Are New Business Elites Driving Democratic Change?
Although political life in the Arab nations has in general been characterised by rigid stability in recent years, an important element has crystallised out that has the potential to open the gates to greater innovation. Figures in the business world are playing an increasingly influential role in political life, in some cases exercising their economic and social muscle by way of organised interest groups.
Most noticeable at first glance is the strong presence of entrepreneurs as members of national and local parliaments, including in Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, Kuwait and Bahrain – countries where a measure of political pluralism and at least the beginnings of democratic elections have developed.
A voice in parliament
As a case in point, the number of representatives from the business community in the Egyptian parliament was up from 37 in the 1995–2000 legislative session to 77 in 2000–2005. (There are 444 elected members of parliament, with 10 additional representatives appointed by the president.) In the current session, 68 seats are occupied by businesspeople, a slightly lower ratio.
In Yemen's parliament, the number is 55 out of a total of 301 seats. However, we should add to this number several representatives who are members of Yemen's influential families, some of which manage large industrial and trade concerns.
Leaders of ruling parties
In parallel with this amplified parliamentary presence, businesspeople are also rapidly rising in the leadership ranks of the ruling parties, e.g. in the National Democratic Party in Egypt and the General People's Congress in Yemen, and hence joining the dominant elite in those two countries.
The situation is similar in Tunisia's ruling party, Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique (RCD). In Morocco, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain, this increasing political involvement is even more far-reaching, across dividing lines between government and opposition.
Arabic for deregulation
In keeping with this trend, many countries have moved away from a planned economy with centralised state control in favour of liberal economic policies featuring privatisation and a gradual relinquishment of state privileges to the private sector as motors for growth. Thus strengthened, business organisations have begun to play a more important role in economic and social decisions made by the executive branch of government and in the elaboration of the legal framework for private-sector business activities.
Although these organisations go by diverse names – in Morocco and Tunisia they call themselves "General Business Associations", in Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait "Chambers of Industry and Commerce" or "Investment Councils" – there's one thing they all have in common: they have made their way to the top of the institutionally established partnership with the ruling elites and regularly play an active part in the curtailment of state privileges.
In the meantime, the range of issues over which they exert their influence runs the gamut from labour market and wage structures to social insurance, all the way to the legal conditions for privatisations, trade deregulation, investments, competition, taxation and antitrust law. This list could be extended ad infinitum.
The growing tendency of the ruling elites to integrate entrepreneurs into the existing power structures, as ministers or in other posts where they have a direct impact on decisions affecting the private sector, has contributed additionally to reinforcing this partnership.
Business interests influencing the media
Communication between the state and its citizens is another field where business-world figures have taken on a more prominent position in recent years. In particular in the media and in civic organisations, this has led to at least a partial loosening of the stranglehold by authoritarian state structures, opening up new scope for development.
Lebanon is a prime example of a country where individual entrepreneurs or business collectives exercise enormous power as the owners of key press organs or vocal radio and television networks, while investors from the Gulf States control the media in other Arab states or abroad, as was the case until the end of the 1990s. This tendency is in the meantime characteristic for the entire region, where it can be found in every possible variation.
Existing media are taken over and others are newly founded and launched onto a media landscape that is shaped by growing competition, where variety is increasingly difficult to stifle or control.
Media companies' motives questioned
These media moguls are of course not aiming solely at expanding this diversity even further, but instead use their conspicuous media presence to influence the course and content of the public debate. And they are trying to upgrade the less-than-flattering, stereotyped image that still prevails of the role entrepreneurs play in the public life of their societies.
The fact is that many citizens regard the new media entrepreneurs as parasites and crooks sponsored by the ruling elite and view them with extreme suspicion.
Also suspect is the engagement of business figures in charitable and civic organisations that work to provide social and humanitarian assistance on the national or local level – and hence still today make an invaluable contribution to the fulfilment of central social duties such as education, health care, and fighting poverty and unemployment.
The extent to which they actually improve the quality of the services offered varies from country to country, however. A completely new picture is therefore emerging here.
Law and order, democratic regime change, transparency
Business figures, their interest groups, and the media and civic institutions they control are increasingly shaping policy today on diverse levels of the legislative and executive branches of government, especially in the economic and social realms.
Many democratic transformation processes outside the Arab world began with entrepreneurs playing an increasingly important political role within the scope of a wide-ranging partnership with the ruling elites in politics and society. They then pushed for law and order, for democratic regime change and for transparent checks and balances in order to redefine the role of the state and its privileges.
This in turn leads us to our main question: Does the strong presence of business elites in Arab politics make the advent of genuine democratic transformation any more likely? Will they in fact be able to put the relations between the state and its citizens on a new basis and thus induce a faster break-up of the traditional, authoritarian power structures?
A democracy-friendly climate
I am convinced that the presence of Arab entrepreneurial elites and their burgeoning political weight will inevitably create a general social and political climate that is more open to democratic change than it would have been otherwise.
This can be stated without qualification despite what are still extremely close ties between these businesspeople and the ruling elites, and the former's inherent dependence on this kind of alliance in most Arab states for the safeguarding of their economic and social interests.
And it is also valid despite the fact that these entrepreneurs – in public at least – do not exactly conduct a discourse rife with democratic concepts, and that in their dealings with the opposition they unreservedly position themselves on the side of the ruling elites, no matter whether the opposition trying to gain power by means of democratic elections is of a religious nature or not.
Accountability of the ruling class
What will ultimately tip the scales is, on one hand, the rivalry between opposing interests within the business elites themselves and, on the other, the competition between these and other groups that hold sway over the ruling elites for scarce resources and their state apportionment.
This will call for a search for alternative political organisation patterns that allow more scope for the rule of law and for transparency, and in which the ruling elites are not the only ones who have the last, unilateral word in political decisions without being held accountable for their actions.
Amr Hamzawy
© Al-Hayat / Qantara 2009
Qantara.de
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