PERSPECTIVE ON THE MIDDLE EAST : Door Is Open for Arab Democracy : Palestinians should show the world how they might synthesize traditional and Western forms of government.

As the prospects for an autonomous Palestine increase, an unspoken fear remains at the core of Western and Israeli concerns: Would a sovereign Palestine prove as undemocratic as other Arab regimes?

The Palestinians have never set forth their vision of the internal structure of a Palestinian state. As the intifada has turned to internecine strife, the need to articulate such an image of self-governance becomes all the more pressing. By setting forth their vision of a democratic state now, Palestinians could allay fears that theirs might become yet another Middle Eastern autocracy.

Palestinians are quick to assert that Israel and the West are not always good examples of democracy. In Israel, as one Palestinian recently told me, only a small clique makes the crucial decisions; whoever has the money or the key votes gets what he wants. Peace, said another, will be achieved only when the Israelis have a really strong leader, someone who is not held captive by political parties but understands popular sentiment and is ready to act on it.

These comments highlight some of the different approaches to democracy of Arabs and Westerners. Democracy is not, of course, a single thing, and Western nations may be properly criticized for failing at times to achieve universal suffrage, legal equality or an unfettered press. But such comments also miss the one ingredient that is absolutely indispensable to any form of democracy--that it be characterized by a government of limited powers.

The idea that too much power should not reside in too few hands for too much time is actually well-inscribed in Arab political culture. Many Arab tribes had elaborate mechanisms for rotating power, and urban leadership was frequently divided among a number of religious, marketplace and political authorities. The fact that pretenders are automatically legitimized if they succeed in acquiring power forces existing power-holders to pay attention to public opinion; the fact that bribery is not seen as corruption--itself conceived as the failure to share one’s gain with others--means that alternative avenues can always be sought among those who exercise daily governance.

But as valuable as these mechanisms may be for dispersing power, they do not place long-lasting, impersonal limits on its exercise; they merely encourage an occasional reshuffling of the same cards. “What is missing,” said one Arab intellectual, “is a structure that will counterbalance the personal power of leaders who are backed by state control of the media and the army.”

Palestinians now have the chance to break this pattern by institutionalizing any of a number of distinctively Arab practices. They may choose to build on the contractual element in Arab thought by elaborating the traditional act of allegiance into a structure that allows for no-confidence votes or electoral recall; they may build on the traditional role of the mediator as an institution for binding administrative arbitration; they may limit the government’s control of individual movement and association by revitalizing the roles of specialized religious and legal figures who would enforce newly formulated compacts based on international human-rights conventions.

It is not, of course, for others to tell the Palestinians how to construct their own government of limited powers. But it is time for the Palestinians to tell the world how they intend to do so. Through a foundational document and shadow government they could demonstrate their approach to democratic ideals and lead the way for other Arab nations to enumerate the limited powers of their own governments.

It is said that no two democracies have ever gone to war with one another. By unveiling their own form of democracy now, the Palestinians could not only protect their own people against domestic tyranny but would also give effect to a structure of democracy in whose peaceful course all peoples would repose confidence.