The New Authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa
141 pages
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141 pages
English

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Description

Islamist politics and inflexible leadership in the Arab world


Stephen J. King considers the reasons that international and domestic efforts toward democratization have failed to take hold in the Arab world. Focusing on Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, and Algeria, he suggests that a complex set of variables characterizes authoritarian rule and helps to explain both its dynamism and its persistence. King addresses, but moves beyond, how religion and the strongly patriarchal culture influence state structure, policy configuration, ruling coalitions, and legitimization and privatization strategies. He shows how the transformation of authoritarianism has taken place amid shifting social relations and political institutions and how these changes have affected the lives of millions. Ultimately, King's forward-thinking analysis offers a way to enhance the prospects for democracy in the Middle East and North Africa.


Acknowledgments

1. Political Openings and the Transformation of Authoritarian Rule in the Middle East and North Africa
2. Sustaining Authoritarianism during the Third Wave of Democracy
3. The Old Authoritarianism
4. The New Authoritarianism
5. Political Openings without Patronage-Based Privatization and Single-Party Institutional Legacies
6. Transitions from the New MENA Authoritarianism to Democracy?

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

Informations

Publié par
Date de parution 28 octobre 2009
Nombre de lectures 2
EAN13 9780253004000
Langue English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

The New Authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa
Indiana Series in Middle East Studies
Mark Tessler, general editor
The New Authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa

STEPHEN J. KING
Indiana University Press Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
601 North Morton Street
Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA
www.iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
Fax orders 812-855-7931
Orders by e-mail iuporder@indiana.edu
2009 by Stephen J. King
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
King, Stephen J. (Stephen Juan), date
The new authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa / Stephen J. King.
p. cm. - (Indiana series in Middle East studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-35397-9 (cloth : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-22146-9 (paper : alk. paper)
1. Middle East-Politics and government-1979- 2. Africa, North-Politics and government. 3. Authoritarianism-Middle East. 4. Authoritarianism-Africa, North. 5. Democratization-Middle East. 6. Democratization-Africa, North. 7. Political culture-Middle East. 8. Political culture-Africa, North. 9. Middle East-Social conditions. 10. Africa, North-Social conditions. I. Title.
JQ1758.A58K56 2009
320.530956-dc22
2009019547
1 2 3 4 5 14 13 12 11 10 09
CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
ONE Political Openings and the Transformation of Authoritarian Rule in the Middle East and North Africa
TWO Sustaining Authoritarianism during the Third Wave of Democracy
THREE The Old Authoritarianism
FOUR The New Authoritarianism
FIVE Political Openings without Patronage-Based Privatization and Single-Party Institutional Legacies
SIX Transitions from the New MENA Authoritarianism to Democracy?
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In completing this book I have incurred many debts. My foremost thanks are to a Georgetown University colleague and friend, Thomas Banchoff, who read the entire manuscript and offered very useful suggestions at a critical stage in the process. A number of other colleagues made helpful comments and suggestions and provided support along the way. These include Lisa Anderson, John Bailey, Harley Balzer, Catherine Evtuhov, Atul Kohli, Sam Mujal-Leon, Judith Tucker, John Waterbury, and Clyde Wilcox. I must also acknowledge the help of graduate students at Georgetown, especially Zeinab Abul-Magd, April Longley, Marten Peterson, and Katrien Vanpee who were exceptionally able research assistants.
Anonymous reviewers from Indiana University Press were very helpful with suggestions that increased the analytic clarity and empirical focus of the book. The book s copyeditor, Joyce Rappaport, is exceptionally able. Dee Mortenson, my editor at Indiana University Press, provided needed encouragement and support.
A substantial portion of the research and writing was completed during a year spent at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Georgetown University also provided a semester without teaching and administrative responsibilities and funded a summer of field research.
Finally I would like to note the help of loved ones. Joan Yengo and our daughter Marley Carmina Yengo-King provided the warmth, distractions, and motivation necessary to manage the ups and downs of book writing. My mother, Frankie King, provided the foundation necessary to accomplish anything. To Arne Tangherlini, I wish we had had more time.
The New Authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa
CHAPTER ONE

Political Openings and the Transformation of Authoritarian Rule in the Middle East and North Africa

T he authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) survived the third wave of democracy that took place in the late twentieth century. 1 However, they did not survive it without undergoing fundamental changes. This book contributes to closing the gaps in our understanding of what sustains authoritarian rule during global democratic waves and what might have caused such rule to unravel in an important subset of the MENA countries that emerged in the post-independence era: the single-party, Arab socialist regimes of Egypt, Syria, Algeria, and Tunisia. 2 In addition, through highlighting how authoritarianism in the MENA is both persistent and dynamic, this book provides a new understanding of how politics currently operate under authoritarian rule in these countries.
There was a turn toward democracy in the MENA during the third wave. Egypt, which began holding regular multiparty legislative elections in 1976, appeared to be genuinely moving toward the rule of law, liberalization, and democratization in 1990, at which time the country s High Constitutional Court dissolved a parliament that the court ruled had been elected under an unconstitutional electoral law. 3 In 2000, the same court ruled that the legislative elections of 1990 and 1995 had been unconstitutional because the electoral process failed to provide for full judicial supervision. Algeria s state party was defeated first in local elections in 1990 and subsequently in legislative elections in 1990-1991 by an Islamist party, before the military moved in to annul the results, thereby setting off waves of bloodshed that lasted some fifteen years. Tunisia introduced multiparty legislative elections in 1989 along with a national pact to guide the transition to democracy after President Ben Ali had taken power in a constitutional coup in 1987. Nominally competitive presidential elections were inaugurated in the mid-1990s. In order to reflect Ben Ali s new platform of democratic reform, the president even changed the name of the political party that led the country to independence, from the Socialist Destour to the Democratic Constitutional Rally (RCD). In 1990 Syria held elections to its People s Assembly. Even though only tame parties running as part of a coalition with the ruling Ba th party were allowed to participate, independent candidates increased their share of seats. At a congress of the Ba th party in 2005, delegates endorsed the idea of independent political parties and the relaxation of emergency laws that had been in place since 1963. 4
Concurrent with these political openings, leaders of the Arab socialist republics accelerated a process of comprehensive economic reforms toward outward-looking, market-oriented capitalist economies that granted dominant roles to the private sector. Privatization of state-owned enterprises and land, which increased dramatically in the 1990s in the MENA, is taken by all significant local and international actors to be the main index of a regime s sincerity on the issue of creating a liberal economic order. 5
How did authoritarian leaders in Egypt, Syria, Algeria, and Tunisia initiate these political openings and economic transformations yet maintain authority and control? This book argues that the authoritarian leaders of the Arab socialist republics made timid turns toward democracy in the 1980s and 1990s, but then utilized single-party organizational resources and patronage-based economic liberalization to subvert full democratization and reinforce control over a new authoritarian system that included liberal economic policies, new ruling coalitions, some controlled political pluralism, and electoral legitimation strategies.
In Egypt, Syria, Algeria, and Tunisia, state-led economic liberalization and experiments in multiparty politics led not to a full opening but actually were crafted to support the new authoritarianism. Economic reform policies created and favored a rent-seeking urban and rural elite supportive of authoritarian rule and took resources away from the workers and peasants who increasingly had the most to gain from democratization. Thus, the privatization of state assets provided rulers with the patronage resources to form a new ruling coalition from groups that would be pivotal in any capitalist economy: private-sector capitalists, landed elites, the military officer corps, and top state officials, many of whom moved into the private sector and took substantial state assets with them. At the same time, ruling parties maintained elite consensus and contained the disaffection of the lower strata in the new multiparty arena by offering them a dwindling share of state resources. In the end, political openings in the four countries culminated in transformed authoritarian rule.
Even as I contend that economic liberalization characterized by the distribution of patronage to economic elites and robust single-party institutional structures provided autocrats with resources to sustain authoritarianism in the MENA republics, this does not mean that other factors were not involved. 6 However, the tasks for analysts seeking to explain resilient authoritarianism in the MENA are both to identify the most salient factors for particular countries and to provide an explanatory framework that can weigh those factors that influence regime outcomes. This framework will be provided in chapter 2 . At this poin

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