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Journal of the Arab American University مجلة الجامعة العربية الامريكية للبحوث

Journal of the Arab American University مجلة الجامعة العربية الامريكية للبحوث

Abstract

This research investigates democracy in the light of the failure of the wave of democratization that Arab countries were supposed to witness. It has become evident that democracy is not a compulsory path for all nations towards "progress" and modernity. This led us to develop the idea of democracy by proposing a theory to explain democracy and autocracy; we argue that there are three forms of social / political exploitation related to the success of democratization:

1. An opaque exploitation manifested in "advanced" industrial capitalism in the “western” countries where the public think that their welfare is their individual affair and the state is not responsible for their economic status, poverty or wealth. This situation allows democracy to thrive because of the absence of regime’s most serious challenge: responsibility for social misery, which requires change and revolution.

2. When the exploitation is visible, as in the case of the pre-industrial countries, where the accumulation of wealth is obtained by taking the surplus directly and violently. This process requires the interference of the state apparatus of coercion. Democracy in this situation leads to the demise of the regime immediately through the ballot box.

3. There is a situation in which a country oscillates politically between democracy and autocracy, which applies to Turkey, Israel, and Tunisia. I call this situation is the obscure case.

We present Israel as a model for low-density democracy that oscillates between control through the use of media, ideology and control through the use of the coercive state apparatus. In this context, the Palestinian Arabs seem to be a problem that remains the main reason for placing Israel in the middle position between democracy and autocracy. This subject is discussed in detail to understand the mechanisms of its work, and to try to predict its evolution.

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