic identity is a very dangerous situation as it often leads to civil conflict. It is also very problematic from a normative perspective of democratic theory. Exclusion along ethnic lines violates the core principle of an inclusive demos, the political community that rules itself. It is thus remarkable that a large part of the academic literature on the subject and the current measures of democracy have not addressed this issue thoroughly.

Democratic Theory and Measurement The pre-eminent theorist of democracy is Robert Dahl who built the conceptual foundations of many popular indicators of democracy (Dahl 1982; 1989). In his view, democracy consists of two main pillars: accountability and participation. The former effectively refers to free and fair elections but also encompasses agenda-setting power. The latter refers to the inclusion of the people. For the most part, Dahl is very clear that any kind of exclusion violates democratic principles. Inclusion should chiefly be dependent on competence and extend to all adult members of the association except transients and persons proved to be mentally defective (Dahl, 1989, p. 129). Yet, when it comes to ethnicity Dahl is less specific. His concern with avoiding minority rule or majoritarian tyranny resembles the Madisonian idea of factions (Dahl, 1982, pp. 1-5). 6

The issue of inclusion into the democratic community, the demos, has been treated from different angles. Usually the term refers to the people of a political unit but who exactly belongs to this people is far from obvious. No democracy has ever included the complete population living on its territory. Barriers of participation are commonly based on material wealth (including land ownership), gender, age, mental capacity, and literacy. In modern times, the most important criterion for determining who belongs to the demos of a given political unit and who does not is a persons nationality which in turn is tied to a state (Linz & Stepan, 1996, p. 28). Individuals living on the territory of a state other than their origin are typically excluded from political participation. National affiliation is usually determined by ius sanguinis or ius soli. While the former principle defines the citizenry as a closed community of descent and the nation as an organic cultural community , the latter is based on the view of the nation as a political community where strangers can be turned into citizens by legal and cultural assimilation (Brubaker, 1992). But in principle both citizenship regimes allow for the integration of people with diverse ethno-cultural origins. As Mann (2005) notes, the state-people does not necessarily have to be based on ethnic characteristics. Thus, the demos can be defined as the people of a political unit who are authorized to politically participate in, and influence, this political unit and are the ultimate point of reference for its accountability.4 However, in political practice, due to the conjunction of nationalism and democracy in the modern world, the demos did and does often become equated with the ethnos or an ethnically defined community (Mann, 2005). Nationalism explicitly links political legitimacy to cultural identity. In the words of Gellner (1983, p. 1), the nationalist principle holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent and that ethnic boundaries should not cut across political ones. Within the framework of democratic majority rule, this demand often unleashed powerful exclusionary mechanisms against culturally distinct population segments (Mann, 2005). Even in advanced industrial economies where ethnic affiliation was thought to be an issue of the past, ethno-nationalist identities remain sticky and powerful (Cederman, 2001). Most of Western Europes demoi became ethnically consolidated through subtle processes of ethnic homogenization largely before democratization (Mann, 2005; Smith, 1985, p. 132). In many other parts of the world, however, the nationalist principle is often violated. Here we find multi-ethnic states with different ethnic groups living side by side within the same territory (Jackson & Rosberg, 1984, pp. 177-179; Linz & Stepan, 1996, p. 30). In these states, the
To a certain extent, this definition is capable to accommodate populations under authoritarian regimes as well, since such regimes often exhibit a composition intended to reflect the structure of the population and, in this way, to pretend something like popular accountability (cp. Jackson and Rosberg (1984) for African single-party regimes and personal rulerships).
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definition of the democratic community becomes paramount and is therefore often the source of political contention (Barnes, 2001, p. 87). One of the possible explanations for the lack of attention to ethno-nationalism in the discussion about the Arab Spring is precisely the fact that the demos question has been less pressing in the West after World War II. While there are exceptions such as Belgium and Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom, this Western bias may have prompted prominent political theorists like Adam Przeworski and his co-authors to ignore the participation question. Focusing on recent cases of democratization, Przeworski et al. (2000, p. 16) observe that suffrage is not an issue: It is taken for granted that it will be universal. Similarly, major indicators of democracy, such as the prominent Polity IV index (Gurr, Jaggers, & Moore, 1989), the Scalar Index of Polities (Gates, Hegre, Jones, & Strand, 2006) or the widely used Freedom House scale (Freedom House, 2011), do not directly assess the demos dimension either. The Polity IV project does however downgrade states on their participation dimension for politics based on sectarian appeal or factional competition along ethnic lines.5 Gates et al. (2006) combine Politys competition components and Vanhanens (2000) democracy index in the Scalar Index of Polities. Their participation dimension multiplies the percent of the population that voted in the last election and the size of the largest party in parliament. Finally, the Freedom House scale of Civil Liberties and Political Rights refers to ethnicity in one of the eight questions determining the Political Rights score. However, it is unclear whether this question refers to the overall value of the index. Again, according to these indicators, it is perfectly possible that a fully democratic country could exclude parts of its population on ethnic grounds, as illustrated by Israel and Latvia. To summarize, mainstream democratic theory as well as widely used measures of democracy assume that the demos needs to include all members of society but they fail at conceptualizing or measuring it. This omission is serious since political reality, especially in the Middle East, is very different. While the possible transformation of Middle Eastern regimes to democratic countries should of course be heartily welcomed, we stress the importance of ethnic inclusion in the process. In the next section, we argue that this is a particularly crucial issue in times of transition.

However, if a state is defined as democratic with a Polity score greater than six, a country could hypothetically still experience sectarian and factional politics (Hegre, Ellingsen, Gates, & Gleditsch, 2001). Apart from these definitional considerations, the factional category is often correlated with civil violence and/or unrest (Vreeland, 2008). A quantitative analysis of the link between regime type and civil conflict must therefore either accept endogenous results or drop all components that are linked to the demos.

The Dangers of Democratization The issue of the demos becomes particularly critical in periods of democratization. For the question of who belongs to the ruling people becomes most important when the people actually rules. Monarchies which are still a common regime type in the Arab World can more easily avoid this conflict since political rule builds on lineage rather than on the demos. Cederman, Hug, and Krebs (2010) showed empirically that periods of democratization indeed increase the risk of civil violence. Yet, what is the mechanism behind the relationship? Several suggestions have been put forward in the academic literature. However, most scholars have focused on institutional factors in their explanations. Most famously, Huntington (1968) pointed to the dangers to political order emanating from the lack of strong political institutions in times of rapid social and political change. Democratizing countries without solid political institutions are unable to control the newly mobilizing social forces and, thus, prone to slide into political disorder. Several scholars suggest that multi-ethnic countries are particularly vulnerable to these negative short-term effects of democratization. Competitive elections may polarize the population and ignite latent conflicts between different ethnic groups. Here, elections are a different expression of the zero-sum power struggle among ethnic groups over access to state power and resources (Bakwesegha, 2004; Gurr, 1994; Horowitz, 1985; Rothchild, 2004). We argue that the causal mechanisms linking democratization to ethnic conflict onset may be driven by the contention over the identity and boundaries of the demos. Multi-ethnic countries that have not yet resolved this issue i.e., agreed upon a binding and inclusive definition of who belongs to the political community face a heightened risk of ethnic conflict at the very moment the demos is supposed to take over political authority in periods of democratization. As Rustow (1970) put it in a more general context, it is a crucial prerequisite of successful democratic transitions that the people living in a given territory agree that they constitute a politically united entity. Interestingly, the revolutions of the Arab Spring were more successful in those states that are ethnically more homogenous, like Tunisia and Egypt, while those states that are more heterogeneous, for example Syria or Yemen, saw large-scale violence. While we do not contend that the reason for violence in these countries was ethnic heterogeneity, we will show below that ethnic exclusion has in the past led to the occurrence of ethnic conflict in several countries of the region. This is in line with global studies that find a statistical link between ethnic exclusion or discrimination and ethnic conflict onset (Cederman, Wimmer, and Min, 2010).

Thus, democracy and political stability are often two contradictory policy goals. Political stability does not necessarily require democracy an observation applying directly to the Arab World and democratization is even likely to lead to insecurity in the short term. However, we argue that in the long run, political stability is impossible to achieve without the democratic participation of the masses and in multi-ethnic societies, group-level inclusion is an essential aspect of this condition.

The Challenge in North Africa and the Middle East So far we have discussed the dangers of democratization in general terms. In the following we want to focus more closely on the Arab World and point to the challenges confronting specific countries. Table 1 shows the level of ethnic discrimination and exclusion by country in 2009.6 More than half of the countries in the Middle East discriminate against some part of the population. In Bahrain and Jordan, Shia Arabs and Palestinians make up more than 50 per cent of the population. The numbers become even more striking when the attention shifts to exclusion. More than three out of four countries exclude some part of their population. The immensely exclusivist nature of the Assad dictatorship in Syria now becomes visible. In the past, this repression was based on the political exclusion of all ethnic groups except for Assads own small Shia Alawite group. Now that his regime is confronted with large-scale popular protest, it has turned to indiscriminate violence against the civilian population. Originally framed as an uprising of the Syrian people against an oppressive regime, the protests which are now in risk of not only spiraling into outright civil war but also of splintering along ethnic lines as already witnessed in Iraq (The New York Times, 2011). Occupying Western Sahara since 1977, Morocco suppresses the indigenous Sahrawis, and continues to exclude the local Berber population from executive power in mainland Morocco. The Berbers account for almost 40 per cent of the total population.

Note that EPR-ETH considers the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as de facto parts of Israel and the West Sahara of Morocco.

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Table 1: Ethnically Excluded and Discriminated Population in North Africa and the Middle East in 2009 Country Bahrain Jordan Israel Turkey Saudi Arabia Iran Lebanon Syria Kuwait Morocco Libya Algeria Tunisia Iraq Egypt UAE Oman Yemen Discrimination 0.700 0.580 0.310 0.187 0.170 0.155 0.100 0.080 0.030 0.016 0.006 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Country Syria Bahrain Jordan Israel Morocco Algeria Iraq Turkey Saudi Arabia Iran Lebanon Egypt Kuwait Libya Tunisia Yemen UAE Oman Exclusion 0.780 0.70 0.580 0.430 0.408 0.270 0.190 0.187 0.170 0.169 0.130 0.090 0.030 0.006 0 0 0 0

Table 1 highlights two more interesting facts. First, ethnic exclusion or discrimination is not necessarily a uniquely Arab phenomenon. While the gravest instances of ethnic exclusion occur between Muslim denominations, and hence between different Arab groups Shia and Sunni Arabs in Bahrain, Alawite Shia and other Arab groups in Syria, Jordanian and Palestinian Arabs in Jordan ethnic exclusion is also pronounced in Israel, Turkey, or Iran where non-Arabs exclude and discriminate against Arabs, Kurds, and other minorities. Neither a cultural argument of Muslim or Arab backwardness nor a Clash of Civilizations thesis explains much of the dynamic of exclusion in the region. The second interesting insight is that being a democracy does not necessarily solve the demos question. Democracy is not necessarily a solution to ethnic power inequalities, as illustrated by the struggle of the Palestinians, the ongoing Kurdish resistance against Turkish assimilation strategies, the bloody failure of power-sharing in Lebanon, and the struggles of present-day Iraq where Sunnis are de facto powerless. Without inclusive demos, democracy can even deepen ethnic inequalities. In dictatorships most of the rulers ethnic kin are excluded from power but in democracy, exclusion from power based on ethnic markers becomes especially visible. It is therefore unsurprising that the four democracies mentioned 11

above have been involved in bloody civil wars for the last decades. In the following we show that ethnic exclusion is actually the main driver of the regions civil violence.

The Dangers of Political Exclusion As mentioned above, ethnic exclusion has been shown to be a significant and strong predictor of ethnic conflict onset on the global level. Considering Northern Africa and the Middle East in particular, we see that the region is not an exception to this global pattern. Table 2 shows the relationship between the size of the excluded population in a country (relative to the total population) and the occurrence of ethnic conflict in the region, based on a cross tabulation of country-years regarding conflict onset and the degree of ethnic exclusion. As can be seen, countries where larger shares of the population were politically excluded because of their ethnic identity have been more prone to experience violent ethnic conflict. Having so far resisted all pressures for a political opening, Iran has experienced ethnic civil war repeatedly. Countries such as Syria and Yemen, which have been affected by ethnic strife in the past, may experience political change in the near future.

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Table 2: Ethnic exclusion and ethnic conflict in the Middle East Country Level Size of excluded population High (>=40%) No ethnic conflict 192 Ethnic conflict 4 Country years with conflict onsets 2% Conflicts

Morocco 1975; Israel 2000; Syria 1979; Iraq 1973 Lebanon 1958, 1989; Israel 1949; Iran 1946, 1966, 1979, 1993, 1996, 2005; Turkey 1984; Iraq 1961, 2004 Yemen (Arab Republic) 1979; Yemen 1994

Medium (>=10%)

276

12

4.2%

Low (<10%)

404 872

2 18

0.5% 2%

Note: Numbers refer to country years. Fishers exact test significant (p=0.003) for the degree of ethnic exclusion regarding conflict onset.

The picture becomes even clearer when we disaggregate the data to the group level. Based on the EPR-ETH dataset, Table 3 links groups exclusion from executive power to their involvement in violent ethnic conflict.7 Group-years are cross-tabulated regarding an ethnic groups exclusion and its participation in ethnic conflict.

Table 3: Ethnic Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict in the Middle East Group Level Political status Politically excluded Politically included No ethnic conflict 1633 2037 3670 Ethnic conflict 18 7 25 Group years with conflict onsets 1.1% 0.3% 0.7%

Note: Numbers refer to group years. Pearsons chi-square test significant (p=0.006) for ethnic exclusion regarding conflict onset.

The number of conflicts is higher in Table 3 than in Table 2 because the former focuses on group onsets so that one country-level conflict may be linked to more than one ethnic group taking up arms against the state.

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Clearly, ethnic groups that are politically excluded are more prone to become engaged in ethnic conflict. Almost three fourths of all recorded conflicts were fought by excluded ethnic groups. Next, we test the effect of ethnic exclusion on the risk of ethnic conflict onset in a regression analysis. Table 4 shows two regressions8 estimating the probability of ethnic civil war among ethnic groups in the Middle East and North Africa. Our main interest is in the effects of ethnic exclusion which we capture by a variable that indicates whether an ethnic group has access to executive power or not. A more dynamic element is introduced by the downgraded variable that notes whether a group has experienced a drop in its political status in the last two years. Previous research on civil war around the world identified a number of important factors that should be taken into account by a statistical analysis. The larger a group the more likely it is to push its demands by violence because it is more confident of winning. The more often groups have already been in conflict with the state, the more likely they are to experience future conflict due to feelings of revenge or an existing conflict economy which for example implies a higher availability of weapons (Cederman, Wimmer and Min, 2010). The poorer countries are the more likely civil war becomes since the state is not strong enough to suppress rebellion. Finally, larger countries are likely to experience more rebellion simply because there are more agents that could rebel (Hegre & Sambanis, 2006).9 We can see that ethnic exclusion, a recent drop in political status, group size, and war history are the main factors explaining conflict in the region. The strongly positive and statistically significant result of both the exclusion and the downgrading variable are especially worrying because these are the factors that have not received enough attention in the context of the Arab Spring. Being excluded from central power and/or being downgraded in the last two years increases the likelihood of civil war substantively. We will present more intuitive numbers for certain cases below, but we can already see that the results reaffirm the worldwide picture that ethnic exclusion is an important explanation of ethnic civil war onset. Other important global factors like GDP/capita or population size do not exhibit a statistically significant influence on ethnic civil war onset. Both of these results are unsurprising. Since SubSaharan Africa is not part of our sample and several of the Middle Eastern states are oil-rich, our cases are not really representative of the world in respect to per capita wealth. The population variable is also easily explained. The largest states in the region like Saudi Arabia and Egypt are often ethnically more homogeneous. The chance of inter-ethnic conflict is lower

We employ rare-events logit which is suitable with a discrete outcome (civil war onset or not) and when the number of one outcome category is tiny relative to the total number of observations as the number of civil wars fortunately is (King & Zeng, 2001). 9 We also include three terms for peace years, i.e. years since the last civil war, in order to account for temporal dependencies in the data.

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from the start. The absence of any effect of population on ethnic conflict is thus due to the uniqueness of the Arab region where large population size does not go hand in hand with ethnic heterogeneity. The second model adds a measure of democracy and its squared term.10 The latter is included because stable and repressive authoritarian regimes as well as stable democracies should be more peaceful than more volatile in-between cases. Neither have these so-called anocracies the power to repress rebellious activity, nor are they open enough to solve conflict peacefully (Hegre, et al., 2001). Democracy has no visible influence on ethnic violence but the ethnic exclusion and downgraded variable remain substantively and statistically influential in our sample.11 This result reinforces our conclusion that procedural democracy without the requirement of an inclusive demos fails to address the political realities of the Middle East. Table 4: Rare Events Logit Regression in the Middle East, 1946-2009 (1) Ethnic Conflict Onset Exclusion Downgraded Group Size War History Log(GDP/cap) Population Peace Years (Peace Years) (Peace Years) Polity (Polity) Constant N -5.634** (-2.97) 3574 1.411 (2.42)* 1.612 (2.00)* 1.495 (3.19)** 0.707 (6.10)*** -0.060 (-0.28) 0.000 (0.55) -0.0257 (-0.47) 0.000 (0.00) 0.000 (0.19) (2) Ethnic Conflict Onset 1.313 (2.36)* 1.613 (2.00)* 1.374 (2.76)** 0.680 (6.29)*** -0.0277 (-0.13) 0.000 (0.78) -0.0319 (-0.70) 0.000 (0.02) 0.000 (0.23) -0.0420 (-0.53) 0.00151 (0.13) -5.871** (-2.92) 3565

t-statistics in parentheses; robust standard errors clustered on countries * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001

We assess the risk of future conflict by computing the cumulative probability that each ethnic group would be involved in conflict with the government during a ten-year period starting in
We employ the altered Polity IV index that drops the data points linked to violence as suggested by Vreeland (2008) in order to avoid an endogenous explanation. 11 We also tried a linear specification, and different versions of the Polity index (dropping transition periods) without notable changes to the results presented in Table 4.
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2009.12 According to our model, Kurds in Iran are almost sure to experience conflict with a predicted risk of 99.9%. They are followed by Palestinians in Israel with a predicted risk of 41%. These clear results show that our model is good in predicting already existing conflicts as both the Iranian Kurds and the Palestinians were involved in civil war with the respective governments at the end of our sample period in 2009. However, we also pick up warning signs for groups that are currently not rebelling but could be soon: the Sunni in Syria (22.8%), the Arabs (13.5%) and Baloch (22.2%) in Iran, and the Palestinians in Jordan (21%). While the Iranian minorities are not on everybodys radar at the moment, Syrias and Jordans delicate situations have been discussed in the recent months. Other ethnic groups with no prior conflict but a relatively high predicted risk are the Shia in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. In both countries we are currently witnessing nascent unrest rooted in ethnic grievances. Surprisingly, the conflict probabilities of the Shia and Kurds in Iraq are among the highest in our ranking with 32.2% and 40.4%, respectively, although they currently form the government in Iraq. These probabilities are a result of the countrys long history of prior conflict. But this example also shows how crucial the political strategy of ethnic inclusion is: if the two groups were not included in government their conflict risk over the next ten years would be twice as high. Thus, ignoring the demos question seems to be a recipe for disaster if we want to lower the probability of future bloodshed. In the next section we discuss three political alternatives for ethnically divided societies and consider their potential for avoiding violent confrontations in the Arab World.

What Can Be done? Ethnically divided societies have several options to deal with their heterogeneity and maintain the peace. In the following, we consider domination, partition and power-sharing. The states in North Africa and the Middle East have mainly relied on domination (see Figure II). Labeled as control by Ian Lustick (1979), such a system of governance is characterized by ethnically homogeneous bureaucracies and militaries (Syrias and Libyas elite army units are cases in point), the absence of bargaining as a method of intergroup coordination, and the wide-spread use of coercion as the modal category of politics. The mix of oil riches of some Arab countries and the enormous coercive potential of their security apparatuses suggests why this strategy has been employed widely in the region. Saudi Arabian Sunnis exclude members of the Shia group who live in the eastern part of the country where most of
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Such predictions rely on the somewhat heroic assumption that the 2009 conditions will not change.

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the crude oil reserves are to be found. In Bahrain, Shia make up even 70 per cent of the population but have no say in politics. A combination of carrots (generous social transfers) and sticks (incarceration of critical opposition leaders as well as abatement of any signs of protests) has kept the two monarchies in power for such a long time. The regions democracies, Turkey and Israel, are even less concerned with appeasing their minorities. Israel has cut off the Gaza Strip from the outside world and Turkish practices vis--vis the Kurds include resettlement and torture (Finn, 2007, 773). However, empirical analyses on the global level as well as the results presented above show that ethnic domination is not a viable solution in the long run but, on the contrary, increases the risk of conflict onset and recurrence. In order to solve the intractable conflicts that have plagued the region for so long, partition a fresh political border cut through at least one communitys national homeland (O'Leary, 2006, p. 1) has been suggested as the main alternative. While territorial reorganization was widespread in Europe for centuries, the age of nationalism has made it a much more violent affair. Following World War 2, state sovereignty has been the prevailing international norm. Africas post-colonial leaders explicitly enshrined the colonial territorial boundaries as untouchable, and the international community has so far been very hesitant to admit new members out of existing states into its midst. More recent advocates of partition (Chapman & Roeder, 2007; Kaufmann, 1996) have fought an uphill battle against this consensus. However, with the end of the Cold War, partitions have become more common as testified by the successor states of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, former Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, as well as the most recent case of Sudan. Presently, it is hard to imagine any other solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than a two-state outcome, although it is unlikely to come about peacefully. Whether the Kurds will one day call a state of Kurdistan their homeland and whether the Sahrawis will be able to govern Western Sahara again is less clear. One of the problems associated with partition is renewed conflict within the newly created state (Sambanis & Schulhofer-Wohl, 2009). The break-up of Pakistan in 1971 into Pakistan and Bangladesh created two new states that are both conflict-ridden and also belong to the poorest in the world possibly because their economic potential is not sufficient as single units. A similar fate could await the West Bank and the Gaza Strip which are already plagued by internal division and would probably be too small to function economically independently. Due to the problems associated with partition we subscribe to the main theorist of powersharing, Arend Lijphart (1977, 1985, 2004). The essence of power-sharing is cooperation between ethnic elites in a grand coalition. Ethnic divisions are recognized and possibly enshrined in the constitution. Ethnic (minority) groups have the power to veto decisions that affect them. Possibly elite cooperation is combined with additional autonomy regulations that 17

may include cultural or territorial self-government. Empirically, power-sharing arrangements have been applied after many civil wars in the 1990s. The conflict settlements in South Africa, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, or Iraq are power-sharing solutions. While the impact of these peace accords is still debated, more and more authors embrace the effectiveness of powersharing (Hartzell & Hoddie, 2007; Mattes & Savun, 2010; Wucherpfennig, 2011). The late Donald Rothchild (1997, p. 19) summarized his life-long research on conflict management on the conflict-plagued African continent: [W]herever Africa's ruling elites have encouraged inclusiveness or diffused power by means of electoral fine-tuning or territorial decentralization or have applied positive principles of proportionality and reciprocity in four key areas political coalitions in central government politics, elite recruitment, public resource allocation, and group rights and protections they have managed to reduce the intensity of state-ethnic conflicts. This sentiment is confirmed by our data. Figure II shows the impressive rise in ethnically inclusive government in Sub-Saharan Africa, predominantly a function of power-sharing arrangements after the end of the Cold War. Admittedly, there are considerable differences between Sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab World, not least the predominance of Arabs, Jews, Turks or Persians as respective titular ethno-national groups. Yet this does not immediately imply that power-sharing would be bound to fail. In Senegal, for example, the culturally and politically dominant Muslim Wolof group that forms the core ethnicity for the Senegalese state has been very successful in coupling the ongoing Wolofization of the state with inclusive politics towards the countrys smaller ethnic groups. Indonesia, another predominantly Muslim state, and the worlds third largest democracy, manages its ethnic diversity through decentralization. Finally, Nigeria, another state with a Muslim majority and oil riches, has at least managed to establish functioning mechanisms of elite cooperation at the centralstate level over the last decade. Clearly, these are examples of how ethnic divisions can be managed politically in phases of democratization. Possible solutions in North Africa and the Middle East could include official recognition of minority languages e.g., Berbers in North Africa and Kurds in Turkey, Iraq and Iran separate judicial areas for different religious creeds as practiced in India and Nigeria, governments that include representatives from minority groups, and even territorial self-governance, as practiced in Iraq.

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What Has to Be Done? Take Home Messages The recent popular uprisings in the Arab region have toppled some of the most resilient dictatorial rulers of the world and are challenging the regions authoritarian political order. Clearly, Northern Africa and the Middle East are laggards with respect to democratization conceptualized and measured in the conventional way. This refers mainly to the establishment of democratic procedures, chiefly among them free and fair elections. However, the issue of the identity and boundaries of the demos itself the question of who belongs to the people that is supposed to rule the state is rarely discussed in depth in the pertinent academic literature or in the current debate on the Arab Spring. This is remarkable since political exclusion and discrimination along ethnic lines remain widespread in todays world and as we have seen particularly so in the Arab World. The empirical results of this paper show that ethnic exclusion is a dangerous political strategy in this region. In this respect, Northern Africa and the Middle East clearly follow the pattern observed on the global level: Politically excluded ethnic groups are significantly more likely to start ethnic rebellions than included groups. Periods of democratization are particularly critical. They have been shown to increase the risk of civil violence. We argue that it is the very question of who belongs to the newly emerging demos which is at the roots of many ethnic conflicts erupting in periods of democratization. Multi-ethnic countries that have not yet resolved this issue face a heightened risk of ethnic conflict at the very moment this demos is supposed to take over political authority. The issue of ethnic inclusion or exclusion has not received sufficient attention in academic research on democracy and democratization. We argue that quantitatively oriented scholars of political science should develop and rely on more encompassing measures of democracy that take into account the ethnic inclusiveness of the demos. The question of ethnic identity has also played a minor role in the debate on the peoples uprisings of the Arab Spring but the results of this paper suggest that ethnic inclusion and minority rights should be a central concern if the new regimes in the region actually start to democratize. Concretely, this means that possibilities of political participation should be distributed equally among the population at large independent from ethnic identity. Broadbased, inter-ethnic coalitions at the elite level during this phase of political transformations will be particularly important. International organizations, such as the EU, should support and promote ethnically inclusive politics and censure discriminatory regimes. Northern Africa and the Middle East would be

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the most current target of such policy but it should apply equally to all world regions where new democracies are emerging including within the EU itself.

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