AZMI BISHARA,Democratic Transition and its Problematics: A Theoretical and Applied Comparative Study (Doha and Beirut: ACRPS, 2020). Pp. 624.
Ash-shaʿb yurīd isqāṭ an-nizām ("the people want to overthrow the regime") is perhaps the most famous and iconic chant of the "Arab Spring". It was first heard in Tunisia but soon found its way to the squares of Egypt, the outskirts of Syria, and into the vocabulary of revolutionary crowds across the Arab region. Over a decade has passed since the first protestors took to the streets and squares demanding reform and social justice, followed by another surge (or second wave) of protests in 2019 in Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, and Algeria. These spontaneous upheavals have propelled attempts to transition to democracy.
In this way, the study of democratic transition (known as transitology) derives its relevance from the aspirations of the common people, elites, researchers, and intellectuals toward democracy. While some researchers have minimized the importance of transitology research in the Arab region, recent events have proven otherwise. The topic of democratic transition in the Arab region has gained currency in the last decade due to the successive revolutions that took place between 2011 and the events of 2019. The successes and failures of these Arab revolutions present us with a set of pressing questions: why did such demands of reform take so long to take shape in the Arab region? Why did democratic transition happen in some Arab countries but not in others? And what lessons can we learn from the Arab Spring?
Tackling such questions on the state of Arab democracy, Azmi Bishara, in his book
Democratic Transition and its Problematics: A Theoretical and Applied Comparative Study, not only probes the literature on democratic transition in depth – a subject that has not received sufficient attention in Arabic – but also critically engages with this scholarship, discusses its trends in light of experiences from the Arab world, and offers insights on (and from) the region that contribute to the wider debate on democratic transition.
* This review was published in the 12th issue of AlMuntaqa, a peer-reviewed academic journal for the social sciences and humanities. You can read the full paper here.
