Instability in the Middle East

Structural Changes and Uneven Modernisation 1950–2015

Karel Černý

Published by Charles University

Karolinum Press

www.karolinum.cz

ebooks@karolinum.cz

Translation by Phil Jones

Cover by Jan Šerých

First English edition

© Charles University, 2017

© Karel Černý, 2017

ISBN 978-80-246-3427-2 (print)

ISBN 978-80-246-3191-2 (pdf)

ISBN 978-80-246-4211-6 (epub)

ISBN 978-80-246-4210-9 (kindle)

CONTENTS

1. Introduction: Chronic Instability in the Middle East

2. Modernisation as the cause of instability in the Middle East – too slow or too fast?

3. Creating an alternative theoretical model: uneven modernisation and its context

4. A new theoretical model of modernisation in the Middle East

5. Four possible macro comparisons of the Middle Eastern pattern of modernisation

6. Operationalisation of the model of uneven modernisation and sources of empirical data

7. From the macro-level of structures to the micro-level of actors and their actions: mechanisms of destabilisation

8. Methodological, terminological and personal observations

9. Political Modernisation: Weak and Authoritarian States

10. Frozen political modernisation in an international comparison: the democratic deficit

11. Regional comparison: the democratic deficit of Middle Eastern regimes

12. The second dimension of political modernisation: a weak state and a governance deficit

13. The character of Middle Eastern regimes and the character of political repertoires of contention

14. Political regimes and political repertoires: a weak authoritarian state, revolution and terrorism

15. (1) The birth of political actors: mass political participation and rigid political systems

16. (2) The discrepancy between preferences and reality: the desire for democracy, prosperity and conservative morals

17. (3) The discrediting of unscrupulous dictators, the invention of tradition and the moralising drive of Islam

18. (5) The current conflict as a continuation of history

19. (6) The decline of secular doctrines: an ideological vacuum and Islam as an alternative

20. (7) The chronic crisis of the legitimacy of regimes: the career of Middle Eastern ideologies

21. (8) The turn to religion: official Islam and the risky strategy of regimes

22. (9) Domesticated clerics and the decline of the traditional religious authorities

23. (10) Oil rent, the power pyramid and the socio-economic alienation of regimes

24. (11) The cultural alienation of westernised regimes: cultural decolonisation

25. (12) Clientelism and the alienation of the regime from the rest of the population

26. (13) Military clientele: co-opting of the army, polarisation of society

27. (14) Terrorism as the continuation of politics by other means

28. Economic Modernisation: Volatile and Distorted

29. Oil rent and distorted economic development: the Dutch disease

30. International comparison: the Middle East and other macroregions

31. Regional comparison of Middle Eastern countries: a two-speed region

32. Rapid economic development as a possible factor in political destabilisation

33. The model’s application to the post-colonial Arab world: oil rent versus neoliberal reforms

34. The international context: the food crisis and political destabilisation

35. Population Explosion: The Middle East and Its Abandoned Young People

36. International comparison: the Middle East and other world macroregions

37. Regional comparison: a comparison of Middle Eastern countries

38. Young people caught in the trap of uneven modernisation: divergence in the rate of demographic, economic and political change

39. A historical comparison of the demographic revolution: Europe past and the Middle East present

40. (1) Rebellious youth: identity crisis, intergenerational conflict and adolescence

41. (2) The leisure of the “Arab street”: a blessing or a curse?

42. (3) The attitudes and aspirations of young people on the eve of revolution: the conflict between hopes and reality

43. (4) A lost generation: the population dynamic versus a collapsing labour market

44. (5) Demographic marginalisation and the marriage crisis

45. (6) The generational alienation of the power elite: the old cadres versus the young population

46. (7) The uneven population growth of different groups within a heterogeneous state

47. The Media Revolution: The Middle East as a Religious Marketplace

48. The media revolution: an international and regional comparison

49. The media revolution: a historical comparison. Modernisation in the era of the global village

50. (1) The birth of public opinion: the masses discover politics

51. (2) The mobilisation and coordination of collective action: the case of the Arab Spring

52. (3) A shrinking world I: consumer aspirations and the revolution of growing expectations

53. (4) A shrinking world II: visible domestic inequality

54. (5) A shrinking world III: the Turkish model and other reference countries

55. (6) The shrinking Arab world: the democratising effect of Al-Jazeera and the revolutionary domino

56. (7) The media at the service of opposition political Islam

57. (8) The religious market and the erosion of traditional authorities: the struggle over how to interpret Islam

58. (9) Pluralism and fundamentalism

59. The Expansion Of Education: The Middle East and the “Lumpenintelligentsia” 300

60. The development of education: an international comparison

61. Regional comparison of the development of education in Middle Eastern countries

62. (1) Educational problems: poor quality and growing inequality as evidence of the failure of regimes

63. (2) The awakening of political awareness and the failing Middle Eastern panopticon

64. (3) The boomerang effect of religious education: the Islamic revival and a culture of interpretation

65. (4) Secondary school political chemistry: the reaction of disgruntled teachers and students

66. (5) Universities as centres of opposition

67. (6) The battle over the interpretation of Islam: the loss of the monopoly of traditional authorities and the arrival of new interpreters

68. (7) Counter-productive reactions on the part of regimes: I speak in the name of Islam – I have power

69. (8) The westernised mindset and the creolisation of Islam: Western ideology and the invention of tradition

70. (9) Growth in aspirations and the unemployed “lumpen-intelligentsia”

71. (10) The alienation and radicalisation of the intelligentsia

72. The Boom In Megacities: A Whirlwind of Urbanisation in the Middle East

73. Urbanisation Middle Eastern-style: international and historical comparison

74. Urbanisation and uneven modernisation

75. Urbanisation and (non)secularisation: European past, Middle Eastern present

76. (1) Unmanageable urbanisation: discredited regimes and their doctrine of development

77. (2) Spatial concentration: the potential for political agitation, organisation and mobilisation

78. (3) Urban unemployment: voluntary simplicity instead of revolution?

79. (4) Shrinking of the social world: visible inequality and the resistance of socially sensitive Islam

80. (5) Urban and rural poverty: new reference groups, new aspirations

81. (6) Islamic charity and civil society: the urban middle classes and the poor as clients

82. (7) The crisis of the overburdened urbanised family: the conservative reaction

83. (8) A threatening urban environment and Islamic feminism

84. (9) Intergenerational alienation: the decline in the authority of rural parents and the search for surrogates

85. (10) Radicalisation of the second and third generation of migrants

86. (11) The city as the modern jahiliyyah: the epitome of moral turpitude

87. (12) The traditional bipolarity of urban and rural Islam: a disturbed balance

88. (13) Peasants into Islamists: socialising functions and surrogate rural communities

89. (14) From folk to political Islam: ideological functions and an orientation for the disoriented

90. Conclusion

91. Four macro-comparisons of modernisation patterns and chronic instability in the Middle East

92. Mechanisms of destabilisation: from macro to micro, from structures to actors

93. References

94. List of figures and tables

INTRODUCTION: CHRONIC INSTABILITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

MODERNISATION AS THE CAUSE OF INSTABILITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST – TOO SLOW OR TOO FAST?

The academic, media and public discourse regarding the development of the post-colonial Middle East has long featured two viewpoints that, on the face of it, are diametrically opposed. The first claims the region is backward and rigid, with change taking place too slowly, if at all. The second believes that the region is transforming too quickly and that this is traumatising and destabilising local societies.

This book offers an alternative way of looking at the issue that brings together these two apparently contradictory viewpoints. It conducts a theoretically original and empirically substantiated analysis of the structural causes of Middle Eastern social and political instability, an instability manifest externally in many different forms: the protracted crisis of governing regimes and their ideologies and legitimacy; an upsurge in different ideologically driven opponents of these regimes in the form of oppositional political Islam and pro-democracy movements; a surge in political violence in the form of terrorism, civil wars or revolutions during the Arab Spring; the chronic post-revolutionary instability of the region, the collapse of many local states and the erosion of social order resulting in chaos, anarchy and interregnum.

Monitoring these external, constantly changing manifestations of pan-regional instability means understanding the Middle East as a dramatic chessboard full of constantly materialising and disappearing state and non-state actors enforcing their interests, promoting their ideologies, and competing with each other, while at the same time entering into often unexpected coalitions or, indeed, dissolving them equally unexpectedly. However, the aim of this book is to offer an explanation of the deeper causes of a chess game that is being played ever faster and during which new pieces are being added and the chessboard itself being redrawn, along with the very rules of the game. A new Middle East is emerging, one completely different to that which we have been accustomed to for decades.

How is it possible that, while over the last fifty years the Middle Eastern political chessboard was one of the most stable, predictable and boring in the world, controlled as it was by the same figures playing in accordance with the same strategies, over the last few years the pace of history has sped up beyond recognition? I will argue that this is the consequence of the impacts of long-term, subterranean social changes that have been taking place over the last fifty years but have been hitherto unobserved, since most observers have concentrated on the political game and not on the changes to its deeper demographic, social, economic and political determinants. And yet the character of these changes is strikingly reminiscent of what was a politically and socially destabilised Europe during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Reminding ourselves of recent European demographic and social history offers the possibility of better understanding the causes of the current turmoil in the Middle East.

EXCESSIVELY SLOW SOCIAL CHANGE

Those subscribing to the first viewpoint referred to above see the Middle East as an underdeveloped region, in which islands of modernity, progress, education and Western culture are surrounded by an ocean of medieval ignorance, obscurantism and Islamic-backed reactionary forces. According to this analysis, the region is experiencing a form of schizophrenia, with one leg in the camp of modernity, and the other still firmly planted in tradition (e.g. Longrigg, Jankowski 1963). More sophisticated versions of this line of argument describe the Middle East as a region inhabited by people who for the most part have not yet adapted psychologically to the modern world. Mentally they languish somewhere in the Middle Ages and its traditions. They cannot be described as “modern” because they are not sufficiently educated, socially mobile and informed. The boundaries of their community are the boundaries of their world. They are stuck in a time warp of tradition. They are walking backwards into the future, as it were, so as to replicate as faithfully as possible the patterns of behaviour, identities and aspirations of previous generations, which represent their role model and authority. They do not possess new, expanding consumer and career aspirations, and as a consequence lack an advanced sense of empathy, namely the ability to imagine alternatives to their life and the organisation of their community or wider society. They do not perceive themselves to be an active subject capable of changing the course of history according to a programme conceived of in advance, but as a passive object simply being dragged along by history and destiny (e.g. Lerner 1964, cf. Bah 2008). The more vulgar, borderline racist interpretation of the immutability of the region speaks of what it calls the “Arab mind”, a specific, unchanging personality archetype common to all Arabs characterised by an aversion to manual work, an obsession with sexuality, an overabundance of pride, a partiality for conspiracy theories, a reluctance to accept reality, an unwillingness to submit to anything other than power, and a comprehensive backwardness (e.g. Patai 1973, Friedman 2006).

The latest perspective on the region is the influential series of studies entitled the Arab Human Development Report (2002, 2003, 2005, 2009), compiled under the auspices of the UN by Arab scholars and intellectuals. These reports traced the deeper cause of the backwardness of the Arab world back to a combination of three deficits: the freedom deficit, women’s empowerment, and the knowledge deficit. Democratisation and the promotion of constitutional liberalism are not taking place, while, on the contrary, authoritarian and oppressive regimes persist. The status of women is not improving fast enough. The participation of women in different social spheres remains low, while oppression and discrimination remains high. As a consequence the human potential of an entire half of the population lies idle. Finally, the reports’ authors say, the region is unable to mount an effective fight against illiteracy and to produce a sufficiently well educated population. It is unable to generate innovation and new knowledge. On top of this it is unable to avail itself of the innovations and knowledge generated elsewhere in the world. The Arab world lags behind other global regions in all respects.

One of the consequences is a lack of economic growth. In addition, what economic growth there is fragile, since it is wholly dependent on the export of raw materials, a burgeoning, ineffective state sector, and on family businesses from the informal sector on the boundary of the grey economy that are incapable of generating stable jobs or expanding because they cannot apply for bank loans. By contrast, the sophisticated output of stable firms with high value added plays a minimal role. Job creation is sluggish and the region is unable to compete within the global economy. Another consequence of the three deficits is the lack of functioning state institutions that would ensure effective, transparent and high quality governance and thus a reliable framework for economic development and a tranquil, safe life for the population. Quality of life lags behind other regions of the world because of the ongoing risk of poverty, poor health and deteriorating nutritional and ecological standards (AHDR 2002, 2003, 2005, 2009).

The approach taken by the Arab Human Development Report team selects developmental indicators from the many gathered by the World Bank and highlights those that show the Arab world to be lagging behind other regions. Not only does the Arab world occupy a lowly position in these rankings, but the situation is improving at a slower tempo (cf. Amin 2006). Such studies point out with relish that not a single Arab university features among the 500 top universities in the world. The Arab publishing market represents only 1% of global book sales, a figure completely incommensurate with population statistics. While Turkey and Iran have multiplied several times over their scholarly output over the last decade as measured by specialist articles, the Arab world does not research or publish and is stagnating academically. The Arab world has low newspaper circulation per capita, limited telephone coverage, and translates only one book a year per one million of the population: in Hungary and Spain these figures are 519 and 920 respectively. All of this is intended to illustrate the region’s intellectual stagnation and its aversion to new ideas (e.g. Zewail 2011).

One variant of the argument that the Middle East is developing too slowly involves a narrative of chronically unsuccessful modernisation projects and developmental strategies imposed on a top-down basis by enlightened dictators on a subservient and backward population. This often involves reformist leaders recruited from the army, who, face to face with military defeat and their country’s obvious technological and economic inferiority as compared to the West, attempt to implement a defensive modernisation strategy aimed at closing the gap. Above all they attempt to establish a modern, powerful army and to embrace new technology so as to be able to resist the pressure of the West and play a commensurate role in international politics. However, generally speaking they are only able to create a strong army having first established a functioning secular education system and an effective state bureaucracy based on a codified, Western-style legal system. This strategy, based on the assumption that successful modernisation also requires a certain degree of cultural Westernisation, was first attempted by the Ottoman Turks, followed by the Arabs, Iranians, and Afghans. However, for the most part the strategy failed and encountered opposition on the part of a population unsettled by attempts at what they saw as excessively rapid change. What ensued were repeated waves of Islamic fundamentalism driven by the belief that, on the contrary, the region lagged behind the West because it had deviated from its own culture and religion (e.g. Lewis 2003a, 2003b).

Both the more sophisticated scholarly and the more vulgar non-academic versions of the slow-development theory of the Middle East region and its allegedly medieval character are often close to the discourse of orientalism, i.e. the set of widespread and deeply entrenched Western ideas, clichés and stereotypes regarding the Orient. Orientalism is based on the binary opposition of two interdependent categories – the Occident and the Orient, civilisation and barbarism – each of which makes no sense on its own. The idea of a Muslim Orient as the antithetical image of Europe, and later the United States, had always enabled the West to define itself by virtue of what it was not, locate its essence, and confirm its positive self-image as being in contradistinction to that of the Other, Oriental and inferior. This stereotype views a citizen of the West as broadminded, rational, active, industrious, peace-loving, progressive, dynamic and civilised, while the Oriental is prone to despotism, slavery, irrationality, savagery, fanaticism, indolence, violence, unbridled sexuality, primitiveness and barbarism (Said 2008, Halliday 2005, Barša 2012). The basis of the Orientalist discourse is essentialism, i.e. the idea that the present attributes of Oriental people are determined by an ancient barbaric culture of primitive desert Bedouins, whose influence they cannot shake off, and that these attributes are intrinsic, not subject to historical development, and fixed in time. The only thing that can liberate the Oriental from being suspended in timelessness and stagnation is an external shock or intervention in the form of colonialism or neo-colonialism (Abdel-Malek 1963).

In Western popular culture Orientalism is manifest, for instance, in television programmes and Hollywood films in which for a hundred years Arabs have been depicted as one of the “three Bs”: belly dancer, billionaire or bomber (Shaheen 2001, 2008). In Western politics Orientalism is then manifest in the justification of military intervention (Afghanistan, Iraq) in order to spread democracy, freedom, human rights and the emancipation of women. It is assumed that any change to this inflexible region can only come from without, and it is emphasised that the backwardness and absence of democracy in the region breeds violence and terrorism (Amin 2004, Amin 2006, Zogby 2012). The first to come up with the argument, still being recycled to this day, that justifies Western political violence against non-Western parts of the world was Napoleon Bonaparte during his expedition to Egypt in 1798 (Said 1981, Wallerstein 2008).

The basic premise of this book will perhaps seem counterintuitive in that it takes Middle Eastern societies to be relatively modern, a viewpoint at odds with the discourse of Orientalism. The fact is that over the last few decades Middle Eastern societies have changed far faster than have Western ways of thinking about the Orient, which remain rigid and incapable of adapting to the new reality. This is why we have a problem in understanding and correctly analysing the new Middle East.

EXCESSIVELY RAPID SOCIAL CHANGE

The opposite opinion views the Middle Eastern region as changing rapidly, a fact that over the last few decades has traumatised the population and driven them into the arms of both moderate and militant Islamists. For instance, in the religious revivals and the creation of new movements and sects, Saïd Amir Arjomand sees a globally intensifying process taking place in parallel not only within the framework of mainly Muslim regions, but within the framework of many other religious traditions. The common denominator is excessively rapid social change that all over the world sees the recycling of local versions of traditional fundamentalisms. This flies in the face of mainstream modernisation theories. The processes that were supposed to lead inevitably to secularisation and the death of religion have instead resulted in a renaissance and even the politicisation of Islam and other religions (cf. also Huntington 2001).

In the case of Muslim societies this involves, in approximately chronological order, the following processes, now running in parallel and overlapping, that escalated after World War II: (1) the integration of the Islamic world into the international economic and political system in the form of colonialism, imperial intervention, Christian missions, and economic, cultural and political globalisation, (2) the expansion of communication and transport technology and infrastructure, (3) the acceleration of urbanisation, (4) increased literacy and greater access to education in general, and (5) the creation of centralised nation states and the politicisation of the masses accompanied by repression on the part of regimes (Arjomand 1986, 2006). While the first four processes follow a similar trajectory in all countries and lead, arguably, to the unification of revivalist religious movements, the last factor is variable and leads to diversification as the character of political regimes forms to a significant extent the character of Islamist movements within each nation state (Arjomand 1995).

An approach that emphasises the rapid social change taking place in the Middle East often attempts to use this fact in order to explain the rise of oppositional political Islam, which has been going on since the 1970s. Though Islamic movements are highly heterogeneous internally and the formative influence of the specific national context in which they are rooted can be tracked down in the case of each, this is a phenomenon of international dimensions. The main causes of this upsurge must therefore be common to all movements (Dekmejian 1995). Individual writers then argue as to whether affinities and analogies can be found between current Islamism and earlier European Marxism (Gellner 1995, Roy 1992, 2004, Eisenstadt 2003), Russian anti-Tsarist anarchism (Gray 2004), German Nazism (Lewis 1990, 2003, Buruma and Margalit 2005), or secular nationalism (Juergensmeyer 1994). However, they all agree that the broad and internally highly differentiated current of Islamism is far more the product of the modernisation of the Middle Eastern region in the same way that the European political movements referred to above were the product of modernisation in their time, and not the consequence or residue of the Middle Ages, as proponents of the secularisation theory still thought until recently. I would agree with Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt (2000, 2003) that these movements possessed significant ambitions to define themselves in respect of the Western version of modernity, to be inspired selectively by it, and to come up with an alternative version or variation also inspired by domestic tradition, be this “invented” or genuinely authentic.

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Table of Contents

Introduction: Chronic Instability in the Middle East

Modernisation as the cause of instability in the Middle East – too slow or too fast?