If only two important features may be singled out to characterize the “New World Order,” they are the collapse of communism and the globalization of the demand for democracy. We have thus reached “the end of history.” Western democracy can travel across the globe without any entry visa and is welcome wherever it lands.

Contrary to this “endism,” the view adopted in this short paper assumes that the democratization process in the Arab countries will be both long and costly. The contagion effect might transform governments' piecemeal concessions into substantive democracy, but this is less probable than a situation of democratic breakdowns and incumbent governments presenting formal pluralism and controlled multipar-tism as the real thing. The literature's overoptimism reflects the nascent state of research on Arab democratization. In fact, multiple published volumes bringing together worldwide and sophisticated research on democratization (Diamund, et al. 1988, 1989; O'Donnel & Schmitter 1986) do not analyze a single Arab case, or explain such absence.