The post-cold war political topography of the Middle East: Prospects for democracy

Third World Quarterly

Volumn 26, Issue 7, 2005, Pages 1135-1156

  Halperin, Sandra ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DEMOCRACY; POLITICAL CHANGE; POLITICAL REFORM; POST-COMMUNISM;

ASIA; EURASIA; MIDDLE EAST;

EID: 28244465539     PISSN: 01436597     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01436590500235751     Document Type: Review

References (93)

1. The Cold War continued the crusade against socialism that commenced after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, but was interrupted between 1939 and 1945 when the non-fascist capitalist countries were forced to enter into a temporary alliance with the USSR.
2. $1568 billion is held by 200 000 people. A Cordesman, 'Stablility and instability in the Middle East: economics, demography, energy, and security. Three reports', 4 April 1999, at http://www.csis.org/midcast/reports/Econl.pdf.
3. D Warriner, Land and Poverty in the Middle East, London: Institute of International Affairs, 1948, pp49-50.
4. UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (HSCWA), Agrarian Systems and the Alleviation of Rural Poverty in Iraq, (Baghdad, 1985), pp 20-21.
5. Figures for Lebanon and Syria are from Warriner, Land and Poverty in the Middle East, p 85;
6. and for Egypt from J Berque, Egypt. Imperialism and Revolution, London: Faber and Faber, 1972, p 618.
7. Turkish-speaking Muslims comprised roughly 40% of the population, 40% of the population were Arabic-speaking, the remaining 20% were Greek, Armenian, Kurdish and Jewish.
8. For a discussion of this, see A Hourani, The politics of notables', in W Polk & R Chambers (eds), The Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East: The Nineteenth Century, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp 41-68.
9. C Issawi, An Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa, New York: Columbia University Press, 1982, p 170;
10. and ZY Herschlag, The Economic Structure of the Middle East, Leiden: EJ Brill, 1975, pp 35-36.
11. Manfred Halpern focused the attention of Middle East scholars on the rise of a 'new middle class' as a subject of study in the early 1960s. Sec the debate between Halpern and Amos Perlmutter in M Halpern, The problem of being conscious of a salaried new middle class', Contemporary Studies in Society and History, XII (1), 1970, pp 27-30;
12. Halpern, 'Egypt and the new middle class: reaffirmations and new explorations', Contemporary Studies in Society and History, XI (1), 1969, pp 97-108;
13. Halpern, 'Middle Eastern armies and the new middle class', in John J Johnson (ed), The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp 277-316;
14. A Perlmutter, The myth of the myth of the new middle class', Contemporary Studies in Society and History, XII (1), January 1970, pp 14-26;
15. and Perlmutter, 'Egypt and the myth of the new middle class', Contemporary Studies in Society and History, X (1), October 1967, p 46.
16. E Davis, Challenging Colonialism: Bank Misr and Egyptian Industrialization, 1920-1941, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983, p 30;
17. M Deeb, 'Bank Misr and the emergence of the local bourgeoisie in Egypt', in E Kedourie (ed), The Middle Eastern Economy: Studies in Economics and Economic History, London: Frank Cass, 1976, pp 69-86;
18. and PJ Vatikiotis, The History of Egypt from Muhammad Alt to Sadat, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980, pp 333-334.
19. When the country became independent in 1967 under a Marxist government, the British, their client sultans, pro-British business interests, as well as many British- and Saudi-backed tribesmen, fled into exile. Consequently, in contrast to the situation in North Yemen, the South Yemeni regime did not remain dependent on sheiks at the local level and royalist hold-overs at the national level. Sec D McClintock, 'People's Democratic Republic of Yemen', in David Long & Bernard Reich (eds), The Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986, pp 167-181.
20. Where agrarian reform and nationalisation programmes were implemented, compensation was paid to the expropriated owners and, in most cases, reinvested in industry and construction with government help so that the returns were higher than they would have been from previous forms of wealth. Thus, rather than reducing the wealth of the traditional elite, reform and nationalisation only changed its composition. E Tuma, The rich and poor in the Middle East', Middle East Journal, 34, 1980, p 43.
21. When Germany's invasion of France and attack on Britain forced the non-fascist capitalist countries to enter into a temporary alliance with the USSR.
22. The United Nations' 'mandate system' provided Britain and France with the authority to establish (pro-British) monarchies in Iraq and Jordan, and (pro-French) regimes in Lebanon and Syria. Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar, which had developed as the private domains of British clients, remained under British protection, as did Oman, until the 1970s. Britain and the USA protected the Al-Sauds against threats to their rule.
23. A Russian Jew named Joseph Rosenthal 'has been credited with single-handedly founding communism in Egypt'. T Ismael & R. El-Sa'id, The Communist Movement in Egypt, 1920-1988, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990, p 13.
24. Ibid, p 15.
25. Deeb, 'Bank Misr and the emergence of the local bourgeoisie in Egypt', p 74.
26. WLaqueur, Communism and Nationalism in the Middle East, New York: Frederick Praeger, 1956, p 46.
27. After Iraq withdrew in 1959 the pact was known as the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO). The USA (which had observer status in the Pact) and NATO envisioned CENTO as contributing to the formation of a world-wide chain of anti-Soviet alliances.
28. The PHLOAG shortened its name to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman in 1974. Its declared intention was to overthrow traditional Arab Gulf regimes.
29. Cordesman, 'Stablility and instability in the Middle East'.
30. Walter Laqueuer argued that, in the Middle East, there is not a 'clear dividing line' between communism and nationalism. 'Nationalism is not a force opposed to Communism. On the contrary, at the present time it has paved the way for and has collaborated with it'. Laqueur, Communism and Nationalism in the Middle East, pp 17, 275.
31. This may have been a reasonable conclusion to draw in 1956. But events soon revealed it to be erroneous. For a recent discussion of nationalism and communism in the Arab east, see Isam Al-Khafaji, Tormented Births: Passages to Modernity in Europe and the Middle East, London: IB Tauris, 2004, pp 186-206.
32. See, for example, the programmes of the Egyptian Marxist organisation Iskra, and of the Egyptian Communist Party, discussed in Ismael & El-Sa'id, The Communist Movement in Egypt, pp 46-50, 85-86.
33. The membership of the Iraqi Communist Party was the first national grouping to support Kurdish independence.
34. Both the Palestine Communist Party (PCP) and the National Liberation League (NLL), formed when the Arabs split from the PCP in 1943, supported the Partition Plan, and opposed the Arab war against Israel launched in 1948 and the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank in 1949. In 1951 the NLL was renamed the Jordanian Communist Party (JCP). The JCP eventually split into a JCP-West Bank and JCP-Amman. Although, at the insistence of Yasser Arafat, the JCP-West Bank backed the Palestine Liberation Organisation's call for 'total liberation', it continued privately to accept Israel's existence and to advocate a settlement based on UN Security Council Resolution 242 (it did not sign the 'unity document' of 6 May 1970 which rejected 242). The Egyptian Communist Party (Haditu) also endorsed the Partition Plan and recognised the Jewish people's right to self-determination in Israel. The Iraq Communist Party organised demonstrations against Zionism in 1946, but in 1947 it did not oppose Soviet support for the Partition Plan.
35. M Hussein, Class Conflict in Egypt: 1945-1970, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973, p 95.
36. They 'were strongly tied to established interests who had a stake in preserving the status quo'. Al-Khafaji, Tormented Births, p 207.
37. High-ranking officers within the 'Free Officers' movement were tied to royal and property interests. Ismael & Al-Sa'id, The Communist Movement in Egypt, p 73.
38. Although the regime enacted an Agrarian Reform Act two months after the 1952 coup, its impetus, as in many East European countries after World War I, was to deprive foreign minorities of land. Much emphasis was placed on the non-Egyptian origin of the reigning Muhammad 'All family, and the claim that their lands had been forcibly taken from the Egyptian people. In 1953 all the family's lands were confiscated. The series of reforms finally 'involved at most about 16% of Egypt's cultivated land, leading to the actual redistribution of 13% of that land to about 10% of Egypt's rural families'. J Waterbury, The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat: The Political Economy of Two Regimes, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983, pp 266-267. Consequently, the land-owning class continued to monopolise power and there was little in the way of significant change that the regime could undertake without its consent.
39. This is something Haditu did not realise when it gave support to the movement. According to a member of the Free Officers, Khalid Muyihi al-Din, several days before the movement seized power, a US Colonel at the US Embassy in Cairo assured an intermediary that the USA would not intervene against the movement as long as it was not communist. Interview with Khalid Muyihi al-Din by Rifa'at Al-Sa'id, Cairo, 23 March 1980, in Ismail & Al-Sa'id, The Communist Movement in Egypt, p 72. The movement was denounced by the USSR and the international communist movement (except for the Sudanese Communist Party).
40. Ismail & Al-Sa'id, The Communist Movement in Egypt, Ibid, p 73.
41. In the 1960s Nasser viewed Iraqi communism as a threat to the whole Arab world; 'Nasserism' became the banner under which anti-communist forces fought to eradicate communism in Iraq. P Mansfield, Nasser's Egypt, Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1969, pp 62, 107-108.
42. King Farouk had been obsessed with communism (and believed in the imminence of war with communism). Berque, Egypt. Imperialism and Revolution, pp 660-661.
43. However, he was unable to suppress working class violence. The Free Officers revolt in Egypt (1952) and coups in Syria (1963, 1966) and Iraq (1963, 1968) strengthened the authority of the state and 'laid the groundwork for a further penetration of society' by the government. James Gelvin, 'Modernity and its discontents: on the durability of nationalism in the Middle East', Nations and Nationalism, 5 (1), 1999, p 84.
44. The increasingly militant worker's movement was an important component of the social and political upheaval that brought down the Egyptian monarchy in 1952. The riots that began in Cairo on 25 January 25 and ended with the overthrow of the monarchy were both national and social: aimed at both the Egyptian bourgeoisie and the British. On the afternoon of 26 January a vast demonstration massed in front of the Soviet embassy in an expression of solidarity. See Hussein, Class Conflict in Egypt, pp 81-84. Conventional historical accounts of this and other nationalist struggles in the region tend to downplay the role of communist, socialist and other reformist and progressive elements.
45. See J Beinin, 'Labor, capital, and the state in Nassirist Egypt, 1951-1961', International Journal of Middle East Studies, 21, pp 71-90.
46. The Ba'ath founders' views on communism are in Michel Aflaq & Salahaddin al-Bitar, al-Qawminyah al- 'Arabiyah wa mawqifuha min al-shuyu 'iyah (Arab Nationalism and its Stance Toward Communism), Damascus, nd;
47. and Michel Aflaq, Fi Sabil al-Ba'th (For the Sake of the Ba'ath), Beirut: Dar al-Tali'ah, 1963.
48. British Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in Iraq, Report from Iraq, London, British Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in Iraq, 1964;
49. The Record of the Arab World (Documents, Events, Political Opinion), Lebanon: The Research and Publishing House, 1970;
50. and G Haddad, Revolutions and Military Rule in the Middle East: The Arab States, Vol II, New York: Robert Speller, 1971.
51. For US involvement in the coup against Qasim, see, for example, Middle East Watch, Human Rights in Iraq, New York: Yale University Press, 1990;
52. and A Hussein & G Alexander, Unholy Babylon, New York: St Martin's Press, 1991.
53. On US support for Saddam, see E Davis, The Persian Gulf war: myths and realities', in H Amirahmdi (ed), The United States and the Middle East: New Directions in Foreign Policy, Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp 251-285.
54. A Kurdish revolt was crushed in 1975.
55. Tareq Y. Ismael, The Arab Left, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1976, p 44.
56. Michel Aflaq, founder of the Ba'ath, considered socialism in the Arab world to be 'a branch subservient to the root which is nationalism'. In his view socioeconomic problems were 'related to a much more important and deeper problem, namely that of nationalism. Quoted in S Hanna & G Gardner, Arab Socialism: A Documentary Survey, Leiden, EJ Brill, 1969, pp 297-304.
57. Data on corporatist structures in the region are limited. See G Baer, Egyptian Guilds in Modern Times, Jerusalem: Israel Oriental Society, 1964;
58. R Bianchi, Unruly Corporatism, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989;
59. Waterbury, The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat; A Richards &
60. J Waterbury, The Political Economy of the Middle East: State, Class, and Economic Development, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990, pp 340-347;
61. and C Moore, 'Professional syndicates in Egypt', American Journal of Arabic Studies, 1, 1975, pp 60-82.
62. The National Democratic Party (NDP), led by President Mubarak. There is also a Liberal Party; Nasserist Arab Democratic Party, National Progressive Unionist Grouping, New Wafd Party and Socialist Liberal Party.
63. The legislature consists of a People's Assembly with 454 seats (444 of them elected by popular vote, 10 appointed by the president) and the purely consultative Advisory Council, which has 264 seats (176 elected by popular vote, 88 appointed by the president). In the last election, the NDP won 99% of the vote for the Advisory Council and 88% of the vote in the People's Assembly. The next largest number of votes, 8%, went to independents.
64. 41 In the last election, held in March 2003, the NPF won 67% of the vote and 167 seats; independents won 33% of the vote and 83 seats.
65. S Khalaf, Lebanon's Predicament, New York: Columbia University Press, 1987, p 113.
66. In October 2003 the Council announced its intent to introduce elections for half the members of local and provincial assemblies and 40 of the 120 members of the national Consultative Council incrementally over a period of four to five years.
67. The 10% are adult males who are native born or who have been naturalised citizens for 30 years or more, and their male descendants at age 21.
68. In the 1970s the largest Saudi employer, ARAMCO, employed only 13 000 people despite an annual turnover of $30 billion. The wages and salaries of these were high even by the affluent standards of the industry. Those working in services (civil servants, city retailers and merchants) also benefited from the oil sector. Few people outside these occupations have benefited. R Wilson, The Economies of the Middle East, London: Macmillan, 1979, pp 40-41.
69. Government of Lebanon, Ministère du Plan, Direction Centrale de la Statistique, Recueil de Statistiques Libanaises Année 1969, p 319.
70. A Badre, 'Economic development of Lebanon', in C Cooper & S Alexander (eds), Economic. Development and Population Growth in the Middle East, New York: American Elsevier, 1972, p 191. Services such as banking, trade and tourism, which produced the bulk of the national income, were related to the oil industry in the Arabian Peninsula.
71. R Bianchi, Unruly Corporatism, p 39.
72. G Amin, The Modernization of Poverty: A Study in the Political Economy of Growth in Nine Arab Countries, 1945-1970, Leiden: EJ Brill, 1974, pp 110-111.
73. G Amin, The Modernization of Poverty: A Study in the Political Economy of Growth in Nine Arab Countries, 1945-1970, 1974, pp 110-111. Ibid.
74. J Waterbury & R El Mallakh, The Middle East in the Coming Decade.: From Wellhead to Well-Being?, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978, ch 1.
75. M El-Ghonemy, Economic Growth, Income Distribution and Rural Poverty in the Near East, Rome: FAO, 1984.
76. The highest rates of migration to the cities correlate with the areas of the largest landholdings. See H Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq's Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of its Communists, Ba'athists, and Free Officers, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979, Tables 5-1, 5-3;
77. and D Warriner, Land Reform in the Middle East: A Study of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, London: Oxford University Press, 1962.
78. The internal conflicts in Lebanon have been largely a struggle between socioeconomic groups, although sectarian, ideological and regional issues blur the lines of division. The prevalence, and generally perceived widening, of significant social and economic differentials between the warring factions are most frequently cited as the cause of the conflict. See, for instance, M Hudson, The Precarious Republic: Political Modernization in Lebanon, New York: Random House, 1968;
79. J Chamie, 'The Lebanese civil war: an investigation into the causes', World Affairs, 139 (3), 1976-77, pp 171-188;
80. A Suhrke & L Noble (eds), Ethnic Conflict in International Relations, New York: Praeger, 1977;
81. and W Kazziha, Palestine in the Arab Dilemma, London: Croom Helm, 1979.
82. S Issa, 'Rural income distribution in Iraq', Development Seminar Working Paper No 8, School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, March 1977, p 3.
83. Amin, The Modernization of Poverty, p 137.
84. Warriner, Land Reform in the Middle East, p 96.
85. S Radwan, 'Agrarian reform and rural poverty, Egypt, 1952-1975', Geneva: International Labour Office, 1977, pp 45-47.
86. The situation has improved since 1991, but the region 'still lags sharply in global terms'. Cordesman, 'Stablility and instability in the Middle East'.
87. Kazziha, Palestine in the Arab Dilemma, pp 43-4;
88. Davis, Challenging Colonialism, pp 171-172, 182, 191.
89. M al-Nowaihi, 'Changing the law on personal status in Egypt", Middle East Review, XI (4), Summer, 1979, pp 40-49.
90. Patrick Seale, The Observer, 9 May 1982.
91. For arguments and evidence supporting these statements, see S Halperin, War and Social Change in Modern Europe: The Great Transformation Revisited, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004;
92. and Halperin, In the Mirror of the Third World: Capitalist Development in Modern Europe, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.
93. As Rueschemeyer et al have argued, 'Where labour is most suppressed, there we find the least progress towards democracy'. D Rueschemeyer, E Stephens & J Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992, p 47.