The state of democracy in Middle East and North Africa can be comparatively assessed according to various definitions of democracy. De jure democracies in the Middle East and North Africa are according to system of government: Parliamentary republic: Iraq,Danilovich, Alex. "Introducing Iraq's Federal System." Iraqi Federalism and the Kurds. Routledge, 2016. 49-64. Israel, LebanonSalamey, Imad, and Rhys Payne. "Parliamentary consociationalism in Lebanon: equal citizenry vs. quotated confessionalism." The Impact of Legislatures. Routledge, 2020. 170-192. Presidential republic: Syria, Tunisia, Turkey Semi-presidential republic: Algeria, Egypt, Mauritania

The V-Dem Democracy indices ranked in 2024 Iraq, Israel, Mauritania and Tunisia as the Middle Eastern and North African countries with the highest democracy scores.Democracy Report 2024, Varieties of Democracy The Economist Group's Democracy Index rated Cyprus and Israel as the only "flawed democracies" and no country as "full democracy" in the region for 2025.

Events of the Arab Spring such as the Tunisian Revolution may indicate a move towards democracy in some countries which may not be fully captured in the democracy index. In 2015, Tunisia became the first Arab country classified as free since the beginning of Lebanon's civil war 40 years ago. Theories are diverse on the subject. "Revisionist theories" argue that democracy is slightly incompatible with Middle Eastern values.Lewis, Bernard. What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East On the other hand, "post-colonial" theories (such as those put forth by Edward Said) for the relative absence of democracy in the Middle East are diverse, from the long history of imperial rule by the Ottoman Empire, United Kingdom and France and the contemporary political and military intervention by the United States, all of which have been blamed for preferring authoritarian regimes because this ostensibly simplifies the business environment, while enriching the governing elite and the companies of the imperial countries. Other explanations include the problem that most of the states in the region are rentier states, which experience the theorized resource curse.

This article follows sources that place Cyprus in Europe, not the Middle East.

History The decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire set the stage for nationalist movements to emerge in Southwest Asia and North Africa as the Second French Empire, the Italian Empire, and British Empire began to target and colonize the region. The First 1877 Ottoman general election during the First Constitutional Era was the first general election in the Ottoman Empire. The century between 1820 and 1920 saw the Ottoman Empire shrink from encompassing the entirety of the Levant and Egypt, the Balkans, and significant portions of the coastal Maghreb and Arabian Peninsula, to less than half of the modern state of Turkey. Turkey declared a republic in 1923 by amending the Turkish Constitution of 1921. During this period, national self-determination movements began in reaction to both the spread of nationalism throughout Europe and to European colonial incursion prior to the Ottoman Empire's collapse.

Following the conclusion of World War I in 1918 and the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, many former Ottoman territories not already under European control were colonized by European countries via League of Nations mandates. While European powers were instrumental in establishing the first independent governments that emerged from the Ottoman Empire, the mandatory period was brief, primarily spanning the interwar period and World War II. Interest in national self-determination further increased during the mandatory period, and accelerated as the process of decolonization began in the region following the end of World War II in 1948.

During decolonization, current and formerly colonized peoples of Southwest Asia, North Africa, and the horn of Africa grappled with significant political and economic upheaval, both internally and in response to neocolonialism from Western nations. Early Arab nationalism involved transforming ethnically diverse communities coping with the effects of experiencing imperial collapse, colonization, and decolonization in under a century, into a unitary national identity. For most of these emergent countries, democratic statehood was either out of reach due to political instability, or rejected in favor of other forms of government.

The Constitution of Lebanon adopted 1926 during French Mandate was based on the French constitution and guaranteed liberty and equality for all its citizens. The first election in Lebanon during French Mandate was 1922 with universal male suffrage. The first election after Lebanese independence in 1943 was the 1947 Lebanese general election. The 1949 Israeli Constituent Assembly election was the first Israeli election.Dieter Nohlen, Florian Grotz & Christof Hartmann (2001) Elections in Asia: A data handbook, Volume I, p123 The 1950 Turkish general election was the first free Turkish election.

During the Cold War, the United States of America and the Soviet Union competed for allies in Southwest Asia and North Africa, and the United States has been accused of supporting dictatorships contrary to its stated democratic principles. The 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine was the beginning of a policy of American democracy promotion in the Middle East and North Africa, leading, for example, to American intervention on behalf of the democratically elected government in the 1958 Lebanon crisis.

Current state Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the U.S. war in Afghanistan and Iraq War represented a significant turning point for the United States' shift in foreign policy in the Muslim world. Although protests against the Iraq War in particular widely criticized American intervention as a form of neocolonialism, American political rhetoric during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars centered on the purpose of the wars being to bring democratization in the region, as the invasions of those countries were partly for purposes of organizing democratic governments.Pratt, N. (2007),"Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Arab World": London: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Opponents of American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq have, however, criticized that democracy cannot be imposed from outside. The two countries have since had relatively successful elections, Afghanistan only until 2021, but have also experienced serious security and development problems.

Some believe that democracy can be established "only through force" and the help of the United States. Writers such as Michele Dunne, when writing for the Carnegie Paper concurs with the rhetoric of the late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin (at that time, referring to peace and terrorism) that the foreign policy position of the US should be to 'pursue peace as though there were no democratization, and pursue democratization as though there were no peace. In other words, the U.S. government should pursue reform and democratization as policy goals in the first instance without worrying excessively about tradeoffs with other goals."Michele Dunne, "Integrating Democracy Promotion into U.S. Middle East Policy", Carnegie Paper No. 50, October 2004. p. 8, The U.S. pressure behind the calling of the 2006 Palestinian legislative election backfired, resulting in the democratically sound victory of Hamas, rather than the US-supported Fatah. Drawing upon the ideas of Middle East scholar Nicola Pratt it can be argued that:

…the outcome of democratization efforts is [in reality]…contingent upon the degree to which actors' chosen strategies contribute to either reproducing or challenging the relations of power between civil society and the state.Pratt, N (May 2004) "Bringing politics back in: examining the link between globalization and democratization" Review of International Political Economy 11:2, p 331,

However, recent academic critics have characterized intervention in the Middle East as a means towards engendering democracy a failure. The 2011 study Costs of War from Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies concluded that democracy promotion has been flawed from the beginning in both Iraq and Afghanistan, with corruption rampant in both countries as the United States prepares to withdraw many of its combat troops. On a scale of corruption established by Transparency International, Iraq and Afghanistan are two of the worst-ranked countries in the world, surpassed in corruption by only Myanmar and Somalia. Despite high corruption, Iraq was the third most democratic country in the Middle East and North Africa in 2024.

There are a number of pro-democracy movements in the Middle East. A prominent figure in this movement is Saad Eddin Ibrahim who advocates and campaigns for democracy in Egypt and the wider region, working with the Ibn Khaldun Centre for Development Studies and serving on the Board of Advisors for the Project on Middle East Democracy.

When asked about his thoughts regarding the current state of democracy in the region he said:

The Middle East Forum, a think tank based in Philadelphia, recently published their table for measurement of democracy within Middle Eastern states. Their contention is that little has changed, post-September 11, 2001, and if anything the "war on terror" has enabled many regimes to stifle democratic progress. The results showed very little progress from 1999 to 2005. The report even states that this pattern may be counter-productive to US interests, with Islamism being the only viable opposition to regimes in many Middle Eastern countries. As an additional measure of US attitudes towards the issue of Middle Eastern democratization, on 14 December 2006, the US Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice stated that democracy in the Middle East was "non-negotiable."

Middle East scholar Louise Fawcett notes how the United Nations Development Programme's Arab Human Development Report 2002, drafted by Western-educated Arab intellectuals, is modelled "on universal democratic principles."Fawcett, L. (2005) International Relations in the Middle East Gosport: Oxford University Press p. 123 In addition, Fawcett argues that "Constitutional democracy is viewed not only as an intrinsic good by the putative globalisers who drafted this Report; it is also an instrumental necessity if the region is to stop stagnating and begin to catch up with the rest of the world."Fawcett, L(2005) International Relations in the Middle East Gosport: Oxford University Press p. 123

The level of democratic process varies widely from country to country. A few countries, such as Saudi Arabia, do not claim to be democracies; however, most of the larger states claim to be democracies, although this claim is in most cases disputed.

Measures of democracy

There are several that publish and maintain democracy indices in the world, according to their own various definitions of the term, and rank countries according to various measures of democracy, including elections, political rights, and freedom of the press.

V-Dem Democracy indices

The table below shows how countries score on the 2026 V-Dem Democracy Indices.