60 Philosophical Frames
proposes, is an impossible mission because of the very nature of capital-
ism itself. He asks:
What if we cannot simply supplement instrumental Reason
with communicational Reason, since the primacy of instru-
mental Reason is constitutive of modern Reason as such?^17owever, the issue is still the process of democratization itself. The H
above-mentioned measures suggested by Habermas are designed to rec-
tify the corruption of the public sphere—and, ultimately, to deal with the
crisis of democracy—in postmodern advanced industrial societies. The
big misunder standing likely to arise here is to treat those tactics as if they
were necessary and sufficient measures for democratization in the non-
Western countries of the world, i.e., for the transition from authoritarian
and despotic rule to democratic elective rule under the rule of law and the
alternation of power.
The question of means: How to dislodge authoritarian regimes?
Is the political influence of the public sphere, as designed in the above
three models, enough to dislodge authoritarian regimes in the countries
of the South? To begin with, it is worth noting the correlation between
the reluctant and partial democratization measures taken in a number of
Arab countries and the social rebellions occurring in all these countries.
The urban turmoil of January 1977 in Egypt was greatly instrumental in
the political liberalization measures, including the recognition of political
“forums.” The 1988 rebellion of youth (the “hitistes”) in Algerian cities was
the prime factor that brought about the collapse of the FLN’s one-party
rule, imposed the recognition of the media and political groups and led to
the organization of free elections, that were later interrupted by the army
as they gave a substantial lead to the Islamists. The liberalization measures
taken by King Hassan II of Morocco in the second half of the 1990s—
the drafting of a new Constitution, the acceptance of the principle of the
alternation of power which finally brought the main opposition party—
the Socialist Union of Popular Forces—to form a government, the release
of political prisoners; all those measures were taken under the pressure of