A funny thing happened on the way to
the Arab Spring. Arab citizens gained their
first taste of freedom. More importantly,
they learned what it means to break down the “barrier of fear.” It was an exhilarating moment, but one which
did not produce the democratic reforms which the protesters had sought. But was the Arab Spring, as many analysts
have concluded, really a failure? More
to the point, what is its legacy for authoritarian rule in the Middle East?
One of the Arab Spring‘s lasting
impacts is to have brought about the end of authoritarianism as we have known
it since the 1950s. We have entered a
new era - the “Twilight of the Dictators” - because none of them is secure in
their rule. No authoritarian ruler, whether
Egypt’s 'Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, Syria’s Bashar al-Asad, Sudan’s 'Umar al-Bashir,
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, or Iran’s Ayatollah Khamane’i, is self-confident
and able to offer a vision of the
future.
Instead, these rulers increasingly rely
on brute force and repression, as lashings, torture, executions, imprisonment and cyber surveillance spread.
These regimes are bereft of ideology.
Neither the secular authoritarianism of the pre-Arab Spring, nor the
vacuous and increasingly hollow Islamism – whether Sunni Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism,
or Shi’i Iran’s State of the Supreme Jurisprudent – hold any promise for the
future.
The impact and legacy of the Arab
Spring by no means suggests that democracy is anywhere close to coming to
fruition in the Arab world or the broader Middle East. But its legacy does suggest that the
continued ability of dictators throughout the Middle East to rule in a way that
assures the outcomes they seek has come to an end. Further, it suggests that the Arab world and
larger Middle East can expect significantly more turmoil and political
instability in the decades to come.
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| Cairo's Tahrir Square during the Arab Spring uprisings |
What has caused the Twilight of the
Dictators? I offer 5 arguments to explain
why traditional forms of authoritarian rule are no longer tenable. These 5 clusters of variables do not
constitute discrete causal factors, but are interdependent. Thus they need to be combined and integrated as
part of a holistic explanation.
The first variable is the ideological fragmentation which has
beset the Arab world and the broader Middle East. Authoritarian regimes are no longer able to offer
a coherent legitimation of their rule. They increasingly appear for what they are
– predatory, corrupt and repressive regimes which serve nepotistic and narrowly
defined elite interests.
The second factor is the lack of political institutions which
fail to offer participation, accountability, transparency or the rule of
law. Instead, Middle East regimes are
highly personalistic. In no way do they function
in the manner designated by the nation-state’s ostensible constitution. Likewise state institutions fail to provide
social services, education, or physical security.
A third factor is the lack of economic growth. This set of variables combines three
elements. First, the Arab Spring adversely
affected FDI by undermining investor confidence in large parts of the MENA
region. (http://www.fdiintelligence.com/Info/What-s-New/Press-releases/Middle-East-and-Africa-FDI-growth-affected-by-Arab-Spring). In 2011, 666 projects were announced at a
total of 27 billion Euros, the lowest level since 2004. In 2012, the rate increased to 37 billion
Euros but this only matched the FDI rate of 2005.
Second, corruption has increased throughout
the MENA region since the Arab Spring. Third, most regimes in MENA region have
sought to “liberalize” their economies.
This does not at all indicate the spread of free markets, but rather the
reduction of state subsides of food and energy to attract foreign
investors.
The fourth factor undermining
authoritarian rule is the end of the
monopoly of information controlled by the state. The spread of new forms of media, from
channels such as al-Jazeera, which covered political and social topics
heretofore considered taboo, and the spread of satellite television, to the
proliferation of social media, has flooded the citizenry of MENA states with
opportunities to obtain information formerly forbidden and unavailable.
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| Libyan protestors during the Arab Spring |
Finally, the development of a “youth bulge” in most countries of the
Middle East, where large numbers of youth have been unable to find employment, has
created a large, disaffected demographic.
With 70% of the population under the age of 30 in many MENA states, the
inability of youth to obtain a quality education, find appropriate employment
and express themselves politically provides a “perfect storm” for recruitment
to criminal and extremist organizations, hence enhancing the region’s
instability.
Exacerbating all these regional challenges
facing the dictators of the Middle East is the recent contraction of the world market followed by the international
collapse of oil and commodity prices.
Ideology
Ideology
Authoritarian regimes can no longer
count on the implicit social contract which they were able to establish when
they first seized power. While citizens,
especially the educated middle classes, were not pleased to lose their personal
freedoms, especially the freedom of expression, the promise of economic
security, and law and order offset this concern. However, once economic development stalled,
and state corruption and nepotism became obvious, authoritarian states found it
more difficult to force citizens to behave in ways that conformed to their desires.
Secular regimes, often populated by
former army officers, who promoted a corporatism which denied social difference
and subsumed the entire populace under an all-encompassing “revolutionary”
ideology, have successively undermined their ideological message. By the 1980s, the revolutionary narrative of
Arab nationalism, and variants such as Algerian “socialism,” had run its course,
having failed to fulfill the promise of “unity, freedom and socialism.” Nationalized industries became a drag on the national
economy and top-heavy and inefficient Soviet-inspired heavy industry failed to
bring about economic growth.
Following the defeat of Arab armies
in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, one response of secular dictatorships was to invoke
religious tropes to augment their declining legitimacy. This process began with Anwar Sadat’s
efforts to break with the leftist tilt of Jamal ‘Abd al-Nasir’s (Nasser) regime
as he dispensed with the United Arab Republic, which once again became Egypt,
and called for a state built on “science and faith” (al-cilm
wa-l-iman). This trend continued
with Saddam Husayn’s shift to “religion” after the onset of the Iran-Iraq War in
1980 when it became clear that the lightening victory over Iran he had expected
failed to materialize.
To understand the development of an ideological vacuum which
began during the 1970s, and accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s, requires an examination
not only of the rise of Islamism, whether in the form of groups such as the Muslim
Brotherhood and more radical variants of Islam, but a focus political economy as
well.
The Middle East has known three forms of ideology and political
organization since 1916 Sykes-Picot Treaty and the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire in 1918. The first ideological
modality, the “ersatz” liberalism imposed on the region by British and French
colonialism after WWI, was not as bad as subsequent authoritarian regimes claimed
it to be.
Under monarchical rule in Egypt and Iraq, for example, there
was a modicum of civility which included extensive associational life, including
a rich urban culture of coffeehouses and salons, a press and literary
production which saw relatively limited control by the state, and a cultural
and religious diversity which saw different sects and ethnic groups live together
in relative harmony. While elections
were manipulated to bring about the desired ends of rapacious elites, there
were urban electoral districts where they were largely free and fair.
The authoritarian regimes which gradually took over the
Middle East following WWII were largely the response to the unwillingness of
pre-War political and economic elites to address the rising social problems of
the region. Large scale rural-urban
migration during the first half of the 20th century, lack of jobs,
and increased political participation of the lower middle and lower classes,
spreading unrest in urban areas (think of the burning of Cairo in 1952), spelled
the end of colonially constituted “liberal” regimes.
The new post-WW II dictatorships, such as those which seized
power under the aegis of the Syrian, Egyptian, Iraqi Yemeni, and Libyan
military, along with the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algeria, offered their
citizenry a new social contract which exchanged personal freedoms for security
and material well-being.
Education would
now be free, government jobs would be guaranteed to those with university
degrees, food subsidies would protect the poor and Western imperialism would
end through the nationalization of foreign assets. The laissez-faire
monarchies, which offered considerable personal freedoms to the small middle
and upper classes persisted in Jordan and Morocco, but elsewhere became a thing
of the past.
The corporatist ideology of military-based dictatorships
emphasized binary thinking. Only two
types of sociopolitical groups were recognized, “reactionaries” and
“revolutionaries.” Except in Lebanon, a
state built on confessionalism, diversity in the Arab world was subsumed under the category
“Arab” or “revolutionary.” Political
pluralism went by the wayside, as did the respect for multi-ethnic,
multi-religious and multi-cultural tolerance which had characterized the
“liberal” regimes of the inter-war era.
The problem with the ideological rhetoric of the second or
post-1945 phase of rule in the Middle East was its inability to deliver on its
promises of material well-being. The
public sector which emerged from the nationalization of foreign enterprise was
inefficient. It provided fertile ground
for nepotism and corruption. In short,
it was unable to sustain meaningful economic growth in face of population increases,
especially among the young, for whom the promised economic future – stable jobs
and income - was not to be.
By the 1970s, economic constraints led the Egyptian regime
of Anwar al-Sadat to proclaim the so-called Economic Opening (al-Infitah). Other authoritarian regimes approached the
problem of economic stagnation in less dramatic fashion. Nevertheless, both the Syrian Bacthist
and Saddam Husayn’s regimes likewise began a process of “liberalization” of the
economy. Only Algeria remained true to the failed Soviet model
of development, resulting in large scale migration of its citizenry abroad,
especially to France, due to lack of jobs.
What this development meant was a backing away from the economic
promises of the Social Contract. In Egypt
in 1977, this led to food riots in Egypt when the state reduced subsidies for
basic goods in an effort to obtain an IMF loan. These riots foreshadowed the
peaceful protests of Tunisians, Egyptians, and Syrians which later would
initiate the Arab Spring.
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| Arab Socialist Ba'th Party emblem |
Of course, ideology in the MENA region was not the sole
property of secular corporatist nationalist regimes. Islamism had always been
waiting in the wings to pick up the political pieces should secular nationalism
fail. Islamism had many similarities
with corporatist nationalism in its reliance on unitary and binary
thinking. In reducing all problems to
the oft repeated formula: “Islam is the solution” (Islam al-hall), and dividing the world into “believers” and “non-believers,”
or even worse, “apostates,” Islamism offers no
better path to solving the pressing problems facing MENA nation-states.
In the Islamist state par excellence , the so-called Islamic
Republic of Iran (whose constitution Olivier Roy has demonstrated in, The Failure of Political Islam, is derived
largely from the French constitutional model, not from al-Sharcia),
simple slogans such as “Death to the Great Satan” (Marg bar Shaytân-e Bozorg) have done little to improve the standards of living of most
Iranians. Instead, the Islamic
Republic’s ruling elite has produced massive corruption, repression, especially
of youth and intellectuals, and, until recently, led to Iran’s isolation as a
pariah state.
Political Institutions
The political institutions imposed by the colonial powers
after WWI never sprouted deep routes. As in many former colonial states, the
constitutions which structured the form of these institutions bore little
relationship to the country’s history or traditions. The political elites privileged by colonial
rule undermined what little support had existed for parliamentary rule and
Western style judiciaries by rigging elections and excluding the bulk of the
populace from political participation.
The close alliance of post-WWI political elites with the
colonial powers, especially Great Britain and France, further delegitimized the
political systems established by colonial rule following the breakup of the
Ottoman Empire. Democracy came to be
associated with corruption, lack of caring about the interests of the populace
at large, and a willingness to subordinate national interests to those of Great
Britain and France and, after WWII, the United States.
The establishment of one-party states by “revolutionary” regimes,
whether dominated by the Bacth Party and/or the military, reduced
opportunities for political participation still further. National elections became farcical spectacles
of dictators who invariably received 98% or more the popular vote. The degradation of politics meant that youth
had no education in, or understanding of, how democratic political institutions
function.
The lack of economic growth
The first decade of authoritarian rule produced a
distribution of income through generous state-sponsored subsidies of basic
necessities, such as bread, cooking oil, sugar and propane gas. The nationalization of foreign industry
provide a windfall for the state in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Iran as did the seizure
of domestically owned agricultural land, banks and businesses.
Second, the authoritarian states which had national foreign
and domestic holdings lacked the capacity to make the enterprises and land
which they had seized profitable. Their ability to technologically innovate to
modernize and make them more efficient was severely limited. Egypt, the most economically pressed of the
authoritarian regimes, given its rapid population growth and limited resources,
realized that, without foreign capital and the technology such investment would
bring, the economy would continue to stagnate.
However, the opening up of economies dominated by the state
public sectors only strengthened this form of economic organization. “Liberalization”
was not synonymous to promoting market forces, as quite the opposite was
true. As the state public sector gained access
to additional foreign capital, its managers had even less incentive to open up
the economy to entrepreneurs who were outside the political elite.
The downside of “liberalization” has been the state’s
efforts to cut subsidies on which large segments of the less well off in the
populace depend upon. To attract FDI,
authoritarian states need to convince investors that the economies in which
they are investing are being run according the desired financial discipline. With economies in the MENA region facing
serious declines in growth rates – even former power houses like Saudi Arabia
(which has an estimated poverty rate of 25%) – the reduction in subsidies had
only further undermined regime legitimacy.
The end of the monopoly of information
One of the key factors in the success of the Arab Spring was
the role of social media. Not only did
social media play a key factor within the
countries which were involved in the Arab Spring but among all countries of the MENA region. Not only did social media allow organizers of
the Arab Spring to efficiently mobilize and situate demonstrators for maximum
impact in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, but information
disseminated through the MENA region was critical in encouraging demonstrators
to persist in their efforts, seeing the success of demonstrators in other
countries.
While the impact of social media in the Arab Spring has been
exaggerated, there is no doubt that opposition elements gained a sense of power
in their ability to use it to mobilize against authoritarian regimes. What has
become clear is the inability of authoritarian regimes to control social media,
despite Egypt having literally shut down the Internet during late January 2011
during the Arab Spring uprisings. Other
Arab Spring states tried to block Facebook and other social media platforms.
While in Iraq during the recent peaceful demonstrations at Iraq’s Green
Zone in Baghdad in mid-March 2016, I saw live feeds as police and local
security forces facilitated demonstrators’ ability to approach the Green Zone
and pitch tents there. Eventually the demonstrations
forced the resignation of the entire cabinet of 22 ministers from Prime Minister
Haydar al-Abadi’s government. Clearly Iraq has come a long way from Saddam Husayn’s
regime when owning a typewriter without a state license was a capital offense.
In light of the increasing sophistication of youth in the
MENA region to use social media, authoritarian regime are finding it difficult
if not impossible to prevent their populaces from gaining access to information
which they regimes consider sensitive and a threat to their rule.
The “youth bulge”
In most countries of the MENA region, 60-70% of the populace
is under the age of 30. What demographers
have referred to as a “youth bulge” need not constitute a negative phenomenon. In East Asia, in many of the so-called “Asian
Tigers,” a youth bulge was beneficial to economic growth as young people provided
labor and often professional technological skills.
Conclusion
The Twilight of the Dictators is the tip of the “perfect
storm” which is about to hit Middle East. Ruling political elites are devoid of ideological
legitimation. To paraphrase Antonio Gramsci, authoritarian regimes in the MENA region lack a hegemonic political culture through which to generalize
their interests to those of the public at large, They lack credible “organic intellectuals”- those in the media, the religious community, and the higher education system
who promote the idea that the masses and the ruling elites share
the same political social and economic interests.
With the lack of functioning political institutions, the personalistic
rule of authoritarian rulers becomes all the more apparent. Corruption and nepotism become more glaring
in economies which cannot meet even the basic needs of their citizens. Violence is spreading. Indeed, in Syria, civil strife has resulted
in the displacement of half the country’s population.
Youth are becoming ever more restless. Frustrated, many are turning to
extremism. With the global downturn in
commodity prices, and stagnant t economies in the EU and Japan, FDI in the MENA
region is declining. This trend has
become a self-fueling downward spiral. Less economic growth leads to more unrest
and violence. Greater instability, in
turn, hampers foreign investment and local economic growth.
What is the projected outcome of the Twilight of the
Dictators? The most likely scenario is
not a turn to radical Islamism or more repressive military dictatorships, but
rather an increase in the number of failed states. Already, we can count Libya, Yemen and Syria
as members of this category.
In the category of semi-failed states, we can count Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon, because large parts of these countries are engrossed in civil strife and not under the control of the central government. The outcome in both cases - failed and semi-failed states - is not only domestic instability in the states in question, but the "spillover" effect on neighboring states, e.g., to Jordan, Egypt and Tunisia.
Unfortunately, more failed states seem in the offing in the decades to come. Egypt and Jordan could fall into this category. What is needed is a comprehensive international strategy to address the crisis of political stability in the MENA region. Will the US take on the role of bringing the key stakeholders together to seek a solution to the crisis, or will it continue to view Middle East politics as a "spectator sport"?
In the category of semi-failed states, we can count Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon, because large parts of these countries are engrossed in civil strife and not under the control of the central government. The outcome in both cases - failed and semi-failed states - is not only domestic instability in the states in question, but the "spillover" effect on neighboring states, e.g., to Jordan, Egypt and Tunisia.
Unfortunately, more failed states seem in the offing in the decades to come. Egypt and Jordan could fall into this category. What is needed is a comprehensive international strategy to address the crisis of political stability in the MENA region. Will the US take on the role of bringing the key stakeholders together to seek a solution to the crisis, or will it continue to view Middle East politics as a "spectator sport"?
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