Heralded for a “third wave of democratization,” the 1990s witnessed the collapse of the Berlin Wall, official apartheid, and a host of dictatorships buttressed by the bipolar structures of the cold war. Even in the Arab world, so often seen as uniquely inhospitable to political, economic, and cultural liberalism, noteworthy political openings raised hopes for more tolerant, responsive, rule-based, fair, pluralist governance and greater personal liberty, freedom, and participation in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine, Sudan, and Yemen. Among these, the prospects for the newly unified Republic of Yemen – itself partly a product of the end of the cold war – seemed especially dramatic and promising. Alas, however, in Yemen as in several other Arab countries, a brief “democratic experiment” was soon submerged in a counter-current of violence and repression. Is nothing better possible for Arab countries?

Those who contend that nothing better is possible have observed that even high standards of living, bourgeois lifestyles, and Western technology have not produced a relaxation of political controls in the Arab Gulf states. Furthermore, electoral competition in the Arab world seems only to embolden intolerant religious puritans who neither respect basic rights nor tolerate alternative ideologies. According to this argument Islamic civilization in general, and Arab tribal culture in particular, have not and probably will not fertilize the sorts of vibrant civic activism that underlie Western democracies, for deeply imbued cultural values and social structures retard the development of civil society.

Although this argument has been widely critiqued, we have few empirical studies that offer evidence to the contrary.