democracy - 'a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives'
[definition from the Oxford English Dictionary]
On this basis of the above definition my view is that there are a number of functioning democracies currently in the middle east including Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, the Palestiniain Territories, Iraq and Libya as well as Israel.
I accept that different people may have different definition of what constitutes 'functioning' and this could be debated.
The eventual political systems that arise in the Middle East may not look like Western democracies, which I think this is just fine. Some of the earliest civilisations were in the Middle East, the Babylonians and the Egyptians being obvious examples. It seems to me quite likely that many countries in the the Middle East could quite soon have different and potentially better versions of democracies than many of the West currently have, provided this is what the majority of the people in these countries actually want.
I do not think the presence of violence in some areas of a country, or contentions about what areas are or are not part of the country prevent it being a functioning democracy. In the United Kingdom there is plenty of contention about which countries within it should or should not remain part of it, and still in Northern Ireland there can be violence, but I do not think anyone would suggest it was not a functioning democracy.
The path to democracy is often messy but can still happen quite quickly - just look at what happened when Yugoslavia broke up.
Democracy is never perfect.
'Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.' George Bernard Shaw
'So Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three. Only Love the Beloved Republic deserves that.' E M Forster
'Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.' H L Mencken
'Democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.' Winston Chuchill
[Source of quotes Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations]
(edit for typos)
Last edited by TalksToCats on 20 Jul 2012, 11:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
20 Jul 2012, 5:41 am
