The Modern Middle East - A Political History Since World War I (Third Edition)

by Mehran Kamrava

  Perhaps the most important feature distinguishing inclusionary from exclusionary states is the former’s conscious and ceaseless efforts to manipulate cultural norms and symbols for political purposes. Of all three nondemocratic state types in the Middle East, inclusionary states are the most actively involved in crafting and influencing cultural values that support their political agendas. They often reinvent tradition. Sultanistic states, by and large, do not craft cultural norms but selectively magnify existing ones and manipulate them for political purposes. Exclusionary states deal with culture at best only implicitly, playing by its rules and defying them only at great cost. The overt and deliberate manipulation of cultural values makes inclusionary states and most sultanistic regimes the least susceptible to liberalization pressures.

  While unable to ignore the forces of culture completely, exclusionary states relate to prevailing cultural values only implicitly, capitalizing on such pervasive phenomena as personalism, patrimonialism, lack of formality, and familism.54 Except for Atatürk and Iran’s two twentieth-century monarchs, Reza and Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, no exclusionary leaders in the contemporary Middle East have tried systematically to alter the cultural basis of social relations or politics. Atatürk succeeded by coercion; Muhammad Reza Shah was overwhelmed by culturally rooted forces. Other exclusionary states have had at best an uneasy relationship with the entrenched cultural forces of their country. The Algerian state’s neglect of “Arabist” students (giving preference to francophone ones) led to increasing political tensions beginning in the 1980s.55 Sadat’s refusal to acknowledge the pervasive social influence and powers of Islamists cost him his life. Hafiz and Bashar Al-Assad both relied extensively on an inner circle of fellow Alawis to guard against the ambitions of the predominantly Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.

  In contrast, inclusionary states set out to create the individual and the whole society anew. The state actively promulgates its self-ascribed mission of safeguarding the nation’s revolutionary heritage, even if that heritage has to be constructed overnight. Ideological indoctrination and cultural transformation take place through the theater of the street, where the individual sheds his previous identity and assumes a new, corporate one in common with his fellow countrymen. Culture becomes political, politics becomes collective, and the individual and his society are transformed. Qaddafi’s nationwide experiments, designed to create a new Libya, have already been alluded to. In Iran, the Islamic Republic initially sought to create an ideal homo Islamicus from the state’s all-encompassing program of religious and political transformation.56 As with so many other phenomena related to culture, the degree or success of this transformation is impossible to measure. But it does take place, with some apparent success.

  Incorporated into the political process, social groups are left with little autonomy to pursue agendas of their own, including pressing for liberalization measures. What appear as spontaneous eruptions of public support are often highly choreographed demonstrations organized by the state. “People power” may be glorified, but power emanates down from the leader and not up from the masses.57 The state placates those who demand political participation with what looks like street democracy. Those who are not sold on the ideals of the regime are repressed. The manipulation of culture gives inclusionary states an added advantage over exclusionary states in terms of political stability. By actively promoting subjective, ideological, and emotional links with society in addition to the institutional bonds that already exist, inclusionary states are better able to deflect tension and to resist the emergence of pressures from within society. After all, rebellion is more easily justified against such modern-day pharaohs as Sadat and Mubarak than against imams, national saviors, and leaders.

  SULTANISTIC REGIMES

  Somewhere between exclusionary and inclusionary systems are the Middle Eastern sultanistic states. Invariably authoritarian, these monarchies rely on a combination of coercive and administrative institutions (e.g., the National Guard and the bureaucracy) to maintain power. Also key to the political formula is the traditional legitimacy of the ruling family, which is deeply rooted in the history, cultural heritage, and lore of the country. Not only does this traditional legitimacy distinguish sultanistic states from exclusionary and inclusionary ones, but, in the Middle East, its resonance and strength differentiate one group of monarchies from another. For the oil monarchies of the Arabian peninsula—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE—historical tradition is an important source of legitimacy. This legitimacy is further reinforced by the state’s access to vast oil riches and the resulting royal benevolence toward society. Consequently, with the exception of Bahrain, where sectarian fissures run deep, the state has by and large been able to placate societal demands for major political changes. Nevertheless, in both Bahrain and Kuwait, for quite different reasons, there have been periodic demands for and episodes of political participation, especially in times of acute economic stress (in the 1930s and 1980s) or political crisis (after the Iraqi invasion of 1990–91).58 Nevertheless, in neither place has free and meaningful political participation been sustained over a long period, and authoritarian policies have been reinstated soon after the end of the crisis. In Bahrain, in fact, in response to popular protests stemming from the Arab Spring, state repression against the country’s Shiʿa majority reached unprecedented levels in 2011 and 2012.

  The two remaining Middle Eastern monarchies, outside the Arabian peninsula, Jordan and Morocco, have neither the vast amount of petrodollars nor the long historical tradition of the oil monarchies. While Jordan and Morocco both rely on rentier economies, their access to rent revenues is not through oil but mostly through worker remittances from abroad for Jordan and the exploitation of mineral resources for Morocco.59 Compounding the economic difficulties of relatively small rent revenues are the lack of a historically resonant tradition of monarchy, especially in Jordan, and the problems of crafting a popular lore of monarchical legitimacy based on local tradition and heritage. This problem is not as acute in Morocco, where, as we saw in chapter 2, dynastic rulers from as far back as the sixteenth century justified their position on grounds of being descendants of the Prophet (sherifs).60 To this day, both the Moroccan and the Jordanian monarchs claim to be sherifs, and the king of Morocco has the additional title of Commander of the Faithful (Amir al-Muʾminin).61 Still, institutionally, both monarchies appear to be on more tenuous ground than their counterparts in the Arabian peninsula. Since the 1960s, Moroccan politics has been characterized by serious internal challenges to the state, in the form of assassination and coup attempts against the king (in 1971 and 1972) and occasional riots and mass unrest (in 1973, 1981, 1984, 1989, and 1991). In an effort to co-opt the opposition, in 1997 King Hassan started alternance, bringing opposition parties into the establishment and starting a controlled process of opening up the political system. The pace of reforms continued with his passing in 1999 and during the reign of his son and successor, Mohammed VI, in the 2000s, significantly on the king’s own accord rather than being imposed on him from the outside. This prompted two scholars to comment in 2008 that “the change that has taken place in Morocco is real.”62 With Mohammed VI as a “model of the authoritarian modernizer,” throughout 2011 and 2012 Morocco remained relatively quiet as revolutions brewed in a number of neighboring countries.63

  In Jordan, meanwhile, prior to the Arab Spring the foundations of the monarchy were threatened time and again: in 1955 by widespread demonstrations; in 1956 and 1968 by attempted coups; in 1958 by the overthrow of King Hussein’s cousin, King Faisal, in Iraq; in 1970 by the Black September civil war; throughout the 1970s by tensions with the PLO; in the late 1980s by extensive “bread riots”; and in the early 2000s by the rise of religious radicals. The unrest of the late 1980s ushered in a limited degree of political opening, meant to support contentious economic policies rather than to reform monarchical autocracy. Through the December 1990 National Charter, the government gave the opposition a limited degr
ee of elbow room in return for recognizing the legitimacy of the monarchy. Throughout the 2000s, however, mounting economic difficulties and increased political discontent led to increased narrowing of political space.64 Not surprisingly, despite initial quiet, the reverberations of the Arab uprisings eventually reached the Hashemite Kingdom in 2012, when economic austerity measures sparked antigovernment, and at times even antiregime, protests with unprecedented frequency.

  Apart from obvious economic differences, two important dynamics account for the different levels of political stability in the oil monarchies versus Jordan and Morocco. The first dynamic is historical, dealing with the radically different patterns of state formation in the two groups of monarchies. The second dynamic, which is political, is directly linked to the first. In oil monarchies, state formation resulted in the evolution of three power sources through which the state rules: a corporate royal family, which relies on traditional authority; the civil service, through which a welfare state is maintained; and the mukhaberat and the armed forces, which ensure the security of the state against internal and external threats and are personally controlled by the royal family.

  The same three power centers also emerged in the civic myth monarchies, but with substantially different characters. Especially in Jordan, the royal family relies not on traditional authority but on an “imagined” tradition, a myth based more on the state’s reinterpretation of history than on factual heritage and reality. Also, the civil service does not act as an agent of the welfare state. It simply provides employment for the middle classes and facilitates the penetration of the mukhaberat into opposition groups. Finally, the royal family’s personal control over the armed forces is not as extensive and complete as is the case in the oil monarchies. The state, therefore, is far more sensitive and vulnerable to potential challenges from within and without. When faced with such challenges, the state’s traditional response has been either to clamp down on the opposition or to liberalize. Given the global political and economic context of the 1980s and 1990s—a time when a powerful Middle Eastern monarchy was swept away by revolution, military juntas in South America abandoned the presidential palace and returned to the barracks, East European communist states collapsed one after another, and the “wave” of democracy seemed unstoppable—the civic myth monarchies of the Middle East felt compelled to opt for liberalization as a survival strategy. Unlike the other nondemocratic states of the region, they have not had the institutional capabilities to continually resort to repression. Liberalization, limited and controlled as it may be, has become structurally necessary. For whatever reason, the Moroccan monarchy seems to have taken this lesson to heart much more than the Jordanian monarchy.

  The oil monarchies have been better equipped than the civic myth monarchies to deal with potential challenges arising from within. The historical processes of state formation in the oil monarchies have been decisive in giving them their current institutional characteristics and determining their patterns of rule. By the time independence came to the Persian Gulf states—beginning in the late 1880s in what later became Saudi Arabia but not until 1961 for Kuwait and 1971 for Qatar, Bahrain, and the UAE—most of the ruling families had already established their supremacy over the tribal areas that later became independent states.65 British support was a critical factor in transforming ruling clans into royal families. With independence came the institutionalization of the tribal chieftaincy and its simultaneous transformation into the leadership of an increasingly modern and differentiated state. Up until the 1950s and 1960s, the ruling families governed through a combination of British material and diplomatic protection, traditional, tribal legitimacy, and a reservoir of tribal recruits who could be relied upon if a domestic military challenge arose. The discovery and later sale of oil in the 1950s and 1960s changed the political equation considerably, resulting, among other things, in a steady bureaucratization of the monarchy and the development of a modern civil service. A modern armed forces was created almost overnight, providing for yet another official institution through which tribal support could be channeled and maintained. A pyramidal power structure emerged, with the royal family at the top, supported by the civil service and the armed forces.

  Key to the relative stability of the oil monarchies has been the successful cultivation of a sense of legitimacy among the larger population in general and among tribes in particular. This is not to suggest that these states enjoy unsurpassed and unchallenged legitimacy, as recent, repeated episodes of protests and acts of political opposition in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and to a lesser extent in Kuwait, demonstrate. Nevertheless, the oil monarchies have developed institutions and patterns of rule that have considerably cushioned their vulnerability against popular uprisings or other similar domestic threats. Their rule is largely considered legitimate on grounds of what Max Weber labeled traditional authority: “an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of the status of those exercising authority under them.”66 In such polities, “obedience is owed to the person of the chief who occupies the traditionally sanctioned position of authority and who is (within its sphere) bound by tradition. The obligation of obedience is a matter of personal loyalty.”67 In the oil monarchies of the Middle East, this type of traditional authority would not have been possible without the pervasive social and political influence of tribalism.

  Despite growing sedentarization and modernization of tribes in recent decades, tribal and clan identity and values continue to figure prominently in politics. At the level of political institutions, tribalism is epitomized by the royal family, even though the monarchy has become highly institutionalized and has far less direct contact with the tribes than ever before. Nevertheless, tribal practices such as shura (consultation) and institutions such as the majlis (an informal, advisory council) remain important symbolic elements in the state’s modus operandi. Even more significant is the way “tribal corporations” have been formally or informally integrated into the political structure. In Kuwait, tribal corporations operate unofficially and through existing political institutions such as the National Assembly, the Municipal Council, and some of the loosely organized political clubs and voluntary associations. In Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Bahrain, tribal corporations are semiofficial and are heavily represented in the police force and the National Guard. In the UAE, meanwhile, they are considered one of the institutions of the state itself, their status having been codified through legislation.68 Finally, as if incorporation were not enough, all oil monarchies use the offerings and patronage of the state—education, medical treatment, subsidized food, housing, and employment—to establish and reinforce direct clientelistic ties with social actors and to strengthen existing bonds with their own and with other tribes.69 Patronage enables the ruler to court the support of other tribal leaders (sheikhs) and to maintain his own position as the paramount sheikh (sheikh al-mashaʾikh).70

  Further reinforcing the strength of the royal family is its essentially corporate nature. A product of its genesis as a tribal chieftaincy, the corporate character of each of the royal families differs on the basis of the overall characteristics of the family itself and the specific personality and capabilities of the amir (or king) in power. The Al-Sabah of Kuwait, for example, have such a strong corporate identity and interests that they have evolved an intricate set of organizations, epitomized by a Family Council specifically designed to run the affairs of the royal family.71 In contrast, up until Sheikh Hamad took over in 1995, in Qatar members of the Al-Thani ruling family had often shown little regard for the ruler’s authority and had demonstrated little corporate identity.72 Saudi Arabia’s unusually large ruling family is estimated to number between fifteen thousand and twenty-five thousand individuals, although it is controlled by only about two hundred senior princes.73 This large size presents challenges as well as advantages. On the one hand, it increases the possibilities of court intrigue and personal rivalries among members of the royal family, as the six-year public f
eud between King Saud, his half brother Faisal, and Prince Talal demonstrated from 1958 to 1964. On the other hand, it allows the royal family to monopolize all important bureaucratic, military, and provincial institutions. These include cabinet ministries and other high-level positions within the civil service, command of the various branches of the armed forces, and the governship of the different provinces.

  This is not unique to Saudi Arabia.74 In Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE, the offices of the prime minister, foreign minister, interior minister, and defense minister are all occupied by members of the royal family, in some cases by the king himself. Moreover, in all the monarchies, including Bahrain, where the royal family is not as wealthy as in the other states, princes and princesses are deeply involved in a variety of commercial and business activities.75 This strengthens their ability to maintain clientelistic ties with wealthy merchants and consequently with the larger society. Further reinforcing the royal family’s dominant position in relation to various social groups is the state’s central role in the real estate market. “Land gifts” have long been a regular policy of the Saudi state, and the governments of Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE have systematically manipulated the real estate market to benefit wealthy merchants and other important personalities.76 Patronage offers the state yet another means of maintaining its hegemony and legitimacy in relation to society.

  Despite declining oil revenues beginning in the 1980s and the shock of the Gulf War in 1990–91, oil monarchies continue to placate domestic pressures for liberalization. Even in Kuwait, where the resumption of parliamentary politics after the end of the Gulf War has not translated into a curtailment of the Al-Sabahs’ arbitrary powers, there has so far been little apparent backlash from the population. Admittedly, the impact of declining rent revenues is far more pronounced on the economies of civic myth monarchies. Nevertheless, the near-complete absence of demands for liberalization in the oil monarchies, at least in normal times, is as much a product of the state’s continued institutional strength as it is a result of the comparatively robust nature of the economy. The royal family is synonymous with the state, not just in terms of the government’s representation of the royals to their subjects, but in the very real ways in which royal personages control powerful state institutions.