A Critical Review of Democratization Approach and its Narration of Political Changes in the Arab World

Since the socio-political events in the Arab world in 2011 that led to change the political regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen and challenges and crises other political systems in Arab countries, the different analysis and works are presented about the nature, causes, and consequences of these events. These analyzes are important differences. Each of them see the changes in the Arab countries from a different perspective. In sum, all of these analyzes and works, can be classified into five approaches: Islamic Awakening, democratization, authoritarianism, Arab Awakening and Conspiracy. Among these approaches, the democratization approach as the main rival Islamic awakening approach, despite major conceptual and empirical problems, has been the most common and influential approach for explaining political change in the Arab world. This paper will review and critique this approach and the claim that the works on democratization in terms of theoretical and empirical and conceptual problems can not fundamentally provide the impartial, convincing and knock-down explanation from political change in the Arab world.