Agency and space: The political impact of information technologies in the Gulf Arab states

Third World Quarterly

Volumn 27, Issue 6, 2006, Pages 1059-1083

  Murphy, Emma C ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ECONOMIC IMPACT; INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY; LIBERALISM; POLITICAL ECONOMY; POLITICAL REFORM; REGIONAL POLITICS;

ASIA; EURASIA; MIDDLE EAST; UNITED ARAB EMIRATES;

EID: 33749145863     PISSN: 01436597     EISSN: 13602241     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01436590600850376     Document Type: Article

References (85)

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2. Structural analyses has been provided by M Kamrava, 'Non-democratic states and political liberalisation in the Middle East: A structural analysis', Third World Quarterly, 19 (1), 1998, pp 63-85.
3. Explanations based on oil wealth precluding a necessity to liberalise are provided by K Chaudhry, The Price of Wealth, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997; and
4. D Vandewalle, Libya Since Independence: Oil and State-Building, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. Eva Bellin has argued that the strength of the coercive apparatus in the Arab world has inhibited democracy but also that the process of state-led development has created an ambivalence towards democracy among key elements of capital and labour.
5. E Bellin, 'The robustness of authoritarianism in the Middle East: A comparative perspective', paper presented at the conference on 'Bringing the Middle East Back In', Yale University, December 2001.
6. See also Bellin, Stalled Democracy: Capital, Labour and the Paradox of State-sponsored Development, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.
7. Volker Perthes has concluded that Arab elites have managed to circulate, regenerate and co-opt to the point that they can successfully neutralise demands for democracy from the wider masses. V Perthes (ed), Arab Elites: Negotiating the Politics of Change, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004.
8. Ellen Lust-Okar keeps the emphasis on elites, arguing that in the Arab world they have proved particularly adept at exploiting and manipulating cleavages between opposition groups, notably along the secular-Islamist faultline. E Lust-Okkar, 'Divided they rule: The management and manipulation of political opposition', Comparative Politics, 36 (2), 2004, pp 159-179. Frédéric Volpi has suggested that the Muslim world has speciffically spawned what he terms 'pseudo-democracies' as a stalemate is reached between three political currents: Liberalism, republicanism and Islamism.
9. F Volpi, 'Pseudo-democracy in the Muslim World', Third World Quarterly, 25 (6), 2004, pp 1061-1078.
10. Samuel Huntington argued that Islam was not compatible with democracy in 'Will more countries become democratic', Political Science Quarterly, 99 (2), 1984, pp 193-218. Adam Garfinkle claimed that Arab societies lacked in varying degrees three vital prerequisites for democracy: A belief that political authority lies with mankind rather than God, a concept of majority rule and the notion of universal equality.
11. A Garfinkle, 'The new missionaries', Prospect, April 2003, pp 22-24. Alfred Stepan has likewise argued for a speciffically Arab cultural resistance to democracy.
12. See A Stepan with Graeme Robertson, 'An Arab more than a Muslim electoral gap', Journal of Democracy, 14, 2003, pp 30-59.
13. See, for example, A Ehteshami, 'Is the Middle East democratising?', British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 26 (2), 1999, pp 199-219. Jean-François Seznec has suggested that the reforms in Saudi Arabia amount to 'proto-democratic stirrings' which place it on a trajectory towards polyarchy.
14. J Seznec, 'Stirrings in Saudi Arabia', Journal of Democracy, 13 (4), 2002, pp 34-40. Michael Herb has argued that Gulf democracy may not be full parliamentary democracy, but it retains the virtue of monarchical domination, which prevents Islamist subversion of democratic processes and thus retains stability.
15. M Herb, 'Emirs and parliaments in the Gulf', Journal of Democracy, 13 (4), 2002, pp 41-47.
16. J Crystal, Political Reform and the Prospects for Democratic Transition in the Gulf, Working Paper, Madrid: Fundacion Para Las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diálogo Exterior, 2005. The International Crisis Group has likewise argued that the Saudi regime is reluctant to do more than talk the talk.
17. See 'Can Saudi Arabia reform itself?', Middle East Report, No 28, Brussels: International Crisis Group, 14 July 2004.
18. D Brumberg, 'The trap of liberalised autocracy', Journal of Democracy, 13 (4), 2002, pp 56-68.
19. A Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
20. D Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East, New York: Free Press, 1958.
21. DA Boyd, Broadcasting in the Arab World: A Survey of Radio and Television in the Middle East, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1982, p 21.
22. For some excellent discussions of the impact of ICTs on the public sphere, see KL Hacker & J van Dijk, Digital Democracy: Issues of Theory and Practice, London: Sage, 2000, chs 3-6.
23. For discussion of the impact of the internet on identity and culture, see R Burnett & PD Marshall, Web Theory: An Introduction, London: Routledge, 2003, ch 4.
24. For American economists like Paul Romer, information had replaced land, labour and capital as the primary source of value. P Romer, 'Endogenous technological change', Journal of Political Economy, 98 (5), 1990, pp 71-102.
25. E Ayensu, 'International management', quoted in Brian Murphy, The World Wired Up, London: Comedia, 1983, p 119.
26. For example, mobile phones are more cost-effective than land lines for rural areas; digital technology may be more appropriate to dusty or humid climates than electromechanical equipment. See J James, 'The global information infrastructure revisited', Third World Quarterly, 22 (5), 2001, pp 813-822.
27. D Lyon, The Information Society: Issues and Illusions, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988; and
28. G Sussman, Communication, Technology and Politics in the Information Age, London: Sage, 1997.
29. There have been suggestions of a New International Division of Information Technology, comprising a wired core and a less wired, or wireless periphery. J Abbott, 'Democracyιnternet.asia? The challenges to the emancipatory potential of the net: Lessons from China and Malaysia', Third World Quarterly, 22 (1), 2001, p 111. Linda Main has discussed the opposing scenarios of either a Global Information Infrastructure, which massively accelerates economic and social development the world over, or a concentration of activity in one privileged group, creating a two-tier technology society.
30. L Main, 'The global information infrastructure: Empowerment or imperialism?', Third World Quarterly, 22 (1), 2001, pp 83-97.
31. See, for example, http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTIN.
32. The precise link between ICTs and development remains opaque. The 12th United Nations Human Development Report made it clear that there is no simple blueprint for how and what a developing country should embrace, how it can anticipate the associated costs or what risk-management strategies work best. Moreover, there remain concerns over the priority given by new research to the needs and interests of developed countries and by the uneven spread of ICT penetration which sees 'the majority of the world's population [has] yet to benefit from the new technology'. Press release of the International Telecommunication Union, 21 January 2002; and speech by Koff Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations.
33. See, for example, DH Perrit Jr, 'The internet as a threat to sovereignty? Thoughts on the internet's role in the national and global governance, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 5 (2), 1998; and
34. B Warf & J Gromes, 'Counterhegemonic discourses and the internet', The Geographical Review, 87 (2), 1997, pp 259-274.
35. See also P Ferdinand (ed), The Internet, Democracy and Democratization, London: Routledge, 2005;
36. L Grossman, The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in America, New York: Viking, 1995;
37. R Freeman, Democracy in the Digital Age, London: Demos, 1997; and
38. B Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age, San Francisco, CA: California University Press, 1984.
39. M Castells, The Internet Galaxy: Re.ections on the Internet, Business and Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
40. See, for example, Hacker & van Dijk, Digital Democracy.
41. For example, this is fundamental to European institutional ideas as to how the information society will affect European and partner states. Hence we see initiatives such as the 1999 European Commission's 'eEurope: An Information Society for All', the tenth action area of which was entitled 'Government Online', and which aimed to 'ensure that citizens have easy action to government information, services and decision-making procedures online'. See http://europa.eu.int/ISPO/basics/ I_europe.html. The EU also endorsed the Yale University-based 'Information Society Project' which explicitly seeks to promote democratisation, participation and decision making through the development and spread of ICT. Meanwhile the World Information Society summits (Geneva, December 2003 and Tunis, November 2005) have placed dissemination of ICTs to all villages, hospitals and schools around the world, including all populations having access to radio and television, by 2015, as their principal target. For them, universal access is considered a prerequisite for a democratising impact.
42. Sussman, Communication, Technology and Politics in the Information Age, p 194.
43. Abbott, 'Democracyιnternet.asia', p 106.
44. In 2000 69% of websites were composed in English, while 43% of web users were non-English speaking. After English the most widely used languages were Japanese (5.8%), German (5.77%) and Chinese (3.87%). Twenty-four of the top 30 languages used were European and, interestingly for the purposes of this paper, there were more web sites in Icelandic than in Arabic. Ibid, p 107.
45. See discussion in A Wilhelm, Democracy in the Digital Age, London: Routledge, 2000.
46. Even the French have been complaining about Google's plans to create a digital library which will give priority to English language material. French scholars have termed their resistance to this 'the first cultural war in cyberspace', claiming that Google will be in a position to 'highjack the thought of the world'.
47. B Noveck, 'Electronic communication and electronic democracy', in Ferdinand, The Internet, Democracy and Democratization, pp 18-35.
48. Noveck has argued that internet discussion between citizens, or between the state and its citizens, lacks vital conversational attributes of true democratic exchanges, such as urgency, importance or sympathy. Until these are somehow 'architected' into internet dialogue, the conversation remains only partial and as such can not fully meet the needs of democratic deliberation and self-governance. Ibid.
49. J Anderson, 'Producers and Middle East internet technology: Getting beyond "impacts"', Middle East Journal, 54 (3), 2000, pp 419-431.
50. H Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Oxford: Blackwell, 1991, p 411.
51. UNDP/Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, Arab Human Development Report 2003: Building a Knowledge Society, New York: UNDP, 2003. For the discussion of the role of religion in impeding knowledge creation, see pp 118-121.
52. See, for example, TE Huff, 'Globalisation and the internet: Comparing the Middle Eastern and Malaysian experiences', Middle East Journal, 54 (3), 2001, pp 439-458.
53. PG Mandaville, 'Reimagining the ummah? Information technology and the changing boundaries of political Islam', in A Mohammadi (ed), Islam Encountering Globalization, London: Routledge Curzon, 2002, pp 61-90.
54. M Fandy, 'Information technology, trust and social change in the Arab world', Middle East Journal, 54 (3), 2000, pp 378-394.
55. The quote comes from Eric Goldstein, author of The Internet in the Middle East and North Africa: Free Expression and Censorship, New York: Human Rights Watch, July 1999 and appears in A Peled, 'Debunking the internet myth', Middle East Quarterly, 7 (3), 2000, p 1, at http://www/meforum.org/article/71.
56. CM Henry, Challenge of Global Capital Markets to Information-shy Regimes: The Case of Tunisia, Occasional paper No 19, UAE: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 1988.
57. Middle East Economic Digest, 27 June 2003, p 33.
58. Ibid.
59. United Nations, Global e-government Readiness Report 2004, New York: United Nations, 2004. Figures adapted from Tables 6.6.
60. Middle East Economic Digest, 27 May 2005, p 37.
61. Middle East Economic Digest, 19 April 2002, p 6.
62. Al-Jazeera had an audience of roughly 50 million in 2005. SA Schleifer, 'Satellite TV and democracy' in bitterlemons-international.org, 3 (19), 26May2005, at http://bitterlemons-international.org/previous. php?opt=18&id=85.
63. The best study of satellite television in the region is N Sakr, Satellite Realms: Transnational Television, Globalization and the Middle East, London: IB Tauris, 2001.
64. E Ghareeb, 'New media and the information revolution in the Arab world - an assessment', Middle East Journal, 54 (3), 2000, pp 395-417.
65. N Ghadbian, 'Contesting the state media monopoly: Syria on al-Jazira television', MERIA Journal, 5 (2), 2001, p 1, at http://meriaq.idc.ac.il/ journal/2001/issue2/jv5na7.html.
66. N Sakr, 'Whys and wherefores of satellite channel ownership', Arab Culture and Civilisation, a National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education CollaborativeWeb Project, at http://arabworld.nitle.org/texts.
67. Ibid, pp 1-8.
68. This particular quote comes from Dr Muhammad Ayish of the Department of Mass Communication and Public Relations at Ajman University from a presentation at an international seminar of Article 19. See D Zureikat, Satellite Broadcasting in the Middle East and North Africa: Regulations, Access and Impact, TBS Archives, 2, 1999, at http://www.tbsjournal.com/ Archives/spring99/Documents/article19.html.
69. Asharq al Awsat, 17 February 2006.
70. J Alterman, 'Arab satellite television: Can it rise above spectacle', Arab Reform Bulletin, 2 (11), 2004, at http://www.carnegieendowment.org/ publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=16242.
71. Figures taken from Madar Research Journal, 2003, quoted in Middle East Economic Digest, 27 June 2003, p 33.
72. UN, Global e-Government Readiness Report, p 111.
73. Anderson, 'Producers and Middle East internet technology', p 424.
74. Jason Abbott has argued, for example, that his own survey of progressive websites on Yahoo.com and Yahoo!Asia indicates that Asian internet users have different priorities in their website selection than users in mature, democratic societies with well developed civil societies. Abbott, 'Democracyιnternet.asia', p 101.
75. International Telecommunication Union, The Global Diffusion of the Internet, Geneva: ITU, March 1998, p 219, at http://mosaic.unomaha.edu/ EDI1998/7IUAE.PDF.
76. G Eid, The Internet in the Arab World: A New Space of Repression?, Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, at http://www.hrinfo.net/en/ reports/net2004.
77. Middle East Economic Digest, 23 November 2001, p 2.
78. Between 1999 and 2003 fixed-line penetration in Saudi Arabia rose by just 1% while it actually declined in the UAE. Middle East Economic Digest, 27 May 2005, p 32.
79. Middle East Economic Digest, 18 February 2005, p 62.
80. See Mobility for One Language, Diverse Cultures, Mobile Telecommunications Company/ABQZawya, 2005/2006, at http://www.Zawya.com/ story.cfm?id. The MENA Survey by ACNielsen is appended at the end.
81. D Wheeler, 'New media, globalization and Kuwaiti national identity', Middle East Journal, 54 (3), 2000, pp 432-444.
82. For information on how Bluetooth technology is facilitating new levels of interaction between the sexes in Dubai, see H Sharp, 'Phone technology aids UAE dating', BBC News, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ world/middle-east, 17 February 2006.
83. The GCC ICT market is currently worth an estimated $5000 million a year, depending on who you talk to, with 60% of the spend taking place in Saudi Arabia.
84. Middle East Economic Digest, 6 February 2004, p 4.
85. For example, according to Abdallah al-Musa, the head of Saudi data research for Saudi Telecom, some 91% of Saudi medium-sized businesses had no knowledge of virtual private network (VPN) systems. 'Third MEED [Middle East Economic Digest] Middle East Telecoms Conference', Bahrain, 2005.