Social Inequality, Power Legitimacy, and the Future of Democracy in the MENA Countries

In spite of their relatively similar religious, cultural and linguistic foundations, the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) countries consist of a diverse set of particularities in terms of their geography, socio-economic structures, human capital, and political institutions. As far as their governments and governance are concerned, these countries have traditionally been governed by authoritarian and autocratic regimes. Such governments have ruled autocratically and suppressed pluralism, limiting or totally denying fundamental societal, economic, and political rights. This state of affairs has created widespread social disparities and injustice, a freedom deficit, and stagnation in the area of democratic change. In other words, a policy of social inequality that has come to be taken for granted. The ruling elites have been able to hold on to power ruthlessly by means of various manoeuvres. These have ranged from violent repression and the superficial practice of democratic simulacra to corruption and “enlightened authoritarianism”. Global democratic change, and the visibility it has gained through the new media, has given people, especially the rising middle classes, the impetus to give voice to their grievances. In consequence, they have started expressing their disenchantment with the political status quo, in its place, demanding democracy and social equality. This can be seen in the emergence in 2011 of social movements in numerous MENA countries, otherwise known as the “Arab Spring”. This paper aims at analyzing some of the main patterns of inequality that prevail in the MENA region and also their socio-cultural and economic origins. In addition, the paper will aim at assessing how long and how demanding the process of democratization may be in the context of the social and cultural complexity of the existing structures and their present legitimacy in such societies.