التحولات السياسية في البلدان العربية وعملية بناء الدولة في عصر المعلومات = Political Transformations in the Arab Countries and the State-Building Process in the Information Age

Abstract

The method of state-building is based on particular ideologies and political philosophies, which means that different countries have different concepts of state-building. Among these concepts, nationalism is most closely related to state-building and plays an important part in the shaping of political frameworks especially in the Third World, including Arab countries. This article contends that nationalism in the postcolonial Arab countries demands in state-building strong populism, radical deinstitutionalization, direct democracy and charismatic leadership, but finally is converted to authoritarianism because of the unsustainability of these demands, which are both the logical result of self evolvement of nationalism and the inner quest of social development of Arab countries. As time goes by, whether Arab countries tend to accept totalitarian or democracy in state-building depends on the combination of nationalism with certain ideologies in the future. Among them, only civic nationalism can keep the political process in the right direction In summary, Arab countries embraced populism that later evolved into authoritarianism, which is a logical result of nationalism ideology’s evolution as well as the internal request of the Arab society development. To view in the long run, authoritarianism is still a transitional political mode. As the history moves forward, authoritarianism and democracy both have the possibility to become the answer, of which trend the internal dynamics lie in which ideology nationalism actually wants to associate with. And only civic nationalism (civic statism indeed) can keep the political process in the right direction.