Current literature on global norms of democratic governance suggests that, especially in less developed countries, decoupling - or feigning support for global norms such as a commitment to human rights without actually enacting these norms in local institutions - is endemic due to the fact that democracy is a Western concept which cannot be simply grafted unchanged onto new cultural contexts (Meyer et. al, 1997). This project argues that much of what is understood by Western scholars as decoupling in terms of mouthing support for democratic governance and political reform by non-democratic regimes is rather best understood as recoupling - co-opting an existing global norm to reflect local institutions while reconfiguring local discourses to make them appear compatible with global norms. This viewpoint is largely absent from existing literature. This study examines discourses of democracy among contemporary Arab political elites in order to observe how the concept of democracy is recoupled in this context.

Do political participation and support for democratic values go hand in hand under electoral authoritarian systems? Much of the literature assessing mass support for democratic values tends to focus primarily on democratic countries. Even studies examining public support for democratic values in non-democratic countries do not explore how these values affect the propensity of individuals to participate in the electoral arena. Based on statistical analysis of survey data recently released by the Arab Democracy Barometer Project, this paper examines the relationship between political participation and support for democratic values in seven Arab countries. By applying factor analysis to the data, the paper identifies dimensions of: (1) support for a democratic political system; (2) support for human rights; (3) support for gender equality; and (4) tolerance towards minorities. Using regression analysis, the paper analyzes the impact of these factors on the probability of political participation at the individual level, including voting. The findings show that weaker commitments to democratic values are associated with a higher probability of political participation. Not only do the findings enhance our understanding of political participation under Arab authoritarian systems, they also contribute to the debate on whether controlled systems of electoral contestation could provide a credible means for democratizing hybrid authoritarian regimes. Specifically, the findings attenuate the argument that state-controlled electoral arenas can be a positive force for democratic change.

Why has the Arab countries, managed to escape all three waves of democratization? Is Islam or "Arab" culture essentially undemocratica How (if possible) can democracy be induced in this regiong These are some of the questions that have been occupying observers and scholars of the region for the past two decades. Explanations have been varied, ranging from political culture approaches; to looking at institutional arrangements such as limited-elections, the party system structure, and elite networks; to economic-based explanations of rentierism, and late-development of capitalism. All these explanations, however, tend to over-emphasize regime-level politics and disregard informal politics from below. Yet, recent events in the region during the past few years warrant a need for looking at the prospects of democratization from below. Especially that mass mobilization in the region, which has been dominated by religious movements in the past few decades, is now changing to include new and more varied axes of mobilization (class, gender, and ideology) and groups (e.g. bloggers, state employees, labor, urban poor). Moving away from a statist elite-politics approach this paper questions the expected impact of the recent waves of mobilization for socio-economic demands (2006-present) which included (state employees, industrial labor, and urban poor) on the prospects for democratization in Egypt. The paper is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork during the past five years including participant observation and interviews with the pro-democracy activists (from secular and religious based movements), labor and state-employees' movement leaders. Specifically delineating the links between the labor movement and the pro-democracy activist groups, the paper argues that unlike what many would assume, this preceding cycle of mobilization for socio-economic demands will not strengthen the upcoming pro-democracy mobilization cycle (in response to the parliamentary elections 2010 and Presidential elections 2011) or broaden its base (through the inclusion on antagonized labor, state employees, or the urban poor). Explainging why this tends to be the case, the paper shows how, despite these socio-economic driven contention not having an effect on direct action for regime-level change, they are reshaping the long existing corporatist pact between society and the state. And in doing so, concludes that such pact which has worked formally and informally to sustain authoritarianism in Egypt -and similarly in many countries of the region- is being dismantled by these new forms of contention. And this is where the potential of labor,and other subaltern groups ,as actors for democratization lay.

The dynamics of social change and development of democracy in the modern era in the non-western societies has been linked in part to globalization forces particularly the advancement of communication technology. Throughout the world, struggle for democracy have reached many nations, some have successfully made the transition in a more or less open society and for some the struggle continues. This paper examines the role of generation as a social force by applying Mannheim's sociology of generation to current situation in Iran.

Recent studies of Islamist movements in Muslim societies have drawn upon the alluring paradigm of 'alternative modernities' depicting such formations as emblematic of a 'civil Islam' (Hefner 2000), 'indigenous modernization' (White 2002) 'alternative secularization of Islam' (Turam 2007) 'enchanted modern' (Deeb 2006), or 'post-Islamism' (Yavuz 2006). Although these studies have challenged the dominant representation of the increasing appeal of Islamic ideas in Muslim societies as a premodern or antimodern phenomenon, they have nonetheless refrained from a profound hermeneutic exercise in critically revising the concepts drawn from western political theory. The underlying 'hermeneutic nadvety' has contributed to the conception of 'siege' characterized as cultural imperialism or neo-orientalism by the Islamist activists of the 'Generation of Qur'an' which constitutes the object of my investigation. In this paper bringing to attention the voice of the Generation of Qur'an in Turkey, I propose to call into question the unacknowledged ethical commitments underlying both democratic theory and theoretically informed empirical works on democracy in the Middle East. In response to the promotion of a 'mild Islam' compatible with democracy and liberalism in the context of Turkey represented as the 'model country' in such globalist schemes of democratization as the Greater Middle East Project, an Islamist intellectual discourse emerged that appropriates the Islamic identity as a basis of resistance to the processes of hybridization, identitarian eclecticism and postmodern pluralism. My project attempts to examine the micro-level resistance to the axiomatic power of the democratization discourse and the neo-liberal economic agenda, burgeoning in Turkish public sphere since 1970s and forming the backstage of Islamism in Turkey behind the window site of Fethullah Gulen's liberal Islam and the moderate Justice and Development Party in government since 2002. By making this hitherto unanalyzed peripheral subject the focus of my paper, I attempt to answer the following questions: How is an Islamic epistemology of resistance through shahadat (witnessing) fashioned, through the translation of Sayyid Qutb's project of building the 'Generation of Qur'an' in Turkey, in direct response to the paradigmatic status of international regimes of moderation and liberalizationu What are the intended and unintended forces of change being set in motion by the operationalization of moderation -the ethics of democratic theory- in governmental projects and by the various practical/ethical strategies of the Islamist actorsh In inspecting those questions, my objective is to explore the undertheorized intersection between intellectual knowledge production, universalist regimes of governance and local politics of counter-Discourse.