Azmi Bishara’s Vision for an Arab Democratic Transition: A Comparative Study on the Conditions Required for Democracy

Abstract

Relying on Azmi Bishara’s writings on democracy, and using the case studies of Libya and Tunisia, the author constructs a theoretical concept on the conditions required to instill democracy or – borrowing from Bishara’s terminology – “susceptibility to democracy”. In the author’s view, Bishara’s uniqueness stems from his proposal of democracy, in its comprehensive form, as an answer to the “Arab Predicament”. To Bishara, a comprehensive democratic solution entails the concepts of identity and nation; state and civil society; democratic mechanisms and their legislation, as a contiguous structure, the formation of which should remain ever-evolving and relentless. Contrary to the popular narratives on nationalism, Bishara’s Arab nationalism is a modernist cultural identity in which the Arab nation is a future-oriented project and where the presence of a civil society, just like its counterpart in a democratic political system, is the product of an environment which presupposes the existence of a sovereign, strong and modern state. Here, the demand for a democratic transition is part of the continuous move towards modernization, and not a step back from it.