Preface ([Special Feature] Democratic Learning, Moderation and Exclusion in the Arab Middle East)

Abstract

No longer can the certitudes of democratization or democracy be taken for granted. Political events around the world belie the preoccupation with a single model that ought to be desirable and adopted by others. The notion that democracy can be diffused from a Euro-American center to external peripheries has been questioned by both theory and practice. Academic studies focused on the variety of post-colonial experiences have initiated and strengthened lines of inquiry into the central role played by local forms of knowledge. In the Arab world, political and social actors have embarked, notwithstanding the obvious challenges of authoritarianism, in a search for good government. The five contributions, one article and four research notes, in this special feature identify and explore a case study or aspect of democratic learning and its concomitant struggle for good government. In addition, the special feature is part of the ongoing four-year Qatar National Research Fund [QNRF] project of “Transitions of Islam and Democracy: Engendering ‘Democratic Learning’and Civic Identities.” Arab and Muslims states are the focus of the dynamic of transition shared by religious tradition [Islam] and civil tradition [democracy]. Different lenses are applied to study various case studies of democratic learning combining bottom-up and top-down forms of politics. The “Transitions of Islam and Democracy” project aims to conceptualize from an entirety novel perspective, an indigenous frame of reference, the processes that are identified to be examples of democratic learning in the contemporary Arab world in in the last decade. Specifically, the three dimensions or …