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The central message of this book is that change leading to empowerment must start at the highest level of government decision-making. Empowerment requires resisting authoritarianism and achieving a balanced relationship between citizens and the ruling power. Regimes' obsession with military security has come at the expense of legitimacy, public services, and wider human security. This has led to the deterioration of already inadequate living standards and social conditions. For some regimes this policy failure has led to state failure. Yet democratization waves are spreading through the region. Though the core tenets of democracy are the same everywhere, the Arab world must develop its own mode of democratic governance based on the primacy of social justice. In an institution-based society, everyone must adhere to practices of transparent decision-making, with oversight and accountability at all levels. While the Arab Spring marked a start toward democratization, the path remains difficult. This book proposes that democratization begin with establishing a stable and peaceful means for transferring power in a state ruled by law and with codified, objective standards for decision-making. Toward this end, states must pursue transparency, balanced media reporting, effective conflict management, and support for communal and individual identity.

The events of the Arab Spring starkly illustrate that average economic growth rates do not constitute development and can even be misleading. Development is defined here as empowerment, starting with restructuring the top of the political system, the equivalent of the body's central nervous system. Empowerment and the primacy of inclusionary decision-making are antithetical to the present neo-patrimonial mode of governance. They affirm the primacy of coordination and partnership in managing the affairs of state and society, in contrast to a control-based model that relies on coercion and compulsion. Empowerment is also at the core of the emerging democratic transition. The methodology adopted here is based on a medical analogy: get the diagnosis and the prescription right-major restructuring-then initiate the change by overcoming the chronic adaptation deficit at the top of the regime. This analogy forms the basis of the book's analytical framework.