Al-Quds Center for Political studies has recently published the book of "Democracy in the Practice of the Arab Political Parties", which included several researches conducted by experts and academicians from Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine and Germany. The book discusses the status of democracy within the Arab parties.
 
This book consists of papers of a regional workshop organized by Al-Quds Center for Political Studies in cooperation with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung on June 13, 2009 under the title :” Democratic Values in Political Parties’ Practice” with 62 participants. These are activists, academicians, party leaders and consultants from six countries- Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Syria and Germany.

The workshop which was organized as one of the events held as part of the 7-year cooperation relation between Al-Quds Center and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. It also marks an event of the “Network for Reform and Democratic Change in the Arab World” launched by the Center and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in 2005.

The Book outlines eight papers discussing the democracy crisis in the internal scenes of the Arab Political Parties apart from their political and intellectual stands and trends. Another paper introduced the German experience of democracy in the internal scenes of the political parties.

First paper: “Democratic Challenges of Ruling Political Parties in the Arab World” .It was submitted by Dr. Basem Zubeidi- Professor of Politics at Bir Zeit University, Dr. Zubeidi outlined the problems that parties suffer from in the Arab region especially the ruling ones. He said that although the one-party governments no more exist in the Arab countries as their ruling systems refuse to change their structure, method, and tools; and they refuse to renew their approaches to cope with emerging developments and establish good governance. Instead, these systems insist on keeping their authority positions in a changing world which with changing conditions, terms and policies. These parties even seem to be alienated from their surroundings and incapable of handling problems that their communities and political and economic disciplines face.
Professor Zubeidi stressed the fact that these parties need to be reshuffled; they need to establish new political disciplines and restructurethe State to be capable of assuming its role, enhance democracy, sustain development and achieve prosperity.

Professor Zubeidi stated the Palestinian case as an example to the democracy crisis that the ruling parties suffer from in the Arab World. He mentioned that “Fath” Movement which rules in the Palestinian Territories suffer, as other ruling parties in the Arab World, from a set of problems and intricacies. These mainly include, personalized leadership, poor institutional build up of the Movement, the unrevealed heritage, lack of internal elections, dominance prevalence, poor accountability, members have become very old, and grassroots are not kept informed of things taking place inside and outside the party. 

The second paper was “Can Democracy Exist in Sectarian Parties”.
             
It was submitted by Dr. Basel Hussein-Deputy Director of the Iraqi Center for Strategic Studies in Iraq. He highlighted the Islamic stand towards democracy and said that it is still an confused stand due to the fact that this Thought lacks a political jurisprudence. He mentioned that the literature in this field is still very little and does not cope with the modern civilization values. Still, there is a large group of Islamic intellects and leaders who reject the notion of democracy and creation of political parties. They view this notion as imported from the West and they view the pluralism idea as in contradiction with the principle of unity that Islam calls for.
Dr. Hussein touched upon the religious political parties in Iraq. He said that most of them are based on the religious leaders dominance and they are personalized. They did not do any intellectual or philosophical reviews to criticize their democratic experience. These parties have become distinct for their struggle to accede power positions due to the absence of the State and political stability. So far, only one Islamic party organized internal elections that helped change the party leadership including the Secretary General and the Political Office Members. This Party is the Iraqi Islamic Party “Muslim Brotherhood Party”.

The third paper was “Democracy in Islamic Parties: Aspects of Progression and Regression”  It was submitted by the Professor of Politics at Yarmouk University- Dr. Netham Barakat. He explained the Islamic parties’ stand towards democracy as a Western theory, ruling system, and their notion of Shura as an alternative for democracy. He mentioned that Shura principles are similar to democracy. However, when it comes to practice on the ground, the Islamic partisan institutions in Jordan have accepted to join the peaceful and legitimate opposition to the ruling system. They created and developed loyal civil institutions that provide financial and moral support while availing the opportunity to have political groups supporting their electoral platform.

Dr. Barakat added that compared to other parties, the Islamic parties have been better in exercising internal democracy especially when it come to the power succession. However, some gaps are detected from time to time especially when it comes to the attitude to woman rights.

Dr. Barakat mentioned that the Islamic parties have been the first among the Jordanian parties to succeed power within their organizational frameworks and by changing leaders of such parties through internal elections. This is to the contrary to other Jordanian parties’ practices. No Jordanian party has a former leader because a leader change means quitting the party or disengagement from it. Islamic parties assumed a role in power succession especially in the legislative branch. They changed their representatives at the House of Representatives according to the electoral results. They joined the Executive Branch by participating in some ministries and then quit those governments. In many cases, these parties exercised pressure and lobbied to topple such governments.

In the fourth paper, Dr. Huda Rizek- Professor of Politics at the Lebanese University presented Do “Existing” Arab Liberal Parties Represent Real Democracy? Dr. Rizek said that we should start by drawing the line between democracy and liberalism so that the Liberal Trends will not be claiming the democracy achievements for themselves. She touched upon the experience of the National Block Party in Lebanon as it has become a phenomenon free from sectarianism opting for liberalism and democratic slogans instead. However, the history of this Party confirms the impact of political environment and local factors on its development. As she views it, this Party opted for liberal and democratic slogans while doing the opposite in practices on the ground. It rather has been influenced with the social and political environment in Lebanon. It is an inherited party with all the members coming from the same sect.

o In another paper, the Researcher at the French Institute for the Near East in Syria, Moh’d Jamal Barout spoke about the Democratic Challenges facing Nationalist and Leftist Party He said that “confidentiality” has been the governing factor of the national, leftist and communist parties. This confidentiality identifies the nature of internal relationships in the partisan life as well as types of relationship among the partisan bodies. This confidentiality can be viewed at a higher level in the patriot and leftist parties but always according to their relationship with the authorities. This applies even to the type of relationships existing in the one party or between it an other parties.

In their beginnings, most of the Arab parties were influenced with the parties’ experience in the Soviet Union and similar experiences in the Eastern Europe countries all subjected to the “Democratic Centralization” Theory. This is based on the necessity to achieve the precise balance between centralization (the leadership centralization) and democracy (freedom of members). If this balance is shaken, centralization as depicted in this theory will be delineated into a dictatorship and dominance.  However, when democracy over-dominates centralization will become a “theoretical chat” or “liberal dilution” that causes the part to quake and fall apart.

This theory resulted in a group of mechanisms to elect all the partisan leaders through their conferences and having the bottom line leaders subjected to the senior leaders. Each member has the right to discuss and vote while committing to the majority decision even if in contradiction with their own opinions. In fact, the general assemblies of such a party had never been regularly held except for recently. For instance, the interval between the creation of the Lebanese-Syrian Party and the second general assembly of the party reaches up to 17 years. The interval between the second general assembly meeting and the third one is 26 years at least. In about 40 years the Syrian Communist Party organized three general assembly meetings only. Most often, such meetings would be as a response to a case of some “outlaws” due to the frozen internal status of the party and the Leadership monopoly of power and authority. This leads to a closer relation between democracy and power in the Party.

In the aftermath of the Soviet Union collapse, all these parties were influenced with the third democratic wave accompanied with the new liberal trends opting for the market economy. The civil society concept has been assimilated from this transformation to democracy which strongly emerged in the past two decades.

In several discussion, the civil society concept was raised in connection with its relation with the democratic transition issue. Then, a gap was clearly observed between the authoritative organizational structure based on democratic centralization and the political structure which introduces a democratic political track on one hand; and the intellectual structure recently transiting from the leftist, patriot, and communist intellectual radicalism to democracy.  Such a gap caused these parties a big disturbance and resulted in a redefinition and reshuffle thereof. The main lesson learnt is that credibility of the party transition to democracy will not be persuading unless it democratizes its internal relations. In brief, this who is not democratic inside the Party will not be so outside it. This lesson is still developing although it is the most powerful and the most visible.

o With regard to the “The democracy predicament within the Democratic   centrist   parties - Jordan as a case study” Mr. Mohammed Ziyoud- a Researcher at Al-Quds Center for Political Studies said that these parties are witnessing a real crisis in terms of democracy application in their internal scenes especially when it comes to the partisan power succession. They also face problems in handling certain issues such as women empowerment, and fiscal and media transparency. He said that leaving this dilemma without any response in addition to other challenges will cause these parties to become ephemeral. It results in risky impacts not only on their activities but also on their existence and future sustainability. This becomes more critical in light of the fact that these parties neither have their own political platforms, nor they have clear and precise visions.

However, Mr. Ziyoud thinks that to improve their visibility, these moderation parties need to review and amend their political disciplines in order to set the required framework of institutionalism and practice mechanisms. In addition, it is important to have a monitoring legislative branch inside the party. This branch must be a middle organ between the general assembly and the leading executive agencies.

Moving to the Recommendation and Proposal Session held under the title “Minimum Requirements for Democratic Parties Bylaws” Hans Martin Sieg Foreign Policy Adviser to MP Manfred Grund, CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group in the German Bundestag, Presented the German experience in terms of the internal democracy of parties. He gave a historical background of the German Experience in Democracy and Partisan Practice. He stressed the importance of having a political parties’ law provide for the obligation of the political parties of the democratic principles especially the group or mass democracy. Internal democracy in a party imposes certain requirements such as: all positions in the party and at all levels must be filled through transparent and confidential elections organized in general assemblies that are elected from the partisan grassroots; and accept the free political competition to fill in all the party and political positions.

The Lebanese Expert of Political Parties’ Affairs- Mr. Raghid AsSulh introduced the democracy experience in the Arab parties. He presented a case study of the Lebanese Parties’ experience and the parliamentary elections held recently in June 2009. He said that exercising democracy in the parties requires a democratic structure that goes from bottom to top hierarchy. Such a structure must be clear in the Statutes of the Party and must be exercised through elections and task assignment. The Lebanese parties’ grassroots do not have a say in selecting candidates to the Parliament.

Mr. AsSulh said that such organizations are still so vague in Lebanon; it is not clear to which extent they can be viewed as modern parties. He mentioned that in Lebanon, there is a confusion among trends, movements and groups and other similar names on one hand and the parties on the other hand.

At the end of his paper, AsSulh presented a set of minimal criteria of democracy inside the political Lebanese parties:

• The party must have a clear, written and disclosed political platform to serve as a basis to the partisan belongingness.

• The party must have an internal charter to identify the role of partisans; their rights and responsibilities.

• Partisan leaders must be selected at all levels through elections.

• The party conferences must serve as an open forum to discuss its policies and appraise performance.

• Partisan leaders must submit a general budget to clarify the funding sources of the party and channels of disbursement.