The Modern Middle East (52 page)

Specific national variations notwithstanding, throughout the Middle East the ruling bargain has been predicated on four primary, mutually reinforcing pillars. The first is the state’s presentation of itself as the sole and ultimate guarantor of the “national interest.” The second is patrimonialism, through which the state’s “protection” of the national interest often assumes a personal character and extends down through successive, overlapping layers of patrons and clients. Closely related to patrimonialism is a third feature of the ruling bargain, namely the existence of a corporatist political economy through which the private sector’s cooperation with the state and the state’s ultimate superiority are guaranteed. The fourth and
last feature is state authoritarianism, whereby the compliance of those who may question the merits of the three other aspects of the bargain is guaranteed.

The state asserts its nationalist legitimacy by presenting itself as the historic extension, and therefore the rightful protector, of nationalism. In the aftermath of the 1973 War and the sobering realities of global economics and diplomacy, nationalism in the Middle East lost some of its raw ideological edge, especially as Nasserism became more of a distant memory. Instead, nationalism became more of an implicit phenomenon than an explicit guiding force. It did not lose its compelling qualities, however, and everywhere in the Middle East it continued to be part of the implied understanding on which the state’s larger legitimacy rested. But only in three countries—Iran, Iraq, and Libya—where its blatant political manipulation was deemed necessary to carry on the state’s “revolutionary” agendas in the 1980s and 1990s did it continue to be one of the defining features of state ideology and propaganda. Elsewhere, the state’s reliance on and manipulation of nationalism tended to be more subtle and implicit.

But the nationalism that states began to subtly propagate as a source of support for their legitimacy was not always the same as popular perceptions of nationalism and national interest. In fact, only in one area did the “official nationalism” of the state and the “unofficial nationalism” of the populace correspond and overlap. Official nationalism is defined in terms of domestic political stability (even if forcibly imposed); statist economic development in conjunction with foreign investors; regional supremacy and a clear articulation of international and strategic interests; and a subtle but carefully calculated promotion of conspiracy theories that blame outside elements for domestic problems or acts of terrorism. This is often done through the state-controlled media, with official sanction, of course, in which everything from economic shortages to acts of sabotage is frequently linked to groups financed by an adversary. Tehran’s revolutionaries, their credentials riding on their rhetoric, have been favorite scapegoats of the Arab media. They are alleged to have financed the terrorism of the Shiʿites in Lebanon, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, and Islamic radicals stretching from Turkey to Egypt and Morocco. The Sudanese are alleged to have done the same in Egypt, and Qaddafi’s agents were assumed to be all over the Middle East. For Middle Eastern leaders, domestic shortcomings and problems are seldom a product of failed policies or misguided agendas. They must, invariably, be the work of outsiders.

Unofficial nationalism, whether articulated by the literati or generally perceived by the urban middle classes, differs in three key respects. It sees
state leaders not as protectors of the national interest but as impediments to it. In terms of economic development, it deplores what it considers to be the plunder of national resources by international capitalists and their local agents. It also sees the state’s international alliances and strategic calculations—close relations with the United States, implicit or explicit recognition of Israel, perceived abandonment of the Palestinian cause, support for or lack of meaningful opposition to U.S. policies around the region—as wrong and downright immoral. But in one key respect, unofficial nationalism overlaps and agrees with the official version articulated by the state: rightly or wrongly, a sizable portion of the middle classes generally buys into the state’s explanation of the threats posed by foreign (neighborly) conspiracies. While most middle-class Middle Easterners tend to be highly suspicious of government explanations and policies in general, their national identities, proud to the point of defensiveness, make most of them receptive to theories of foreign conspiracies. Accurate public opinion data in this regard are not available. But if the sensationalism caused by frequent revelations of foreign bank accounts and secret shipments of arms and cash is any indication, such theories hold much sway in most Middle Eastern capitals.

Whether the Arab Spring and its ripple effects will close the gap between official and unofficial nationalism remains to be seen. In countries where the 2011 uprisings succeeded in bringing about new political systems, as in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, the state’s international profile and its articulation of the national interest are bound to be more reflective, at least initially, of prevailing social sentiments. Whether this will last or will be replaced by old patterns is still uncertain. Elsewhere in the Middle East, where the Arab Spring was crushed before it had a chance to succeed, as in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, the state’s increased defensiveness and paranoia in relation to social currents have only widened the gap between the two variants of nationalism, with the state framing domestic difficulties as the work of transnational Shiʿite networks sponsored by Iran, while domestic actors see the trouble as originating in the state itself.

The height of the ruling bargain was reached in the populist days of the 1950s and the 1960s, when states promised to ensure social justice, foster economic development, and guarantee national interests in return for the political acquiescence of the citizenry.
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But as these political bargains became discredited, repression increased. In the decades following the 1950s and early 1960s, most Middle Eastern states exhausted their once-extensive popular legitimacy. Their leaders promised victory but lost war after war, talked of liberating Palestinians but abandoned them in short order,
promised riches but brought declining living standards for the middle classes and abject poverty for many others, and advocated moral purity while wallowing in worldly pleasures and material possessions. Nevertheless, though often hanging by a thread, most states retained some nationalist legitimacy. The state remained the only viable defender of the nation’s sovereignty, not necessarily against the possibility of wars, which were rather unlikely, but against the constant machinations of more elusive, less obvious foreign adversaries.

A second, more compelling aspect of the ruling bargain is patrimonialism. While traditionally associated with monarchies that cultivate and rule through a series of highly personalized relationships, in the Middle East patrimonialism is equally pervasive in both monarchical and presidential political systems. Most republican political systems in the region, after all, are in reality presidential monarchies in which the president is routinely reelected in elections that can hardly be considered democratic. The election of President Bashar Assad in Syria by the country’s parliament following the death of his father, President Hafiz Assad, gave the term
presidential monarchy
new meaning. In Iraq and Egypt, there were rumors that Saddam and Mubarak had designated their sons, Uday and Gamal, respectively, to be their heirs apparent. Seif al-Islam Qaddafi was reportedly also being groomed by his father, Muammar Qaddafi, to take over the reins of power in Libya.

Patrimonial leadership features the pervasiveness of personal ties that directly bind the sovereign to successive layers of subordinates and in turn bind those subordinates to officials beneath them. These personal ties between the leader, who is the ultimate patron, and progressively lesser patrons beneath him are replicated throughout the system. James Bill and Robert Springborg explain the phenomenon best:

In the patrimonial Middle East, the sovereign is located at the center of the political system. He is surrounded by advisors, ministers, military leaders, personal secretaries, and confidants. The one thing that all members of this inner circle share is unquestioned personal loyalty to the leader. This is best indicated by their continual reflection of the will and personality of that leader. These individuals may relate submissively and passively to the leader, but they do not relate in this way to their own peers and followers. Here, they are caught up in intense manipulations and machinations. . . . Although the vertical relationships tend to be one-sided, the horizontal patterns are characterized by balanced rivalry. . . . The traditional politics of patrimonial leadership in the Middle East, therefore, tends to consist of a chain of vertical manipulation and horizontal competition that cuts through the sociopolitical fabric.
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Reinforcing patrimonial ties are those fostered through corporatist political economies, which, in one form or another, are found throughout the Middle East.
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Just as the leader is the ultimate dispenser of sociopolitical privileges and favors in a patrimonial political system, so is the state the ultimate arbiter of various economic privileges in a corporatist political economy. By definition, corporatism divides society into various functional groups—agricultural producers, industrial manufacturers, entrepreneurs, white-collar workers, the armed forces—and fosters organic links between each and the state.
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The precise composition of corporatist groups and the nature of the arrangements between them vary across Middle Eastern countries and depend on prevailing class alliances and preferences within each country. Nevertheless, all Middle Eastern states have identified at least three functional groups whose corporatization into the state’s orbit they deem essential: civil servants, entrepreneurs, and the armed forces. The oil monarchies of the Persian Gulf, which do not have an indigenous labor force of their own and import practically all of their necessary labor, have no need to include immigrant laborers in the state’s corporatist arrangement. The opposite is true of countries with an expansive class of laborers—that is, virtually all the other countries of the Middle East—where states have devised elaborate institutional and organizational arrangements to ensure labor’s corporatization.
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Within the oil monarchies themselves, Saudi Arabia appears to have gone the furthest in fostering corporatist ties between the state and the kingdom’s selected tribes, although lesser forms of the phenomenon can also be found elsewhere in the peninsula.
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In Saudi Arabia, this was traditionally done through the institution of the
majlis,
or council, in which the monarch or his representatives, usually one of the royal princes, met with tribal leaders and ensured their cooption into the system.
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Daniel Brumberg is one of the first scholars to theorize about the economic aspects of the ruling bargain. “To compensate for their subordination,” he maintains, “popular groups obtained social benefits such as guaranteed public sector employment, food subsidies, and free higher education. This ruling bargain was given a philosophical gloss that celebrated the culturally ‘authentic’ traditions of class unity and cooperation.”
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The emerging state is one that Iliya Harik labeled as “the patron state,” in which the state “is a business entrepreneur and a provider at one and the same time.”
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The patron state took on obligations that it could not possibly meet, resulting in a failure of the quality and quantity of its services, perpetuated by a lack of funds and low productivity. The state thrust itself into the economy less for the sake of economic development than for political
considerations having to do with its fragile legitimacy. Not surprisingly, official mismanagement of the economy became an endemic feature of these patron states, and the problems of state enterprises were compounded by poor performance and inadequate management.
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The three features of the ruling bargain discussed so far—nationalism, patrimonialism, and corporatism—may be necessary for keeping the state-society modus vivendi operational, but insofar as the state is concerned, they are seldom sufficient to ensure the state’s supremacy over society. In fact, each of the three features of the ruling bargain either already has encountered or is in the process of encountering significant problems of its own. Official nationalism, as already mentioned, hardly holds the sway today that it once did, and Middle Eastern states are finding it increasingly hard to manipulate popular nationalist sentiments for political purposes. Patrimonialism has also become difficult to maintain in recent decades as declining state largesse has tended to weaken some of the systemic bonds of loyalty between successive layers of patrons and clients. Similar problems have also plagued corporatist arrangements, which, by bestowing on various groups organizational skills and mobilization, have the potential to get out of the state’s control and turn on it. In fact, the state’s deliberate effort to corporatize industrial laborers in Turkey and Egypt has had the paradoxical effect of enhancing their autonomy and potential as an irritant to the state.
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The upshot has been a keen awareness on the part of Middle Eastern states that they must underwrite their ruling bargains with high levels of coercion, or at least the threat of coercion. The message given by the state to social actors is clear and simple: comply with the dictates of the state—buy into the ruling bargain—or face the consequences. Repression, or its implied threat, is ever present in the world of politics. Some four decades ago, Samuel Huntington described such “praetorian” polities as those in which “social forces confront each other nakedly; no political institutions, no crop of professional political leaders are recognized or accepted as the legitimate intermediaries to moderate group conflict. Equally important, no agreement exists among the groups as to the legitimate and authoritative methods of resolving conflict.”
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In the praetorian polities of the Middle East, state actors view repression as a necessary survival tool and often consider themselves besieged by potential adversaries from within the different societal strata. A sense of paranoia pervades state-society relations, in which each side suspects the intentions and motives of the other. The steady decline in states’ legitimacy in recent decades, manifested in recurrent and multifaceted challenges to the ruling bargain, has made states’ resort to coercion all the more frequent.