The Globalization of Democracy and the Location of the Middle East in the Contemporary Global Order

Globalization is notoriously difficult to define, subsuming a staggeringly complex interrelation of social, economic, and political phenomena, which monodisciplinary approaches alone cannot begin to capture (see also Stetter in this volume). Common to most, if not all, these approaches to “globaliza- tion” are three ideas: first, that contemporary globalization bears the imprint of a particular historical trajectory inextricable from the “West’s” recent past and present; second, that contemporary globalization involves an acceler- ated spatiotemporal compression (Scholte; Virilio) driven by the expansion of capitalism (Wallerstein; Frank), often resulting in a complex interrelation of denationalization (Sassen), renationalization, expansion, and resistance; and third, that the diverse phenomena subsumed under this label are crucial if we are to understand the configuration of relations of power in the contemporary global order. As for the Middle East’s roles in this globalized system, there are many, ranging from the economic (e.g., hydrocarbons, migration, water) to the strategic (e.g., stability, terrorism), the historical (e.g., [neo]imperialism), the cultural (e.g., Arab, Islamic, etc.), and the political (e.g., Palestine). Rather than contributing to this literature, however, this chapter emphasizes the importance of a different approach to a key concept: democratization. The analysis presented here will not assess how democratic transitions in the region might affect regional and global politics, speculate on the mid- and long-term impact of the uprisings across the region, nor argue that existing scholarship has neglected particular factors. Rather, the focus will be on the politics of the categories of “democracy” and “democratization” themselves.