1. The Rule of Law in Arab Societies: Between Human Rights and American Hegemony.
- Author
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Mednicoff, David
- Subjects
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RULE of law , *HUMAN rights , *HEGEMONY , *POLITICAL science , *ADMINISTRATIVE law , *CONSTITUTIONAL law - Abstract
This paper presents the first stage of my major new research project that aims to understand diverse contemporary Arab understandings of the rule of law and their implications for political liberalization in the Middle East. I hope this project will contribute to the almost complete lack of systematic comparative study of the idea and ramifications of the rule of law in the Middle East. This paper begins this large effort through a focused study which attempts to ascertain to what extent two competing recent legalist influences have helped shape Arab debate on political change. On the one hand, written laws and published work that embrace the language of human rights have been associated with pressures for or progress in Arab political liberalization. On the other hand, the recent American invasion and occupation of Iraq has amplified common populist fears among some Arabs casting suspicion on legal or political ideas linked with the West, such as the contemporary rule of law. Thus, the success in the 1990s of indigenous Arab human rights movements provides an example of internalization of some aspects of the rule of law, while Washington's recent military assertions in the region highlights the formidable sources of interference and distraction to the autonomous growth of contemporary Arab ideas of legalism and democracy. My paper builds on a prior, published study of the local adaptation of human rights in Moroccan and Tunisian societies by using more recent materials and looking more specifically at the connection between human rights language, local law and political change. I argue that the relatively unproblematic adaptation and local cooption of human rights norms suggests a model for gradual autonomous political liberalization that faces great challenge, but not necessarily defeat, by the more dubious legalism and political liberalism of recent American Arab involvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2004