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The University of Texas at Austin
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Spring semester 2008
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Government 390L/MES 381
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Prof. Clement M. Henry
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Unique numbers: 39602, 42517
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Office: Batts 4.152; email:
chenry@mail.utexas.edu
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BEN 1.118: Wed 7-10 p.m.
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Office hrs: Tu and Th 2-3:30 p.m.
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ISLAM AND DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST
AND NORTH AFRICA
ASSIGNMENTS
GRADING CRITERIA
BOOKS AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE
TOPICS AND READINGS week :
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
10 11 12
13 14 15
This seminar will critically examine various Western (Weberian,
Marxist, and post-structural) approaches to the study of politics in
the Middle East and North Africa, particularly within the Arab world.
We stress theoretical assumptions about politics as well as the
content of contemporary everyday politics in the region because our
understanding of the everyday may be victim to our own intellectual
tastes and prejudices. For instance, is "Islamism" an ideology like
Marxist-Leninism? Are the "Bolsheviks" or extremists bound to win
out? We tend to think by analogy, and it is important for us to be
aware of our underlying assumptions.
How, if at all, and under what conditions may "democracy" develop
in the Muslim parts of the Middle East and North Africa? This seems
to be the most important question facing the region today: must its
authoritarian regimes make major changes in order to survive?
Political transitions are also a major concern of students of
comparative politics. We will keep coming back to this question as we
analyze institutions, processes, classes, civil society, groups,
modes of production, clienteles, ideologies, strategic elites,
professions, and the like--categories used to compare political
systems. You will also be expected to acquire a good contextual
appreciation of at least two countries of the Middle East or North
Africa in addition to Egypt, which is well discussed in some of the
core readings.
ASSIGNMENTS
Three oral presentations in class
- one presentation on the required reading for the week - focus
on one or two of them and present a critical analysis (10 - 15
minutes).
- two presentations, no more than 10 minutes each, critically
summarizing an asterisked (*) book on the suggested readings. Each
of these two presentations is to be accompanied by a class handout
of no more than one single-spaced page.
Two papers, each 10-15 pp. long (3-4000 words), analyzing,
comparing, and contrasting works read in the seminar. Each paper may
include one of the books you presented in class and should focus on a
particular problem or concept (e.g.. the utility of class analysis
for explaining political change), supporting your argument with
illustrations from at least two countries in the region. The paper
should not be a research paper. It should incorporate as many
of the required readings as you may find relevant to the theoretical
topic and argument you are pursuing. Consider it like a take-home
exam where you are framing the question. Try to include a discussion
of at least 5 assigned readings (these may be fleeting
references, the more the better, to show that you are integrating
what you read into an argument) as well as an optional reading or
two.
Here are some suggestions. They are not intended to exhaust or
inhibit your intellectual imagination.
- 1. What is "civil society" and how, if at all, can this
"western" concept usefully be applied to Middle Eastern and/or
North African societies?
- 2. Discuss patterns of social and political mobilization in
any two countries of the region which experienced some form of
western domination. Did political mobilization engender greater
national cohesion or fragmentation? Why?
- 3. Does class interest have any visible impact upon modes of
governance, political strategies of rulers, or particular policies
in any Middle Eastern or North African state? Be sure in your
answer to try at least two alternative definitions of class. Would
a focus on concrete interest groups be more useful or less so?
- 4. Does the current emphasis on privatization in a number of
countries which had earlier engaged in extensive state planning
efforts mean that civil society is being substantially
strengthened at the expense of the state?
- 5. Is the persistence of patron-client relationships
compatible with class or interest group analysis?
- 6. Why might Islam be or not be compatible with liberal
democracy? Discuss with reference to at least two national
contexts where "Islamist" movements seem significantly to affect
political life.
- 7. Under what conditions might you expect tribes to be
politically significant in the contemporary Arab world? Discuss
with reference to two political systems. What is a "tribe"?!
- 8. Discuss the uses and possible abuses of a concept like
modernization or development as applied by the social sciences to
the study of Middle Eastern/North African societies. Do you have
suggestions for revising one of these concepts to facilitate
useful cross national comparisons?
- 9. Can it still be argued, after so much "deliberalization" in
the past decade or two, not to mention the chaos in Iraq, that
Arab political systems are making transitions from authoritarian
to democratic rule?
- 10. How useful is dependency theory for the understanding of
contemporary MENA societies?
- 11. How useful are categories like authoritarianism and
democracy for understanding political realties in the region?
- 12. Why hasn't the MENA joined the rest of the world,
including some sub-Saharan states, in making transitions to
democracy?
- 13. Some commentators have described some Arab states as
"tribes with flags." However autocratic their regimes may be, do
you think these states are strong or weak - and what do is meant
by a strong or weak state? Has the current crop of scholarship
about enduring authoritarianism and stalled transitions to
democracy absorbed or transcended Nazih Ayubi's insights about
Arab states.
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GRADING CRITERIA
Three oral presentations, two of them with one-page handouts in
class, also to be posted to Blackboard : 30%.
Papers: 30% each - to be submitted in hard copy and also to be
posted to Blackboard.
Quality (not quantity!) of discussion in class or via internet,
also to be posted to Blackboard: 10%
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BOOKS AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE
- Ayyubi, Naizh N., Overstating the Arab State: Politics and
Society in the Middle East (London: Tauris, 1995)
- El-Kenz, Ali, Algerian Reflections on Arab Crises
(UT 1991) - your gift from the UT Center for MES (to be obtained
from the instructor)
- Hammoudi, Abdellah, Master and Disciple: the Cultural
Foundations of Moroccan Authoritarianism, (U. of Chicago
Press, 1997)
- Michael Hudson, ed., Middle East Dilemma: the Politics and
Economics of Arab Integration (Columbia UP, 1999)
- Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah (abridged ed. Princeton
Bollinger Series)
- Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East: the
History and Politics of Orientalism (Cambridge UP, 2004)
- Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts (U of Calif, Press,
2002)
- Owen, Roger, State, Power, and Politics, 3rd edition
(Routledge, 2004)
- Marsha Pripstein Posusney and Michele Penner Angrist, eds.,
Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Regimes and Resistance
(Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2005)
- Lisa Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric,
and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (U of Chicago Press, 1999)
Optional: also ordered for bookstores:
- Paul Aarts & Gerd Nonneman, eds., Saudi
Arabia in the Balance: Political Economy, Society, Foreign Affairs
(London: Hurst 2005).
- Eva Bellin, Stalled Democracy: Capital, Labor,
and the Paradox of State-Sponsored Development (Cornell UP, 2002)
- Laurie A. Brand, Citizens Abroad: Emigration
and the State in the Middle East and North Africa (Cambridge
University Press, 2006)
- Jason Brownlee, Authoritarianism in an Age of
Democratization (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
- Steve Cook, Ruling Not Governing: The Military
and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey (NY:
Council on Foreign Relations, 2007)
- Alan George, Syria: neither Bread nor Freedom
(London: Tauris, 2003)
- Robert W. Hefner, ed., Remaking Muslim
Politics: Pluralism, Contestation, Democratization (Princeton,
2005)
- Ellen Lust-Okar, Structuring Conflict in the
Arab World: Incumbents, Opponents, and Institutions (Cambridge
University Press, 2005)
- James McDougall, History and the Culture of
Nationalism in Algeria, Cambridge UP 2006
- Volker Perthes, Arab Elites: Negotiating the
Politics of Change (Lynne Rienner, 2004)
- Jillian Schwedler, Faith in Moderation:
Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen (pb ed 2007)
- Robert Vitalis, America's Kingdom: Mythmaking
on the Saudi Oil Frontier (Stanford University Press, 2007)
- Quintan Wiktorowicz, ed., Islamic Activism: A
Social Movement Theory Approach (Indiana University Press,
2004)
All of the above have also
been requested for Overnight Reserve at PCL.
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Topics and readings
(@=Abel's Copies)
1st week (Jan 16): INTRODUCTION
The Middle East and North Africa: a distinctive region? Area
studies, comparative politics, and international relations. Where
does journalism end and scholarship begin? Or is much of the latter
just bad journalism? Here is one of my less academic efforts, "The US
and Iraq: American Bull in a Middle East China Shop,"a recent
chapter
in Glad and Dolan, eds., Striking First, a book on the US and
Iraq. What were its analytic assumptions? If you have time see George
Packer,
"Planning
for Defeat," The New Yorker, Sept. 17, 2007, pp. 56-65.
And, just off the press, see International Refugee Committe,
Uprooted
Iraqis: an Urgent Crisis 17 Dec. 2007.
If you are just beginning the study of Middle Eastern and North
African politics, you may benefit from reading Roger Owen, State,
Power and Politics cover to cover immediately.
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2nd week (Jan. 23): EPISTEMOLOGICAL ISSUES AND AREA STUDIES
Stereotypes of "Oriental despotism" and of "Orientalism": who are
we to understand the "Other" and how, if at all, might we try? What
are some of the limitations of German philosophy (Hegel,
Marx...Weber) and American political science on comprehending the
"Orient"? For the record, the last major attempt to evaluate US
Middle East area studies from social science disciplinary
perspectives was a book edited by Leonard Binder in 1976, The
Study of the Middle East : research and scholarship in the humanities
and the social sciences (NY: John Wiley). Of an entirely
different standard is Martin Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand: The
Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (Washington
Institute for Near Eastern Policy, 2001).
- Further reading suggestions:
- *Edward Said, Covering Islam (it's a fast read!)
- *Mark Tessler ed., Area Studies and Social Science
Strategies for Understanding Middle East Politics,
(University of Indian press, 1999)
- Leonard Binder ed., The Study of the Middle East :
research and scholarship in the humanities and the social
sciences (NY: John Wiley, 1976)
- Ernest Gellner, Muslim Society (1981)
- L. Binder, Islamic Liberalism, pp. 85-127
(deconstructing anti-orientalism).
- *Thierry Hentsch, Imagining the Middle East
(Montreal: Black Rose, 1992)
- J.B. Kelly, Arabia, the Gulf and the West (an
example of "orientalist" expertise)
- *Edward Said, Orientalism (Pantheon 1978)
- Fred Halliday, Nation and Religion in the Middle
East (Boulder CO:Lynne Rienner, 2000)
- Roger Owen, "The Middle East in the Eighteenth Century--an
'Islamic' Society in Decline?" Review of Middle Eastern
Studies 1:101-112.
- Fuad Ajami, The Arab Predicament (Cambridge 1981,
1992)
- Bernard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam
- *_____, What Went Wrong : The Clash Between Islam and
Modernity in the Middle East (Oxford UP, 2002)
- Martin Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of
Middle Eastern Studies in America (Washington Institute for
Near Eastern Policy, 2001)
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3rd week (Jan 30): WESTERN DECONSTRUCTIONS OF ISLAMIC
SOCIETIES
Toward a comparative analysis of colonial situations. The
peculiarities of the Middle East in the context of the "Eastern
Question." What is colonialism? What is Imperialism? What might be
meant by Lord Milner's characterization of Egypt as a "veiled
protectorate" and what might have been the implications for Egypt's
political development? Are we "colonizing" Iraq today? or Kuwait?
- Roger Owen, State, Power and Politics, 3rd ed., pp.
5-22 (chap 1).
- Nazih Ayubi, Over-Stating the Arab State, pp. 1-38,
skim pp. 86-134
- Clement M. Henry and Robert Springborg, Globalization and
the politics of development in the Middle East,
chapter 1..(also optional:
C.M.Henry,
"The Clash
of Globalizations," in L Fawcett, ed. International
Relations of the Middle East (Oxford, 2005)
- Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts, introduction and
chaps 1 and 2, cf. my review of
Mitchell in IJMES (optional).
- Further reading suggestions:
- *Robert Vitalis, America's Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi
Oil Frontier (Stanford University Press, 2007)
- *Toby Dodge, Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building
and a History Denied (Columbia UP, 2003)
- *Rashid Khalidi, Resurrecting Empie: Western Footprints
and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (Boston:
Beacon, 2004)
- *Joel S. Migdal, Through the Lense of Israel: Explorations
in State and Society, SUNY Press, 2001
- C.H. Moore, "The
Colonial Dialectic," (pdf file) in Politics in North
Africa (1970)
- Tim Niblock, "Pariah States" and Sanctions in the Middle
East: Iraq, Libya, Sudan (Lynne Rienner, 2001)
- Leonard Binder, Islamic Liberalism
- L. Carl Brown, International Relations and the Middle
East.
- Abdallah Laroui, The crisis of the Arab intellectual :
traditionalism or historicism? (UC Press, 1976)
- Sir Alfred (later Lord) Milner, England in Egypt
(1892)
- John Marlowe, Spoiling the Egyptians (N.Y.: St.
Martin's, 1975)
- David S. Landes, Bankers and Pasha (Harvard, 1958)
- Robert L. Tignor, Modernization and British Colonial
Rule in Egypt 1882-1914 (Princeton, 1966)
- Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (1965)
- *Timothy Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt, esp. pp. 1-33,
63-127, 161-179
- Franz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth (1961)
- P. Bourdieu, The Algerians (Beacon, 1962)
- Philip S. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: the
Politics of Arab
- Nationalism, 1920-1945 (Princeton 1987) esp. pp.
285-317, 619-630.
- Lisa Anderson, The State and Social Transformation in
Tunisia and Libya, 1830-1980 (Princeton, 1986).
- Late edition: Chronicle of Higher
Education article about Iraqi
Baath archives (Jan 23, 2008)
- Emerging
Social and Religous Trends, Arab
Insight Quarterly Journal, Winter 2008
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4th week (Feb. 6): THE PROBLEM OF (WITH?) CIVIL SOCIETY
How may we usefully define civil society, so that it is not just
another western absence which impedes our understanding of the Middle
East? Let's try to shift away from the "orientalist" focus on Islamic
vs. Christian medieval heritages to comparisons of catholic versus
puritan legacies on both sides of the Mediterranean--in search of
"civil society." Discussion
questions.
- El-Kenz, Ali, Algerian Reflections on Arab Crises
(Center for ME Studies, UT, 1992).
- Robert Hefner, Remaking Muslim Politics, chaps 1, 3,
4., 7 and 11 if you have time for uncivil society in Indonesia
(time later for some of the other selections).
- @ Bryan Turner,
"Orientalism
and the Problem of Civil Society in Islam"
- @ Sami Zubaida,
"Islam, the
State & Democracy: Contrasting Conceptions of Society in
Egypt," Middle East Report (Nov-Dec 1992), 2-10.
- Anna Seleny "Tradition,
Modernity, and Democracy: The Many Promises of Islam,
Perspectives on Politics 4:3 (Sept 2006), pp. 481-494. [get
from apsa-net]
- Tom Carothers, Is
Gradualism Possible: Choosing a Strategy for Promoting Democracy
in the Middle East, Carnegie Endowment Working paper No. 39,
June 2003. And along these lines, maybe promoting civil society is
a big excuse for supporting existing regimes: cf C..M. Henry,
"...cyberspace.."Middle
East Policy, Jan 1997
Further reading suggestions:
- *A. R. Norton ed., Civil Society in the Middle East, 2
vols (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995-96)
- *Amin Saikal and Albrecht Schnabel, eds., Democratization
in the Middle East: Experiences, Struggles, Challenges, United
Nations University Press, 2003. ($21.95 pb)
- *Yahia Zoubir, ed., North Africa in Transition: State,
Society, and Economic Transformation in the 1990s, University
Press of Florida, 1999
- *Daniel Brumberg and Larry Diamond, ed., Islam and
Democracy in the Middle East (2003),
TOC and
Introduction
- Mark Tessler et al (?),
Islam and Democracy in the
Middle East (2001?) - optional
- Frank Tachau, ed., Political Parties of the Middle East
and North Africa (Greenwood, 1994)--an invaluable
compendium of political associations.
- Timothy Mitchell, "The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist
Approcahes and their Critics," APSR 85:1 (March 1991),
77-96.
- Albert Hourani, "Ottoman Reform and the Politics of the
Notables," in W.P. Polk and R.C. Chambers,
- *Ernest Gellner, Muslim Society (1981), pp. 1-56. Cf
Gellner, Conditions of Liberty (1994).
- *Simon Bromley, Rethinking Middle East Politics, pp.
1-34
- Leonard Binder, Islamic Liberalism, pp. 206-242
- Bryan Turner, Capitalism and Class, chaps. 1 and 5
- ___________, Weber and Islam (1974)
- Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State
(London, 1974), pp. 462-520 (on the 'Asiatic mode of
production')
- Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, F. Rosenthal trans.,
chapters 3, 5:2.
- Maxime Rodinson, Islam and Capitalism
- Albert Hourani article in Hourani and Stern, ed., The
Islamic City
- Abraham Marcus, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity:
Aleppo (1989)
- Andre Raymond, Artisans et Commercants au Caire au XVIII
siecle (1973)
- ______, The Great Arab Cities in the Sixteenth to
Eighteenth Centuries (NYU 1984)
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5th week (Feb 13): MASTER AND DISCIPLE: A syndrome of Arab
authoritarianism?
It is all very well to compare Western puritanism and Islamism,
but might there be an authoritarian political culture underpinning
both the corrupt states and Islamist responses in the Arab world? How
much can we generalize from the Moroccan experience depicted by
Abdellah Hammoudi?
- Abdellah Hammoudi, Master and Disciple: The Cultural
Foundations of Moroccan Authoritarianism, entire.
- @ Michael Hudson,
The
Political Culture Approach to Arab Democratization: The Case
for Bringing It Back In, Carefully, in Rex Brynen et al, 1995:
61-76
- @ Eva Bellin,
"The Robustness
of Authoritarianism in the Middle East," Comparative
Politics 36: 2 (Jan 2004), 139-158
- Marcus Noland,
"Explaining
Middle Eastern Authoritarianism." (38 pp. but here is his
summary of the argument)
- Further reading suggestions:
- *Jason Brownlee, Authoritarianism in an Age of
Democratization (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
- *Lisa Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric,
and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (U of Chicago Press, 1999)
- *Eva Bellin, Stalled Democracy: Capital, Labor, and the
Paradox of State-Sponsored Development (Cornell UP, 2002)
- * Marsha Pripstein Posusney and Michele Penner Angrist, eds.,
Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Regimes and Resistance
(Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2005)
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6th week (Feb 20): THE CLIENTELIST PARADIGM - N.B. this got added
as one of our topics (cutting earlier discussions of area studies and
methodology by a week) as a result of my recent research in Algeria
and also from reading Werenfels on Algerian elites, an expensive book
that I reviewed for Middle East
Journal, winter 2008.
- "Lebanon:
zuama clientelism," in Library of
Congress Country Studies (1987).
- James C. Scott, "Patron-Client Politics and
Political Change in Southeast Asia," The American Political
Science Review, Vol. 66, No. 1. (Mar., 1972), pp. 91-113,
available at PCL Jstors linked
here.
- Steven Caton, " Power,
Persuasion, and Language : A critique of the Segmentary Model in
the Middle East", International Journal
of Middle East Studies,
19:1(February 1987), pp. 77-102 - here is a better
link
- Mohammed Hachemaoui, "Algeria’s
May 17, 2007 parliamentary elections or the political
representation crisis," Arab Reform Initiative (Carnegie Foundation), 17 July 2007.
- Osama Al-Ghazali Harb, "The
Role of the West in Internal Political Developments of the Arab
Region," Ibid., 11 May 2007.
- Steven Heydemann, "Upgrading
Authoritarianism in the Arab World,"
Brookings, October 2007.
Further reading suggestions:
- *Ernest Gellner and JohnWaterbury, eds,
Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean
Socioeties (London: Duckworth,
1977)
- Dale Eickelman, Middle East : an Anthropological
Approach (Englwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 2nd ed., 1989)
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7th week (Feb 27): First paper due.
VARIETIES OF STATES AND POLITICAL CULTURES IN THE
MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
How do oil and various forms of foreign intervention affect
the MENA states? How might political and economic changes in turn
affect "political culture?" But first just a quick timely (14 Feb
2008) discussion of
"Counting
Iraqi Casualties - and a Media Controversy" by John Tirman,
Executive Director and Principal Research Scientist at the
Massachusetts Institute for Technology's Center for International
Studies.
- Roger Owen, chaps 2 and 3.
- Michael L. Ross, "Does Oil Hinder
Democracy?" World Politics 53: 3 (April 2001), 325-361
- Michael Herb, "No Representation Without
Taxation?" Comparative
Politics, April 2005, pp.
297-316.
- Henry and Springborg, Globalization and the politics of
development in the Middle East,
chaps. 2-6.
- Hefner, chaps 5 and 6 (on Iran and Egypt).
- Further reading suggestions:
- Gregory White, A Comparative Political Economy of
Tunisia and Morocco: On the Outside of Europe Looking In
(Albany: SUNY 2001)
- *Hugh Roberts, The Battlefield Algeria 1988-2002:
Studies in a Broken Polity (London: Verso 2003)
- C.Henry, Algeria’s
Agonies: Oil Rent Effects in a Bunker State (2002 ms.
online)
- Sami Zubeida, Islam, the People and the State
- P. S. Khoury and J. Kostiner, eds, Tribes and State
Formation in the Middle East
- D.F.Eickelman, "What is a tribe?" in The Middle East: An
Anthropological Approach
- Ghassan Salame, "'Strong' and 'Weak' States: A Qualified
Return to the Muqaddimah," in G. Luciani, The Arab
State, pp. 29-64
- Lisa Anderson, "The State..." Comparative Politics
(Oct 1987).
- Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, F. Rosenthal trans.,
chapter 2.
- Robert Montagne, The Berbers; their social and political
organization (London,1973--PCL DT 313.2M6613 1973)
- ____________, Civilisation du desert (generalizes
from the Berbers)
- Ernest Gellner, Saints of the Atlas
- John Waterbury, Commander of the Faithful (London,
1970)
-
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8th week (March 5): RELIGION AND "SOCIAL MOBILIZATION" IN A WORLD
ECONOMY
Standard modernization theory (Deutsch, Lerner) is often
criticized for confusing social with political mobilization
(Huntington) and for not taking sufficient account of the "dependent"
context in which these processes occur. Dependency theory views
contemporary third world states as enjoying little more political
autonomy than their colonial predecessors. Coming from a very
different theoretical tradition, Carl Brown also emphasizes the
continuities rather than the differences between the dependent
Ottoman Empire, penetrated by various Great Power interests, and the
independent order of successor states. Which states today are
expanding their "national" constituencies; which ones, like Lebanon's
presidential palace at Baabda in the 1980s, are besieged fortresses?
In what senses might states in the region be described as
"penetrated" polities? How are new identities are being forged in
opposition to external threats or neo-colonial domination?
What frames of reference are competing with the nation-state? How
can we view ethnicity, confessionalism, Arabism, Universal Theory,
Islamic fundamentalism, etc.? Toward a contingency theory of
political identity? Mosaic societies? Was the Lebanese civil war just
an aberration--or an expression of underlying political tensions in
the Middle East? From a Marxian standpoint Samir Amin argues
"Political Islam
at the Service of Imperialism," Monthly Review, Dec. 2007
- what do you think?
And finally and most importantly for this seminar, how does
contemporary islamism compare to the asabiya enlarged by religion in
Ibn Khaldun's day? Do we need, as Francois Burgat proposes, to
revisit colonial dialectic to understand contemporary political
Islam? And maybe keep an eye on Palestine - see
Electronic
Intifada ...also here is the latest
Political Islam
Online
- Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, (abbreviated Rosenthal
translation, Bollingen series, Princeton UP) pp. 5-9, 91-101,
123-166, 230-255
- P. Fargues, "Demographic Explosion or Social Upheaval?" in
Ghassan Salame, ed., Democracy Without Democrats? , pp.
156-179. Or, since this was omitted from Abel's Course pack,
examine the age pyramid distributions of Algeria, Saudi Arabia,
and any other countries of your choice at
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbpyr.html
- Dale F. Eickelman, "New Media," in Hefner, chapter 2
- Henry, Algeria: Free
Press, Opaque Political Economy (2003 ms. online)
- @ Ellis Goldberg,
"Smashing
Idols and the State: The Protestant Ethic and Egyptian Sunni
Radicalism," Comparative Studies in Society and History
(1991), 3-35.
- Peter Mandaville, "Sufis and Salafis," in Hefner, chap 12
- Bowen, French Islamic Reasoning, in Hefner, chap 13.
- Further reading suggestions:
- * Peter Mandaville, Global Political Islam
(Routledge, 2007)
- Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam
from the Extremists (HarperCollins, 2005)
- ________, Islam and the Challenge of Democracy
(Princeton University Press, 2004)
- Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: the Search for a New
Ummah (Columbia UP, 2004)
- Noah Feldman, After Jihad: America and the Struggle for
Islamic Democracy (NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003)
- Cyril E. Black and L. Carl Brown, eds, Modernization in
the Middle East (Princeton: Darwin, 1992)
- L. Carl Brown, International Relations and the Middle
East (1984)
- Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed: Religious Development in
Morocco and Indonesia (Yale, 1968)
- Bernard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam,
- Bryan Turner, Capitalism and Class in the Middle
East, esp. ch. 6, 11.
- *Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society
(1958)
- Karl Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication
(1952)
- Samuel P Huntington, Political Order and Changing
Societies (Yale l968)
- Michael Hudson, The Precarious Republic: Political
Modernization in Lebanon (1968, 1985)
- A. R. Norton, Amal and the Shi'a (UT Press, 1987).
- Guilain Denoeux, Urban Unrest in the Middle East
(Albany: SUNY 1993)
- Michael Johnson, Class and Client in Beirut (Ithaca,
1986)
- C.H. Moore, "Prisoners' Financial Dilemmas: A
Consociational Future for Lebanon?" Am Pol Sci Rev 81:
201-218 (March 1987).
- Bertrand de Jouvenal, The Pure Theory of Politics,
appendix on the problem of applying the principle of national
self-determination.
- Fuad Ajami, The Arab Predicament (Cambridge, 1981)
- Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies (Yale
1977).
- E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism
- I. Harik, "Political Integration..." International
Journal of Middle East Studies 3:3(1972), 303-23.
- A. Hourani, "Race, Religion and the Nation State," in A
Vision of History (1961)
- _________, "Ideologies of the Mountain and the City," in
Rogen Owen, ed., Essays on the Crisis in Lebanon,
pp. 33-42.
- Khalaf, Samir, Lebanon's Predicament (Columbia UP,
1987) DS 87 K395 1987
Table of contents | Main
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Spring break: March 10-15 ISLAMIST
9th week (March 19): SOCIAL BASES OF OPPOSITIONS: THE STRUGGLE
AGAINST CLIENTELISM AND INEQUALITY
How relevant are western theories to the problem of legitimate
political order in the Arab-Islamic world? Are Max Weber's categories
useful? Is patrimonialism (a "traditional" form of political order)
legitimate? In whose eyes? How necessary is legitimacy for a regime's
political survival? How does patronage help, and what forms may it
take? How durable is the rentier state? Can the oil rents insulate
the region from international trends favoring democratization? Or is
the era of clientelism passing away with "traditional society?" We
look at Marxian and other approaches to elites, examine social
classes, and ask what (class?) interests might political Islam be
articulating. Can class, by the way, enable us to explain political
outcomes, such as policies and power structures (i.e. patterns of
selection of political elites), in ways that are not circular?
[p.s. I just happened to see a new analysis of Lebanese
confessional represention by Mark Farha,
"Demography
and Democacy in Lebanon, in Middle East Monitor 3:1
(jan-march 2008) - and
Salafi-jihadism
in Lebanon by Gary C. Gambill in same issue]
- @ Manfred Halpern,
"The New
Middle Class" in The Politics of Social Change in the
Middle East and North Africa
- Abdulaziz Sager,
The
Private Sector in the Arab World – Road Map Towards Reform,
Arab Reform Initiative, Dec . 10, 2007.
- @ Michael Hudson,
"The
Legitimacy Problem in Arab Politics," Arab Politics,
pp. 1-30
- Nazih Ayubi, pp. 164-195
- @ Hanna Batatu,
"...Social
Roots of Syria's Ruling Group," MEJ (1981)
- Lisa Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric,
and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (U of Chicago Press, 1999)
- Further reading suggestions:
- *Hanna Batatu, Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of Its
Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics (Princeton, 1999)
- Shana Cohen, Searching for a Different Future: The Rise of
a Global Middle Class in Morocco. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2004,
reviewed in my "North
Africa's Desperate Regimes," Middle East Journal summer
2005.
- Sami Zubeida, Islam, the People and the State
- S.E. Ibrahim, "Anatomy of Egypt's Militant Islamic Groups,"
IJMES 12 (1980)
- James Bill, "Class Analysis and the Dialectics of
Modernization," IJMES 3 (1972), 417-434.
- *C.H. Moore, Images of Development: Egyptian Engineeers
in Search of Industry (Cairo: AUC, 1994)
- Caglar Keyder, State and Class in Turkey: A Study in
Capitalist Development (London and NY: Verso, 1987)
- Bryan Turner, Capitalism and Class in the Middle
East
- Bernard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam
- *Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the
Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton, 1978).
- I.W. Zartman ed., Man, State and Society in the
Contemporary Maghreb (Praeger, 1973)
- I. William Zartman, ed., Elites in the Middle East
(Praeger1980)
- _________, Political Elites in Arab North Africa
(Longman 1982)
- A. Drysdale, "The Syrian Political Elite, 1966-1976,"
Middle East Studies 17(1981):1, 3-30
- C.A.O. van Nieuwenhuijze, ed., Commoners, Climbers, and
Notables: a Sampler of Studies on Social Ranking in the
Middle East (Leiden: Brill, 1977)
- G. Luciani, The Arab State
- E Gellner and J Waterbury, Patrons and Clients in
Mediterranean Societies (London 1977).
- Entelis, John P., Islam, Democracy and the State in North
Africa
- G. Hossein Razi, "Legitimacy, Religion, and Nationalism in
the Middle East," APSR 84:1 (March 1990), 69-91.
- Max Weber, Economy and Society (eds. Roth and
Wittich), pp. 31-38, 212-245, 1006-1031.
- Robert Springborg, Family, Power, and Politics in
Egypt (1982).
- Hisam Sharabi, Neo-Patriarchy: A Theory of Distorted
Chnge in Arab Society (Oxford 1988)
- Lisa Anderson, The State and Social Transformation in
Tunisia and Libya, 1830-1980 (Princeton, 1986).
- Davis, E and N Gavrielides, eds., Statecraft in the
Middle East: Oil, Historical Memory and Popular Culture
(Florida Intl UP 1991)
Table of contents | Main
page
10th week (March 26): CHANGING OF THE ELITES?
If we can produce a substantive definition of a state bourgeoisie,
can we also show that this bourgeoisie is in decline? If bureaucrats
help their private sectors cousins to line their collective pockets,
can the new "interests" sustain a bountiful state? How useful a
category is "bourgeoisie," state or private, for conjuring up
constellations of interests that can be subjected to political
analysis? How much of a target does it become for Islamist
oppositions, and why? Alternative ethnic identities? You have
readings on Saudi identity as well as Algerian elites. What can we
say about Berbers in Algeria or the possible "Lebanonization" of
Iraq? (which I feared
earlier and could spell out more clearly today)
- Ayubi, pp. 196-255
- Henry and Springborg, chaps 5 and 6.
- Okruhlik, Empowering Civility...in Saudi Arabia, in Hefner,
chap 8.
- @Volker Perthes,
Arab
Elites: Negotiating the Politics of Change (Lynne Rienner,
2004), 1-32, 46,120, 173-205, 301-307
- Further reading suggestions:
- *Steven Heydemann, ed., Networks of Privilege in the
Middle East (Palgrave, 2004)
- *Volker Perthes, Arab Elites: Negotiating the Politics
of Change (Lynne Rienner, 2004)
- * Isabelle Werenfels, Managing Instability in Algeria:
Elites and political change since 1995 (Routledge 2007) -
cf my
review
- * Jason Brownlee, Authoritarianism in an Age of
Democratization (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
- Hugh Roberts, The Battlefield Algeria 1988-2002: Studies
in a Broken Polity (London: Verso 2003)
- Guilain Denoeux, "State and Society in Egypt,"
Comparative Politics (1988)
- Hamied Ansari, Egypt: the Stalled Society (SUNY,
1986)
- Robert Springborg, Family, Power and Politics in
Egypt (Penn., 1982)
- John Waterbury, The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat
(Princeton, 1983)
- Hanna Batatu, The old social classes and the
revolutionary movements of Iraq : a study of Iraq's old landed
and commercial classes and of its Communists, Ba'thists, and
Free Officers (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1978)
- ______, Syria's peasantry, the descendants of its lesser
rural notables, and their politics (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1999)
- Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, Iraq since
1958: From Revolution to Dictatorship (New York: Methuen
1988).
- John P. Entelis, Algeria: The Revolution
Institutionalized (Westview, 1986)
- Mahfoud Bennoune, The Making of Contemporary Algeria,
1830-1987
- (Cambridge, 1988) PCL HC 815 B48 1988
- Yahya M. Sadowski, Political Vegetables? Businessman and
Bureaucrat in the Development of Egyptian Agriculture
(Brookings, 1991)
- Ernest Gellner and Charles A. Micaud, Arabs and Berbers:
from tribe to nation in North Africa (London: Duckworth,
1973)
Table of contents | Main
page
11th week (April 2): MILITARY RULE AND REVOLUTION
How do we distinguish between coups and revolutions? What is a
revolution and what might some of its preconditions be? Can we
predict future Irans? Or revolutionary futures?
- Further reading suggestions:
- *Steve Cook, Ruling Not Governing: The Military and
Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey (NY:
Council on Foreign Relations, 2007)
- *Mohammed M. Hafez, Why Muslims Rebel: Repression and
Resistance in the Islamic World (Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner
2003)
- William B. Quandt, Between Ballots and Bullets: Algeria's
Transition from Authoritarianism (Brookings, 1998).
- A. Richards and J. Waterbury, Political Economy of the
Middle East
- Sami Zubeida, Islam, the People and the State
- S.A. Arjomand, The Turban for the Crown (Oxford,
1988), esp. pp. 189-211.
- Elizabeth Picard, "Arab Military in Politics: from
Revolutionary Plot to Authoritarian State," in G. Luciani,
The Arab State, pp. 189-219.
- Barry Rubin and Thomas Keaney, eds., Armed forces in the
Middle East : politics and strategy, London: Frank Cass,
2002
- Leonard Binder, In a Moment of Enthusiasm: Political
Power and the Second Stratum in Egypt (Chicago, 1978)
- Michael Johnson, Class and Client in Beirut (Ithaca,
1986)
- E. Burke III and I.M. Lapidus, eds., Islam, Politics,
and Social Movements, pp. 263-313 (arts. by Hamid Alger,
Ervand Abrahamian, and Nikki Keddie)
- Issa J. Boullata, Trends and Issues in Contemporary Arab
Thought, Albany: SUNY Press, 1990 pb.
- F Kazemi and J Waterbury, eds., Peasants and Politics in
the Modern Middle East (Florida Intl U Press, 1991
- Theda Skocpol, "Rentier State and Shi'a Islam in the
Iranian Revolution," Theory and Society (Dept. of
Sociology, U of Chicago, 1982), pp. 265-283)
- Glenn E. Robinson, "The Role of the Professional Middle
Class in the Mobilization of Palestinian Society: The Medical
and Agricultural Committees," International Journal of
Middle East Studies (May 1993), 301-326.
- Glenn E. Robinson, Building a Palestinian State
(Indiana UP, 1997)
Table of contents | Main
page
12th week (April 9):TOWARD A TYPOLOGY OF ISLAMIC REVIVALISM: MASS
MOBILIZATION?
Reassertions of Muslim identity, expressed through the Muslim
Brotherhood and other socio-political movements, have been on the
rise in the Arab world since the June War of 1967. Perhaps they have
peaked in Egypt and Tunisia, but they are still visible in various
forms throughout the Middle East (as are analogous Jewish movements
in Israel). How do regimes cope with them, with what implications for
political development?
- Roger Owen, pp. 154-177.
- @ William E. Shepard,
"Islam and
Ideology," International Journal of Middle East Studies
19 (1987), pp. 307-336.
- @ Mona El-Ghobashy,
"The
Metamorphosis of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers,"
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 37:3 (August
2005), 371-395
- @ Henri Lauciere,
"Post-Islamism
and the Religious Discourse of 'Abd al-Salam Yasin,"
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 37:2 (May
2005), 241-261.
- Clement Henry and Rodney Wilson, eds., The Politics of
Islamic Finance (Edinburgh University Press, 2004), draft
Introduction and
Conclusion - apparently the
whole book is now
available
online!
- @ Excerpt from C.M. Henry,
Population,
urbanisation and the dialectics of globalisation, draft
chapter for Cambridge History of Islam, vol. VI (in
progress)
- Further reading suggestions:
- FYI: Cheryl Benard (wife of Ambassador Khalilzad),
Civil Democratic
Islam: partners, resources, strategies (Rand
Corporation, 2003)
- *Roxanne Euben, Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic
Fundamentalism (Princeton, 1999)
- *Timur Kuran, Islam and Mammon: the Economic
Predicaments of Islamism (Princeton 2004 )
- John Esposito, ed., Political Islam: Revolution,
Radicalism, or Reform? (Rienner, 1997)
- Francois Burgat and W Dowell, The Islamic Movement in
North Africa, esp. pp. 1-41, 247-310
- Aziz Al-Azmeh, Islams and Modernities (Verso, 1993)
- Ruedy, John, ed., Islamism and Secularism in North
Africa, NY: St Martin's, 1996 pb.
- Moussalli, Ahmed S., Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The
Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb (Beirut:
American University of Beirut, 1992)
- *Bulliet, Richard, Islam: the view from the edge,
NY: Columbia UP,1994
- Frank Vogel and S.L. Hayes, III, Islamic Law and
Finance: Religion, Risk and Return ((Luwer Law
International, 1998)
- Roy, Olivier, The Failure of Political Islam
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1994)
- E. Burke III and I.M. Lapidus, eds., Islam, Politics,
and Social Movements
- Giles Kepel, Prophet and Pharaoh (U. California
1986)
- *Ernest Gellner, Muslim Society
- *Leonard Binder, Islamic Liberalism
- The Annals, vol 524 (Nov 1992) special issue on
Political Islam ed. C.E. Butterworth and I.W. Zartman.
- Layachi, A. and Haireche, A., "National Development and
Political Protest: Islamists in the Maghreb Countries," Arab
Studies Quarterly 14:2-3 (spring-summer 1992), pp. 69-92.
- Susan Walz, "Islamist Appeal in Tunisia," MEJ, 40:4
(1986), 651-670
- Islam and the State, Middle East Report no. 153
(July-Aug 1988)
- Henry Munson, Jr., Islam and Revolution in the Middle
East (Yale 1988)
- Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Islam in Modern History
(Princeton, 1957).
- James F. Piscatori, Islam in a World of
Nation-States (Cambridge, 1986)
- John L. Esposito, Islam and Politics (Syracuse,
1984)
- John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat Mythor Reality?
(Oxford 1992)
- Olivier Carre, L'utopie islamique dans l'Orient
arabe (Paris: FNSP, 1991)
- R. Hrair Dekmejian, Islam in Revolution: Fundamentalism
in the Arab World (Syracuse, 1985)
- James P. Piscatori, ed., Islam in the Political
Process (Cambridge, 1983)
- Shireen T. Hunter, ed., The Politics of Islamic
Revivalism: Diversity and Unity (Indiana, 1988)
- William R. Roff, ed., Islam and the Political Economy of
Meaning: Comparative Studies of Muslim Discourse (U
Calif. Press, 1987)
- Emmanuel Sivan, "Sunni Radicalism in the Middle East and
the Iranian Revolution," IJMES 21:1-30 (Feb 1989)
- ___________, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern
Politics (Yale, 1985)
- Tibi, Bassam, Islam and the Cultural Accommodation of
Change (Westview, 1991 pb)
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page
13th week (April 16): STRATEGIES OF 'SOFT' STATES: ADJUSTMENT VS
ADJUSTMENTS TO ISLAMISM?
Buying loyalty? Strategies of capital accumulation and
distribution to be discussed with specific reference to Egypt. Can we
infer strategies from the available evidence? Does it make sense to
view the state as a an autonomous actor, even if it make less sense
to reduce it to the executive committee of the bourgeoisie, the new
middle class, or some tribal asabiya or sectarian abstraction?
Are the Arab core states fragmenting (specters of Lebanonization?)?
How much influence do donor states and international institutions
(IMF, World Bank) wield in the internal policy-making of the 'soft'
states? What of the internal, domestic pressures on governments? On
oil economies? Evolution of rentier states away from static
("orientalist") passivity of the rentiers? Is the suppression of
Islamist political movements a by product of economic adjustment and
"globalization?" Here are some
questions for class discussion
- @John Waterbury,
From Social
Contracts to Extraction Contracts: The Political Economy of
Authoritarianism and Democracy, in John Entelis, ed., Islam,
Democracy and the State in North Africa , pp. 141-176
- Roger Owen, pp. 113-153
- @Eberhart Kienle,
"More than
Response to Islamism: the Political Deliberalization of Egypt in
the 1990s," Middle East Journal 52:2 (spring 1998), pp.
219-235
- @ Ellen Lust-Okar,
"Divided They
Rule," Comparative Politics 36: 2 (Jan 2004), 159-180
- Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts, chaps 7-8. Here is
my review of his
book in International Journal of Middle East Studies 36
(2004), 321-324
- Further reading suggestions:
- *Ellen Lust-Okar, Structuring Conflict in the Arab World
(Cambridge UP, 2005)
- * Jillian Schwedler, Faith in Moderation:
Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen
- Abdo Baaklini, Guilain Denoeux, and Robert Springborg,
Legislative Politics in the Arab World (Lynne Rienner,
1999)
- Tim Niblock, Saudi Arabia: Power, Legitimacy, and Survival
(Routledge 2006)
- Islam,
Democracy and the Secularist State in the Post Modern Era,
Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, 2nd Annual
Proceedings, Georgetown, April 2001.
- M. Riad El-Ghonemy, Affluence and Poverty in the Middle
East (Routledge, 1998)
- Henry, Clement M., The Mediterranean Debt Crecent
(UP of Florida, 1996)
- Harik, Iliya, and D.J. Sullivan, Privatization and
Liberalization in the Middle East (1992), esp. pp. 1-23,
123-166.
- Henri Barkey, ed., The Politics of Economic Reform in
the Middle East (1992)
- Jean Leca,"Social Structure and Political Stability:
Comparative Evidence from Algeria, Syria, and Iraq," in G.
Luciani,The Arab State, pp.150-188
- I. W. Zartman, "The Opposition as a Support of the State"
in G. Luciani, The Arab State, pp. 220-246
- Caglar Keyder, State and Class in Turkey: A Study in
Capitalist Development (London and NY: Verso, 1987) pb.,
pp. 91-247
- *Eberhart Kienle, A Grand Delusion: Democracy and
Economic Reform in Egypt (London: Tauris, 2001)
- Raymond A. Hinnebusch, Jr., Egyptian Politics Under
Sadat: The Post-Populist Development of an
Authoritarian-Modernizing State (Rienner, 1988)
- Raymond A. Hinnebusch, Peasants Bureaucracy in Baathist
Syria (Westview, 1989), pp. 31-60, 285-305.
- Robert Springborg, Mubarak's Egypt: Fragmentation of the
Political Order (Westview, 1989)
- Kiren Aziz Chaudry, "Labor Remittance and Oil Economies,"
International Organization 43:101-145 (Winter
1989)
- Kiren Aziz Chaudry, The Price of Wealth (Cornell
1997)
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14th week (April 23): Second paper
due.
ISSUES OF REGIONAL INTEGRATION AND
GLOBALIZATION
We need to gain a regional perspective, looking at relationships
between domestic politics (within one country) and international
(primarily intra-Arab) politics. If pan-Arabism is dead, the ghost
still seems very much alive. There is an
Arab
Free Trade Area Agreement (1997), which had a quick
Lebanese
farmers' reaction. And the
Agadir
Agreement of 2004 for a Free Trade Zone
(Morocco-Tunisia-Egypt-Jordan). Islamism, too, supports transnational
organizations. Subregions, such as the Maghreb, the Gulf (GCC), and
Egypt-Sudan, may also be undergoing gradual, subdued, relatively
"apolitical" processes of integration. May transnational currents
favor a restructuring of "civil society" in the region? And how does
the region fit into the larger international picture - does proximity
to Europe help unite or divide the Arab world? (Speaking of
transnationals, here is the latest from West Point's Combating
Terrorism Center: The
Power of Truth: Questions for Ayman Al-Zawahiri ) And P.S. here
were the links I was showing in class:
Arab
Free Trade Agreement 1997;
US
Middle East Free Trade Initiatives; World Bank
World
Trade Indicators;
European
Neighborhood Policy;
Agadir
Agreement 2004; and the
funny map. Also a
Middle East Survey of the various trade
agreements
as of 2002.
Here were the questions
we discussed, after reading:
- Further reading suggestions:
- *Gerd Nonneman, ed., Analyzing Middle East Foreign
Policies (Routledge, 2005)
- *Shibley Telhami and Micahel Barnett, eds., Identity and
Foreign Policy in the Middle East (Cornell 2002)
- World Bank,
IS
THERE A NEW VISION FOR MAGHREB ECONOMIC INTEGRATION? (Nov
2006)
- Brynen, Rex, Korany, and Noble eds Political Liberalization
and Democratization in the Arab World, vol. I, pp. 283-337
(articles by Gregory Gause, Gabriel Ben-Dor, and editors'
conclusions).
- George Joffe, ed., Special Issue on Perspectives on
Development: The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, The Journal
of North African Studies 3:2 (summer 1998)
- G.E. Fuller and I.O. Lesser, A Sense of Siege: The
Geopolitics of Islam and the West (Westview-Rand, 1995),
pp. 1-12, 81-174
- Luciani and Salame, "The Politics of Arab Integration," in
G. Luciani, The Arab State, pp. 394-419
- L. Carl Brown, International Politics
- Malcolm Kerr, The Arab Cold War
- Patrick Seale, The Struggle for Syria
- Malcolm Kerr and El Sayed Yassin, eds., Rich and Poor
States in the Middle East (Westview, 1982)
- Saad Eddin Ibrahim, The New Arab Social Order: A Study
of the Social Impact of Oil Wealth (Westview, 1982)
- Bassam Tibi, "Structural and Ideological Change in the Arab
Subsystem Since the Six Day War," in Yehuda Lukacs and Abdalla
Battah, The Arab-Israeli Conflict (Westview,
1988)
- R.K. Ramazani, The Gulf Cooperation Council: Record and
Analysis (U Va., 1988)
- Erik R. Peterson, The Gulf Cooperation Council: Search for
Unity in a Dynamic Region (Westview, 1988)
-
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page
15th week (April 30): CORPORATISM VERSUS
PLURALISM: MORE DEMOCRACY, REPRESSION, OR CONTAINMENT?
Whether emanating from civil society or controlled by the state,
interests are assumed to become ever more demanding and complex as
societies evolve in the contemporary world. Political scientists have
transferred Italian, Portugese, and/or East European "corporatism" to
Nasser's Egypt, Turkey on occasion, and other Middle Eastern states.
But how far can these conceptual transplants legitimately travel? And
what do we make of rising sectarianism within states and
transnationally - cf.
Sectarianism
and National Identity and
The
Changing Face of Jihad – Culture Trumps Ideology, Political
Islam Online (retrieved April 24, 2008)? Here is a NYT
review
of recent books by Olivier Roy and Noah Feldman - no rosy
prospects for political development in the region!
A number of authoritarian regimes are opening up to more
pluralistic and democratic practices. Turkey's military rule imposed
in 1980 has given way to somewhat competitive elections, and both
Egypt and Tunisia have engaged in political as well as economic
"opening up." Since the mid-1970s Morocco, too, has sustained a
semblance of representative democracy. These limited experiments all
suggest a question. How do they relate to changes in economic policy?
Is a strong and autonomous private sector a necessary condition for
institutionalizing political competition? Is it sufficient? Proposed
questions for discussion
after reading:
- Further reading suggestions:
- *Marsha Pripstein Posusney, Labor and the State in
Egypt (Columbia UP, 1997)
- Fahmi Jedaane, "Notions of the State in Contemporary
Arab-Islamic Writings," in G. Luciani, The Arab State,
pp. 247-283.
- Leonard Binder, Islamic Liberalism
- *Robert Bianchi, Interest Groups and Political
Development in Turkey (1984)
- *Robert Bianchi, Unruly Corporatism (Oxford, 1989),
pp. 3-34, 90-123, 158-224.
- Sullivan and Abed-Kotob, Islam in Contemporary Egypt: Civil
Society vs. the State
- S.E. Ibrahim, C. Keyder, and Ayse Oncu eds.,
Developmentalism and Beyond: Society and Politics in Egypt
and Turkey (American University in Cairo, 1994)
- G. O'Donnell, P. Schmitter and L. Whitehead eds.,
Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for
Democracy, chapter on Turkey by Ilkay Sunar and Sabri
Sayari.
- John Waterbury, The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat, part
4: "Politics without Participation," pp. 307-388.
- I. Harik, "The Single Party as a Subordinate Movement,
World Politics 26: 80-105.
- John Higley and M.G. Burton, "The Elite Variable in
Democratic Transitions and Breakdowns," Am Soc Rev
54:17-32 (Feb 1989)
- Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave
- Hugh Roberts, "The Algerian State and the Challenge of
Democracy," Government and Opposition 27 (Autumn 1992)
Table of contents | Main page
April 23, 2008
Department of
Government, College of
Liberal Arts, University of
Texas at Austin.
Questions, Comments, and Suggestions to
chenry@mail.utexas.edu