ABSTRACT
Those European-controlled Arab states which became independent before or just after the Second World War followed much the same political trajectory as in the rest of Africa and Asia. For some this involved a passage from a brief period of competitive elections to several decades of one-party rule, followed, in some cases at least, by the revival of a more open political system in the 1980s and 1990s. For others this meant a slightly different path, missing out either the initial multi-party stage, like Tunisia, Algeria and the former South Yemen, or the single-party stage, like Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco. Sudan pursued yet another variation, involving three distinct passages from multi-party to military government. Elsewhere, the Gulf states, although subject to large amounts of British influence, were generally unaffected by the same pressures and maintained a pattern of direct family rule, with the single exception of Kuwait where there was an elected assembly, but no formal parties, from 1961 to 1976, 1981 to 1986 and 1992 to the present. As for the three non-Arab states, only Israel maintained an uninterrupted period of democratic practice, at least as far as its Jewish citizens were concerned. The Turkish system of competitive elections introduced in 1946 was three times interrupted by the military interventions of 1960, 1971 and 1980, while Iran experienced only brief moments of electoral democracy in the 1940s and a more restricted Islamic version from 1980 onwards.
