What types of government do MENA citizens want?

The Arab Barometer is the leading academic opinion poll in MENA, comparable to other regional peers such as the Afrobarometer and the AmericasBarometer in its scope and methods. A decade ago, at the start of the Arab Spring, we found that citizens across the region overwhelmingly supported democracy. At the same time, less than half of all 10 countries surveyed in the second wave of the project worry that democracy can lead to economic weakness, indecision and instability.

In the decade that followed, these views began to change, including in countries that underwent democratic opening. In Tunisia, for example, citizens began to change their minds about democracy. Shortly after the Jasmine Revolution, fewer than 1 in 5 citizens believed that instability (17 percent), indecision (19 percent), and poor economic performance (17 percent) were related to democracy.

After two years of weak democratic governments, the percentage of Tunisians who hold this view has doubled for all three indicators: instability, 42 percent; indecision, 50 percent; and weak economy, 35 percent. Over the next decade, this perception grew, with at least two-thirds of Tunisians attributing every problem to democratic governance.

How much public support does the president of Tunisia really have?

The Arab Barometer has conducted nearly 23,000 face-to-face interviews with citizens aged 18 and over in 10 countries so far as part of its seventh wave. Each of these personal interviews is conducted at the respondent’s residence on a variety of topics, including economic, political, religious, and political issues. Each country’s survey has a margin of error of roughly plus or minus two percentage points. Full details can be found on our website.

Tunis was not alone in changing his mind. In seven out of nine countries where we asked these questions, half or more agreed that democracy was associated with some of these disadvantages. This has increased significantly in many countries since our last wave of interviews in 2018-2019. This change in the region is in line with a global trend of growing dissatisfaction with democracy.

At the same time, as our new report details, in all 10 countries we surveyed, majorities still agree that, despite its problems, democracy remains the best system of government. What’s more, in all but two of the 10, majorities go even further to say that not only is democracy the best system, but the only viable system of government.

In other words, the citizens of the Middle East and the Middle East have realized the shortcomings of democracy – they see it as the best system, or even the only viable system – while also realizing that it is not perfect. This applies to citizens living in countries that previously had a democratic opening and those that have been authoritarian in the past decade.

Overall, these findings offer some hope for the future of democracy in the region. Research has found that democracy is only established when all key pillars of society, including the public at large, believe that there is no better option. Citizens in the Middle East and North Africa no longer harbor unrealistic expectations that a political transition to democracy will solve all the problems in their societies—a big change from just a decade ago. And yet they remain committed to this as their goal.

Michael Robbins (@mdhrobbins) is the director and co-principal researcher of the Arab Barometer.

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