Is The Arab Brain Incompatible with Democracy?

In this thought-provoking episode, hosts Malcolm and Simone dive into the complexities behind the absence of stable democracies in Arab majority countries. Exploring historical, cultural, and geopolitical factors, they debunk common explanations like colonialism, war, and religion. Instead, they highlight the role of tribalism, the influence of Saudi Arabia, and unique social structures that differentiate Arab societies from other global cultures. Tune in for an enlightening analysis on why democracy fits some contexts better than others, illustrated through comparisons with Northern European countries and even touching upon differences in animal social behaviors.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today we are gonna be talking about one of those controversial topics that I just walked into by accident. Oh no. We were on another episode and I was like, well, you know, no Arab country has a stable democracy or ever has.

And I just threw this out there 'cause I was like, just in my head when I thought about it, I was like, yeah, I can't think of any Arab majority country that has a stable democracy. And then I was, I, I rewatched myself saying that and I was like, wait. That cannot conceivably be true. There are 22 Arab majority countries.

The, the, the, the region is one of the oldest, you know, in terms of civilization, in human history. Yeah. Has there literally never been a single democracy in this region that lasted more than one human lifetime? And the answer is no. There really hasn't been. No. The longest democracy ever within this region was Lebanon, and it lasted for a [00:01:00] period of 32 years.

30. Oh my God. Not even. And that was the longest. The next longest was 11 years for Tunisia. Other than that, not a single country has had a democracy last more than 10 years. And give mind, this isn't like a, a, there are 22 countries in this region now to understand how Absolutely effing and insane this is.

Let's contrast this with Northern European countries, right? Okay. You can say, okay, okay. How weird is it really for countries that are Arab majority to never have had democracy. If you look at the 14 Northern European countries in the world today, all over the world, not a single one of them is in a democracy.

Oh

Simone Collins: God.

Malcolm Collins: Like this is one of these things where you gotta be like, this is not like [00:02:00] random odds or something like that. You know, this is not like, oh, we, we, we rolled the dice and we just, you know, weren't sure or something like that. So, so you could now say, okay, Malcolm. Okay, Malcolm, I know what you're getting at.

This is some sort of a Muslim thing. And I'm gonna say, actually no, the majority of non-Arab, majority Muslim countries. 35 out of the 40 total non-Arab majority Muslim countries

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Are democracies.

Simone Collins: No way. Whoa. Okay. Yeah. 'cause I mean like 90% of Arabs are Muslims, but then not all Mus, like actually maybe not even a majority of Muslims.

No, most Muslims are not Arab, so Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That makes, no, no, they

Malcolm Collins: might be semi democratic systems, but like if you're talking even full democracies Wow. It's still the majority of them that are democracies. Wow. Which makes it even crazier that the [00:03:00] Arab majority countries haven't had a single period of democracy in their entire history.

And, and, and then you can say, you know, you go to AI about this and, and, and, because I tried to like, talk this through with ai. Okay. And it, it gives me like. Terrible answers to start, right? Like at first it was okay. Like what? Of course, of course. Colonialism caused this. And I'm like, whoa.

First of all, the majority of Latin America now, which was all colonized, is democracies at this point. You know, all over East Asia, there are heavily colonized areas that are democracies. There are areas of Africa that far worse things happen to, than happen to the Arab countries. In terms of colonialization Absolutely.

Yeah. Their democracies. Mm-hmm.

I actually got , curious about this point and decided to look into it. And of the, , 14 never colonized countries, , seven are democracies and seven are not. Of the countries that were at some point in their history colonized, 43.8% are democracies. So the [00:04:00] probability that you're going to be a democracy does not appear to be considerably impacted by whether or not you were colonized.

There's there. That's, that's, that's not the answer. Okay. And the AI then said, well, it's war. There's just so much war in that region.

Speaker 5: Mm-hmm. And said,

Malcolm Collins: excuse me. Europe went through two world wars. Yeah. Which was much heavier conflict over a much you know, more condensed time period.

But still like extended, like the war, war, war, war, war was the two world wars. Mm-hmm. And most of its democratic institutions stayed intact.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So it's, it's, it's not Muslim. It's not, it's not, it's not Islam, it's not colonialism.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It's not instability.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, it comes to me and it goes, well, it's Dutch disease.

So for people don't know Dutch disease. Dutch disease, I don't know what

Speaker 2: this is,

Malcolm Collins: is when you have too much wealth [00:05:00] from a single income source like oil

Speaker 2: mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And that leads to consolidation of power. And it makes it more likely that you're going to have a like,

Simone Collins: oh, but not all Arab countries are super wealthy.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I was like, okay. But

Simone Collins: two. And then what about the Nordic countries that are super wealthy and are that Dutch named after

Malcolm Collins: the Dutch and they're not. I, there have been plenty of instances of countries with touch disease not becoming autocracies, and there are plenty of Arab countries that don't have Dutch disease.

No. So that's clearly not an explanation either. Okay. And, and this I just detail like audience, if, if you're like bad with like statistics or coin flips or something like that and you're just like, oh, it's a, it's a weird coincidence. No, this isn't a weird coincidence. This demands explanation. You can't have a coin flip 22 times over.

[00:06:00] Millennium, or let's just say democracy is being popular, is new over centuries, never land democracy. You can't have that. Alright. And, and note here, people can be like, well, you know, there weren't that many democracies historically. And I'm like, actually there are a lot of democracies historically.

You can go back to the ancient Greeks. You can go back to other weird semi democratic systems you had throughout Europe at various periods. Or in, in, in small like islands over various periods. I think Malta was a democracy at one point. But anyways, so something there. Various countries have been democracies at some point.

Those don't exist anywhere in Arab history. So this brings us to questions that are difficult.

Simone Collins: Okay? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The first is, could it be genetic? So, so the question here is do we know of some species. That order themselves differently based on within the same species, based on minor