Towards a Better Life: How to Improve the State of Democracy in the Middle East and North Africa

The constitutional question and the related intractable issues of democratic
transition and human rights in the Arab world have occupied center stage of
the Arab political arena for the last three decades. Arab political regimes are
currently experiencing what seems like birth pangs: a variety of political and
social conflicts which presage and prepare the grounds for the transition from
authoritarianism to a kind of pluralism that heralds the beginning of the end of
the despotic state. Developments in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan,
Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Kuwait mirror the rise of what may
be called the Arab constitutional movement, a sophisticated development
that signifies a mature democratic consciousness in the Arab societies. This is
manifested in the liberalizing steps taken by several Arab countries to enhance
the potential for a democratic transformation via the burgeoning number of
human rights organizations, an increased vitality of civil society organizations,
the increasing number of cultural centers concerned with free dialogues on
all matters of concern to citizens, and finally the increasing freedoms of the
judiciary.