REVIEW ARTICLES

E X P L A I N I N G A R A B P O L I T I C S R O G E R O W E N

SI. Anrony's College. O.ufird

GOOD books on Middle East politics are few and far between. Apart from a number of studies of the political process in particular Arab countries it is difficult to think of many works which match the standard of writing on other parts of the non-European world. For the rest, books on the Middle East generally consist either of straight- forward political history or political biography or of the unsubtle application of concepts drawn from the mainstream of systems analysis and modernization theory.'

This view is now generally recognized among those working in the field and, indeed, has become something of a platitude. But not surprisingly there is still considerable disagreement about the reasons for the unhappy situation and the ways in which it might be remedied.2 To some it is mainly a matter of the problems posed for Western scholars in trying to study opaque political processes in difficult languages. To others i t stems from the fact that existing concepts and methods of analysis have not been applied with sufficient rigour and over a wide enough area. In either case the remedy follows naturally from the diagnosis. There has also been a tendency, characteristic of academic disciplines undergoing a crisis of confidence, to return to the existing theoretical literature to find hitherto under-utilized concepts which might raise new questions or provide new ways of structuring the mass of available materiaL3

It is my own opinion, however, that the difficulties go much deeper and that they derive largely from two basic sources. The first is the unhappy marriage, to be found in

For two useful bibliographical reviews of writing on Middle Eastern politics see: F. Stoakes. 'Political Science' in D. Hopwood and D. Grimwood-Jones (eds.). Middle Easr and /slam: A Bibliogruphicul Inrroduc/ion (Zug. Switzerland: Con. Inter-Documentation. 1971). f 10.00, and I. W. Zartman. 'Political Science' in L. Binder (ed.), The Siudy of'rhe Middle Eusr (New York, Wiley, 1976). $26.50. Writing in 1970 Stoakes could find few books on the Middle East exhibiting a 'political science' approach. A few years later, Zartman was a little less sparing in his praise and, inter alia, singled out the following for special mention: (Single country studies) L. Binder, Iran: Political Devefopment in a Changing Society (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1962); L. Fein. Politics in Israel (Boston, Little Brown, 1%7); D. E. Ashford, Political Change in Morocco (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1961); (the role of parties in political systems) L. Karpat, Turkey's Politics: The Transition to a Multi-Party System (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1959). C. H. Moore, Tunisia since Independence (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1965); and (elite studies) R. H. Dekmejian, Egypt under Nasir (Albany. S.U.P. of New York, 1971). $22.00; J. Westbury, The Commander of the Faithful: the Moroccan Political Elite (New York, Columbia University Press, 1970), 315.00. See also, I. Hank, 'An approach to the study of Middle East politics' in Middle East Studies Association, Bulletin, IV (1970).

*For different diagnoses of this phenomenon see, L. Binder. 'Area studies'. a critical reassessment' and I . W. Zartman, 'Political Science' in Binder, The Srudj of'rhe Middle Eusr and M. Halpern, 'Middle East Studies-a review of the state of the field with a few examples', Journal of' K'urid Polirics, XV ( 1 962).

See. for example, C . Ben-Dor. 'Political culture approach to Middle East politics'. inirrnationul Journal ~JMiddIe East Srudies. VlIl (1977) or the discussion of the application of the concept of charisma in C. Bowie 'Nasir's role and legacy: charisma. Weber and Nasir' and R. H. Dekmejian 'Maru, Weber and the Egyptian revolution' in Middle EUSI Journal, X X X (1976).

Political Studies. Vol. XXVI, No. 4 (507-512)

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many works on Middle Eastern politics. between political science and the traditional orientalism which treats the region as an example of a particular civilization or culture-the Islamic4 The dangers and difficulties involved in the application of concepts like those of a political system. of modernization. or of political development have been discussed so often that they d o not need to be mentioned again. But what makes matters even worse is the additional reliance on modes of analysis and explanation developed by orientalists which draw heavily on the assumption that, in a political culture defined as either Arab or Islamic. the motives of the political actors can be understood largely in Arab or Islamic terms. A good example of the sterility which this produces is the way in which, in many studies of the Middle Eastern military. the a- historic notion of an unchanging culture is combined with the equally a-historic assumption that armies remain essentially the same types of organization over time, to encourage explanations of the coup-making potential of local officer-corps in terms largely of the weight of their Arab or Islamic heritage.s

Two other offspring of this unhappy marriage are also worth mentioning. One is the assumption, to be found in most books on Middle Eastern or Arab politics, that they must take as their subject all those states, over twenty in number, in which either Arabs or Muslims form a majority, a task which can only be undertaken with the use of over- simplified, supposedly unifying, general concepts.6 The other is the payment of exaggerated attention to the uniqueness of Middle Eastern politics in such a way as to set them apart from the processes to be found in the rest of the non-European world.

A second basic source of difficulty is the many barriers to the fruitful exchange of ideas between Western political scientists and their Middle Eastern counterparts. In the case of Egypt, for example, the excellent work of many local historians and political analysists is largely unknown in Europe and America.' And it is probably no accident that much of the best Western writing about Arab political systems concerns North Africa where there has been more of a dialogue with Tunisian, Algerian and Moroccan academics.8 Once again, the legacy of the orientalists still to be found in many centres of Middle East studies has much to answer for in that it has legitimized the continued use of super-annuated cultural stereotypes about the Arabs which are deeply offensive to local opinion.p The employment of these same stereotypes in obvious support of American or Israeli political interests has only made matters worse. l o

In these unhappy circumstances any new book on Arab or Middle East politics is

'For an examination of some of the basic assumptions of traditional orientalism, see my

For example. E. Be'eri. Army Offiwrs in Arab Polirics and Soc,ie/y (London. Praeger. I969), pp.

For example, D. Rustow's chapter. 'The politics of the Near East' in G . A. Almond and J . S . Colemen. The Polirics cq'tlrr Dndoping Areas (Princeton. Princeton University Press. 1960). or M. Halpern's study of sixteen societies, The Politics of Social Change in the Middle Easr and Norrh A/rica (Princeton, Princeton University Press. 1963).

- For example. among many, T. al-Bishri. Turiq a/-hurako a/-si jasiyafi Misr. 1945-5-7 [History of the Political Process in Egypt, 1945-521, (Cairo, General Book Publishing Organization. 1972).

For example. Moore, Tunisia since 1trdependenc.e and Waterbury, The Commander o j rhe Faitlr/ul. Also, W. B. Quandt. Revolurion and Poliric,al Leadership: Algeria 3954-1968 (Cambridge. Mass.. Harvard University Press, 1969). and I . W. Zartman. Morocco . Problems of Nnt Power (New York, Columbia University Press. 1964).

For example. A. Abdel-Malek. 'LOrientalisme en crise', Diogkne, XLlV (1963); A Laroui. Le Crise des Intellectuals Arubes (Paris, 1974) (trans. as The Crisis uf rhr Arab Inrellectuals Tradiirionalism or Hisrorkism) (Berkeley. University of California Press. 1976): or F. M. Moughrabi 'The Arabic basic personality: A critical Survey of the literature', International Journal o/ Middle East Studies. 1X ( 1978).

l o For one of the few explicit criticisms of this kmd see 1. Gendzier'r critique of D. Lerner's influential. The Passing of Tradirional Sor.ie/j.: Modernizing the .Midtile Easr in Ruview of Middle East Studies, I11 (1978) (forthcoming).

'Studying Islamic History', Journal of Inrrrdisciplinarj Hisrorj, IV ( 1973).

277-8.

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bound to raise hope that the period of lean years is over. This is even more so in the case of Michael Hudson’s Arab Politics; The Searchfor f.egitimucyl1 in that the author is widely respected for his sensible study of modern Lebanon, presciently entitled, The Precarious Republic.‘* It is sad to have to report that these hopes are not fully realized. While the book exhibits a number of considerable virtues it is based on such a narrow view of what constitutes political activity that its total effect is disappointing. 1 will begin with an outline of its major virtues before moving on to offer a more general critique.

First and foremost, Arab Politics is to be commended in that it locates its subjects f i d y in a Third World rather than a more narrowly Middle East perspective. In Hudson’s words, ‘we must look beyond explanations based on the alleged uniqueness of the area itself, And he goes on to criticize ‘the dubious character’ of existing reductionist concepts based on such artificial creations as ‘the Arab or Islamic mind’ (pp. 3 4 ) . This does not solve the problem of Middle Eastern specificity, as I hope to show, but at least it opens the subject up to critical inspection by outsiders in a way in which the usual narrow concern with explanations based on esoteric information about Muslim culture cannot possibly do. A second virtue is his commonsense approach which, time and again, allows him, sharply, to dispose of a number of sacred cows or ideesjxes. Thus, unlike most other analysts. he does not take Nasser and his colleagues to task for coming to power without a well-developed ideology but makes the more relevent point that they were quick to establish a ‘set of positions’ which pre-empted their rivals and touched an important cord in the Egyptian people (p. 239). Again, he plays down the importance of explanations of Nasser’s power in terms of his ‘charisma’ and places greater emphasis on the fact that he benefited greatly from the existance of an historical Egyptian pattern of autocracy and bureaucratic control (p. 243). Third, there is an enormous amount of useful information about Hudson’s chosen eighteen Arab states, based on wide reading and a particularly sound knowledge of the region. For all these reasons Arab Politics ought certainly be read by anyone seeking a clear, concise account of the main events and processes in recent Middle Eastern political history.

But it is when we turn to the author’s method and the book’s organization round a single theme that doubts begin. Briefly stated its main argument goes something as follows. The central feature of Arab political systems is the absence or insufficiency, of legitimacy. This explains the volatility of Arab politics and the failure to achieve a consensus in matters of identity. authority, social policy or structured participation. As in other Third World countries the lack of legitimacy is the product of history, augmented by the effects of imperialism and modernization. But in the case of the Middle East the problem is further aggravated by the presence of pan-Arab nationalism which makes the business of developing identity and authority at an individual country level still more difficult. This theme is than worked out in a first, general, section which examines the main components of Arab political culture and the forces making for change, and in a second section where the ’search of legitimacy’ is looked at on a state by state basis. In all this Hudson makes use of Easton’s threefold classification of legitimating resources in terms of the personal, the ideological and the structural. He also provides his own two-fold classification of Arab paths towards a post-traditional legitimacy : the formula of the ‘modernizing monarchies’ (Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, etc.) in which autocratic authority is combined with a diffuse (Arab) nationalism and a general ethos of development, and the formula of the ‘Arab republics’ (Egypt, Iraq, Syria, etc.) where autocracy is clothed in more modem

M. C. Hudson, Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1977). xi + 484 pp.

M . C. Hudson, The Precarious Republic: Polirical Modurnixtion in Lebanon (New York. A.O.B. Philadelphia. 1968). See also Hudson’s ‘The Lebanese crisis and the limits of con- sociational democracy’. Journal uJ Palestine Studies. V (1976).

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democratic norms and accompanied by a more militant nationalism and commitment to social equality.

Objections inevitably begin with the concept of legitimacy-r. more importantly. the concept of a lack of legitimacy-itself. Here there are four points to be made. First. does the concept have any explanatory power? Is it not simply a circular argument in which instability is explained in terms of insufficient legitimacy and the proof of insufficient legitimacy is given as political instability‘? As Hudson himself shows. there are plenty of reasons for the apparent volatility of Arab, or Third World, politics which can be simply listed without any reference to the concept itself. But there is also the further question of whether this same volatility is in fact the central feature of such politics and thus the main focus for analysis. Among many other things, the way in which Hudson poses the problem allows him to slide round the consequences of the fact-which he certainly mentions--that for the last ten years at least the regimes in most Arab states have been characterized by their stability rather than their general shakiness. In this context the implications of his telling quotation from Iraq’s present strongman, Saddam Hussein. to the effect that ‘with our party methods there is no chance for anyone who disagrees with us to jump on a couple of tanks and overthrow the government’, clearly runs counter to the direction in which the bulk of his conceptual apparatus is deployed.

Second. is there any way in which the concept of a ‘search’ for legitimacy can be made to yield useful distinctions between different types of political systems and different processes of political change’? While there is no doubt something to be said for making a rough and ready classification between monarchies and republics and between the different strategies which their regimes adopt, this is not necessarily the most important distinction if analysis is also to concern itself with such central features as the character of political institutions, the distribution of power and the constituent elements of the state apparatus. It is true that Hudson discusses many of these same features in terms of their role in improving ‘structural’ legitimacy and also in terms of his employment of Deutsch’s ’loads,capacity‘ equation in the context of his examination of the growth of government in particular countries. But in every case the question of analysing differences in structures or performance is subordinate to the overriding task of spelling out the implications for what he asserts to be healthy political progress.

Third, it follows that such a single-minded concentration on the concept of legitimacy implies a remarkably restricted view of what politics actually consists of. This point can be easily made with reference to a comment Hudson passes on his conclusion that. because of the unsolved problems of identity, authority and equality, Arab politics is now largely ‘the art of manipulating appealing ideological symbols and trying to generate personal popularity’ (p. 392). So much for such vexed question as the role of the military in the Middle Eastern political process, the relationship between the army and party in regimes like those in Syria and Iraq or the attempts to re-establish the position of the Lebanese central government. That Hudson himself does not believe that such considerations fall outside the scope of political analysis is shown by his choice of material in much of the rest of the book. Nevertheless, the employment of so tight a conceptual framework must inevitably promote over-simplified conclusions of this type.

Fourth. and lastly, the use of the concept of legitimacy seems to encourage a concentration on the normative and the predictive. In spite of all his sympathy for the people of the region. Arab politics are constantly being judged in terms of what they are not or in terms of where they ought to be proceeding, but are not. Thus, to quote from Hudson again. Arab politics appears ‘to be going neither forward nor backwards’ (p. 392). And the solution is ‘the development of meaningful, broad-based participation in the political process in accordance with accepted procedures so that government will be more responsive and responsible to public opinion’ (p. 392). While we can all dream. while we (outsiders) can share with many Arabs a hope for greater popular participation

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in the future, such generalized aspirations are no substitute for the infinitely more difficult task of analysing present processes in such a way as to show where, if anywhere, such participation might be allowed to begin.

A number of other criticisms ought also to be made. I will concentrate on three which seem to me to relate most directly to the complex problems connected with writing about Middle Eastern politics. The first concerns the definition of the unit of analysis. What exactly are Arab politics? In what way are they different from the politics of other regions of the non-European world? For Hudson the answer would seem to lie in the existence of the phenomenon of Arab nationalism and the very special problems it is said to pose for Middle Eastern legitimacy-making. But even in its own terms this argument is unsatisfactory. For one thing Arab Nationalism, in any of its forms, can hardly be said to have had more than a marginal impact on a number of the political systems chosen for analysis, notably those of the Maghreb countries from Tunisia to Morocco. For another, the strength of that nationalism has certainly waned as a motivating force since the 1960s. Even in its hey-day much of its disruptive power came, not from its popular ideological appeal, but from the fact that it was used so directly as an instrument of Egyptian foreign policy. Since then much of what was left of its impact has been further eroded as a result of its incorporation as part of the official ideology of most of the larger Eastern Arab states.

A second point concerns Hudson’s presentation of the main outside agents of political change-imperialism (or, more correctly, colonialism) and modernization-as discrete systems which not only produced separate and unrelated effects but also, in a chronological sense, produced them at different periods of time. Such a method at least has the effect of widening the traditional scope of political analysis to include consideration of the economic, social and cultural spheres. But it leads to a highly artificial division of the impact of external factors, labelling, say, the consequences of the creation of the state of Israel as one and those of the discovery of oil as another. No way of integrating the two is suggested. Moreover, Hudson’s various ‘legacies’ of imperialism seem to float around outside historical time, making it difficult if not impossible to trace their impact on the development of institutions or central political relationships. Thus, among many other omissions, there is no examination of the state systems created by the coloniai power, nor of the consequences of the way in which they were inherited by the first generation of nationalist politicians, who were quick to use the existing mechanisms of repression for their own ends. In these circumstances it was not surprising that radical urban groups seeing the way to power blocked by a coalition of landowners and merchants, were quick to try to strengthen their position by obtaining military support. Nor was it surprising that armies which were created specifically to support the maintenance of the colonial position should, just as quickly, be drawn even further into the heart of the post-independence political process.

Third, and lastly, there is the whole question of the enormous expansion of state power in almost all the Arab countries over the last two decades. This is mentioned repeatedly by Hudson but without giving it its proper weight or examining its various implications. One, undoubtedly the most important, is the way in which this new power to coerce and control the population is responsible for the greater degree of political stability in recent years. Another, well-analysed by C. H. Moore in its Egyptian context, is the regime’s ability to monopolize politics either by destroying the power of any group within the society to play an independent political role or, as in the case of the trade unions, the press or the universities, by simply incorporating them within the state system.I3 But this monopoly or the ‘administration of politics’, as it has been called, does not mean that politics itself, in terms of the struggle between different classes or groups for power or for a different allocation of national resources, simply disappears.

l 3 C. H. Moore, ‘Authoritarian politics in unincorporated society: the case of Nassels Egypt‘, Comparative Politics, V1 (1974).

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What it does mean. however, is that the whole process is much more difficult to analyse in that it does on largely hidden from view within the apparatus itself. It is this. among many other things. which has encouraged the tendency to see Arab politics simply in terms of an endless rivalry between different powerful individuals or different cliques. l 4 But, in fact, as a few studies have demonstrated. material does exist. in the case of some countries at least, to show that the political struggle has first to be examined in terms of a competition between rival classes or groups each deriving support from their control over, or manipulation of. different institutions such as the single party of the national a ~ s e m b l y . ' ~

These are major criticisms. However, it also ought to be said that, in almost every case, except the last, the material for answering them can be found somewhere in the book itself. Unlike many other lesser works the information it contains could quite easily be arranged to provide a more convincing account of Arab political processes. This. in the last analysis. is why it will continue t o be read.

IJ For example, R. Springborg 'Patterns of association in the Egyptian political elite' in G. Lenczowski (ed.), Political Elifes in the Middle Eusr (Washington. American Enterprise Institute, 1975).

I 5 Works which suggest the possibility of such an approach include: (Egypt) M. N. Cooper, 'Egyptian state capitalism in crisis: Economic policy and Political interests', fnlernafionol Journul of Middle East Studies, X (forthcoming), and Dekmejian, Egypt under Nusir, particularly Chs. 13 and 14; (Iraq) U. Dann, Iraq Under Qussem: '4 Polifical Hisfory(New York, Praeger, 1969), (Jordon) P. J. Vatikiotis, Politics and the Milirury in Jor&n: A Srudy of the Arub Legion 1921-1957 (London, C.A.S.S., 1967; (Lehunon) Hudson. The Precarious Republic and M. Johnson 'Factional politics in Lebanon: The case of the Islamic Society of Benevolent Intentions (Al-Maqasid) in Beirut', Middle Eastern Studies XIV (1978); (Syriu) M. H. Kerr 'Ha& Asad and the changing pattern of Syrian politics', International Journal, XXVIII (1973); I. Rabinovich. Syria under the Ba'th: The Army- Purly Symbiosis (Jerusalem, Israel Universities Press, 1972) and N. Van Dam, 'The StNggk for power in Syria and the Ba'th party (1958-1966)', Orient, I1 (1973).