Debating Arab Authoritarianism: Dynamics and Durability in Nondemocratic Regimes

By Oliver Schlumberger

This volume inquires into the working mechanisms, the inner logic, and the durability of authoritarian rule in Arab countries. Written by leading American, European, and Arab experts, the collected essays explore the ongoing political dynamics of the region and show how Arab regimes retain power despite ongoing transformations on regional, national, and international levels and in societal, political, and economic spheres.
The findings of this book strongly suggest that democratization remains off the agenda in any Arab country for the foreseeable future. Domestic political protests, international pressure toward more liberal governance, and "reform-oriented" regimes notwithstanding, Debating Arab Authoritarianism indicates that while the impetus for political change is strong, it is in the direction of an adaptation to changed circumstances and may even be a revitalization or consolidation of authoritarian rule rather than a systemic transition to democracy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Release date: Nov 20, 2007
• ISBN: 9780804779616

Book preview

e9780804779616_cover.jpg

Debating Arab Authoritarianism

Dynamics and Durability in Nondemocratic Regimes

Oliver Schlumberger

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

© 2007 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Debating Arab authoritarianism : dynamics and durability in nondemocratic regimes /

edited by Oliver Schlumberger.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

9780804779616

1. Arab countries--Politics and government--21st century. 2. Middle East--Politics and government--21st century. 3. Authoritarianism--Arab countries. 4. Authoritarianism--Middle East. 5. Democratization--Arab countries. 6. Democratization--Middle East. I. Schlumberger, Oliver.

JQ1850.A58D436 2007

321.90917’4927--dc22

2007029731

Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10/14 Minion

To Rose and Jonas

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Contributors

1 - Arab Authoritarianism

Winds of Change . . . ?

. . . or Dust of Continuity?

Interpreting the Dynamics of Authoritarianism Beyond the Democratization Paradigm

Key Lessons and Future Challenges

Part 1 - STATE-SOCIETY RELATIONS AND POLITICAL OPPOSITION

2 - Social Pacts and the Persistence of Authoritarianism in the Middle East

3 - The Management of Opposition

4 - Authoritarian Opposition and the Politics of Challenge in Egypt

5 - Islamist Inclusion and Regime Persistence

Part 2 - THE REGIMES

6 - The Ozymandias Syndrome

7 - Intraregime Dynamics, Uncertainty, and the Persistence of Authoritarianism in the Contemporary Arab World

8 - Privatization of Social Services as a Regime Strategy

9 - State Building, Liberalization From Above, and Political Legitimacy in the Sultanate of Oman

Part 3 - THE ECONOMY AND THE POLITY

10 - Linking Economic and Political Reform in the Middle East

11 - The Political Economy of Regime Maintenance in Egypt

12 - From Political To Economic Actors

Part 4 - THE INTERNATIONAL ARENA

13 - International Dimensions of Middle Eastern Authoritarianism

14 - Democracy Promotion and the Renewal of Authoritarian Rule

15 - The Longevity of the House of Saud

Reference Matter

Notes

Bibliography

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE IMPETUS FOR THIS BOOK came from a workshop I codirected with Farid El-Khazen of the American University in Beirut at the fifth Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting, organized by the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies of the European University Institute (EUI), in Montecatini Terme, Italy, in March 2004. This conference gave us the opportunity to gather Arab, American, and European scholars for a workshop to discuss the dynamics within and the durability of Arab authoritarianism. The EUI’s and Imco Brouwer’s personal support of the project, through sponsoring that workshop but also in its aftermath, is gratefully acknowledged. Initially the volume was to be coedited by the workshop directors, but Farid had other obligations that prevented him from participating further. Yet I am glad that through his efforts and work during the review process of more than 60 paper proposals for the workshop and through his ideas, he significantly influenced this volume.

After I had left Tübingen University in 2004, Dirk Messner of the German Development Institute (DIE) in Bonn made it possible for me to continue to work on the book at that institute. The DIE also readily funded language and style editing. I am grateful to Deborah Ann Rice for improving our (nonnative speakers’) English with diligence. Moreover, the organization of the manuscript, the revisions of individual chapters, and the compilation of the bibliography would have been impossible without the assistance of Nathalie Bouchez, Stephanie Portoff, Jennifer Mansey, Maria Josua, and Kevin Köhler.

Several authors had to update or rewrite their contributions because unforeseen circumstances prolonged the process more than anticipated, including health reasons that kept me away from work for almost half a year. The contributors’ constant encouragement and readiness to help and stay onboard is exceptional. I am grateful to this fine team of authors, who, despite all obstacles, still valued the book as their preferred outlet and upon whose patience I depended. Many of them not only wrote their own chapters but felt personally responsible for the outcome as a whole and generously lent their help, encouragement, and advice in many instances. Most of all, I am indebted to Holger Albrecht, who not only discussed and accompanied the project with me from the first ideas in 2002 to June 2006 but also helped several authors revise their chapters, rereview them, and discuss them. Apart from Stanford University Press and myself, Holger has the greatest share in the realization of this book. Roger Owen accompanied the project with constructive criticism up to the final stages of the manuscript, and Kate Wahl, Kirsten Oster, and Carolyn Brown of Stanford University Press were always there when help was needed during these stages and during production so that collaboration was a pleasure. Last but not least, I would not have had the energy for this project without the continuous support provided by Anni and by my parents, to whom I dedicate this book.

O. S.

January 2007

CONTRIBUTORS

Paul Aarts is senior lecturer in international relations at the Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He has published widely on Middle Eastern politics and economics. Among his recent publications is Saudi Arabia in the Balance: Political Economy, Society, Foreign Affairs (London and New York: Hurst and New York University Press, 2005/2006), coedited with Gerd Nonneman.

Holger Albrecht is assistant professor at the Institute for Political Science of the University of Tübingen, Germany. He has published articles on authoritarian regime change, political participation and opposition, civil society, and Islamist movements in the Middle East and North Africa in a number of journals and edited volumes.

Philippe Droz-Vincent is assistant professor of political science and teaches at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris. He is the author of The American Moment in the Middle East (Paris: La Découverte, 2007 [in French]) and The Middle East: Authoritarian Power, Blocked Societies (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2004 [in French]) as well as Quel avenir pour l’autoritarisme arabe? [What Future for Arab Authoritarianism ?], Revue Française de Science Politique, 54 (6), 945–979 (2004).

Steven Heydemann is associate vice president of the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, DC, and, from 2003–2007, directed the Center for Democracy and Civil Society at Georgetown University. He is the author of Authoritarianism in Syria (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999) and the editor of War, Institutions, and Social Change in the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000) and of Networks of Privilege in the Middle East: The Politics of Economic Reform Reconsidered (New York: Palgrave, 2004). He is currently working on a book about the persistence of authoritarianism in the Middle East.

Eberhard Kienle is the author of Ba‘th v. Ba‘th: The Conflict Between Syria and Iraq, 1968–1989 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1990) and A Grand Delusion: Democracy and Economic Reform in Egypt (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001) as well as the editor of several books. Professor Kienle is currently director of the Institut de Recherche et d’Études sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman (IREMAM/CNRS) in Aix-en-Provence, France.

Fred H. Lawson is Rice Professor of Government at Mills College. He is author of Constructing International Relations in the Arab World (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006) and Why Syria Goes to War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), among other studies of political economy and foreign policy in the contemporary Middle East.

Giacomo Luciani is the director of the Gulf Research Center office in Geneva and professorial lecturer in Middle Eastern studies at the Johns Hopkins University Bologna Centre. His research interests include political economy of the Middle East and North Africa and geopolitics of energy. His name is primarily associated with work on the rentier state in the Arab world. He has edited The Rentier State (New York: Croom Helm, 1987) with Hazem Beblawi; The Politics of Arab Integration (New York: Croom Helm, 1988) with Ghassan Salamé; and The Arab State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). In recent years Professor Luciani has continued to work on the concept and impact of the rentier state, in particular with respect to democratization in the Arab world.

Ellen Lust-Okar is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Yale University. She received her M.A. in Middle Eastern studies and her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan. Her book, Structuring Conflict in the Arab World: Incumbents, Opponents, and Institutions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), examines how institutions structure government-opposition relations in Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco. Other work examining authoritarian politics in the Middle East and North Africa is published in journal articles and book chapters.

Daniela Pioppi is a senior research fellow at the Mediterranean and Middle East Programme of the Italian Institute for International Affairs and lecturer in contemporary history of Egypt at the University of Rome La Sapienza. Her recent publications include Decline and Revival of an Islamic Institution: The Waq f in Contemporary Egypt (Rome : La Sapienza Orientale Ricerche, 2006 [in Italian]) and The Question of Democracy in the Arab World: States, Societies, Conflicts (Rome: Polimetrica, 2004 [in Italian]), co-edited with Federica Bicchi and Laura Guazzone.

Thomas Richter is a Ph.D. candidate at the Graduate School of Social Science of the University of Bremen and the author of Determinants of Econo mic Policy Maki ng for Micro, Small, and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Egypt (Münster, Germany: Lit, 2004 [in German]). In his thesis, Richter examines how different positions of Middle Eastern states (Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, and Jordan) in the international and regional systems have influenced the timing and scope of economic liberalization.

Mustapha Kamel Al-Say yid is professor of political science at Cairo University, and he has also taught at the American University in Cairo, at Harvard Law School, and at Colgate University. He spent a year as a visiting scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, and two months as a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Geneva and has widely published in Arabic, English, and French on civil society, processes of political change in Arab countries, and the political economy of development.

Oliver Schlumberger is a senior researcher at the German Development Institute, Bonn, Germany, and the author of Authoritarianism in the Arab World: Causes, Trends, and International Democracy Promotion (Baden-Baden, Germany: Nomos, 2007 [in German; English edition in preparation]). His research focuses on Middle Eastern politics and political economy as well as on nondemocratic regimes and democracy promotion. He obtained his Ph.D. in political science from Tübingen University, where he served as assistant professor until 2004.

Peter Sluglett has been professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Utah since 1994. He obtained his D.Phil. from Oxford University in 1976 and has written extensively on the history of the Middle East in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing principally on Iraq and Syria. He is co-author (with Marion Farouk-Sluglett) of Iraq Since 1958: From Revolution to Dictatorship, 3d ed. (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001). His latest book, Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country, an extensively revised and updated edition of Britain in Iraq 1914–1932 (London: Ithaca Press, 1976), was published by I. B. Tauris (London) in 2007.

Marc Valeri is a lecturer in political science and constitutional law at La Rochelle University (France) and holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Institut d’Études Politiques of Paris. He is the author of Le sultanat d’Oman: Une révolution en trompe-l’œil. (Paris: Karthala, 2007) and has contributed to the Études du CERI (2005) and to several international conferences on the Gulf. His current research interest is on authoritarianism and political legitimacy in Oman and the Gulf.

Eva Wegner is a postdoctoral fellow at the German Institute for International and Strategic Studies (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik) in Berlin, where she is working on the Jordanian Islamic Action Front and, comparatively, on the political inclusion of Islamist movements. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the European University Institute (Florence, Italy). On Moroccan Islamists she has contributed to the Journal of North African Studies and to the Arab Reform Bulletin.

1

ARAB AUTHORITARIANISM

Debating the Dynamics and Durability of Nondemocratic Regimes

Oliver Schlumberger

AUTHORITARIAN RULE still prevails in the Arab countries.¹ What are the working mechanisms and inner logic that contribute to its durability? Rather than asking, as Salamé (1991) did, Why . . . is the Arab world not democratic? the contributors to this volume examine how authoritarianism works in practice and how it can be grasped conceptually. These questions are especially pertinent with respect to the Arab world because it is the only world region that has not, over the past three to four decades, experienced any cases of transition from authoritarian rule (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986)² and because, arguably, many of the possible answers to Salamé’s question will be affected by how we assess current political rule in the Middle East.

Under the heading of Arab exceptionalism the puzzle set out by Salamé has preoccupied scholars for the past two decades and—with the possible exception of the Arab-Israeli conflict(s)—may well be the single most important long-term issue in Middle Eastern politics since the end of the Cold War. The mode of governance in the Arab world is of prime importance in the post-9 /11 world because of its direct relevance to international peace and security and to the relations of Western governments with their Arab counterparts. It is also relevant because of the region’s paramount importance for the global economy (world energy markets) and because of the area’s geopolitical location at the crossroads of three continents, rendering its constituent states close yet politically distant neighbors (Ayubi 1995a).

This debate on political rule in the Arab world has been characterized by widespread disagreement among scholars who hold divergent views, assess events differently from one another, and come from different schools of thought. However, one broad consensus has emerged: The Middle East finds itself amid significant political change in the 2000s. Against a background where violent conflict once again looms large, this intersection of different possible political trajectories comes at a time when political dynamics and change in most Arab countries have gained a degree of momentum in ways not seen in the recent past. The political choices made by leaders of the region and by external players and rapidly changing social, economic, and international contexts all contribute to a new dynamic. This dynamic has certainly been accelerated in the post-9/11 era, as the eyes of the world have focused more intensely on the region than before; however, what is now taking place in the region originated long before September 11, 2001.

WINDS OF CHANGE . . . ?

Three phenomena that have long been absent from the Middle Eastern scene have reappeared and seem to signal that strong winds of change are blowing throughout the Arab world: political protest, political reform, and more visible pressure for political reform exerted by external players. Together, these phenomena are giving rise to renewed expectations among both policymakers and scholars of thoroughgoing political reforms, including the transition of Arab polities to more participatory systems of governance.

First, political protesters and, in some cases, antigovernment or even antiregime opposition took to the streets in numerous countries in the region. In Lebanon mass demonstrations against the long-standing Syrian occupation were largely responsible for Syria withdrawing its troops in 2005. In Bahrain human rights activists, and women’s rights activists in particular, gained considerable ground despite repressive moves by the regime. Women also advanced in Kuwait, where they now have the vote for the first time. Moreover, a majority of deputies walked out of the Kuwaiti parliament in 2006 in protest against the government’s reluctance to reduce the number of constituencies, which would make electoral competition more fair. In the Egyptian capital people took to the streets and said enough to a quarter-century of President Mubarak’s rule. The Kifaya movement openly challenged the legitimacy of the rule of Egypt’s modern pharaoh. Regionwide civil society declarations and statements, such as those of Alexandria or Beirut (both in 2004),³ bear witness to the fact that for the first time in decades public protests have adopted a decidedly political tone. Rather than exploding into bread riots as a result of rising unemployment and increased poverty, the almost proverbial Arab street seems to have reemerged, albeit with fewer numbers, in a highly politicized fashion after having been silenced since the 1950s and 1960s, the last time the masses were mobilized during the heyday of Arab nationalism.

Second, at the same time as the emergence of new political movements from below, incumbent regimes themselves, long hesitant about the idea of political change, seem to have grasped the necessity of political reform. Numerous declarations on good governance, greater pluralism, human rights, and democratic reforms have emanated from within the region (e.g., Tunis in 2004, Sana‘a in 2004, and the Dead Sea in 2005).⁴ What is more, these initiatives from above have been accompanied by actual reforms. Thus from the new personal status code in Morocco to Saudi Arabia’s first ever local elections, from the installation of parliaments in Gulf countries such as Oman to the opening of the Egyptian presidential elections to competition, from decentralization schemes in Yemen or Jordan to discussions about the abolition of the Ba‘ath Party’s hegemonic position in Damascus, from new Jordanian laws against corruption to the gradual opening of Libya, Middle Eastern rulers have started to vie for international attention for engaging in political reform, and most of them have done so in more than one area of governance.

Third, the domestic political dynamic from above and below has been accompanied by a new emphasis on the promotion of good governance by external players. While Kant (1995 [1795]) would not have dreamt that a dozen Islamist terrorists would one day help his theorem of perpetual peace to become popular among American neoconservatives, George W. Bush’s administration in particular promised to abandon the former US strategy of supporting dictators, because this had produced only the illusion of stability. Only free countries, runs the recent discourse, would guarantee long-term peace and security. Hence promoting democracy probably figured more prominently in US and other Western countries’ policies toward the Middle East than ever before, at least rhetorically. In 2002 the United States launched a Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI),⁵ and other Western countries followed suit with their own bilateral initiatives for political reform. Yet not only did authoritarianism come to be seen as a threat to international security, but in a parallel discourse it was also identified as a major obstacle to sustainable human and economic development (Sen 1999). Therefore international organizations and multilateral donors, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, in 2004), the Group of Eight (G8, in 2004), the World Bank (in 2003), and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP, in 2000), embarked on programs that promoted better governance and reforms in the direction of political openness in the Middle East.⁶

Although this flurry of external initiatives and pressures for political reform leave the observer with the impression of a degree of concerted action by the international community hardly paralleled elsewhere, strivings for political change, including democracy promotion (direct intervention aside), have a history that goes back at least several decades. Even before the 2003 war on Iraq, more than 800 bi- and multilateral programs and projects had been implemented in the Middle East under the heading of democracy promotion (cf. Carapico 2002).

Hence pressures for political change or liberalization can be depicted neither as Western reaction to the events of 9/11 nor as a direct consequence of the military intervention by US and allied forces in Iraq. External support for improving governance has no doubt been intensified in the recent past, but processes of political liberalization have a longer history in the region (cf., e.g., Brynen et al. 1995, 1998).⁷ Prominent contemporary political dynamics, whether originating within the region or exported to it, are embedded in wider processes of political, social, and economic change that the Arab world has been undergoing in recent history. Thus they should be interpreted as part of a series of processes that set in before both the war on Iraq and recent international initiatives.

Even a casual look at the literature validates this claim. For most of the 1990s both Arab and international scholars tended to assume, in light of political liberalization, that the famous third wave (Huntington 1991) of democratization had already begun to reach the shores of the Arab world. In an optimistic turn and with understandable if somewhat premature enthusiasm, regional experts declared that the Arab world is evolving along the same broad trends and processes that have been at work elsewhere in newly democratizing societies (Ibrahim 1994, 27). Comparativists joined in and wrote of Arab countries as emergent democracies (Schmitter 2001, 104). Schmitter, in fact, answered his own question of whether it was safe for transitologists to travel to the Middle East and North Africa by asserting explicitly⁸ that political dynamics in Arab countries should be interpreted according to the democratization paradigm that has recently gained renewed popularity in policy circles.

. . . OR DUST OF CONTINUITY?

All the dynamics described so far and the corresponding optimist literature of the 1990s, however, stand in sharp contrast to the empirical reality of what is now routinely addressed as the Arab world’s democracy deficit or governance gap (Richards 2005; UNDP 2002, 2005; World Bank 2003). The startling fact is that in the Middle East none of the mentioned initiatives and dynamics have produced a structurally enhanced quality of governance (in the sense of guaranteed basic freedoms that Arab citizens enjoy), let alone any instances of democratization. In this respect the world’s most unfree region is indeed unique.

A case in point is Egypt. When the country was under close US scrutiny during the national and presidential elections in 2005, the regime used a strategy of making minimum gestures toward political reform. A constitutional amendment allowed alternative candidates to run for the presidency—without, however, opening up the system for meaningful political contestation. Although Freedom House (2006) rated Egypt less repressive in 2005 than in 2004, early 2006 saw the regime brutally cracking down on the newly organized opposition forces, including hundreds of arrests and massive human rights violations not only against protesters in the streets but also against the country’s independent-minded judges. Despite discussions, the state of emergency was once again not lifted, and chances to strengthen the rule of law were thus further deferred. Simultaneously, external pressure for political reform was reduced in 2006, most notably through the US administration’s giving up on the ‘liberty doctrine’ (Hamzawy and McFaul 2006). In short, the regime left no doubt of its determination to cling to power as firmly as in the past. Recent events thus confirm a pattern of showcase reforms that are most often neutralized by the effects of deliberalizing measures taken simultaneously or shortly afterward. This pattern is well known: Even though the regime might appear in the guise of democracy (Kassem 1999), this is a grand delusion (Kienle 2001), geared toward greater external legitimacy rather than at allowing political contestation at home.

To be sure, this is just a snapshot that could be taken in nearly every Arab country from Morocco to Oman. The crux is that the centers of political power in all Arab countries have remained firmly closed off from contestation—one of the two necessary attributes of democracy according to Dahl’s seminal study (1971).⁹ Obviously, democracy is not high on any Arab regime’s agenda. And while in comparative politics the concepts, hypotheses and assumptions that Schmitter (2001) mentions (see note 2) became almost paradigmatic in a Kuhnian sense (Kuhn 1962) during the 1990s, Thomas Carothers (2002) declared the end of this very paradigm.

As the 1990s came to a close, many scholars realized that political liberalization in the Arab world is easily reversible and has in fact often been followed by deliberalization (Kienle 1998c). A growing number of area specialists thus joined in Heydemann’s (2002, 62) call for Middle Eastern studies to enter a post-democratization era (cf. also Schlumberger 2000a). With the transitologist approach having hardly furthered the understanding of Middle Eastern political dynamics, scholars increasingly asserted that Arab regimes are liberalized autocracies (Brumberg 2002), yet they persist (Brownlee 2002a). Consequently, a more recent strand of literature turned the Salamé puzzle (why no democracy) on its head. Arguably, this more recent literature might be motivated primarily by a certain pessimism, at times even exhibiting overtones of frustration. This time, the question was, Why is authoritarianism so exceptionally successful in that region? (cf., e.g., Bellin 2004; Posusney and Penner Angrist 2005). Yet the frequency of pejorative terms such as gap, deficit, and the like, even in the more recent literature, reveals that one thing has by and large remained constant: the popularity of an implicit frame of reference that analyzes Middle Eastern politics against the normative background of how the free world would like to see Arab countries ruled. Apparently, the predominance of the democratization paradigm is particularly hard to break and continues to preoccupy many analyses of Middle Eastern politics.

INTERPRETING THE DYNAMICS OF AUTHORITARIANISM BEYOND THE DEMOCRATIZATION PARADIGM

The contributors to this book attempt to push the debate further by transcending the optimist-pessimist divide of these two strands of literature. They do not ask when democratization might ultimately occur or what the Middle East lacks. Rather, the research interest here is on how political rule in Arab countries is effectuated, organized, and executed.

The two key questions guiding the following chapters pertain to the title of the present collection, namely, the durability of Arab regimes on the one hand and the political dynamics within the Arab world on the other. In brief, the two questions could thus be captured as (1) what accounts for the durability of nondemocratic rule in Arab countries? and (2) what are the dynamics that characterize political developments in Arab polities and how can they be grasped analytically?

Both questions interrelate in many instances and in a variety of different ways. The contributors struggle to find explanations that can grasp underlying political dynamics beyond the rather narrow focus of (reversible) political liberalization and deliberalization processes. They focus on elements that they consider central to an understanding of the working mechanisms and functional logic of nondemocracies as they prevail in the Arab world. The aim is thus neither to detect signs (however faint) of democratization or its antecedents nor, vice versa, to prove the authoritarian nature of political rule in the Arab countries. Rather, the contributions explore how Arab regimes manage to remain in power despite grand transformation on all three levels (national, regional, and international) and in the societal, political, and economic sphere while at the same time looking at how such changes shape political dynamics.

Framing the Research: Understanding Arab Authoritarianism Through Multiple Lenses

This book is distinctive in several respects, some of which are linked to the perspective its contributors share on the question of how to interpret political dynamics in the Arab world. The contributors agree about the state of affairs insofar as they view current forms of political rule in Arab countries as unmistakably authoritarian. Thus, in examining ongoing political dynamics, we do not speak of processes of democratic transition.

To be sure, significant differences do exist between Arab polities, as the following discussions of such diverse cases as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Oman and Syria, or Tunisia and Bahrain confirm.¹⁰ Yet Arab polities are homogeneous insofar as they are all characterized by an authoritarian mode of governance.¹¹ This durable authoritarianism has been taken as the dependent variable, or explanandum . Therefore the contributors not only search for conceptualization of Arab politics outside the democratization scenario but also refrain from adopting frameworks of reference that explicitly or implicitly ask what democracy deficit (Posusney 2005) Arab polities display compared to democracies .¹² Although the contributors are interested in possible future developments and trajectories and discuss them, they do not primarily focus their attention on seeking to identify change agents, prospects for democracy (Herb 2005b), or challenges to authoritarian rule (Posusney and Penner Angrist 2005) that might ultimately open up the path to democratization. Rather, in an effort to recalibrate the research agenda to what actually happens (instead of what we might wish to happen), we aim at a better understanding of how authoritarian rule actually works. For this purpose the frame of reference should be shifted from democratic to authoritarian rule in order for research on Middle Eastern politics to reach a true postdemocratization stage.

Second, a lively debate on the causes of authoritarian resilience in the Arab world has emerged. A multitude of possible causes have been claimed to account for that phenomenon, and most scholars agree today that no single explanation can provide a full answer to this question. But while agreeing on this, we are still required to think in more differentiated shades than just black and white. Therefore the authors were not pressured to embrace a theoretical framework that would require them to look at only the political systems level or structures, or to prioritize agency systematically over structural conditions. Nor were they asked to restrict their inquiries to the macro-, micro-, or mesolevels of analysis. Some of the contributions tend toward the macrolevel, some toward the microlevel.

The reason for doing so is that, in the analysis of a phenomenon as multifaceted (on a phenomenological level) and multicausal (on an analytical level) as the durability of authoritarianism in a certain world region, no single theoretical model can provide fully satisfactory answers. Rather, the utility and adequacy of applied approaches can be judged against the backdrop of the topic dealt with and the research agenda pursued. For instance, in his analysis of US-Saudi relations, Aarts (Chapter 15) identifies longer-term structural variables as more important than the strategic behavior of individual actors. By contrast, in Wegner’s empirical study of the Moroccan Islamist opposition (Chapter 5), the focus on actors and their interests, preferences, and strategies comes naturally.

But there is a third reason for leaving the theoretical framework relatively open: Inquiring into the working mechanisms of authoritarian rule independently of whether we would like to see such regimes democratize is a relatively recent topic. Apart from a valuable collection of revised essays that originally appeared separately in journals such as Comparative Politics (e.g., Bellin 2004; Langohr 2004; Lust-Okar 2004) or the Middle East Journal (e.g., Herb 2004) and that were presented by Posusney and Penner Angrist (2005), only a handful of articles at the time of this writing aimed to explain the durable yet dynamic form of Arab authoritarianism (e.g., Albrecht and Schlumberger 2004; Camau 2005; Ghalioun 2004; Hinnebusch 2006). This implies that there are no ready-made solutions to the puzzle (s) and that the discussion is still at a stage where no mainstream or academic consensus has emerged. Therefore in this volume the authors explicitly aim to encourage further debate on Arab authoritarianism—a goal that implies, in turn, explicitly allowing for diverging viewpoints and approaches. Not only do the contributors look at different aspects in their examination of what might enhance our understanding of the logic, dynamic, and durability of nondemocratic rule in the Arab world, but also they do so by consciously adopting different theoretical approaches.

Our underlying assumption is that for the present stage of the debate it would be inadequate to press contributors to adhere to an artificially unified theoretical scheme, pretending that we had some single best explanatory solution for the dynamics of Arab authoritarianism. Instead, a range of thematic clusters has been suggested as crucial in accounting for and explaining Arab authoritarianism, and each of these might require its own approaches.

Structure of the Book

This book is structured along four key dimensions that might be considered most relevant for understanding Arab authoritarianism. However, a further two popular arguments are not covered here. First, it has been argued that the high repressive capacities of Arab states account for their longevity (Bellin 2004). But although repression, as Sluglett (Chapter 6) observes, may help autocrats survive critical moments, it does not in itself enable them to hold power indefinitely, let alone ensure regime stability (cf. also Camau 2005, 41–44; Schlumberger 2004). Therefore in this volume we chiefly look at factors beyond coercion (Dawisha and Zartman 1988) to capture the ongoing political dynamics.

Second, the culturalist or essentialist literature claims that Islam as a religion, or some specific aspect of Islamic or Arab culture, is incompatible with democracy and thus responsible for preventing the emergence of democracy in the Muslim world (or in the Middle East). Critiques of such approaches are sufficiently common and persuasive that they do not need to be repeated here.¹³ However, this still leaves us with at least four other areas that may play a significant role in explaining the durability and dynamics of Middle Eastern authoritarianism. These thematic clusters are taken here as possible independent variables, and each theme forms one part of the present volume.

Because it is difficult to impossible to measure the relative weight or impact of these thematic clusters and because each cluster probably contains important elements that will assist in a better understanding of authoritarian rule, the four themes deserve further examination. Therefore each part of this book starts with an opening chapter that exemplifies the respective dimension from a bird’s-eye perspective, presenting conceptual or comparative analyses that look across the region as a whole.¹⁴ One of the remaining chapters in each part then takes an in-depth look at individual cases and presents a country study,¹⁵ and the other remaining chapters in each part highlight a particular aspect relevant to the issue area under discussion.¹⁶

Part 1 focuses on state-society relations and political opposition. The patterns of interaction between regimes and society at large and between regimes and the political opposition (legal as in parties or illegal as in protest or resistance movements) determine the formal and informal institutional arrangements of state-society relations and the organization of the larger political system (Heydemann 1999; Lust-Okar 2005). Therefore the interactions affect the life expectancy of such arrangements. Furthermore, they have an impact on which social coalitions will be formed and will come to dominate and what distributive networks will prevail (Heydemann 2004 ; Hinnebusch 2006).

In Part 1 Steven Heydemann explains how what he calls national-populist social pacts have structured state-society relations in the Middle East and account for the high flexibility and adaptability of Arab regimes, a trait crucial to regime survival even though new challenges to these specific pacts may arise. Ellen Lust-Okar shows how formal structures of contestation shape both formal and informal interactions between regime and opposition. Depending on the structures of contestation, regimes will try to either fragment or strengthen certain opposition parties and movements to remain in power. Two empirical case studies of opposition in Egypt and Morocco, by Holger Albrecht and Eva Wegner, respectively, make the general claim that oppositional groups and parties in authoritarian regimes, although inconvenient to rulers at certain times, also contribute to maintaining the balance of social forces and thereby help to maintain the political status quo. If they are not outlawed, opposition groups may participate in the electoral game, but they have to resign themselves to the fact that it is the regime alone that makes the rules of the game.

Part 2 inquires, from various angles, into the features of the political regimes themselves. This thematic cluster therefore deals with the political architecture (UNDP 2005) that organizes the polity, with the constellation of forces within regimes and with the regimes’ specific strategies of power maintenance. Arab regimes entertain high repressive capacities and at the same time enjoy high degrees of nondemocratic legitimacy generated through symbol politics, elaborate patronage systems, and control of the rules of the political and economic games, all instrumental in keeping incumbent elites in power (Bill and Springborg 1994; Richards and Waterbury 1996).

It is in this arena that the question of regime stability enters. Peter Sluglett radically questions the Arab cases, highlighting the fact that stability is not synonymous with durability. The absence of social compacts and an increasingly narrow social base, he claims, quoting Joel Midgal (1988), make Middle Eastern regimes inherently weak. Fred Lawson models constellations of key regime actors (the military, state officials, and private property holders) in four cases (Bahrain, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen) to explain variations in the scope of political liberalization. Whereas Lawson highlights regime actors, Daniela Pioppi looks at regime strategies for survival in times of multiple crises. She demonstrates empirically how the Egyptian regime benefited from outsourcing welfare services to reprivatized religious foundations (awqaf ), thereby alleviating budgetary pressures and simultaneously creating new avenues for clientelist purposes. Marc Valeri presents a study of political legitimacy based on field research in Oman. After seizing power in 1970, the sultan transformed traditional loyalties and redirected them toward himself, creating a new system of cultural references and new modern economic and political institutions (including an elected parliament) —a gigantic program to enhance the ruler’s legitimacy and thereby preserve authoritarian rule.

Part 3 focuses on the economic context of Arab authoritarianism. Most notably, the region’s abundant exportable mineral resources and resulting rentier structures enable many regimes to buy off dissent by supporting large patronage networks and sustaining huge repressive capacities (e.g., Beblawi and Luciani 1987; Ross 2001; World Bank 2003). But the contributors to this part also focus on less well known aspects of Arab political economy, such as domestic allocation patterns and the changing balance of the social forces identified as pillars of the regime or emergent classes.

The part begins with