Any autumn snapshot of this years momentous Arab upheavals will certainly capture the wretched end of Muammar Gaddafi. But it will also highlight two radically different ways of doing the business of government,on display this weekend in the Arab springs democratic debut in Tunisia and (not at all on display) in the secretive and theocratic kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Electing a constituent assembly in what could set a benchmark for Arab countries that topple their tyrants,about 90 per cent of eligible Tunisians turned out to vote. Great uncertainty lies ahead for their revolution,as well as those they helped to ignite,in Egypt,Libya and Syria. But the joyful embrace of suffrage by people who had suffered decades of despotism has set a tone. In Saudi Arabia,the death of the ageing Crown Prince Sultan,by contrast,sets in motion a royal succession reminiscent of the gerontocratic Soviet politburo as Leonid Brezhnev began to fade. The future of the kingdom is in the hands of Prince Nayef,the ultraconservative interior minister,77. Which of these ways of running a country eventually comes to be the norm greatly matters. The battle to shape the future of an Arab world in flux will be fierce - and the Saudis will be in the thick of it. From behind the defensive wall of their puritanical Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam,they will deploy petrodollars to steer Arab Islamism in their direction. While to many this is not an appealing version of bread and circuses,the Saudi regime,built upon the twin pillars of absolute monarchy and Wahhabi sectarianism,tends to feel history as well as divine right is behind its cause. The religious reform movement in the Arabian peninsula is roughly contemporary with the Arab political reform drive of the 19th century. Tunisia and Egypt,where constitutional reform had sunk roots by the 1860s,were pioneers then as now. But the normal process of nation-building and constitutional politics of the first Arab awakening or Nahda was interrupted,and its proto-democratic expression discredited,by a century of intrusion by the French and British empires. That gave way to the ideological wild goose chase of pan-Arab nationalism,which masked the will to power of militarised local elites,who built national security states that left their opponents only the mosque as an increasingly politicised space in which to regroup. Islamism was guaranteed an important space in Arab politics by a combination of despotism and western intrusion. Yet Islamism is but one of three spectres that haunt the future of Arab democracy; the others are sectarianism and populism. In practice,all these dangers elide and overlap. Islamists typically command the allegiance of up to a third of Arab citizens - more when,like Hizbollah,Hamas or Iraqs Sadrists,they have the aura of a resistance movement. But they still have to perform - now in competition with broad-based if fragmented democratic movements thrown up by rebellions that,unlike theirs,were successful. Far from monolithic,the Islamic revivalists are split on generational lines. They also have a choice of models to inspire them. Irans Islamic revolution is one,but polls suggest this combination of immovable vested interests,violently defended from behind a façade of divine order,exerts little appeal. Though the Saudis can influence through money and mosque-building,their model cannot be replicated outside the Gulf. But the example of Turkey suggests Islamism can be synthesised into a pluralist and secular order. Tunisias Ennahda party,way ahead in early vote counts,took inspiration from Turkey. But the success of the second Arab awakening will depend not just on obvious needs: to develop institutions,establish the rule of law and embed a competitive and plural democratic culture. As important will be how it manages and overcomes sectarian,ethnic and (in some cases) tribal tensions. In this deadly terrain,Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia are poisonously sectarian. Mainly Sunni Turkey is not,in its dealings with,say,Lebanon or Iraq,or its outlook. Recep Tayyip Erdogan,the prime minister,told Egyptians and Libyans last month that while he is not secular in the western sense,secularism is a shield of state to protect equally all beliefs (a position he could usefully extend to ethnic minorities such as Turkeys Kurds). The spectre of populism arises because the structural economic reform touted by the Mubaraks and the Ben Alis was a rapacious hoax that discredited the very idea of reform,the more so because it was prescribed in,though not administered by,the west. Here too,Turkeys dynamic economy,under management by Islams equivalent of the Christian Democrats,offers a more appealing prospectus. Yet the best insurance against the three spectres of Islamism,sectarianism and populism is that the young Arabs who drove these revolutions did not risk their lives to embrace new tyrannies or social divisions - or imbibe old snake oil. David Gardner© 2011 The Financial Times Limited
