Arab popular uprisings or the Arab arrival to political modernity

Notes internacionals CIDOB, núm. 27

Through the last century and a half, the Arabs have achieved a fair measure of intellectual and cultural renaissance. They have conducted national liberation wars and they are still at it in some places such as Palestine and elsewhere. They have built states –or, rather, the structures of modern states– that are still standing despite internal and external tremors, some of them violent. They have started agricultural, industrial and scientific transformations not much different from those carried out by other nations. Yet, both on the pan-Arab level and on that of each particular country, they have failed in building modern nations, in the sense of united, interactive and cohesive societies whose members are linked by the bond of citizenship, a common desire to live together and the assertion of human dignity –which entails the recognition of basic rights, namely equality and intellectual and political freedom, as the basis for active and responsible participation in the national –and international—community.

The main reason for this failure is the stealing by tyrannical powers of the buds of political modernity, such as the liberation from foreign influences, whether religious or political or cultural, and the achievement of de facto sovereignty –meaning the right of every member of the national community to think for himself and to participate, on an equal footing and without any sort of coercion, in decisions concerning private and public affairs and in working towards what each individual deems essential for the public interest. The rise of the citizen as the leading actor and the center of political life is the essence of politial modernity. It is the basis for transforming popular sovereignty into the only source of political power and the permanent point of reference for political activity, as well as the locus where social conflicts are solved. People’s sovereignty means independence for each individual and the assertion of the right to equality with his or her peers –which means freedom from marginalization, humiliation and exclusion from collective decisions, as well as the impossibility to be held accountable and punished for anything but their offenses under the rule of equal justice for all. Such is the foundation –and the very condition– for the national social contract. Sovereignty also means the existence of a free state, not dependent or subservient to foreign powers, for only such a state can protect people’s sovereignty and guarantee its full exercise.

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