The Revolutions
My goal is to attempt to understand the violence that we are seeing in Libya and Syria and place these cases in a broader perspective of political science, particularly in terms of what is called “comparative politics.” In the end I will propose three inherent lessons we might extract from the violence we’re seeing.
To begin we need to deal with the concept of “politics” in a general sense. This concept, despite its widespread use, is not very clearly defined and its definition is hotly debated. The definition I consistently turn to is that of Patrick O’Neill: “politics is the struggle within a group for the power to make decisions for the larger group.” If we subscribe to the Clausewitzian conception of war- or really violence in general- as simply one among many political tools, then it becomes immediately apparent that what we are seeing in Libya and Syria between the governments and opposition is simply politics in it crudest form, that of violence.
Yet it makes some sense, particularly when viewed through the perspective of Mohammed Ayoub, who authored a very insightful examination of Third World Elites and their security concerns. State elites, and every state has them, might be equated to entrenched interests; those people and institutions that benefit from the established order. Elites, as entrenched interests, in any state seek to maintain the established order and to generate people’s loyalty to that established order. To do so they can draw on such things as ideology, ethnicity, history, nationalism, distraction, and, of course, force.
The problem in Third World states is that often they are built on weak national foundations, as holdovers from colonial times. In the Middle East this is particularly true, where the states are often referred to as “lines on a map.” These states were drawn from agreements all made in Europe, such as the Balfour Letter, the Hussein-McMahon Letters, the Sykes-Picot Treaty, the San Remo Conference, and the Cairo Conference. The joking name given to the little blip on Jordan’s southern border, “Churchill’s Sneeze,” poignantly underscores the argument: Middle East states were by and large determined by people not of the Middle East. Thus, here in the Middle East, the established order and the people who benefit from it have to use every tool at their disposal in order to maintain that order; oftentimes the last recourse for maintaining loyalty to the state is force and fear.
The thing people need to realize is that the process I just described above, the process of people who benefit from the established order using force and fear to maintain order, this is the traditional process. That is what states from their early beginnings were founded on. They may have resorted to other unifying factors, but overall the threat of violence from the state was the underlying unifying motivation for people to obey and be loyal to the state. Max Weber, an early German political theorist, described this as state’s having the monopoly on legitimate violence within a territory. I also personally like the description of states as essentially a form organized crime, a giant racketeering organization. This is not far from the truth. The difference between the state and organized crime, we in the West like to think, is that the state is legitimated by its subjects and it uses force discretely and according to the rule of law. In the West, our states tend to be organized in such a way so as to try to ensure those things as well as to internalize the “struggle” that is inherent to politics, hopefully ensuring that struggle remains peaceful.
However, that very conceptualization of the state as being responsible for not using indiscriminate violence is actually not very old in the grand scheme of things. Its actual practice is even more recent. Finally, its practice and acceptance on a broad scale is still not assured. In a place where the very foundations and established order of the state are doubted by its people, maintaining that order is not easy and elites, as I’ve been calling them, are more ready and willing to use force to achieve their objectives.
Boiled down, I’m attempting to argue three points:
1) In a comparative politics sense, it needs to be understood that states are states and the difference between Authoritarianism and Democratic governments is not one of diametric opposition; rather it is one of degree. They are different political regimes but the crux is that they are on the same scale, that is: “political organization.”
2) The use of violence indicates that the conception of states as being beholden to all of their subjects is, ultimately, still not universally accepted or practiced. What’s new about these cases is that the international community is actually taking action to enforce that very conception, suggesting the possibility that a former aspect of the nature of the state may actually be changing as a result of the international community. This argument is heavily loaded and I welcome any debate regarding this specific issue because I’m suggesting that this is something new.
3) Finally, I’m arguing that Assad and Qaddafi are not necessarily illogical, crazy , and soulless, despite the attractiveness of dismissing them as such. They and their respective establishments have an agenda: maintaining the order from which they perceive they benefit most. They are making a “rational” choice in order to succeed in that agenda. Unfortunately for them, the fact that their choice to use violence is rational given their perceived interests and constraints doesn’t make that choice any less unjust, reprehensible, and, ultimately, evil as an assault on human dignity.
Thank you for your interest!
Respectfully,
Brennan
I guess it’s finally time to address the revolutions we’re seeing in the Arab world. Finally, meaning this attention comes a little late, as my purpose with this blog is to provide some perspective on the Middle East to people at home. Yet, while I can’t deny the monumental importance of the revolutions, every time I’ve sat down to write, I’ve felt that there are more important issues to address, such as the common “Westerner’s” perception of the common Middle Eastern person. This issue is so important because ultimately any perceptions of “the other” have a more lasting impact on relations; our supposed civilizational conflict is only fed by the belief in an irreconcilable body of “us” and of “them.”
My defense of my lack of attention to the “Arab Spring” laid out, it seems appropriate to address the revolutions now. The fact that these are popular uprisings and are generally under the auspices of calls for freedom and human rights is fascinating but also largely a puzzle to many experts on “Democratic transition models” and experts on Middle Eastern politics alike. For this reason, I am going to insist on refraining from attempting to explicate the causes, roots, and implications of these revolutions. Even more, I will not try to postulate on the future of the Arab Spring. Any attempt to do these things would be unfounded in academia and knowingly dishonest intellectually.
To begin we need to deal with the concept of “politics” in a general sense. This concept, despite its widespread use, is not very clearly defined and its definition is hotly debated. The definition I consistently turn to is that of Patrick O’Neill: “politics is the struggle within a group for the power to make decisions for the larger group.” If we subscribe to the Clausewitzian conception of war- or really violence in general- as simply one among many political tools, then it becomes immediately apparent that what we are seeing in Libya and Syria between the governments and opposition is simply politics in it crudest form, that of violence.
Yet it makes some sense, particularly when viewed through the perspective of Mohammed Ayoub, who authored a very insightful examination of Third World Elites and their security concerns. State elites, and every state has them, might be equated to entrenched interests; those people and institutions that benefit from the established order. Elites, as entrenched interests, in any state seek to maintain the established order and to generate people’s loyalty to that established order. To do so they can draw on such things as ideology, ethnicity, history, nationalism, distraction, and, of course, force.
The problem in Third World states is that often they are built on weak national foundations, as holdovers from colonial times. In the Middle East this is particularly true, where the states are often referred to as “lines on a map.” These states were drawn from agreements all made in Europe, such as the Balfour Letter, the Hussein-McMahon Letters, the Sykes-Picot Treaty, the San Remo Conference, and the Cairo Conference. The joking name given to the little blip on Jordan’s southern border, “Churchill’s Sneeze,” poignantly underscores the argument: Middle East states were by and large determined by people not of the Middle East. Thus, here in the Middle East, the established order and the people who benefit from it have to use every tool at their disposal in order to maintain that order; oftentimes the last recourse for maintaining loyalty to the state is force and fear.
The thing people need to realize is that the process I just described above, the process of people who benefit from the established order using force and fear to maintain order, this is the traditional process. That is what states from their early beginnings were founded on. They may have resorted to other unifying factors, but overall the threat of violence from the state was the underlying unifying motivation for people to obey and be loyal to the state. Max Weber, an early German political theorist, described this as state’s having the monopoly on legitimate violence within a territory. I also personally like the description of states as essentially a form organized crime, a giant racketeering organization. This is not far from the truth. The difference between the state and organized crime, we in the West like to think, is that the state is legitimated by its subjects and it uses force discretely and according to the rule of law. In the West, our states tend to be organized in such a way so as to try to ensure those things as well as to internalize the “struggle” that is inherent to politics, hopefully ensuring that struggle remains peaceful.
However, that very conceptualization of the state as being responsible for not using indiscriminate violence is actually not very old in the grand scheme of things. Its actual practice is even more recent. Finally, its practice and acceptance on a broad scale is still not assured. In a place where the very foundations and established order of the state are doubted by its people, maintaining that order is not easy and elites, as I’ve been calling them, are more ready and willing to use force to achieve their objectives.
Boiled down, I’m attempting to argue three points:
1) In a comparative politics sense, it needs to be understood that states are states and the difference between Authoritarianism and Democratic governments is not one of diametric opposition; rather it is one of degree. They are different political regimes but the crux is that they are on the same scale, that is: “political organization.”
2) The use of violence indicates that the conception of states as being beholden to all of their subjects is, ultimately, still not universally accepted or practiced. What’s new about these cases is that the international community is actually taking action to enforce that very conception, suggesting the possibility that a former aspect of the nature of the state may actually be changing as a result of the international community. This argument is heavily loaded and I welcome any debate regarding this specific issue because I’m suggesting that this is something new.
3) Finally, I’m arguing that Assad and Qaddafi are not necessarily illogical, crazy , and soulless, despite the attractiveness of dismissing them as such. They and their respective establishments have an agenda: maintaining the order from which they perceive they benefit most. They are making a “rational” choice in order to succeed in that agenda. Unfortunately for them, the fact that their choice to use violence is rational given their perceived interests and constraints doesn’t make that choice any less unjust, reprehensible, and, ultimately, evil as an assault on human dignity.
Thank you for your interest!
Respectfully,
Brennan
Its never too late to comment on the Revolutions. Thank-you for the post, very revealing insights.
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