Explaining Middle Eastern Authoritarianism
Explaining Middle Eastern Authoritarianism
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解释中东威权主义
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发表时间：
2005
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通讯作者：
M. Noland
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作者：
M. Noland
阿拉伯政治政权既异常不民主，又异常稳定。据报道，一系列嵌套的统计模型用于解析相互矛盾的解释。从缺乏现代化、英国殖民历史、邻里效应、政府财政对税收的依赖以及阿拉伯人口份额等方面来看，民主赤字是可以理解的。对最后一个变量的解读是有问题的：它可能指向阿拉伯文化的某些反民主方面(尽管这似乎没有调查证据支持)，或者它可能代表了一些不可观察到的因素，比如对内部压制机构的投资，这些机构可能不是由文化决定的，而是反映了精英阶层的偏好。没有得到强有力支持的假设包括石油租金的存在、女性的地位、与以色列或其他邻国的冲突，或者伊斯兰教。自由化转型发生的可能性很低，但正在上升。在这方面，将阿拉伯族裔的份额解释为固有的文化标志和将其解释为某些不可察觉的文化标志之间的区别是重要的--如果前者是正确的，那么人们会认为政权更迭的可能性只会随着时间的推移而逐渐上升，而如果是后者，则概率可能表现出更大的时间变异性。
Arab political regimes are both unusually undemocratic and unusually stable. A series of nested statistical models are reported to parse competing explanations. The democratic deficit is comprehensible in terms of lack of modernization, British colonial history, neighborhood effects, reliance on taxes for government finance, and the Arab population share. Interpretation of the last variable is problematic: It could point to some antidemocratic aspect of Arab culture (though this appears not to be supported by survey evidence), or it could be a proxy for some unobservable such as investment in institutions of internal repression that may not be culturally determined and instead reflect elite preferences. Hypotheses that did not receive robust support include the presence of oil rents, the status of women, conflict with Israel or other neighbors, or Islam. The odds on liberalizing transitions occurring are low but rising. In this respect the distinction between the interpretation of the Arab ethnic share as an intrinsic cultural marker and as a proxy for some unobservable is important—if the former is correct, then one would expect the likelihood of regime change to rise only gradually over time, whereas if it is the latter, the probabilities may exhibit much greater temporal variability.