Debate: Arab Democracy or Islamist Revolution?

The argument of Roy’s “The Transformation of the Arab World” in the July 2012 issue of the Journal of Democracy is threefold. First, the circumstances in which the Brotherhood and other Islamist groups such as the Salafists have reached power have also put them “into a political space formatted by certain constraints.” Second, the Islamists are aware of this situation and they have bent or will bend to it. Third and finally, if they do not “accept the demands of the democratization process . . . they will find themselves sidelined.” So whether the Islamists cooperate or not, democratization will triumph. All this may eventually prove true. At the moment, however, the political evidence tends strongly in a different direction.