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Are Arab Politics Still Arab?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Jerrold D. Green
Jerrold D. Green
Affiliation:
M.I.T
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Abstract

For many scholars and observers of the Middle East, the uniqueness of the Arabs has proved to be far more interesting than those areas of Arab political life that exhibit similarities with politics elsewhere. Some of the studies reviewed here provide a partial corrective to this gap. They suggest that Arab politics, much like politics in other settings, is concerned with issues of socioeconomic change and conflict, problems of legitimacy, the role of competing ideologies, and elite factionalism. Those of the studies that highlight the weaknesses of pan-Arabism are more persuasive than those that emphasize its vitality. What is needed now is the ability to determine where we can usefully generalize about Arab politics and where politics in the Arab world are in fact unique. The social-scientific approach is deemed more likely to accomplish this analytical goal than the traditional area-studies and policy approaches.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , July 1986 , pp. 611 - 625
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1986

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References

1 For an analysis of the role of ideology in the Middle East, see Bill, James and Leiden, Carl, Politics in the Middle East, 2d ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984)Google Scholar. The ideological role of Islam is further investigated in Green, Jerrold D., “Islam, Religiopolitics, and Social Change,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 27 (April 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Among the better books dealing with Islam and politics are Akhavi, Shahrough, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Arjomand, Said Amir, ed., From Nationalism to Revolutionary Islam (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dessouki, Ali E. Hillal, ed., Islamic Resurgence in the Arab World (New York: Praeger, 1982)Google Scholar; Enayat, Hamid, Modern Islamic Political Thought (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Piscatori, James, ed., Islam in the Political Process (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; and Rahman, Fazlur, Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

3 The development literature is represented by Hudson, Michael, Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; the elite literature by Zonis, Marvin, The Political Elite of Iran (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; the political economy literature by Waterbury, John, The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat: The Political Economy of Two Regimes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and interest groups by Bianchi, Robert, Interest Groups and Political Development in Turkey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, These volumes are just a sampling of a much broader literature.

4 For example, see Binder, Leonard, In a Moment of Enthusiasm: Political Power and the Second Stratum in Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)Google Scholar, Cooper, Mark, The Transformation of Egypt (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982)Google Scholar, and Waterbury (fn. 3).

5 This became clear to me while I was a visiting research professor in the Faculty of Economics and Political Science at Cairo University in 1982–1983, and during visits, then and more recently, to various Arab states.

6 For example, see Augustus R. Norton's Protest Politics in South Lebanon (Austin: University of Texas Press, forthcoming).

7 Two recent studies on the P.L.O. thoroughly document this point. See Cobban, Helena, The Palestine Liberation Organization: People, Power, and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Miller, Aaron, PLO: Politics of Survival (New York: Praeger, 1984)Google Scholar.

8 Dessouki (fn. 2), 8.

9 For discussion of the relationship between social science and area studies, see Leonard Binder, “Area Studies: A Critical Reassessment,” and Zartman, I. William, “Political Science,” in Binder, Leonard, ed., The Study of the Middle East: Research and Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences (New York: John Wiley, 1976), 1–28Google Scholar and 265–326, respectively. For an examination of these issues within a broader geographical context, see Pye, Lucian W., ed., Political Science and Area Studies: Rivals or Partners? (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

10 Lubrani, Uri, “Lebanese Peace in Syria's Hands,” The New York Times, January 15, 1985, p. 23Google Scholar.

11 For a different perspective on Iraqi politics, see Sciolino, Elaine, “The Big Brother: Iraq Under Saddam Hussein,” The New York Times Magazine, February 3, 1985Google Scholar. Interestingly enough, Sciolino interviewed some of the same people as Helms did, such as Taha Yasin Ramadan, Latif Nasif Jasim, and Saadoun Hammadi; visiting Americans apparently tour the same circuit. Sciolino seems to have drawn more plausible conclusions from the experience than Helms, while also providing several illustrative vignettes of how nonofficial Iraqis view Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party.