ARID/ARABLE? HOW CLIMATE & GEOGRAPHY INFLUENCED A POLITICAL DIVERGENCE IN EUROPE AND THE MENA REGION

A number of theories exist to explain the divergent development of democracy in Europe and authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This preliminary manuscript puts forth a new explanation for this divergence: the abundance of arable land in Europe, and the paucity of arable land in the MENA region. Arable land in Europe facilitated widespread but dense urban settlement pattern during the medieval era that was unmatched in the MENA region. Consequently, central authorities across Europe were confronted with a very different governance challenge than rulers of the MENA region—managing a large number of geographically proximate towns and cities during the state-building process. Comparatively weak European monarchs were forced to constantly negotiate with their numerous towns and cities in order to produce the necessary taxes to build and sustain the state. Such negotiations took place in what are now known as parliaments—i.e., the chief democratic political institution found in most European states. Thus, there exists a long but direct connection between Europe’s arability, its early explosive urbanization, and the continents widespread use of the parliament as a governing apparatus. Central authorities in the MENA region did not face similar challenges because the region’s limited urbanization pattern (from lack of arable land) meant that its urban centers (i.e., its local political authorities) were both more geographically spread out, and substantially fewer in number. Thus, no serious attempt was ever made to convene a parliament-like national assembly akin to the many proto-parliaments that developed in Middle Ages’ Europe. While European central rulers were constantly negotiating with their urban settlements in order to bring their resources further into the state-building process, central rulers of the MENA region were more likely to pursue a strategy of segmentation—i.e., keeping distant urban centers apart from one another in order to limit challenges to their authority. The presence of democratic parliaments in Europe today is at least partial result of the continents relative arability, while the absence of parliaments across most of the MENA region is at least a partial result of the relative dearth of arable land across the region.