Nevertheless, a quick point of illustration on the tension between sequencing political and economic reform. I continue to feel that American and European "democratization" support in MENA has things all backward - absolutely meaningless without economic change. And that economic change must be domestic market liberalisation, which means undoing the dead hand of the rent-seeking elite, whether they go by the name Al Saud, Thani or Aloui, etc. It may be Bahrain is taking some right steps, or perhaps not. Certainly they have greater interest than say fat-n-happy Dubai in more genuine reform.

As a general matter, without economic liberalisation, democratisation in most of the MENA region - leaving aside fuzzy happy talk about stakeholders, 'civil society' (what that really means I have no bloody fucking clue), and other such incoherent blather - means simply new routes to rent seeking - either as petty bureaucrats extracting fees and bribes (no surprise in Morocco for instance a good portion of public uni degree holders with utterly useless educations go 'on strike' before parliament trying to get appointments as petty bureaucrats) or larger scale rent-seekers. I would hate to see "democratisation" go the way of "secularism" in the region, spoiled by the abusive and meaningless fetishisation of the concept.