Young monarchs and old presidents

by Michele Dunne

After an Arab summit in Sharm al-Sheikh in 2000, a joke circulated in Cairo about an informal meeting among President Mubarak, King Mohammed of Morocco, King Abdullah of Jordan, and President Bashar al-Asad of Syria on a terrace overlooking the Red Sea. When a waiter approached, Mubarak placed the order: "I'll have a coffee, and bring some ice cream for the kids". While the story expressed Mubarak's sense of natural dominance in the Arab arena at the time, it also had an edge: Egypt was increasingly finding itself left out of the action, as the United States praised reform efforts by the young monarchs and pursued free trade agreements with Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain (and now the UAE, Oman, and perhaps Qatar). Egyptians wondered what it was about the young monarchs of these countries that made them such darlings of the United States.

Five years down the road from that joke, it is clear that the isolated steps toward political reform taken since then are beginning to add up to a trend, albeit a fragile one. The reasons generally discussed for this trend--and they are valid ones--include increasingly vocal demands for change from within Arab countries, emboldened by the assertively supportive stance of the US administration, as well as the reshuffling of the region's strategic deck due to the US removal of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the death of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.

Another factor in the reform trend discussed occasionally is the generational change in leadership in the region. Not only have young heads of state taken the reins in Morocco, Jordan, Syria, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE in recent years, but younger officials have also risen to prominence in countries such as Egypt and Libya. While youth alone in a leader does not guarantee a progressive outlook--Syria being the clear example--it might well help to be surrounded by a coterie of young advisors who have traveled or been educated abroad and are open to new ideas.

There remains the question of whether Arab monarchies are intrinsically more amenable to change than presidential republics, separate from the question of the age of the rulers. One advantage that such systems have is that the monarch himself represents a lodestar for the society, the ultimate guarantor that--happen what might in parliament--Morocco, for example, will still be Morocco. In republics such as Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria, and even perhaps Egypt, there is a sense that the system is more fragile and possibly subject to extreme change if it is opened up to real competition. At the same time, the very stability the monarchs provide might impose limits on the likely extent of political reform. The reformist young kings are, after all, absolute monarchs. While some of them are taking admirable steps to improve human rights conditions and women's rights and to increase the margin of political participation and freedom of expression, none so far has demonstrated an intention to give real power away to a parliamentary system.

Another advantage of monarchies is that they have well-established and generally accepted methods for bringing successors into power. The presidential republics currently are struggling with this issue, having for many years worked hard to protect incumbents from potential challengers. Now, because an entire generation of potential leaders was pushed aside, primogeniture is playing an important role in the succession politics of Syria, Egypt, and Libya.

Perhaps, as many Arab commentators have noted, there is not so much difference between the monarchies and the republics after all.

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- Published 10/3/2005 (c) bitterlemons-international.org. Used here with permission.

Michele Dunne is editor of the Arab Reform Bulletin, a monthly online journal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC.