Whenever there were very promising moments for economic development in the last 200 years, there were setbacks. For example, at a time when Egypt under Mohammed Ali is about to take off, foreign powers gang up and crush him and set back his experiment. Egypt provides a good illustration of what is being discussed because this cycle of attempts at modernization followed by foreign incursion is repeated throughout the region. The Slow and Uneven Economic or Socioeconomic Development. This fifth element which defines the modern Arab world relates to the other four.
Foreign encroachment interrupts a country's efforts to modernize.
Development, is distorted, partly because of the lack of sophisticated conception of what development is all about, but mostly because of foreign factors, external factors. Reluctant and Zigzagging Democratization. The sixth element, democracy, or an attempted democratization, began in the 1860s as part of the modern nation building by Khedive Pasha Ismail. With the opening the Suez Canal, Khedive Ismail invited the royalty of Europe to attend the great occasion. Because he wanted to impress them, three or four years before the event was to take place, he began to build a modern city.