The Modern Middle East - A Political History Since World War I (Third Edition)
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The continued dominance of nondemocratic state institutions in the Middle East is matched by a number of inherent weaknesses within civil society organizations. Civil society organizations are defined as self-organized, politically autonomous organizations that serve as unofficial gathering places for interest articulation, cultural and/or political expression, and participation in the public arena. They occupy critical spaces between states and societies and facilitate the articulation of ideas, circulation of information, and formation of identities and agendas that are not always welcomed by the state. To be sure, there is a rich and varied history of associational activism throughout the Middle East, and self-organized, interest-driven groups have long existed and operated in every country of the region from Iran in the east to Morocco in the west. These have ranged from merchants’ guilds and associations to syndicates belonging to writers, artisans, various professional groups (pharmacists, physicians, journalists, lawyers, dentists, etc.), the majlis or diwaniyya in the Arabian peninsula, and even Freemasons. In recent years, social media and cyberspace have become critical arenas for identity formation, agenda setting, social mobilization, and political activism. The Middle East also has a rich tradition of activism, at times going all the way back to the Ottoman era, by self-organized, associative groups such as Sufi orders (in Egypt), clerics (in Iran’s 1906–11 Constitutional Revolution), women’s rights advocates (in the 1920s in Iran), minority rights groups, and secular members of the intelligentsia (the Young Turks, and nationalists in Palestine and elsewhere before and after World War I).84 Beginning in the 1980s, as economic difficulties and infitah (open-door) policies slightly reduced the role of the state in the economy, associations proliferated. In Egypt, for example, the number of business groups grew from 26 in 1970 to 40 in 1980, professional groups from 36 to 68, and cultural organizations from 86 to 215.85 In Morocco, by the 1980s an estimated 3,000 associations were said to be active.86 Algeria saw an even more dramatic explosion of associational activism in the late 1980s, especially after the enactment of liberal laws in 1987–88 removing the need for government approval in establishing associations. By 1991, some 7,350 associations were in existence there.87
But the depth and prevalence of associational life did not necessarily mean its political independence and autonomy. Again and again, both historically and in contemporary times, the state has stepped in to curtail the degree to which these groups can act independently and serve as potential forums for political activism or the articulation of nonstate ideologies. Surprised by their quick proliferation and unexpected vibrancy, most states hurriedly drafted laws designed to curtail the associations’ autonomy and thus their efficacy as alternative sources of interest articulation and mobilization. In Egypt, where there may have been as many as fourteen thousand voluntary associations before 2011, the Mubarak regime insisted that they engage only in social activities and remain apolitical or risk being banned. In a law enacted in 1993, the government also tried to regulate elections within voluntary associations—in which oppositional Islamists were scoring impressive victories—and to tighten its control over them.88 In Jordan, where most associations have remained relatively passive and have interested themselves in largely nonpolitical issues, the government nevertheless decreed laws tightening control over the press and placed burdensome financial requirements on independent publications, resulting in the closure of twelve weeklies.89 In Morocco, the government’s efforts aimed at curtailing the independence of associations took a slightly different form—co-optation and penetration. The state placed its “faithful representatives and cronies” in leadership positions of the associations and “supplied them with financial and infrastructure support.”90 Clientelization caused these voluntary associations to lose any semblance of political autonomy they had once had. Even in Palestinian territories, the fledgling Palestinian Authority, alarmed at the popularity of Islamists within the various Palestinian nongovernmental organizations, made certain early on, through legislation, that the powers and independence of the NGOs would remain checked.91 Thus, throughout the Middle East, the state has gone to great lengths to ensure its continued and unimpeded dominance over society, seeing to it that civil society would suffer an embryonic death.
Given the effective subjugation of voluntary associations and NGOs to state organs, in most cases the only effective vehicle for change in state-society relations was the state itself. More specifically, state institutions such as parliamentary bodies and officially approved political parties—if not the state party itself—often acted as catalysts for subtle changes in the way the state related to society. For quite different reasons, this is what has been taking place in Iran and Lebanon and, to a somewhat lesser extent, in Morocco. Baaklini, Denoeux, and Springborg have labeled the ensuing process a “negotiated transition” to democracy:
Regime and opposition alike realize that the system is becoming more open. They are aware that the rules of the game are being more liberalized, yet neither knows exactly what the rules will end up being. The regime appears confident that it can control the pace at which, and the extent to which, the rules are being altered. It is orchestrating reforms on the assumption that these reforms will ultimately strengthen its position. The opposition, for its part, believes that its bargaining power is increasing with every concession made by the regime. It hopes that, in the long run, the small and incremental changes that are being implemented will amount to a significant shift in the balance of power between state and society.92
In each of these three cases, the elected members of the legislature set in motion a subtle process whereby some of the state’s traditional policies and practices were openly debated. Significantly, the primary impetus for such a debate was the internal makeup of the state itself, the unintended outgrowth of a highly controlled process of liberalization that gave rise to a larger debate over the general state of politics. In both Iran and Morocco, the state has done whatever it can to muffle the debate and direct it in ways suited to its own purposes. The response by elements within the Iranian state has been particularly brutal, leading to the serial murder of a number of noted journalists and writers in the late 1990s and blanket repression, mass arrests, and show trials of hundreds of political activists and state opponents in 2009. Countless newspapers and journals have also been closed down in recent years. In 2004 thousands of reformist candidates were barred from running in parliamentary elections, and the “stolen” 2009 presidential elections left hundreds dead and imprisoned in its painful wake. Nevertheless, talk of a loosely defined “reformation” abounds in Iran. The Iranian parliament, interestingly, had earlier emerged as one of the primary articulators and defenders of what is turning out to be a uniquely Iranian brand of democracy.93 Whether this trend will continue remains to be seen.
A similar but somewhat less noisy and contentious process has been unfolding in Morocco, where, beginning in the mid-1990s, the late King Hassan II strengthened the role of the parliament and allowed the unprecedented public airing of often-heated parliamentary debates and proceedings. Political prisoners were granted a royal amnesty in 1993, and a constitutional amendment in 1996 allowed for the direct election of deputies to the lower house of the parliament, one of the main demands of the opposition.94 Most importantly, in April 2004, the country’s new monarch, Mohammed VI, established an Equity and Reconciliation Commission (Instance Équité et Réconciliation, IER) charged with investigating and, through monetary and other forms of compensation, healing the wounds left by the country’s bitter legacy of arbitrary arrests and the ill treatment of prisoners. As a report by the International Center for Transitional Justice maintained at the time, “The Commission represents a groundbreaking approach for the entire region and is exceptional in many respects. It has the blessing of a King examining the crimes of his own father; its membership comprises many victims of arbitrary detention and torture; it is the only truth commission to ever have possessed the power to grant compensation directly to victims; and
it is the first truth commission in the Arab world. For these and other reasons, the IER has the potential for significant regional and international influence, both in the short and long term.”95
The IER’s final report, issued in December 2005 and released to the public a few weeks later, revealed that previous governments had been responsible for disappearances or forced exile of political opponents, arbitrary detentions that were often followed by execution, numerous violations of civil liberties, and sexual violence committed against prisoners and detainees. In addition to awarding monetary compensation to the victims, the report made a number of important recommendations, the most important of which were “consolidating constitutional guarantees to human rights”; “adopting and implementing an integrated national strategy to struggle against impunity”; and “reforms in the sectors of security, justice, law, and penal policy.”96
Despite the hopes raised by the commission’s appointment and its report, Morocco’s much-anticipated process of democratic opening has so far failed to materialize. The monarch remains the undisputed fount of all power. It appears that the efforts of King Hassan were designed to “reinvent” the monarchy and make it easier for his heir to rule.97 His son, King Mohammed VI, has sought to change the public appearance of the political system but has left intact its unaccountable and largely unresponsive relationship with society. Within only months of the IER’s report, an examination of the state of the country’s political opening reached the following conclusion: “There is no indication that Morocco is becoming a democratic country in which power resides in institutions accountable to the electorate. Instead, the king remains the dominant religious and political authority in the country and the main driver of the reform process. All new measures have been introduced from the top, as the result of decisions taken by the king and on the basis of studies carried out by commissions he appointed. Moreover, none of the measures impose limits on his power.”98
In Morocco, as in Iran, there is also a problem of routinized popular participation in NGOs, as lack of skills, limited opportunities, and fear of possible risks keep most urban middle classes away from voluntary associations.99 This is likely to hamper the emergence of a “culture of debate” in the country, though democratic aspirations continue to manifest themselves across the social spectrum.100
The other Middle Eastern country in which parliamentary democracy has been taking shape in recent years is Lebanon. The collapse of the 1943 National Pact (al-Mithaq al-Watani) set off a bloody civil war that raged from 1975 to 1990.101 The civil war was precipitated by, among other things, the inherent fragility of Lebanon’s consociational democracy and the institutions on which it relied. Also important were bitter inter- and intraelite factionalism and the stresses associated with the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, chief among which was an influx of armed Palestinian guerrillas into the country following their expulsion from Jordan in 1970. For nearly fifteen years, the civil war was sustained by the convergence of international and domestic factors. One of the domestic factors was the interests of local bosses (zuʿama), who found the crippled but still serviceable institutions and processes of the state beneficial.102 By the late 1980s, however, Lebanon’s self-destruction had become too costly, and members of the last elected parliament, from 1972, gathered in Taʾif, Saudi Arabia, to negotiate an end to the war and foster a new national consensus. Although the civil war continued for another year, the Taʾif Accord was meant to serve as the basis of a reconstituted democratic system. Finally, in October 1990, the Lebanese civil war came to an end.
The spirit of Taʾif did not outlast the civil war by much. Initially, opposition candidates, mostly Christian, boycotted the 1992 parliamentary elections, primarily because of Syria’s heavy-handed presence in the country. When the 1996 elections came around, talk of a boycott was abandoned by those opposed to the Taʾif formula, and a reinvigorated democracy appeared to be in the offing. But it did not take long for the state elites to ensure that election laws favored their reelection and continued dominance of the system.103 As an indication of other limits of Lebanon’s democracy, various acts of intimidation of opposition figures and state-imposed restrictions continued to occur throughout the 1990s. In 1998, for example, the government banned public gatherings and demonstrations and prevented the broadcast of a television interview with the exiled Aoun.104 Parliament’s election in 1999 of a new president (Emile Lahoud, formerly commander of the army) and the subsequent resignation of a prime minister widely perceived to be corrupt (Rafiq Hariri) held promises of a greater democratization of the Lebanese polity.
Because Lebanon has historically found itself in the firing line of much more powerful rivals—the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Syrians, and more recently the Iranians—its domestic politics has been shaped, perhaps more so than those of any other regional state, by international crosscurrents over which it has had little or no control. Repeatedly, Lebanon’s various factions have failed to demonstrate their own resolve to sustain the country’s constitutionally democratic political system. But the constant machinations of overbearing, external players have done even more harm to the consolidation of a consolidated democracy. Although the Taʾif Accord mandated the departure of Syrian troops from Lebanon, who had been present since 1976, it was not until April 2005 that the Syrian army finally withdrew from the country. Up until that point, “Damascus essentially controlled Lebanon—dominating government, interfering in elections, naming presidents and prime ministers, making major policy decisions.”105 Syria’s withdrawal was prompted by Hariri’s assassination the previous February, once again plunging Lebanon into chaos and leading to bitter acrimony among the country’s multiple factions. The animosities were temporarily set aside in the aftermath of Israel’s devastating war on the country in 2006 but resurfaced again shortly thereafter. Iran, meanwhile, found in its ally the Hezbollah a highly effective deterrent against possible Israeli attacks on its soil.
On the one hand, Lebanon’s various factions are too divided and acrimonious to enter into lasting, viable alliances. On the other hand, none is strong or numerous enough to effectively overwhelm the others and impose its will on them. Not surprisingly, early on in the life of the republic a consociational democracy was determined to be the most appropriate form of political system for the country.106 But neither the Lebanese elites themselves nor the external actors interested in the country have done much to make the system meaningfully effective. If anything, they have often deliberately eroded its efficacy. Nevertheless, despite its chronic precarious balance, at times teetering on the edge of collapse, the political system has somehow withstood the test of time since the civil war ended. How much more meaningfully democratic it will become over time is yet to be determined.
As the examples of Iran, Morocco, and Lebanon show, up until the 2011 uprisings, the pace, depth, and meaningfulness of liberalization processes in the Middle East all were a product of the agendas, priorities, and overall nature of dynamics within the state. Iran offers a paradigmatic example of a state-led transition arising from tensions between “hard-liners” and “soft-liners.” These internal tensions are far less apparent in Morocco, where the state remains far more cohesive in its goals and priorities, so the transition process there has been considerably slower and far more controlled. In Lebanon, the ruling elite’s commitment to the spirit of the Taʾif Accord has proven paramount in maintaining the overall vibrancy of the country’s democracy. Up until the late 1990s the locus of the elites’ commitment lay elsewhere. The election of a new president in 1999 and the slow emergence of a new cadre of politicians appear to have brightened the prospects for Lebanon’s democracy.107 The degree to which society eventually becomes involved in the transition process and the timing of such involvement depend on specific conditions within each country. The frequency of political mobilization in Iran over the past two decades appears to have been instrumental in giving Iran’s transition until 2009 greater societal resonance, whereas a history of s
tatist absolutism has made most Moroccans take a wait-and-see attitude toward the state’s proclaimed championing of democracy. In Lebanon, where sectarian and community leaders have long held sway among their respective clients, the popular scope of the country’s democracy has been defined more sharply by elite agendas and priorities.
As these cases demonstrate, until 2011, across the Middle East states resorted to a variety of means to ensure their uncontested control over the political process and the nature of political input by social actors. In almost all cases this was done through the legislative organs of the state, which in dictatorships served as “instruments of cooption” and enabled dictators to make policy compromises and concessions.108 They helped with “controlled bargaining” and enabled the dictator to “reconstitute his bargaining partner each time.”109 In Yemen, for example, these formal venues for dissent helped boost the Saleh regime’s appearance of legitimacy both domestically and internationally and created safety valves for pressures from below by providing avenues to the expression of oppositional sentiments, however mild and sanitized.110 But parliamentary elections were not always as easy to manage, opening the possibility that they might be undermanaged, as was the case with the Egyptian parliamentary elections of 2005, or overmanaged, as with Egypt’s 2010 parliamentary elections.111 In fact, the farcical nature of Egypt’s 2010 elections directly contributed to the spontaneous demonstrations that erupted the following January and led to the fall of the Mubarak regime.112