Mafhoum
Exclusive
The Viability of
Authoritarian Rule in the
an overview and critique of theory
Raymond Hinnebusch,
I. THE DEBATE ON DEMOCRATIZATION STUDIES:
After a decade
in which democratisation studies were on the cutting edge, the wheel has turned
again with growing claims that the Third Wave is exhausted or that the
transition paradigm is misguided. While some always regarded the
This
essay will explore the debate over the persistence of authoritarianism in the
II. CONTENDING APPROACHES TO EXPLAINING AUTHORITARIANISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST
I. Modernisation Theory (MT) and the Requisites of Democratisation:
Current democratization theory owes much to the early Modernisation Theory (of the fifties and sixties) that examined the requisites of democratisation in developing countries. It argued that beyond certain thresholds of economic development, societies become too complex, and socially mobilised to be governed by authoritarian means[6]. What MT convincingly demonstrated was that high income countries were most likely to be democratic and that rising literacy, urbanisation, and non-agricultural employment (indicators of "social mobilisation") were associated with an increased propensity to political participation (greater desire for it and efficacy to seek it); by implication authoritarianism need not be unviable at lower levels of modernisation and may even be quite congruent with the features to many pre-modern societies.
Modernisation
theory, however, is flawed in at least two respects. First, there is a problem
in identifying the threshold beyond which authoritarianism ceases to be
viable: it is evidently quite high since fascist and communist regimes remained
viable in
Since
democratisation has not happened in the Middle East when similar middle income
levels have produced some democratisation elsewhere, MT theorists have
fallen back on the argument that the region's cultural exceptionalism
has short-circuited the “natural” linear relation between increased development
and increased democratisation. Where such arguments see cultures as essentially
fixed and uniform, they are fundamentally misleading. On the contrary, Islam
varies widely by context and time and is no more an unchanging religious
obstacle to democratisation than Catholicism was once said to be. Where
other conditions are right (such as level of income, presence of a
private bourgeoisie as in
Arguably
culture is most important in shaping conceptions of political legitimacy, which
is everywhere “constructed” of inter-subjective (i.e. cultural) understandings.
I am prepared to accept that the Middle East’s patriarchal and Islamic
traditions accept authoritative leadership as long as it is seen to
serve the collective interests, that is, defends the community from outside
threats and delivers welfare to which people feel entitled, and as long as it
is seen to consult with the community; where it fails to meet these standards,
authoritarian leadership is rapidly de-legitimised and Muslims form or join
opposition movements. This essentially collectivist/populist idea of leadership
legitimacy is likely to embrace a more restricted (some might say more
balanced) notion of individual, property and minority rights, is difficult to
reconcile with neo-liberal versions of capitalist liberal democracy, and is
more tolerant of populist versions of authoritarian rule; but, on the other
hand, it is more egalitarian and inclusive than the cultural traditions of
states like Hindu India where a liberal but rather (substantively if not
procedurally) exclusionary version of democracy has survived. Conceptions of
legitimacy are hardly fixed and
Given that authoritarian rule is the historically dominant form of governance (and not just in the Middle East) and in view of the complicated requisites of democratization, there is little need for cultural as an independent variable to explain authoritarian persistence. Rather, it is probably most useful as a merely intervening variable, in which conceptions of legitimacy which are more tolerant of authoritarian leadership under certain conditions, reinforce the viability of adapted forms of authoritarianism at growing levels of societal modernisation.
What seems clear is that modernisation is increasing aspirations for participation and endowing individuals with such necessary participatory tools as literacy and that culture is no obstacle to this: but whether such aspirations will be satisfied depends on other variables such as whether individuals can act collectively to demand democratisation or whether there are institutions that can accommodate it or ones that can contain such demands short of.
2. Revised Modernisation Theory and the Obstacles to Democratization:
The
failure of early MT’s expectations for democratization in the LDCs led to a
revision of the theory, epitomised by
An
additional obstacle to democratisation was that capitalist accumulation in
modernising countries required high profits for investors while squeezing
workers and peasants so that--as the Kuznets curve showed--inequality actually increased
in the development process (and only in the longer term when high levels of
income were reached, did inequalities start to decline)[12]. This stimulated class conflict not
readily containable by democratic institutions and stimulated authoritarian
solutions—authoritarianism of the right on behalf of capitalist classes or
authoritarianism of the left on behalf of their victims (MT cannot, however,
specify which version of authoritarianism will result). A third factor was that
the mismatch between state and identity from the haphazard imposition by
imperialism of territorial boundaries meant that LDCs did not enjoy the
underlying consensus on political community (shared nationhood) that would
allow them to differ peacefully over lesser issues and interests. Rustow argued
that the consolidation of national identity was the first requisite stage in
democratic transition.[13]
In the
These realities seem little changed today: the combination of increased social mobilisation, notably literacy with increased economic inequality amidst states suffering from unconsolidated political identity makes for a democratic unfriendly socio-economic environment
3. Social Structure and alternative political paths
The traditional of
historical sociology pioneered by Barrington Moore and applied in the
In
the
Instead of democracy, two outcomes have been typical: in the most tribal regions, oil rentierism has locked in a shaikhly authoritarianism of the right. In the more advanced settled regions, big landed classes stimulated radical alliances of the salaried middle class and peasantry, issuing in revolutionary coups and a populist authoritarianism of the left. These forms of authoritarianism were arguably congruent with the social structure of their societies, while stable democracy is not likely to be until and if these structures are transformed. Moreover, which version of authoritarianism exists will determine the kinds of coalitions, supportive of or opposed to any attempted democratization.
4. Regime Institutions and Authoritarian persistence:
The school of “new institutionalism” argues that the institutional configuration of regimes makes a crucial difference for outcomes, especially in institutionalising the various social structural configurations discussed above. As against the notion that authoritarian rule is cut from a single cloth (and necessarily “obsolete” across the board), institutionalism alerts us to the fact that authoritarian regimes are not all alike and vary according to their level of institutionalisation, which, in turn is shaped by and shapes the social forces that they include and exclude.
In this respect, it is necessary, firstly, to distinguish fairly primitive forms, such as personalistic dictatorships and military juntas which lack institutions able to include supportive social forces and implement policy and are, hence, only likely to be viable at lower levels of development. Quite different are more “institutionalised” authoritarian regimes, with single party/corporatist systems and bureaucratic/technocratic institutions that are more relatively “modern,” potentially more inclusive and developmentally capable, and durable at considerably higher levels of development.
Secondly,
among more developed kinds of regimes, it is necessary to distinguish PA
(populist authoritarian) regimes from "BA" ("bureaucratic
authoritarian" regimes. PA regimes originate during early-middle periods
of development, in middle class rebellions against old oligarchies and seek to
mobilize and incorporate the masses in the name of redistributive reform.
BA regimes, are a phenomenon of the transition to mass politics in which military
officers acting on behalf of the bourgeoisie and foreign capital use
authoritarian power to exclude the mobilising working class in the name capital
accumulation. The dominant institutional type that gave birth to most current
Steven Heydeman makes the strong claim that PA, (with the Syrian case in mind) was successful authoritarianism[18] in that it constituted a formula for constructing quite durable regimes that managed to overcome the “praetorianism” that seemed to Huntington so rampant in the LDCs during the fifties and sixties. The durability of PA rested not on one but several interlocking factors.[19]
First, PA regimes issued from revolutionary coups, originating in the heart of society and expressive of the revenge of nativist plebeians against cosmopolitan oligarchs buttressed under Western tutelage; moreover, PA revolutions incorporated a middle class/peasant alliance against this oligarchy; they were consolidated amidst intense social conflict, with authoritarian rule an instrument of one (plebeian) part of society wielded against the (oligarchic) other part, thus having strong class roots. PA regimes’ socio-economic reforms (typically land reform and nationalizations) simultaneously demolished the power of the oligarchy and the bourgeoisie while giving workers and peasants a stake in the persistence of populism. Initially at least, PA regimes were by no means so narrow based as the literature tends to assume.
Second, PA regimes were consolidated structurally. High levels of bureaucratisation and militarization shaped formidable pillars of power.
Single party systems penetrated factories, villages and schools and created or took over corporatist associations organising the various sectors of society—workers, peasants, women, youth. In this respect, it is worth underlining Huntington’s argument on order building which is often misunderstood as advocating dictatorship as a solution to praetorianism: he was actually quite explicit that military dictatorships only replicated praetorianism and stability required that participation demands be satisfied through institution building. But, by contrast to early MT, he argued that single party systems were a viable and modern form of authoritarianism because they could satisfy enough participation and organise enough of a constituency for the regime, particularly among previously non-participant masses, to stabilise states in the transition to modernity. Because armies and bureaucracies can only impose order “from the outside” and clientalist networks can rarely buy the loyalty of large masses of people, such institution building was essential if regimes were to “penetrate” society and incorporate constituencies.
But the cement of institutions has turned out to be a more complex mix of traditional and modernity than MT, which actually defines the two as contrary polarities, can admit of. Indeed, what makes PA viable is arguably its successful mix of "modern" (imported) and “traditional" (indigenous) forms of political cement. First, all PA regimes learned that cohesive elite cores could only be built through the dominance of a personalist leader over the rest of the ruling elite and through the exploitation of indigenous “political cement”—the trust deriving from likenesses based on kin, tribe, sect, region or graduating class; all put “trusted men” in command of the structural instruments of power. Second, the distribution of patronage was used to co-opt and ensure the loyalty of key groups; and it was the flow of oil revenues and foreign aid that allowed the servicing of clientalist networks inside and outside regime structures. Thus, rational bureaucratic structures were interwoven with patrimonial practices.
Fifth, all PA regimes were reactions against on-going Western penetration and the conflict with Israel and it was this that allowed them to develop nationalist legitimacy in lieu of traditional or democratic legitimacy. In this respect, it is worth noting that Brooker’s 1997 study of 8 surviving authoritarian regimes found that the only communality among them was nationalist resistance to an external threat.[20]
Finally PA regimes enjoyed reliable instruments of repression. They learned how to prevent coups—the main vehicle of regime change. Moreover, multiple wings of the mukhabarat maintained pervasive surveillance and specialised security forces repressed active rebellion. It is important to note however, that successful repression, while crucial for regime survival in times of crisis, must itself be explained, especially given the notorious unreliability of the instruments of repression in the period of “praetorianism;” it is only within the context of wider regime construction that this can be explained: the penetration of the army by the party; the purge of higher class elements from the military; the recruitment of the security forces from trusted in-groups; the nationalist legitimacy deriving from the struggle with external enemies, were among the multiple factors that made repression successful in PA regimes.
Institutional analysis thus suggests that PA regimes are not so flimsy as much democratisation literature assumes; indeed, in the Middle East, they have survived repeated crises, including economic crises, wars and intense external pressures. Additionally, surveys of authoritarian regimes by Huntington, Brooker and others have found that PA regimes combine all the structural features which even individually are most resistant to democratisation, namely personalist leadership, single party rule and a politicised army with stake in the regime. [21] What is perhaps most important is that these are complex, not simple regimes, combining multiple governance resources: coercion but going “beyond coercion" as a definitive study on the durability of the Arab state recognised over a decade ago.[22] A second argument critical argument about PA regimes is that the coalitions they rest on make them peculiarly suited to authoritarian persistence. Firstly, they incorporate the social forces most threatened by the economic liberalisation—workers, peasants, civil servants—needed to start political pluralization. PA regimes thus, typically try to limit market capitalism. Second, PA regimes tend to deter formation of a democratic coalition since they greatly weaken the bourgeoisie, the potential leader of such a coalition, while incorporating the working class and peasants, making them unavailable as shock troops of such a democratic revolution. Finally, the funnelling of rent through clientalist networks tends to individualise political action as actors seek personal gains through privileged connections to power, thereby fragmenting the potential class action needed for democratization.
In short, institutional analysis suggests that what makes the Middle East “exceptional” is less culture, per se, than the unique institutional configurations by which it has combined mass incorporating populism with rent-lubricated patrimonalism. In no other region has this model dominated. One could add to this that the other regime type prevalent in the region, the rentier monarchy, the outcome of a special combination of oil and tribalism, is also virtually unique to the region.
Even if we accept the argument of “path dependency”, these regimes are, nevertheless, all subject to pressures from without and changes from within--including economic liberalisation, elite change and global pressures--to which they must inevitably seek to adjust.
5. Post-Populist Political Economy and Lopsided Political Liberalisation
Even if PA was a political success, it obviously had big liabilities: it was rooted in no large-property owning class having a stake in its survival; it is very economically vulnerable and needs rent to sustain itself. The economic growth that it manages to promote cannot keep up with the population growth that populist welfare programs actually encourage. The vulnerabilities of PA, usually an economic crisis, perhaps associated with war burdens, has forced all Middle Eastern PA regimes into a post-populist phase involving economic liberalisation (infitah) and attempted revival of a capitalist class.[23] If economic liberalisation succeeds, it generates a new engine of growth to supplement the stagnating public sector as well as a new bourgeois class with a stake in the regime.
Since mature capitalism and democracy go together, is it plausible that the economic liberalisation that has spread across the Middle East will stimulate political democratization? A number of authors, including Brumberg, Owen, Farsoun and Zakhariyya, and Ehteshami and Murphy have all highlighted how far this is not necessarily the case.[24] The fact is that economic liberalisation is, indeed, associated with political pluralization, but not with democratisation.
This outcome is shaped by post-PA’s requisites of success. To restore confidence to investors in regimes that attacked the bourgeoisie a generation ago is not easy and requires, among other things, policies which strongly favour them, including subsidies, low taxes, de-regulation, and a roll-back of the protective legislation such as labour and agrarian relations laws legislated by PA regimes. It also requires structural adjustment to pay off foreign debts (putting the burden on "have-nots"). Generally this entails dismantling the tacit populist social contract on which PA regime’s were initially erected. It also requires a foreign policy alignment with the West (at a time when the US remains widely associated with pro-Israeli and anti-Arab policies).
These requisites tend to dictate quite specific political innovations. What I have called limited and lopsided political liberalisation is designed to give confidence to and open policy making access channels for investors, but to stop well short of the democratisation that would empower the have-nots at the possible expense of the "haves" and likely overturn post-populist economic strategies. The structural manifestations of lopsided political liberalisation include:
1) the empowerment of the judiciary in order to enforce selective rule of law, most importantly for protecting property rights, but very little to protect political dissent;
2) selected access to the ruling elite is opened for businessmen through parliaments and corporatist associations (e.g. chambers of commerce) resulting in increased influence and concessions to their interests in policy-making;
3) more scope for civil society and some party pluralism is allowed in order to appease the middle class but is combined with strict controls to prevent either NGOs or opposition parties from getting access to and organising the mass public. This limited pluralization actually benefits the regime in that the pluralization of parties facilitates a divide and rule strategy while controls on party activity ensures the ruling party remains dominant.
4) at the same time, the political demobilisation and marginalization of former populist constituencies is pursued, albeit selectively and in increments to prevent popular revolt.
Post-PA is arguably both a substitute for and an obstacle to democratization in that it prevents a democratic coalition[25]. The economic dependence of the bourgeoisie on the state (for contracts, licenses) plus its political co-optation through political pluralization, means it is not available to lead a democratic coalition. On the other hand as Farsoun & Zakhariyya and Owen[26] have argued, the ruling elites themselves cannot democratise, that is, empower the masses at a time when they are reneging on the social contract and sacrificing their nationalist legitimacy through US alignments and the selling off of national assets to foreign investors. Political liberalisation cannot turn into democratization without a mobilisation of workers and other sub-altern groups to demand it but post-populist authoritarianism prevents opposition parties access to the masses.
This is where the Islamic factor has its main impact. Islamic movements fill the welfare gap left by the state's post-populist retreat from its welfare responsibilities and, in trying to mobilize the victims of economic liberalisation, they inevitably become populist. This dynamic tends to make the political incorporation of Islamic movements incompatible with post-PA economic liberalisation; without inclusion of Islamist movements in the political system, there can be liberalisation but no democratisation.
There is, of course, another strand in political Islam that is pro-capitalist and, were it to win ascendance, it could conceivably bring a big segment of the masses into a democratic coalition. Perhaps this is happening in Turkey with the rise to governing power of the Islamist party, but, generally, Islamic movements that embrace neo-liberalism risk splintering and the emergence of more radical factions contesting their hold over their constituencies. The only road out of this dilemma is a very long term one: sustained economic growth capable of providing jobs and income for widening sectors of ordinary people—that is the classic “tickle-down" scenario--that alone can make democratization and capitalism compatible (as in East Asia).
The key lesson of the post-authoritarian experience is that in most cases movement away from authoritarianism actually translates, not into more popular power but into privileged class power and less popular inclusion.
6. Elite Calculations and the Risks of Democratic Transition
The discussion up to now has stressed structural conditions but agency also counts: what elites do is crucial to political outcomes and they always have several options. It seems reasonable to expect that political elites, as rational actors, will only democratise if they think their vital interests will survive or even be enhanced by the transition from authoritarianism. As Waterbury and Salame insist, elites need not be committed democrats to initiate democratisation if the alternative is a less desirable crisis or stalemate situation that cannot otherwise be overcome.
In this respect, pact theory holds that the optimal scenario for elite-led democratization is a combination of division inside the regime and formation of an alliance between regime and opposition moderates against the hard-liners in both camps. This alliance would issue in a compromise, a pact that preserves elite interests while accommodating and promising the opposition increased influence through a gradual democratisation[27]. Succession of a new leader might cause the split in the regime and present an opportunity for reaching a pact; in this respect the generational change in leadership that has started in the Middle East might be expected to facilitate democratisation, but has not so far done so. The fact is, democratisation is very risky and elites look to precedents to gauge whether the likely outcome will serve their interests.
In the Middle East case, there is one successful precedent, Turkey, where the elite split into two equal factions and agreed to settle their rivalries by electoral competition. But Turkey may have been a special case. The competing parties, coming out of the same establishment, shared basic interests and values while, democratising at a fairly early stage of social mobilisation enabled the two competing parties, between them, to mobilize the public into two moderate centre-right and centre-left camps. The relatively high nationalist legitimacy with which state founder Ataturk endowed the state and Turkey’s relative congruence between state and territory endowed the country with a greater sense of national identity and coherence that made democratisation less risky than is so in most of the region’s Arab states which, without exception, suffer from legitimacy deficits.
It is worth noting, in this respect, that the early 1990s success of a pact in Jordan also depended on unique conditions, namely the special nationalist legitimacy King Hussein won as a result of his disengagement from the West Bank and his stand against the West in the first Iraq war of 1990: it is significant that Jordan’s subsequent foreign policy re-alignment toward the US and its peace treaty with Israel cost the monarchy a good deal of this legitimacy bonus and required that the regime put the brakes on, even reverse, its democratisation experiment. In the second Iraq war, the helplessness of the Arab states in the face of US aggression against Iraq afflicted almost every Arab regime with legitimacy losses that are bound to deter democratisation.[28]
Unfortunately, there are even more cautionary tales that regional elites must be aware of. Algeria produced the harshest lesson, namely that economic reform combined with rapid and thorough democratisation, is disastrous: there it produced Islamist electoral victory, civil war (in which the hard-liners on both sides marginalized the moderates) and the rapid reversal of democratization. Elites are mindful, too, of another negative example, the Soviet scenario where simultaneous economic liberalisation and democratisation led to regime collapse. The disorder unleashed by regime collapse in Iraq can hardly be encouraging to would-be democrats, either within or outwith regimes in neighbouring states. Democratization must be seen as the best way to avoid civil war and disorder, but where regimes are deeply entrenched in society, overly rapid or thorough democratization may bring them on. It is hardly surprising, then, that hard-liners have often won the argument within regimes and that elites find the East Asian model, “economic growth first, democracy later,” as much more attractive.
7. The Globalization and Dilution of Democracy?
Globalization theory posits significant consequences for forms of governance world-wide but there is no consensus on the direction in which this is going. The view of globalization enthusiasts is that there is a horizontal spread to the periphery (LDCs) of economic liberalisation, stimulating more independent /transnational bourgeoisies, forcing more rule of law, and political pluarlization, and, reinforced by the global triumph of liberal ideology, issuing in democratization.[29] In the Middle East, there is limited evidence of all of these developments except the last.
A second approach posits a dichotomy or divergence between zones of peace in the core, where democratisation holds, and zones of war in the periphery where it does not.[30] While the democratic peace and economic interdependence in the core spells the right liberal “virtuous circle” for taming the power struggle between states, their absence in the periphery sets up a vicious circle where war precludes the economic interdependence and and democratisation which could, in turn, deter war. There can be little doubt that the Middle East remains a zone of war, with all the deleterious consequences for democratisation: over-sized armies, the dissent--intolerant atmosphere of national-security states, and the deterrence of investment that could generate internationalist minded coalitions with a stake in peace that might ultimately become democratic coalitions.[31] On the other hand, regional peace processes and the Euro-Med partnership can be seen as efforts to bridge the core-periphery gap and encourage economic and political liberalisation.
Critical globalization theorists[32] see quite another outcome. In their view, globalization is causing the transfer of power away from states and the empowerment of transnational corporations and neo-liberal international regimes such as the IMF and WTO, thereby turning states from buffers against global economic insecurity into transmission belts of it. This, they argue is driving a hollowing out or dilution of democracy everywhere, including in the core. The symptoms of this are the removal of the big economic issues from political debate as the neo-liberal status quo is frozen by international conventions. As a result party choice disappears (all party programs become similarly neo-liberal) and, as a result, participation (electoral turnout) is everywhere in decline. The growing role of big money and big media in shaping electoral outcomes biases them in favour of the “haves.” As citizens are de-mobilised, international networks of political elites increasingly listen to each other and ignore their citizens; (a striking example of which is the way the British, Spanish and Italian governments ignored public opinion in backing the invasion of Iraq; of course the counter example, Germany, where an election turning on this very issue resulted in the opposite policy, shows that democracy, if under threat, is still far from dead).
Could it be that, as thecore becomes less democratic while the periphery becomes more politically pluralized , that we are actually seeing a convergence toward semi-democracy as all states become more alike in having the forms of democracy but with decreasing democratic content?[33] This outcome is compatible with older traditions that were always sceptical of ideology: Marx’s view that great economic inequality with liberal political forms meant class rule is by no means obsolete; similarly Mosca and Michels showed that elite rule was perfectly compatible with liberal constitutional forms and that the iron law of oligarchy had universal validity[34].
This is the context in which one has to put the new American hegemony and Washington’s claims of wanting to spread democracy in the Middle East. The fall of the Soviet bloc not only removed an authoritarian model that had once seemed successful and worth emulating, but also the patron-protector that had allowed the authoritarian republics to stabilise themselves against Western hostility; as such, the current international power imbalance is profoundly hostile to nationalist/populist versions of authoritarianism. But that does not make it friendly to democratization, for, while Washington rhetorically demands democratisation it generates conditions that make it impossible. The resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the single most important pre-requisite for extricating the region from the zone of war but Washington's deeply biased policy keeps the pot boiling. Moreover, whatever the long-term effect of the occupation of Iraq, the short term effect has been to de-legitimise most regimes and to sour the investment climate in much of the area. While regimes may be under some pressure to appease Washington with token democratisation, the foregoing conditions provide a very risky environment for letting such experiments go very far. Indeed, what Washington really wants is to spread rule by a transnational bourgeoisie (or liberal oligarchy) responsive to its demands and resistant to indigenous ones. While this is compatible with controlled political pluralization, US interests are not really compatible with democratization because that is certain to empower mass forces deeply hostile to it. As such, unless Middle East states incur US displeasure for quite other reasons (a fate Syria and Iran risk), most authoritarian regimes should be able to adapt to the demands of the hegemon by simply deepening their current pluralization for the “haves.”
IV. CONCLUSION
Authoritarian persists in the Middle East in part because an accumulation of conditions are hostile to; but also because such forms of governance as PA and rentier monarchies represent modernised forms of authoritarianism which come out of and are congruent with indigenous societies that are far from having breached the modernisation thresholds which would make them unviable. Moreover, while the internal vulnerabilities and the global pressures on these regimes are substantial, the solutions to them, notably economic liberalisation, dictate the adaptive pluralization of authoritarianism, but obstructs democratization. The iron law of oligarchy is seemingly inescapable.
[1] Elie Kedouri, Democracy and Arab Political Culture, Washington, D.C.: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1992.
[2] Rex Brynen, Bahgat Korany and Paul Noble, eds., Political Liberalization and Democratization in the Arab World, vol. 1, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Press, 1995; Ghassan Salame, ed., Democracy without Democrats: the Renewal of Politics in the Muslim World , London: I.B. Tauris, 1994; Augustus Richard Norton, Civil Society in the Middle East, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995.
[3] Eberhard Kienle, A Grand Delusion: Democracy and Economic Reform in Egypt, London: I.B. Tauris, 2001; Anourshiravan Ehteshami and Emma Murphy, "Transformation of the Corporatist State in the Middle East",Third World Quarterly, v. 17, n. 1996, pp.753-772.
[4] Larry Diamond “Hybrid Regimes,” Journal of Democracy Vol. 13: 2 (July 2002).
[5] Raymond Hinnebusch, “Liberalization without Democratization in “post-populist” Authoritarian States,” in Nils Butenshon, Uri Davis and Manuel Hassassian, Citizenship and State in the Middle East, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University press, 2000, pp. 123-145. If we consider democratization to have two dimensions, increasing competition and rights and increasing political equality, that is, inclusiveness, full democratization would entail both competitiveness and inclusion. However, it is quite possible to increase competition/rights for some parts of the population without increasing inclusiveness; indeed increased competitiveness can be associated with a shrinking the scope of inclusiveness. On the other hand, can inclusiveness be increased without competition? Arguably revolutions, normally waged and institutionalized under single party regimes which mobilize the mass public do exactly that; however, without competition, the public tends to be de-mobilized in the post-revolutionary period but residues of the revolutionary period can persist quite a long time.
[6] Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Comparative Politics A developmental Approach, Boston: Little, Brown, 1966, 255-332; Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society, New York: Free Press, 1958; Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man, 1960; Charles Issawi, “Economic and Social Foundations of Democracy in the Middle East,” International Affairs, January, 1956, pp. 27-42.
[7] On the threshold, see John Waterbury, “Democracy without Democrats?: the Potential for Political Liberalization in the Middle East”, in Ghassan Salame, ed., Democracy without Democrats: the Renewal of Politics in the Muslim world, pp. 23-24.
[8] On rentierism, see Giacomo Luciani, “Resources, Revenues, and Authoritarianism in the Arab World: Beyond the Rentier State,” in Rex Brynen, Bahgat Korany and Paul Noble, eds., Political Liberalization and Democratization in the Arab World, vol. 1, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Press, 1995.
[9] Gudrun Kramer, “Islam and Pluralism,” in Brynen, Korany and Noble 1995 , pp 113=130; and “The Integration of the Integrists” in Salame, 1994, pp. 200-226.
[10] Hisham Sharabi, Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
[11] Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965. The distinction between early and revised modernization theory is taken from Vicky Randall and Robin Theobald, Political Change and Underdevelopment, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998,pp. 45-85.
[12] Simon Kuznets, “Economic Growth and Income Inequality,” American Economic Review,v. 45, March 1955, 1-26.
[13]Dankwart Rustow, “Transitions to Democracy,” Comparative Politics, 2, 1970, pp 337-63.
[14] Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World, Boston: Beacon Press, 1966; D Rueschemeyer, E. Stephans and J Stephans, Capitalist Development and Democracy, Cambridge, Polity Press 1992. For Middle East applications, see Simon Bromley, “Middle East exceptionalism—myth or reality?” in D. Porter, D. Goldblatt, M. Kiloh, P. Lewis, Democratization, Polity Press and the Open University, 1997, pp. 321-44 and Haim Gerber, The Social Origins of the Modern Middle East, Boulder, CO.: Lynne Rienner Press, 1987.
[15] See Volker Perthes, “The Private Sector, Economic Liberalization, and the Prospects of Dermocratization: the case of Syria and some other Arab countries,” in Salame, Democracy without Democrats, pp. 243-269.
[16] For the argument about institutions, see J.C. March and J.P. Olsen, “The new institutionalism: organizational factors in Political Life, “ American Political Science Review, 78, 1984, 734-49 and Jan-Erik Lane and Svante Ersson, The New Institutional Politics: Performance and Outcomes, London & NY: Routledge, 2000; on the “modernity” of authoritarianism, see Amos Perlmutter, Modern Authoritarianism: A Comparative Institutional Analysis, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981; for the distinctive features of populist authoritarianism, see Nazih Ayubi, Overstating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East, London: I.B. Taurus, 1995, pp. 196-223.
[17] Lisa Anderson, “Absolutism and the Resilience of Monarchy in the Middle East,” Political Science Quarterly Vol. 106: 1 (1991): 1-15; also, “Dynasts and Nationalists: Why Monarchies Survive?” in Joseph Kostiner (ed.) Middle East Monarchies: The Challenge of Modernity (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000.
[18] Steven Heydemann, Authoritarianism in Syria: Institutions and social conflict, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999, especially 1-29.
[19] For an argument on state formation in the Middle East see Raymond Hinnebusch, International politics of the Middle East, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003. pp., 80-85; see also my Syria: Revolution from Above, London & N.Y.: Routledge, 2001: especially pp. 1-13.
[20] Paul Brooker, Defiant dictatorships: Communist and Middle Eastern Dictatorships in a Democratic Age, Macmillan 1997.
[21] Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press; Paul Brooker, Non-Democratic Regimes, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2000, pp. 188-225.
[22] Adeed Dawisha and I. William Zartman, Beyond Coercion: the Durability of the Arab State, London: Croom Helm, 1988.
[23] The first use of “post-populist” was in my Egyptian Politics under Sadat: the post-populist development of an authoritarian-modernizing state (Cambridge University Press, 1985.
[24] Daniel Brumberg, “Authoritarian Legacies and Reform Strategies in the Arab world, in Brynen, Korany and Noble, pp. 229-260; Samih Farsoun and Christina Zacharia, “Class, Economic Change and Political Liberalization in the Arab world,” in Brynen, Korany and Noble, pp. 261-82; Roger Owen, “Socio-economic Change and Political Mobilization: the Case of Egypt,” in Salame, pp. 183-199; Ehteshami & Murphy, "Transformation of the Corporatist State in the Middle East., “ Third World Quarterly, v 17, n 4, 753-72..
[25] Raymond Hinnebusch, “Liberalization without Democratization in “post-populist” Authoritarian States,” in Nils Butenshon, Uri Davis and Manuel Hassassian, Citizenship and State in the Middle East, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University press, 2000, pp. 123-145.
[26] Roger Owen, "Socio-economic Change, " in Salame; Farsoun & Zackaria,“Class, Economic Change and Political Liberalization in the Arab world,” in Brynen, Korany and Noble.
[27] For the transition literature and pacts, see G. O’Donnell, P. Schmitter, and L . Whitehead, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 4 vols., 1986; for Middle East applications, see Waterbury in Salame, pp. 33-41 and Jean Leca, “Democratization in the Arab World: uncertainty, vulnerability and legitimacy,” in Salame, pp. 49-53
[28] On Turkey, classic texts include Dankwart Rustow, “Transition to Democracy” in M Heper and A Evin, eds., State, Democracy and the Military: Turkey in the 1980s Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1988; on the Jordanian case, see Jillian Schwedler “Don't Blink: Jordan's Democratic Opening and Closing,” MERIP Press Information Note 98, July 3, 2002.
[29] Francis Fukiyama, “The End of History,?”The National Interest, 16, 1989. is the prototype statement of globalization enthusiasts who see no alternative to democratization. For a more measured argument see Lucian Pye, "Political Science and the Crisis of Authoritarianism," The American Political Science Review, v. 84, no 1, March 1990, pp. 3-19.
[30] James Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, “A Tale of Two Worlds: Core and Periphery in the Post-Cold War Era, International Organization 46,1, 1992, 467-92. Max Singer and Aaron Wildavsky, The Real World Order, N.J.: Chatam House, 1993.
[31] Etel Solingen, Regional Orders at Century’s Dawn: Global and Domestic influence on Grand Strategy, Princeton: University Press, 1998.
[32] Robert W. Cox, “Economic Globalization and the limits of liberal democracy, in Anthony McGrew, ed., The Transformation of democracy: globalization and Territorial Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997; Stephan Gill, “Globalization, market civilization and disciplinary neo-liberalism, “Millennium 24, 3, 1995.
[33] I am indebted to Sami Zemni for this idea.
[34] Richard Schmitt, Introduction to Marx and Engles: A Critical Reconstruction, Boulder, CO: Westview press, 1987, pp 171-181; Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class New York: McGraw Hill, 1935; Roberto Michels, Political Parties: a Sociological Study of the Oligarchic Tendencies of Modern Democracy, New York: Free Press, 1962.
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