by Clara Marina O'Donnell

Earlier this month, the Arab Reform Initiative (ARI) presented its first report on the state of democratic reform in the Arab world. ARI is a consortium of a dozen leading Arab research institutes which try to promote peaceful democratic reform across the Middle East (CER and a few other non-Arab think-tanks are associated with the initiative).

The report is a groundbreaking venture. It is the first collective and coordinated effort by Arab research institutes to evaluate the state of their political systems. By highlighting the progress towards democracy, or more to the point, the lack thereof, ARI hopes to pressure Arab governments into further reforms.

Launched at a conference in Alexandria, the report looks at eight Arab countries – Jordan, ‘Palestine’, Lebanon, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Yemen from July 2006 to June 2007. The report’s ‘democracy index’ measures progress towards democracy on the basis of four criteria: strong public institutions, respect for rights and freedoms, the rule of law, and equity and social justice. The results will open a few eyes. Jordan ranked first, ahead of Morocco. And Palestine came third, ahead of Egypt.

Unfortunately, the rankings don’t give us the full picture on the ground. Most such indices are somewhat arbitrary but this one will be particularly controversial. The choice of criteria and how they are assessed explain the surprising results. For example military conflict is not taken into account, which partly explains Palestine’s good marks. Wage equality is used as an indicator for democratic progress, allowing poverty-ridden Yemen to score top marks in that category and increase its overall performance. For future ARI reports to make real difference, the authors will need to refine the methodology (something they recognise).

The Alexandria conference was remarkable as much for the conversations that took place as for the long-awaited report. Rami Khouri from the American University of Beirut argued that the push towards democratic reform has slowed down, and in some places collapsed, over the last few years because of wars and foreign influence (in particular the US ‘war on terror’); ideological conflicts; and the resistance of the ruling regimes. Democratic rights have become less important compared to security and stability. This is particularly the case for countries in conflict such as Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine. But the current situation is also being exploited by some governments, such as in Syria and Jordan, where authorities justify postponing reforms by the need to maintain stability.

Khouri also argued that the arrival in politics of Islamic parties, the strongest opposition movements in most Arab countries, has been a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it has increased the amount of people calling for democracy. But at the same time it has reduced the desire for reform from the governing elites and western powers, who do not want to see Islamists in government.

Professor Mustapha Kamel Al Sayyid from Egypt lamented the lack of links between Arab movements for democratic reform and European and American civil society. Most Arab groups are averse to Western assistance because they perceive it as neo-colonial. But Kamel argued that European civil society groups had been a valuable source of support during the transitions to democracy in Latin America and that Arab movements were losing out.

While taking into acount the many obstacles, the conference and the report concluded that the Arab region ‘showed an initial disposition towards democratic transformation, albeit a still embryonic one’.

But even the conference itself was full of reminders of how difficult the current situation is. One ARI member has been inactive for a year because it is being hassled by its government. And the Lebanese participants could not get home as Hezbollah had cut off access to Beirut airport.

Clara Marina O'Donnell is a research fellow at the Centre for European Refom.

by Clara Marina O'Donnell

During a trip to Israel in August, the only optimists I met were French diplomats. The reason for their upbeat mood? Ambitious plans by President Sarkozy for the EU to advance the Middle East peace process – including a controversial proposal that the EU should take the lead in creating an international peacekeeping force which could replace the Israeli army in the West Bank as part of a peace deal. But in the current inauspicious environment, can France, which currently holds the EU presidency, really help to move things forward and allow the EU to play a bigger role in the peace process?

Probably not. Already, it looks as if the French plans are becoming victims of circumstance. The Gymnich, an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers, that will take place on September 5th and 6th, had been flagged up as vital in developing a new EU strategy. The EU was to reflect on ways it could increase its support for the peace process, including the offer of new security guarantees to Israel. But the Georgian war has changed EU priorities, and talks on the Middle East have been seriously scaled down.

But even if the EU’s agenda had not been thrown off course, the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories is so bad that there is little Europe can do to assist the current peace process. The prospects for the US-sponsored Annapolis peace effort, always bleak, have almost entirely faded. With just over three months to the December deadline for a deal, not only are Palestinians still divided and feuding, but Israel has also plunged into a political crisis. Prime Minister Olmert, the main force behind the peace talks, has been forced to resign over corruption allegations. In the current environment, any efforts by the EU, a minor player, are condemned to frustration.

Yet Sarkozy’s ideas are interesting. The CER has long argued that the EU should offer more security guarantees to Israel, including peacekeepers, in order to prove its credibility as a valuable partner to Israel, and to strengthen its role in the peace process (‘The EU, Israel and Hamas’, CER working paper, April 2008). So while it might not be possible to debate these ideas at the upcoming Gymnich, and still less put them into practice in the near future, the EU should still reflect on them.

Sarkozy’s general approach to Israel is also interesting. The EU has always found it hard to influence Israel. Two tactics have been tried, both – so far – unsuccessfully. The EU used to voice loud public criticism of Israeli actions it disapproved of, for example the expansion of settlements in the Palestinian territories. But Israel would simply ignore this, and accuse the EU of megaphone diplomacy. More recently, the EU has trodden more softly, in the hope of increasing its influence. Relations have, as a result, significantly improved – but on issues such as settlements the EU is still mostly ignored.

Sarkozy has adopted something of a middle ground approach – ‘tough love’ – with Israel. He presents himself as a true friend of Israel but he is also publicly critical about sensitive issues. His approach seems to have had some success. Despite declaring that settlement activity must stop and that Jerusalem must become a shared capital of Israel and a future Palestinian state, Sarkozy received a standing ovation when he addressed the Israeli parliament in June. And I encountered generally positive assessments of him from local and foreign officials in the region.

France may not be able to deliver the ambitious and radical ideas it was envisaging to strengthen the Middle East peace process (it would be unkind to suggest that scaling back ambitious agendas might be a recurrent theme of the current French administration). Neither has Paris found a magic solution to the EU’s conundrum of how to increase its influence with Israel (the continued growth in settlements over the last year clearly shows the limit of EU influence), but Sarkozy’s new approach does offers a potentially useful path forward for EU-Israel relations.

Clara Marina O'Donnell is a research fellow at the Centre for European Reform.