Middle Eastern democratic forms mask the region’s real monarchical politics

Evidence

To many Americans it must have seemed incongruous, if not uncongenial, that their government should support a king against an elected parliament, but the out­ ward forms of Middle Eastern political life should not mislead us into equating them with their Western originals. In the Middle Eastern poker game there is nothing inconsistent in a good republican’s playing a hand of three kings—and hoping that no one else will play the aces. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1194

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to how Western audiences were taught to read the region — forms don’t mean what they mean in the West. Corroborates Said’s critique of Western ‘expert’ framing that reduces Arab politics to a poker game of surface vs. real power. — connects to: A successful democratic Egypt threatened the legitimacy of Saudi monarchy — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 340