Arabs and Democracy

An editorial at OpinionJournal refers to a new study published by the United Nations Development Program, specifically its new Arab Human Development Report:

The UNDP assembled a panel of distinguished Arab authors, including Clovis Maksoud, the former Arab League ambassador to the U.N., to take a hard look at the state of their own society. And while they don't fail to mention the evils of Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank, they clearly realize the plight of 1% of the Arabs can't account for all the region's ills. Nor is this yet another plea for more aid from the rich countries. The report places blame squarely where it belongs--unaccountable and unrepresentative governments in the Arab countries themselves.

An indication of this, taken from the report, are the "Quality of Institutions in the Arab countries: standardized indicators," from Chapter 7, "Liberating human capabilities," page 113 of the report. Table 7-1 presents these standardized indicators, referring to high, medium, and low HDI groups. The high for graft was an indicator of 0.237, while the low was -0.953 -- that's right, a negative index! The average for the 17 Arab states involved in the study was -0.262.

Worse yet were the numbers generated by the "Borda rule" for measuring human well-being.

On the basis described above, no Arab country enjoys high human welfare. Seven Arab countries, representing only 8.9 per cent of the population of the sample of 17, enjoy medium human welfare. The remaining 10 Arab countries, accountin for 91.1 per cent of the sample population, have low human welfare.

The bar chart included illustrates this to rather devastating effect. (Quote and bar chart found in Chapter 7, page 113).

The pdf of the entire report is available for download. Now, please, can we stop blaming Israel for all the ills in the region and get to work on the real issues?