Talk:Democracy in the Middle East and North Africa

message: I thought I'd kick off the talk page here! Off the top of my head we might want to include:
* Historical context:
** end of the Ottoman Empire (the concepts of umta and millet),
** nationalism
** and USA/European involvement (oil, war promises, League of Nations mandates).
* Hashemite monarchy — perhaps something on the role of Middle Eastern social structures informing modes of governance.
* The effect of minority rule (e.g. Alawite-led government of Syria, Sunni-led goverment in Iraq.
* The forces of modernisation versus religion in Egypt and Iran.
Some food for thought? Gareth Hughes 22:56, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Clarification: do you mean "the Middle East", or "the Middle East and North Africa"?  If the former, Morocco seems a dubious candidate to invoke. - Mustafaa 01:05, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thoughts 

message: Looking at the rights of Bedouins (Bedouins denied same protections: bedouin protection denied ), Rights of Christians, clamp downs on dissent in reporting, rise in racism especially against refugees from Africa, and those refugees being imprisoned.  I really have to question Israels rankings in all the categories.  
Where were those figures from?  How about an independent source please? 96.31.177.52 (talk) 09:34, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Bias on the list

message: Should this article expand on the governments in some of the important or notable countries, or just link to, say, Politics of Bahrain? | Mr. Darcy talk 15:12, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Expansion

message: I've made some edits and I think I've resolved most of NPOV statements either by removing them or attaching citations. So, I've tentatively removed the NPOV warning for the entire article. Incidentally, most of the citations were done when I got here, but I guess nobody felt comfortable enough to remove the warning? While there are still a few citation-neededs and a couple of related problems in the article, I felt it was pretty safe to get rid of that too. I made an effort to wikify the main body of the article. I think it was mostly successful although of course it could be improved.
THAT SAID I think the opening paragraph of this article is very poor. Perhaps the original author would like to take another whack at it or someone could come up with a better preamble. This one not written concisely at all. It's full of run-on sentences. It had some POV problems that might persist, though I took out the most glaring one. Other than that I think this article is getting closer.
Also, I would say that the article smacked of an American bias, which certainly is not in line with the guideline that articles should include all relevant cultural perspectives. I kept the US point of view in, properly cited, where necessary (especially in the current state section), but I think this is a main problem with the opening paragraph.
Egypt and Syria do not have regular competitive elections for presidency. Paragraph is not clear about that and gives a non-neutral and incomplete opinion. Please revise.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Patrick.N.L (talk • contribs) 02:07, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV, citation, Wikification, and opening paragraph

message: The heading says it.  If the title of the article was 'Government in the Middle East, that would be a good start.  Otherwise the whole thrust of the article is promotion of a Non-NPOV! Fremte 23:02, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Anti-Israel bias?  The rankings if anything are pro-Israel biased, ignoring key problems with regards to minority rights in Israel and Israeli controlled territories.  Especially when you look at the Bedouins, migrant Africans, and Palestinians. 96.31.177.52 (talk) 23:42, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Bias, Political agenda, suggest deletion or rename + re-working

message: At the top of the article:
As of 2009, American organization Freedom House recognizes Israel as the only fully-fledged, free electoral democracy of the Middle East.
Does this make sense? How about these , , ? --Email4mobile (talk) 13:52, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Has US news been our major resource? 

message: There is a large amount of material in the present article that seems to come from a non-worldwide-POV, even a non-US-wide POV, since it excludes the academic work (POV) of famous dissidents like Noam Chomsky. A hint for people wishing to help balance the article would be to look through Deterring Democracy for some older XX-th century examples of the US' role of deliberately deterring democracy in the Middle East except when democracy was in its interests. It might make it more obvious that USA/France/UK (and now PRChina) - as States - have geostrategic interests in the area and that desires to support Middle East democracy from grassroots citizens' groups and rare dissenters among elites in those countries have to be distinguished from propaganda claims by governments/mainstream media.
Getting worldwide POVs would require a bit of work, but this Wikipedia is not the US.wikipedia.org. It's the English-language Wikipedia for knowledge about the World. So the work has to be done if this article is to be taken seriously.
Incidentally, the 2010–2011 popular overthrow of Ben Ali without a coup d'etat seems to have shocked Western commentators who promoted the racist belief that the populations of Arab countries somehow could not overthrow authoritarian leaders in the same grassroots way that happens almost everywhere else in the world, but instead they need to be bombed and invaded for their own good. Suddenly there's the discovery that maybe Tunisia does not "need" to be bombed and invaded! Something on this (not my comments) should go in the article.
With enough work done, this might potentially become a good article.
If editing starts becoming conflictual on this article, anyone should feel free to add  at the top of this Talk page, since this editorial "sanctions regime" extends to all articles relating to the Arab–Israeli conflict "broadly construed". ("Sanctions" here do not mean preventing food and medicines from reaching Wikipedia editors.) See Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Palestine-Israel_articles#Discretionary_sanctions for details.
Disclaimer: i am not an admin. :) Boud (talk) 23:44, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Worldwide view of this subject 

message: 2010-2011 Middle East and North Africa Protests
2010-2011_Middle_East_and_North_Africa_Protests
I have added this to the page, as the two are directly related. --Smart30 (talk) 13:01, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I have tired to put somewhere where I thought it belonged -- The Egyptian Liberal (talk) 13:32, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  2010-2011 Middle East and North Africa Protests 

message: Hello
Everything about Turkey is wrong, like made about a Turkish government from a long time ago, or just made by people who ignore about Turkey or someone who just hates Turkey.
Turkey is acceding to the European Union and it has higher standards than many countries inside it so....  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.184.208.56 (talk) 22:43, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Everything about Turkey is wrong 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The whole idea about this article is based on the wrong foot, if we are going to talk about democracies in the middle east, then we should not include countries from regions like North Africa nor South Asia, it would have been better if there was a second article talking about Democracies in North Africa or should i say Democracy in Tunisia. Greetings.
SERVITAS VITAE (talk) 13:07, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  North Africa is not the middle east 

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message: Is there any way to avoid the potentially ambiguous use of scare quotes in the introduction? The intro reads: Freedom House categorizes Israel and Tunisia as "Free"... Are Israel and Tunisia free, or are they "free"? Is this a direct quote, or an implication that they are not truly free? Duey (talk) 04:49, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scare Quotes 

message: The Palestine section seems to not be particularly accurate.Here are a few issues:
"Prior to the mass immigration of Israeli citizens to the region and the two-state solution"
Jews were not Israelis until 1948 but more importantly there has been no two state solution as of yet.
"there was no formal government or authority in the land known as Palestine. Society operated without a democracy, monarchy or dictatorship; merely a conglomerate of tribes, clans, villages and communities headed by a select few elders known as "Sheikhs" also transliterated Sheik, Sheyikh, Shaykh, Shayk, Cheikh, Shekh, Shaik and Shaikh"[34]
Haven't been able to follow up the source here but there under the Ottomans and the British there was most definitely structures of government in place. 
"The two state solution drastically altered this and effectively displaced an overwhelming amount of Palestinians."
Again the two state solution has not happened and the Palestinian refugees does seem completely relevant here. 
"As a result, the semi-political organization, Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed. Yasser Arafat served as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization from 1969 to 2004 and is considered one of the most influential Palestinian leaders.[35]"
This is more or less correct but does not seem to be addressing overall the subject of democracy in the Palestinian territories. 
Given all of this I would propose deleting the Palestine section and rewriting it about the structures of government in the West Bank and Gaza. 
Adam Bernstein (talk) 18:56, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Palestine section 

message: The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
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Participate in the deletion discussion at the . —Community Tech bot (talk) 07:37, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion 

message: I believe Freedom index is not relevant for this page since, the Title of this page is Democracy in the Middle East and North Africa and not Freedom in the Middle East and North Africa.  Amitai Scott you reverted back to freedom index, can you explain why freedom index is more relevant than a democracy index for this page?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by HudecEmil (talk • contribs) 09:44, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: But I agree with you that the table could look prettier, will update. HudecEmil (talk) 09:54, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

text: Yeah, I agree. Is the freedom index even related to democracy methodologically? I can't tell because the 'introduction' link is currently broken, but Freedom House is also not the most neutral research outlet - it has close US gov ties. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:38, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: The freedom index looks at both civil liberties and political rights (with some aspects of elections). While there is a contribution of democracy, and categorizes countries if they are "electoral democracies" or not, the index cannot be categorized as purely democracy index, only as mixed democracy and civil rights index. Currently, the methologically most sound democracy index is probably V-Dem Democracy indices. HudecEmil (talk) 12:13, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I've since noticed that Freedom House is also both a research and advocacy organization, further diminishing their respectability as a reliable source for concrete metrics not colored by all sorts of explicit and implicit bias. The Democracy Index and V-Dem Democracy indices both seem like obviously better bets, and it is after all the former that appears in the intro. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:18, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Freedom index vs Democracy index