Middle Eastern Oil Economies and Political Liberalization

The question of how the Middle East would best be able to achieve modernization is a speculative one, and one that depends heavily on a number of things, such as what means would be best used to achieve this modernization, to what exactly the term “modernization” really encompasses.

Many people perceive the Middle East as a geographic area, which for several reasons may be especially resistant to the kind of modernization process that has taken place in the western world, and that has, and is still occurring in Asia. The chief reasons that are given in backing up this doubt center on the pervasiveness of the Islamic faith, as well as the nature of the governments that are already in place in many of these Middle Eastern nations.

To begin to examine the issue, the idea of modernity or modernization should be defined, for the purpose of discussion. There are a handful of characteristics that have been present in the modernization process of other nations, and which, by and large, exist in countries that have already undergone the modernization process, and have achieved the state of existence that many assume Middle Eastern nations ought to strive for.

Points that have been discussed both in lecture and reading include the following factors that generally occur within a modernized nation: Freedom, (civil liberties) technology and access to technology, mass education, literacy, political and economic liberalization, social tolerance and pluralism, democracy and equality, and secularism.

The first of these tenets of modernity, freedom, as it pertains to civil liberties and political participation seems as though it should be a given in the framework of what makes a country modern. To have the general populace protected by laws and statutes that protect their interest in participation in the affairs of the state of which they are a part would be requisite for any of the other items on the list to occur. Political and economic liberalization, democracy and access to technology cannot occur without the expansion of civil rights. In the still-modernizing nation of China, the economic liberalization has occurred without widespread increases in civil liberties, although its economic liberalization is only taking place in localized zones of the country. Total economic liberalization, in all likelihood, will not be able to happen without an increase in the overall level of freedom that the state allows to the people on the whole.

Increased levels of freedom domestically also include the protection of the general populace in regards to the freedom of speech, assembly, and so forth. The ideal of freedom is a wide ranging one, and one under which many of the other tenets of modernity fall.

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