“Rhetoric and Democracy in the Arab World”

Nicol Hall, Conference Room 222, Beirut campus

Abstract:
This paper attempts to empirically test the relationship between the type of rhetoric dominant in the Arab world on the one hand and the notion of democracy on the other. It takes as a case study three sets of editorials written directly in the aftermath of the toppling of Egypt’s Mubarak on February 11, 2011: one from the politically controlled and autocratic Republic of Syria, another from the more open, cosmopolitan, and arguably more democratic Republic of Lebanon, and the third from the USA as an example of the most functional democracy of the three.