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Towards Arab liberalgovernance: From thedemocracy of bread to thedemocracy of the voteLarbi SadikiPublished online: 25 Aug 2010.

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Third World Quarterly, Vol 18, No 1, pp 127± 148, 1997

Towards Arab liberal governance:from the democracy of bread to thedemocracy of the vote

LARBI SADIKI

In most theoretical treatments civil strife and domestic political con¯ ict are

commonly thought to be deconstructive and negative. As Gurr points out ` most

Western students of con¯ ict from Burke to Sorokin to Huntington have assumed

that widespread violent con¯ ict is intrinsically undesirable’ .1

Yet no messengers(from Christ to Muh. ammad), no leaders (from Bolivar to Ghandi), and no

revolutionaries (from Lenin to Mao to Mandela) ushered in new orders and ideas

without con¯ ict. Whether viewed diachronically or synchronically, humankind’ s

history is the history of con¯ ict. However, domestic con¯ ict is neither always

negative (as Dixon and Moon have shown2) nor does it always have only

short-term effects (as Bienen and Gersovitz have assumed3). There is ample

historical evidence for this in the aforementioned cases. Against the backdrop of

domestic con¯ ict these historical ® gures effected positive and lasting changes.

Hence the chief postulate of this essay: domestic political con¯ ict, despite the

` inherent plausibility’4

of its harmfulness, presents opportunities for positivechange with long-term effects. This position is tested using examples of Arab

bread riots and the spillover effect of the Palestinian intifaÅ d½ ah (uprising).

Support for this position is found in the context of the recent wave of Arab

democratisations. Although generally guided and controlled, Arab political

liberalisations (especially that of Sudan, Algeria and Jordan) have their roots inpressure from below. Elsewhere (as in Tunisia and Egypt), similar pressure

helped consolidate, or at least place, political reform on the agenda of delegit-

imised ruling elites.

Theoretical background

Studies of domestic political con¯ ict both diverge and converge. The causalmodels vary. Huntington, among others, puts forth an explanatory model that

rests on poverty, income inequality and land maldistribution at the roots of

discontent and rebellion.5

Huntington’ s discontent hypothesis is countered by

other con¯ ict theorists who stress resource mobilisation. Both Gamson6

and

Tilly,7

for instance, ® nd nothing either new or special in discontent being atthe root of protest and con¯ ict. For the latent triggers of discontent, be they

Larbi Sadiki is at the Centre for Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University,

Canberra ACT 0200, Australia; email , sadiki.larbi@edu.anu . .

0143-6597/97/010127-22 $7.00 Ó 1997 Third World Quarterly 127

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LARBI SADIKI

landlessness, inequality or repression, are features common to most societies

and polities. Accordingly, they hold mobilisation to be the chief factor to

understanding and analysing collective action and protest. The explanatory

power of mobilisation ® nds further substantiation in Skocpol’ s comparativestudy of French, Russian and Chinese peasant uprisings.8

There is more agreement on the inimical nature of domestic political con¯ ict

and its undesirability.9

Hence, while challenged by the awesome tasks of

achieving independence and racial equality, both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin

Luther King turned to non-violent struggle. Nonetheless, the utility of domesticpolitical con¯ ict, regardless of the violence that it could engender, cannot be

totally written off. For if inequality of any kind can lead to insurgency,10 then

insurgency must in the eyes of its initiators hold some possibility of leading to

equality. As a strategy, insurgency and its associates (` rational’ and ` irrational’

violence,11

protest) must be perceived by those who employ it to be the key tooverturning conditions of despair (like inequality) and creating conditions of

hope (like equality).

Collective action and domestic violence are found to play some positive role

in the spheres of social change and political reform. Piven and Cloward establish

linkage between the increased rioting and disturbances by marginalized, un-integrated, unemployed, subemployed and disenfranchized blacks12 and social

welfare initiatives (the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964; Johnson’ s war on

poverty announced in January 1964;13

and the Great Society programmes) by the

Democratic National Administrations in the 1960s. Two observations can be

gleaned from this. First, the Democratic Administrations’ response in this caseto the needs of the downtrodden involved a degree of political calculation aimed

not only at ` reach{ing} blacks {and} integrat{ing} them into the urban political

system’ ,14

but also at redirecting black voters from the Republicans and to the

National Democratic Party.15

Second, as with all riots, regardless of their roots,

politicisation is inevitable. Politicisation in the US riots of the 1960s was visibleat more than one level. At one level, the visible discrepancy of income and

opportunity served for the underprivileged Blacks to reinforce the strong

boundaries between exclusion and inclusion, between ` blackness’ and ` white-

ness’ , and between the ` self’ and the ` other’ .The ` other’ was not an ` alien’ from

outside but an ` alien’ from inside. No matter how legitimate the establishmentwas in the eyes of the ` Whites’ , for Blacks it was delegitimised. Thus Black

rioters directed their anger at ` white establishments, and they engaged police-

men, ® remen and National Guardsmen in pitched battles, sometimes even in gun

battles’ .16

In appraising the consequences of the Blacks’ anti-systemic protests

Piven and Cloward observe: ` old patterns of servile conformity were shattered;the trauma and anger of an oppressed people not only had been released, but had

been turned against the social structure. Disorder, in short, had become politi-

cized.’17

At another, the struggle for basic needs and economic rights became

enmeshed with the struggle for political rights. Hence ` the enactment of the Civil

Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965’ .18

Violence or the threat of it are also assumed to have a democratising function.

Nieburg, the most ardent proponent of this assumption, reasons along the

following lines. First, he considers the threat of violence as well as its

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` occasional occurrence’ to be ` essential elements in peaceful social change’ for

individuals no less than states.19

Second, he sums up their democratising

function in ` induc{ing} ¯ exibility and stability in democratic institutions’ . For

` they instil dynamism into the structure and growth of the law, the settlementof disputes, the process of accommodating interests, and they induce general

respect for the verdict of the polls’ .20 The contrast between the democratic and

totalitarian states’ approaches to citizen-initiated or threatened violence is sharp.

The former ` preserve the right of organized action by private groups, risking

their implicit capability of violence¼ By permitting a pluralistic basis foraction, {they} permit potential violence to have a social effect with only a token

demonstration, thus assuring greater opportunities for peaceful and political and

social change.’21

The latter, ` by intervening at the earliest possible point in

private activities, increase the likelihood that potential violence will have to be

demonstrated before it is socially effective’ .22

Neither the state of IsraelÐ the occupying force and both the target of and

the respondent to the Palestinian intifaÅ d½ ahÐ nor the Arab states, which were

confronted by a series of bread riots in the 1970s and 1980s, strictly qualify as

either totalitarian or democratic. The Jewish state’ s ` garrison democracy’23

has been exclusionary by dint of its draconian dealings with the occupied Arabsin both the West Bank and Gaza. The Arab states have since independence

been much less inclined than Israel to adopt democratic rule, and not until

recently has a number of them initiated democratic openings in their authori-

tarian structures.24

Nonetheless, if citizen-based violence or the threat of it can

be assumed to induce further democratising of already democratic systems, itcan similarly be assumed to engender positive sanctions, such as political

reforms and accommodation of the aggrieved parties’ interests and preferences,

given the limitation and political cost of state coercion and the potential for

sustained but unaccommodated controllable and ` rational’ violence to turn into

uncontrollable violence that can precipitate the fall of even the most draconianregimes. Both the Jewish state and Arab states responded to, respectively, the

intifaÅ d½ ah and bread riots in a fashion more akin to the style of the totalitarian

than to the democratic state. This can be measured by both the ` in® nite

deterrent to all non-state (and thus potentially anti-state) activities’ ,25

and by the

countless fatalities and detainees who fell victim to that deterrent in both thePalestinian intifaÅ d½ ah and Arab bread riots. Yet the changing global scene, along

with the pressure of the intifaÅ d½ ah, and the price it exacted on Israel’ s image

abroad, created new realities, the bene® ts of which are slowly but surely being

reaped in the form of greater Palestinian autonomy, and the probability of

statehood by the end of the 20th century. Being mostly led from within andby the non-mainstream political elitist cliques of the Palestinian diasopora,

the intifaÅ d½ ah served to further popularise the struggle for independence, and

pluralise the centres of decision making. Hence its democratising functions.

Arab bread riots generated the kind of organisation, mobilisation and self-

consciousness that served notice to delegitimised ruling elites, and generatedadequate credible threat to their hold on power to force them to look for

alternative means to managing crises of political and performance legitimacyÐ

political reform.

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Khubz (bread) protests

Food protest is not speci® c to Arab history. The seminal article by EP

Thompson on this phenomenon in 18th century England demonstrates this.26 In

it Thompson makes a number of interesting suggestions that have relevance not

only for the pre-modern but also for the contemporary Arab world. First, he

opposes reducing food protests in 18th century England to a ` mob’ or ` riot’

genre of activities, ie just ` rebellions of the belly’ , or ` simple responses to

economic stimuli’ .27

For Thompson such reductionisms are the byproduct of

` a spasmodic view of history’ .28 For ` according to this view the common

people can scarcely be taken as historical agents before the French Revol-

ution’ .29 Second, he shows that such food protests can instead be readily

explained in terms of an expression of disapproval by the lower strata at the

breaching of what was seen as a community consensus holding tacit assump-

tions informing England’ s ` moral economy of the poor’ .30 Central to these

assumptions was that the lower strata’ s ` traditional rights’31

to livelihood and

economic justice, which were seen as partly legitimated by the ` support in the

paternalist tradition of the authorities’ ,32 were not to be undermined or compro-

mised by dealing, milling or marketing activities which could cause high rises

in the price of bread. Third, he argues therefore that food protests in 18th

century England were not ` compulsive’ . Rather, they were ` self-activating’ in

that they were ` highly complex form{s} of direct popular action, disciplined and

with clear objectives’ .33

Burke capably applies Thompson’ s thesis of a ` moral economy’ to the Arab

world between 1750 and 1950. Burke identi® es three phases of Arab protest:

1750±1839; 1840±1880; and 1880±1925.34

The pattern, organisation, style and

ideology of protest differed from one phase to another, especially that of the

third. In the third phase, for instance, the symbolic language of Islam was

replaced with that of secular nationalism.35

Here Burke cites the example of the

Druze and Syrian rebels of 1925.36 Similarly, the strategy of resistance shifted

to more sophisticated tactics to counter more formidable adversaries. In the

1880s Egyptian fallaÅ h½ õÅ n (peasants) resorted to ` rent strike’ and ` land invasion’

to counter high Mameluke taxes; and Moroccan fallaÅ h½ õÅ n and ½Abd al-KarõÅ m

anti-French resistance in the 1921±1925 uprising imitated European warfare

tactics.37

Burke sees the changes in the ideology and strategy of Arab social

movements as indicative of the changes engul® ng the Arab world (as in social

structures), partly because of the in¯ ux of European colonisers.38

Burke’ s

analysis conceives of Arab protest movements, although historically discon-

tinuous, as an arena of social assertion and dynamism. Thus his analysis lends

signi® cance to anti-orientalist and historical approaches to the questions of

state±society relations and governance in the pre-modern era. It lists a number

of points that can be seen to favour democratic norms.

Burke, ® rst, challenges the conventional orientalist bias premised on the

notion of oriental despotism, rejecting theories of the Islamic state being an

all powerful edi® ce that is the exclusive domain of manipulative and corrupt

rulers and bureaucrats whose ` politics is a game’ .39

These orientalisms, Burke

argues, diminish the signi® cance of revolts in Arab societies. His analysis gives

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evidence of frequent popular protests between 1750 and 1925, which represented

` historical praxis’ of societal resistance. Second, this historical praxis of resist-

ance indicates that the pre-modern Islamic state was neither the chief agent of

change nor unresponsive to the demands of the variety of social movements(millenarian, revivalist or economic). Burke observes that ` over the course of the

period 1750 to 1950¼ many delegations were dispatched and letters of grievance

drafted by protesters, {with} rulers {taking}¼ elaborate measures to disinculpate

themselves and to blame their agents’ .40

Third, Burke calls attention to the fact

that these delegations and other forms of mediation between rulers and ruledsuggest ` Middle Eastern societies were governed in accordance with tacit moral

understanding¼ about how much was too much’ .41 Intrinsic to this moral

understanding was the Islamic notion of social justice. Burke views Muslims,

both as individuals and communities, as being endowed with a mission to

struggle for justice, stipulated in the QuraÅ nic instruction to enjoin the good andforbid evil.42 The enactment of justice, Burke argues in agreement with accounts

given above, is invested in the authority of a just prince. The of® ce of

al-muhtasib (superintendent) is delegated this task in practice. Being charged

with ensuring fair dealing in the marketplace in such matters as prices, weights

and measures, and with ` preventing hoarding’ , the muhtasib and the duties heperformed were ` in effect a public trust’ , which for Burke has special

signi® cance in the context of the pre-modern Islamic state’ s commitment to

social justice:

¼ there was indeed an Islamic analogue to the West European Christian notion of

moral economy, and¼ it centered upon the application of the sharõ$ah {Islamic Law}

by a vigilant Muslim ruler. In particular, according to the sharõ$ah, the government

was obligated to enforce a series of measures of direct economic relevance to the

inhabitants. These included the prohibition of usury and the insistence that only

Quranically sanctioned taxes be imposed, that only Quranically approved coinage

be permitted to circulate of® cially¼ In addition, there was the further general

understanding that it was the duty of governments to ensure the supply of grain to

the market at reasonable prices. Taken together these obligations amounted to an

Islamic social compact which provided the moral basis of society.43

The above forms the doctrinal as well as customary frames from which what

Burke calls the historical praxis of resistance derived its legitimacy. Those

protest movements Burke referred to amounted to acts by society to enact the

Islamic telos of justice and ` a populist defense of age-old liberties¼ the rights of

the quarter, the tribe and other social groups against encroachment on theirsubsistence’ .44 For the rulers such protests provided them with the opportunity

to replenish their own legitimacy by both looking into the demands and petitions

from society, and having occasion to reassert the Islamic principles of good

government on the basis of justice. The praxis of resistance, especially in the

form of khubz protests, continues to be embedded in Arab societies. Theseprotests, as shown below, have political implications, namely, discontinuous

practice of democracy by society and forms of pressure from below, often

effecting change from above.

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Arab transition to democracy: catalysts and constraints

It has been asked: ` How can a nation pass from unlimited to representative

government?’45

Barrington Moore, Jr identi® es three different routes to

` modernity’ : capitalism (Western Europe), fascism (Germany and Japan) andcommunism (Russia and China). However, he establishes that only the ® rst has

led to a relatively democratic polity.46 Capitalism is yet to triumph in the Arab

world. The Western model of linear change through feudalism (iqt½aÅ ½) and then

the bourgeoisie has had no precedent in the Arab world. The Arab search for

democracy seems to traverse the ` authoritarian road’ .47

The survival of authori-tarianism and personalist regimes and the experience of reversals in 1958 and

1975 strongly illustrate the persistent problem of stillborn Arab democracy.48

Scholarly discourse on political transformation presupposes the presence of

prerequisites or preconditions for transition to democracy. The discourse, how-

ever, remains indeterminate with regard to many questions concerning politicaltransformation.49 Rustow injects an insightful input into the discourse.50 He

cautions, inter alia, against confusing correlation with causation, especially with

reference to socioeconomic variables. He also calls for due attention to be paid

to external factors, noting that the transition processes and dynamics are not

uniform. In the following, the socioeconomic correlate of democracy will beexamined with special emphasis on the denouement of the khubz pact between

rulers and the ruled in the Arab world.

Socioeconomic variables

The matrix of prerequisites and causal and correlational propositions and

associations of democracy is indeed impressive.51

The focus here is on Lipset’ s

widely accepted association of high economic performance with corresponding

high levels of democracy.52

In his words:

Concretely, this means that the more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances

that it will sustain democracy. From Aristotle down to the present, {people} have

argued that only in a wealthy society in which relatively few citizens lived in real

poverty could a situation exist in which the mass of the population could intelli-

gently participate in politics¼53

Lipset establishes a linkage between wealth and democracy.54

He does not,

however, link economic fairness (equal distribution of wealth) and political

fairness, ie democracy (` one person, one vote’ ). Thus for Lipset, an incrementin general wealth would mean political participation without necessarily elimi-

nating socioeconomic inequalities. Dahl, however, while of the view that a fairly

high GNP per capita ` threshold’ can be conducive to higher levels of contestation

and participation, cautions that higher GNP levels per capita beyond an upper

threshold do not necessarily ` affect {polyarchy} in any signi® cant way’ .55

Furthermore, Dahl gives the example of US democracy (in the 19th century as

observed by Alexis de Tocqueville), which was neither industrially based, nor

had high GNP per capita.56

Huntington’ s ® ndings point to an ` economic transition

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TOWARDS ARAB LIBERAL GOVERNANCE

FIGURE 1

Discrepancies between GNP and competitiveness in the Arab World.

zone’ that can correspond with a ` political transition zone’ where movement

from non-democracy to democracy occurs.57

This however, is not irreversible.Lipset’ s correlation applies to the Arab setting only in one sense.58 It explains

the unsustainability of competitive (Lebanon) and semi-competitive (Morocco,

Tunisia, Jordan) politics in the not so ` well-to-do’ Arab countries.59

In general,

however, the Arab world reveals inconsistencies. Three deviations stand out.

First, the view in many parts of the Arab world is, rightly or wrongly, thatdemocracy is amenable to high economic development, not vice versa. Second,

present Arab democratisers are the ` relatively populous, poor, and politicised’ .60

Third, the well-to-do Arab rentiers states are, with the quali® ed exception of

Kuwait, the furthest from democratisation (see Fig 1).

How can these last two deviations be explained? The anomaly in the Araballocation or hydrocarbon states61 is partly a result of the arti ® ciality of oil

wealthÐ one of a number of various possible factors. The huge returns from

external oil rent have mostly contributed to aggrandisement of the state and its

political oligarchical patronsÐ the ` rentier class’ .62

This aggrandisement applies

to both oil producers and non-producers. The former directly accrued billions ofpetrodollars from external oil rent. The latter, which were only peripheral

oil-producers, pro ® ted from the Arab oil boom which facilitated greater Arab

economic integration and interdependence. This latter group have partly become

rentier economies. They rent labour, skills and expertise to the sparsely popu-

lated Arab oil-producing states earning billions of dollars in remittances. Thetransfer of millions of Arab petrodollars either in the form of aid or investment

is another factor in the equation. Many interrelated factors are at the core of

oil-related state aggrandisement.

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LARBI SADIKI

Autonomy Petrodollars have endowed the Arab state with an independent

resource to cement and reproduce itself. A prime function of this resource has

been the ability to buy political patronage, legitimacy and time. Hence the oil

paradox: the strength and relative domestic autonomy of the Arab state stemsfrom dependence on external oil revenue.63

Statism Petrodollars have enabled power holders to assert their authority by

expanding state involvement in all socioeconomic spheres. Most socioeconomic

functions are state-led. This interventionism has largely inhibited the rise of

autonomous societal power centres. The large size of the state bureaucracy has

turned much of the working population into de facto state clients whoselivelihoods depend on the public purse. According to one estimate of the late

1970s, state bureaucrats formed 30% of Egypt’ s labour force and 60% of

Jordan’ s.64

In fact, according to Springborg, infõÅ taÅ h½ (open-door policy) has not

stemmed the growth of Egypt’ s state bureaucracy. It quadrupled between 1970

and 1986 reaching 4.8 million, ie 10% of all Egyptians were state employees.65

Political interdependence Dividends from oil-rich to oil-poor states havehelped consolidate the latter. External extraction of oil surpluses has bestowed

upon the oil-rich states both internal and regional distributive powers. These

powers have in turn given them regulative functions calibrated according to

interestÐ exclusion of foes and inclusion (pork-barrelling) of allies. The recipi-

ent Arab states distribute and regulate using the same formula. What Farsouncalls a ` wide economic base’ a ` wide economic base’ operates both internally

and externally:

Regime stability derived domestically in part from this wide economic base, which

has been a direct consequence of the expansion of state functions. This would have

been impossible without the capital surpluses for the oil-producers and capital

transfers for the oil-poor states.66

Authoritarianism Extraction and distribution of petrodollars has given regimes

regulative leverage owed to the acquisition of a ` wide economic base’ through

all-encompassing patronage. As Farsoun correctly notes, this has enabled thestate to ` pre-empt and de¯ ect opposition’ .67 Political monopoly, however, and

the reproduction of the authoritarian state are not only functions of passive

exclusion (pre-emption and de¯ ection) but also of active exclusion. Hence, the

MukhaÅ baraÅ t (police) state with its military and police apparatuses has been made

possible by the oil boom. Accordingly, ` in general, Middle Eastern states havebecome more authoritarian, and more ef® ciently so than ever before ¼ This could

be construed as the proverbial stick of the Middle Eastern state’ .68 For Farsoun

the Arab state is the ` syncretic state-in-three’ .69

First, it is the ` historic state’

thriving on political patronage through limited distribution of power (status,

prestige) and economic opportunities. Second, it is the ` modern state’ with itscorporatist character,70 combining interdependent and yet autonomous and semi-

autonomous interests and power clustersÐ bureaucracies (civil, military and

police), bourgeoisie (including ruling elites) and technocrats (including infor-

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mation holders and dependent theocrats). It is self-serving, nurturing legitimacy

through welfarism and symbolic functions71

(to enhance a sense of community,

of safety, of patriotism), and nurturing clientelism by creating the opportunities

and environment for ` capital accumulation by the elite’ .72

Third, it is theMukhaÅ baraÅ t state that ensures the survival of the regime and its allied interests.

Huntington relates the failure of oil-rich states to democratise to state

enrichment from petrodollars which discards its need for tax revenue. Hence the

axiom of all non-competitive polities: ` no representation without taxation’ .73

In

contrast, he notes, industrial economies are amenable to a ` much more diverse,complex and interrelated economy, which becomes increasingly dif® cult for

authoritarian regimes to control’ .74 The irony, however, is that oil wealth accrued

unevenly, directly and indirectly has contributed to the viability of authoritarian-

ism, not of democracy. If one is to accept the association between high economic

development and democracy, arguments can be made for more equitable distri-bution of oil wealth in such a way that it brings Arabs near those ` thresholds’

or ` zones of transition’ that would make Arab democracy a viability.75 For such

transfers to happen, democracy is needed ® rst.76

The anomaly with regard to

democratising Arab states resides in the fact that medium to low economic

development which is generally taken to be a constraint to democratisation hasin fact been a catalyst. Whilst this might be an exaggeration, the fact remains

that openings initiated by a few authoritarian Arab states have been the result of

economic downturns, not high performance.77

The denouement of d õÅ muqraÅ t½iyyat al-khubz

The notion of a tacit pact between ruler and ruled is best encapsulated by the

Arab term dõÅ muqraÅ t½iyyat al-khubz (democracy of bread). Thus did Professor

Ahmad Shalabi of Cairo University describe Nasser’ s politics.78

Akin to

dõÅ muqraÅ t½iyyat al-khubz is the notion of the ` democratic bargain’ .79

Essentially,its chief premise is that post-independence Arab rulers have been paid political

deference by their peoples in return for the provision of publicly subsidised

servicesÐ education, health care, and a state commitment to securing employ-

ment. Hence political deference has been ` traded off’ for khubz. Khubz, which

means bread, is used here in a generic sense to refer to free education, healthcare and other services.80 In a sense the arrangements underpinned by

dõÅ muqraÅ t½iyyat al-khubz are, more or less, similar to Burke’ s idea of a ` social

compact’ as they represent the ` moral basis’ of polity and society. As an

explanatory tool, dõÅ muqraÅ t½iyyat al-khubz is signi® cant in that it emphasises the

socioeconomic basis of Arab political power: Arab authoritarianism has notreproduced itself solely by relying on brute force, but also on ` elements of

negotiation and accommodation’ .81

The catalytic role of the inh½ ilaÅ l (denouement) of dõÅ muqraÅ t½iyyat al-khubz can

be seen in the most recent Arab democratic stirrings. As noted above, the politics

cultivated by dõÅ muqraÅ t½iyyat al-khubz is largely deferential and non-participatory,conditional on the state’ s providential capacity. One consequence of this politics

is what the Algerian intellectual MaÅ lik Bin NabõÅ calls bulitõÅ q (a bastardisation

of the French term politique).82

The popular and pejorative usage of bulit õÅ q

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throughout the Maghreb refers to an understanding of politics as an undesirable

game of power, subterfuge and countersubterfuge; as talk but no action;

conveying a general feeling of distrust and hence avoidance of politics.83

And if

Arab peoples tend to disown their regimes, bulitõÅ q aptly explains the reason. Thesupport networks provided by the tribe or the family have generally helped

Arabs keep distant from authority. Before the emergence of the nation-state

system, livelihood without interference from nature or from authority (tax

collection) formed the desideratum of the Arab individual. The undisturbed and

apolitical world of the Arab individual was captured in the popular Maghrebisaying: naÅ kul al-quÅ t wa nistanna al-muÅ t (` food we eat, until death we meet’ ).

The ultimate provider was not the state; it was Allah and His barakah (blessing).

In the post-state period, the residue of that folk culture can be noticed in

another popular Maghrebi term: khubz-ist (combining the Arab term for bread

and the French suf® x ` ist’ to mean bread-seeker). The khubz-ist has come todescribe not only an attitude rigorously in¯ uenced by the pejorative semantics of

bulit õÅ q, but also by the khubz-ist’ s deferential political behaviour. The difference

now is that the state is in the picture. A departure has occurred: from the world

of non-conceptual icons to one of conceptual symbols; from one where barakahis imparted by Allah directly and indirectly to one where providence isassociated with the state; and from one where politics had little relevance to one

where politics has more relevance. In both, however, politics had relevance only

where the balance of physical existence was impinged upon by authority. And

if Arab individuals are khubz-ists so are Arab states. The latter created an

expectation in the former to seek what it can provide. The khubz-ist individualis quietist; the khubz-ist state is ` providential’ .

However, the khubz-ist is quietist only insofar as the state is providential.

Hence economic downturns have eroded the khubz-ist platform of Arab polities,

or what has historically been the quintessential providential state. Subsequently,

under societal pressure, the tacit ` contract’ between ruler and ruled has becometenuous, leading to involuntary relaxation of control from the top in the form of

ambiguous politics of renewal, the clear purpose of which has thus far been

regime survival by other meansÐ limited participation and contestation. Econ-

omic malaise is at the root of both societal pressure and political changes. And

nowhere has that societal pressure been more evident than in the phenomenonof intifaÅ d½ aÅ t al-khubz (bread uprisings). Recent Arab history is littered with

numerous examples of bread intifaÅ d½ aÅ t: Egypt, January 1977; Morocco, January

1984; Tunisia, January 1984; Sudan, March 1985; Algeria, October 1988;

Jordan, April 1989; Lebanon, in the postwar period. Bread riots (briots) can be

explained in terms of cause and effect. In all these countries intifaÅ d½ aÅ t al-khubzwere triggered by soaring food prices, housing shortages, high unemployment

and, in Algeria, even rationing of water supplies. In Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia

the trends since the mid-1970s up to the mid-1980s had been of rising prices and

declining living standards for a measurable number of the population.84

For

instance, ` between 1973 and 1983, Morocco’ s cost-of-food index more thantripled’ ,85 and in the mid-1980s it was estimated that over 40% of its population

was estimated to be ` living below the absolute poverty level’ ,86 whereas around

the same period some 35% of Tunisia’ s total labour force was either unemployed

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or underemployed, and a high percentage of ` households in the southern interior

live{d} at or below the level of basic subsistence’ .87

Like them the Sudan

experienced increasing trends of pauperisation, either because of government

economic mismanagement or poor harvests.88

In Jordan, soaring food pricesfollowed IMF-approved economic austerity measures, a situation that was aggra-

vated by mounting foreign debt and a plummeting dinar.89 In this regard, the

examples of Algeria and Egypt are equally instructive.

In neither country was the professed brand of Arab socialism godless or about

class struggle.90

Both, however, were authoritarian and economically inef® cient.Egypt’ s military setbacks against Israel further delegitimised Naner’ s Arab

socialism. The ditching of socialism in Egypt in the late 1970s and, more so, in

Algeria in the 1980s was conceived in a milieu of economic malaise: soaring

foreign debt,91

high unemployment, housing crises and heightened social polaris-

ation between rich and poor. The state welfarist inducements, which in the 1960sand early 1970s served to depoliticise the masses, became in the 1980s too

outstretched or totally unaffordable because of bigger populations. Egypt’ s high

military expenditure and Algeria’ s dwindling revenues from oil rents, which

decreased by more than one-third between 1984 and 1986, from 45 to 28 billion

dollars,92

were intolerable burdens on both countries’ economies. For theeducated jobless in both countries, where unemployment still affects between

20% and 30% of the active workforce, disillusionment with the regimes was

vented in the ` briots’ of 1977 in Egypt and 1988 in Algeria.

In the impoverished Arab states, unemployment will always remain a potential

detonator of social discontent and political instability. Like khubz-ists, h½ it½t½-ists(another pejorative Maghrebi term composed of the Arabic word for wall, and

the suf® x ` ist’ Ð itis used to describe jobless people who sit or stand by the wall)

are ubiquitous. This concern was highlighted by Richard Murphy, former

Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs in the US

State Department in 1984. In his statement before the House AppropriationsCommittee’ s Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, he based his advocacy of

further aid to the USA’ s key Arab allies (Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Tunisia)

on their increasing economic hardships, citing this as a threat to their stability.93

The pressure of population growth further compounds economic hardship. The

annual population growth rate, ¯ uctuating between 2% and 4%, is very highgiven the modest resources of impoverished Arab states. This not only means

further pressure on housing, water, food, employment, education and health care,

but, still more daunting, presents the prospect of a doubling of the total

population by the year 2025.94

The contraction of job markets is further squeezing these countries’ econom-ies. In almost all of them, only 23 to 31 percent of the total population is

employed, excluding those who are underemployed. This has heightened despair

among the youth, considering that in 1989 ` sixty percent of all Arabs {were}

under nineteen years of age’ .95

The prospects of improvement are poor for the

alienated and disillusioned Arab youth. The doors of immigration have beenclosed.96 To put brakes on future immigration, the European Union (EU) has

devised a package of aid to 12 non-member Mediterranean states, seven of

which are ArabÐ Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia.

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The aid package, known as the Revised Mediterranean Policy, is a combination

of $500 million in grants and more than $4 billion in loans. It is prompted by

fear that economic malaise and surging Islamism may spark an exodus from

these countries to Europe: ` Today the phrase ª boat peopleº refers to refugeesfrom Vietnam’ , said one {EU} of® cial. ` In the future it may refer to illegal

immigration across the Mediterranean’ .97

Unequal and selective development that bene® ts a certain social group or

favours a certain region has created a great deal of polarisation. The polarisation

is between the poor and the nouveaux riches. It is visible in Algiers which ` issplit between the contrasting wealth of the middle class suburbs, and the

depressing poverty of the Qasbah area. In the latter, the slums are overcrowded

and unsanitary. Begging is commonplace¼ ’98

In Egypt Al-SaÅ daÅ t’ s economic

policy of in® taÅ h½ has not been bene® cial to the poor. Concomitant with the

` prosperity’ of the Free Trade Zones was the misery and marginalisation ofmillions of EgyptiansÐ some actually living in cemeteriesÐ outside the formal

economy. Mostly geared to liberalising the economy, encouraging foreign

investment and privatising public assets, the modest windfall of the in® taÅ h½ policy

was con® ned to the Egyptian bourgeoisie, the clientele of the al-SaÅ daÅ t regime.

Hence the notion of ` economic apartheid’ .99

While this policy freed Egypt fromdependency on the Soviets, it failed to free it from dependency on the USA and

from international capitalism:

This meant the incorporation of the Egyptian bourgeoisie into new relations with

imperialism, and its transformation into a comprador class dependent on foreign

capital ¼ Egypt became a part of the world economy, ful ® lling its role as emergent

neo-colony of transnational capital dominated by the United States.100

The khubz-ists’ disaffection with inexorably deteriorating economic and living

conditions can be singled out as being the breeding ground for socially and

politically explosive atmosphericsÐ the stage of breaking-point. It is against this

backdrop of economic malaise that khubz-ists and dissident forces take to thestreets en masse. In these protests the people’ s taste for participatory politics is

nurtured, and their dissidence is unleashed by directly challenging political

authority. The rebellious street binds political dissidents, the marginals, the

unemployed and the disillusioned youth. They acquire a spontaneous solidarity

and, in their common consciousness of being regime victims, actual or potential,they direct their anger at high status and regime symbols. The Algerian riots of

1988 are instructive:

From the cities of the coast to oases of the Sahara, Algerians went on {the} rampage

and destroyed whatever, in their eyes, represented the regime: city halls, police

stations, courts¼ They also vented their rage on the political headquarters of the

country’ s only legal party, the FLN ¼ Inevitably, stores were ransacked and cars

burned, turning the main commercial streets of Algiers into scenes of devastation.101

The point must be made that intifaÅ d½ aÅ t al-khubz represent more than economi-cally based phenomena. The protests following the waiving of state subsidies for

strategic commodities (sugar, tea, kerosene, ¯ our, bread)102 and price hikes can

mislead if strictly interpreted as ` rebellions of the belly’ . IntifaÅ d½ aÅ t-al-khubz must

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also be recognised as being political phenomena.103 Everywhere throughout the

Arab landscape these intifaÅ d½ aÅ t amounted to protests against social inequality,

corruption, nepotism, authoritarianism and regime incompetence. Just as Alge-

rian protesters in 1988 targeted the government and the Front de LibeÂrationNationale (FLN),104 their Egyptian counterparts did the same.105 Cooper stresses

the signi® cance of the fact that the January 1977 riots in Egypt followed the

November 1976 parliamentary elections and primarily targeted the People’ s

Assembly,106

the reason being that:

the rioters {did} not look on {the People’ s Assembly} as an object of attack; rather,

it seem{ed} that they want{ed} to use it as a forum in which to be heard¼ These

elections in particular aroused and politicized large numbers of people and, with the

capricious raising of prices, the demonstrators felt that the elections and the

Assembly had failed them.107.

Likewise, if by targeting the Assembly Egyptian rioters disowned the abused

process and institutions that, in waiving food subsidies, allowed a decision that

was seen to be inimical to their preferences and interests, the Algerian riotersexpressed similar ` disavowal of the{ir} regime’ .108 According to Roberts, that

disavowal was translated into open contempt for the then president, al-ChaÅ dhli:

` as the rioters themselves put it, ª maÅ bghõÅ naÅ laÅ zibdah wa laÅ ® lfal, laÅ kin bghõÅ naÅza½õ Å m fh½ alº (ª we don’ t want butter or pepper, we want a leader we can

respectº ).’109

The reference to the bread riots, especially those of Algeria and Jordan, as

intifaÅ d½ aÅ t, is deliberate. The magnitude of public participation, especially among

young people; the intensity of the outbursts; their semi-peaceful nature (with

stone-throwing being the main means of engagement) and their sponteneity, lend

credibility to the theory of the infectiousness of the Palestinian intifaÅ d½ aÅ h. TheintifaÅ d½ aÅ h is an outburst against an occupying Israeli force and Israeli authority,

which are foreign. The Jordanian and Algerian riots were outbursts against local

authorities. It can be argued that these local authorities represented some degree

of ` foreignness’ in the eyes of the rioters: their dependence on foreign aid and

expertise; their imported ` isms’ and ideologies employed for nation-building,which have failed; their economies which have been plugged into the inter-

national economy, and their limited autonomy, with many regimes being seen as

puppets. Like the Palestinian intifaÅ d½ aÅ h, the Jordanian and Algerian riots

amounted to a cry for justice, equality and emancipation. The stone-throwing

Palestinians clamour for international justice to be applied to their cause. Theirdemands are equality with the Jews by having an equal right to self-determi-

nation; possession of their own sovereign homeland and emancipation from

colonialism. The Jordanians and Algerians aim to achieve social justice, equality

with the privileged in living conditions and opportunity and emancipation from

poverty and despair. A leaf had been borrowed from the intifaÅ d½ aÅ h ’ s book in theAlgerian riots of October 1988:

¼ those who sympathise with the rioters often call the October Revolt the intifaÅ d½ aÅ h

(uprising)¼ There can be no doubt that the school children battling in the streets of

Algeria took their cue from the Palestinian teenagers of the West Bank and Gaza.

W itnessing almost daily television scenes of that uprising, Algerian youngsters set

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out to enact their own intifaÅ d½ aÅ h. One young demonstrator was quoted as saying,

` they aren’ t afraid, so why should I be?’110

This serves as a con® rmation of the view expressed by West Bank activistJonathan Kuttab in 1988 that Arab regimes harboured fears of an intifaÅ d½ aÅ hspillover into their own streets.111 The spectre of a spillover was, for a while,

nowhere more feared than in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, where Pale-

stinians were variously estimated to make up between 40% and 65% of the

population.112

Most Arab regimes paid more lip service than money towardsthe intifaÅ d½ aÅ h. Very little of the money that was pledged to the intifaÅ d½ aÅ h($43 million a month) in the Algiers Arab Summit of June 1988 reached the

Palestinians.113

The intifaÅ d½ aÅ h assumed a spiritual importance in the eyes of millions of Arabs.

It forged a spiritual bond between the struggling Palestinians at one end anddisgruntled Arab youth at the other. It symbolised the Arabs’ struggle for

self-actualisation and their quest for a better future. It epitomised hope that

people-power and non-violent resistance may one day enable disaffected Arabs

to achieve their objectives of justice, equality and emancipation. Like the youth

of the intifaÅ d½ aÅ h, the new generation of Arabs stage their own intifaÅ d½ aÅ h inde® ance of the status quo. Unlike their parents and grandparents, they have

known only the post-independence order, an order where the gap between their

rising expectations and the ability of their regimes to meet them increasingly

widens. They have little reason to feel grateful or beholden to their regimes. And

no amount of rhetoric about a glorious past or a brighter future, couched in thelanguage of nationalism, pan-Arabism or development, is good enough. It means

little to the h½ it½t½-ists in many an Arab cafeÂor street, the hungry Sudanese or the

cemetery-dwelling Egyptian.

The Algiers Arab Summit of June 1988 focused on the intifaÅ d½ aÅ h. Arab

literature deals with and extols the intifaÅ d½ aÅ h. Arab musicians and singerspopularise it. There are even festivals to celebrate it in some Arab countries.

Arab opposition parties express support for the Palestinian struggle, indirectly

coaching the people in the virtues of political freedom. The Secretary-General of

the Socialist Democratic Movement (MDS), Muh½ ammad M’ waÅ ½adah, attended an

intifaÅ d½ aÅ h festival in the southern Tunisian town of Degash on 16±17 December1989.114 The fact that a leading opposition ® gure attended such a festival in an

impoverished town of the rebellion-prone Tunisian south is only indicative of the

hopes pinned on a future peaceful and non-violent civil struggle to effect change

from below. The intifaÅ d½ aÅ h is thus seen as a model for Arab people’ s revolt

against their own regimes, and a medium whereby popular taste for participatorypolitics is sharpened. Thus the dissident Iraqi authors of a recent work, IraqSince the Gulf War: Prospects for Democracy, systematically and repeatedly

refer to the March 1991 uprisings by the Kurds in northern Iraq and Arabs in the

south, against the central regime, as the intifaÅ d½ aÅ h.115

If intifaÅ d½ aÅ t al-khubz seem to have aroused the Arab people’ s appetite for opende® ance of the status quo, what then are their consequences? First, economic

malaise and the limitation or unaffordability of state welfarism have produced

twin opposite effects: politicisation of both khubz-ists and h½ it½t½-ists on the one

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hand, and erosion of regime legitimacy in many impoverished Arab states.

Second, intifaÅ d½ aÅ t al-khubz can be interpreted as kinds of indirect elections in

countries where no pluralist politics exist. IntifaÅ d½ aÅ t al-shaÅ ri½ (street uprisings)

amounted to votes of no con® dence against the incumbent regimes. The riotersrebelled to express the wide feelings among the hitherto anonymous masses of

ingratitude towards their regimes, which still based their legitimacy on past

achievements of little relevance to the people’ s present struggle for khubz.

These intifaÅ d½ aÅ t, despite economic roots, have de® nite political content and

motivation. According to Cooper, Egypt’ s 1977 riots had ` signs of organiza-tion {with} identical anti-regime literature appear{ing} simultaneously across

the¼ country¼ {of} systematic attempts to cut internal communications¼ {of}

coordinated attacks on neighbouring police stations¼ {of} selectivity of targets,

concentrating on state property’ .116

Seddon draws similar conclusions about

evidence of political organisation in the intifaÅ d½ aÅ t of Morocco, Sudan andTunisia in 1984 and 1985.117 Third, dõÅ muqraÅ t½iyyat al-khubz gave way to

al-dõÅ muqraÅ t½yyah al-siyaÅ siyyah (political democracy). Khubz, the powerful idiom

of the past, ceded to the idiom of the present: the vote. In immediate post-

independence the vote was denied to the Arab masses in return for khubz. In the

1980s the regimes failed to deliver khubz; when the masses took to the streetsdemanding khubz they were given the vote.

The democratic openings in Algeria and Jordan are instructive. It is pressure

from belowÐ the intifaÅ d½ aÅ t of the Jordanian and Algerian streetsÐ that has been

a prime factor in forcing both countries’ regimes to democratise. The price was

paid in human lives: 12 Jordanians in the April 1989 riots, and perhaps up to 500Algerians in the October 1988 riots.118 From this perspective, democratisation

has not come easily to Jordan or Algeria. It was fought for. The protest for khubzturned into a protest for rights. In Jordan, ` the political situation {in 1989} was

calmed with the hasty replacement of Rifai and the promise of early elections’ .119

In Algeria, the FLN ` only saved itself from being ousted in October 1988 by apromise of democracy’ .120 The rulers in Algiers and Amman came to the

realisation that repression has its limitations. Then, the still vivid memory of the

fate of Sudanese leader al-NumayrõÅ (1985) was a reminder of such limitations.

As Gene Sharp observes, ` the brutalities of repression against non-violent

resisters trigger a process of ª political jiujitsuº , which increases the resistance,sows problems in the opponents’ own camp, and mobilizes third parties in

favour of the non-violent resisters.’ 121

The catalytic role of inh½ ilaÅ l (denouement) of dõÅ muqraÅ t½iyyat al-khubz and

intifaÅ d½ aÅ t al-khubz in a few Arab democratic openings can be noticed in the

overthrow of al-NumayrõÅ ’ s authoritarian regime in 1985. This event was like ahistorical re-enactment of the October 1964 downfall of another Sudanese

autocrat, General½AbbuÅ d. Not a single authoritarian regime in the contemporary

Arab world fell victim to people-power except in the Sudan, twice. And nowhere

else, with the exception of Algeria and Jordan in the late 1980s, did clear-cut

democratic experiments ensue from people-power: the ® rst from 1964 to 1969,the second from 1986 to 1989. These outcomes refute Bienen and Gersovitz’ s

thesis that subsidy cuts-based anomie has only short-term implications for

political stability.122

More importantly, long-term political repercussions of Arab

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intifaÅ d½ aÅ t al-khubz challenge both the near silence of the literature on democratic

transition regarding the note of anomie, and the functionalist faith in modernis-

ation and social change embedded in some W estern epistemological circles. If

democratic transition can be the result of social disorder triggered by bread riots,then there is evidence from the Arab world to support this possibility. Introduc-

tion of higher food prices, like Luciani’ s conclusion about taxes, ` if imposed by

an authoritarian government lacking legitimacy¼ offer{s} the opportunity for

civil disobedience and manifestation of the lack of popularity of the govern-

ment’ .123

If civil disobedience led to the cancelling of food prices (Tunisia,Morocco,124 and Egypt125), followed by incremental but continuous, though

token, pluralisation in Sudan, Algeria and Jordan, it led to clear-cut political

liberalisations.

The intifaÅ d½ ah of the Sudanese people in March±April 1985 represented an

example par excellence of an economically-based but politically-motivatedprotest. It represented a politically purposeful anti-centralist protest by civil and

non-civil collectivities, some of which were both aware and dissatis® ed with

their peripheral positions. The visibility of so many forces from the country’ s

civil society (associations representing women, doctors, lawyers, engineers,

trade unions and students) as well as non-civil forces (Association of PoliceOf® cers, Free Army Of® cers Organization (FAOO) was part of a political process

that was espousing radical change, ie nothing short of bringing down al-

NumayrõÅ ’ s regime. For some of these forces, their participation in the protest

was not just part of a larger mobilisational effort against a delegitimised

authority, but also part of a strategy of aspiring power claimants with their ownpolitical agendas.

Throughout the intifaÅ d½ aÅ h the con¯ uence between the economic and the

political was clear-cut. Lea¯ ets, like those distributed by hospital doctors,

referred to the regime as ` a regime of hunger’ .126

However, the same lea¯ ets

articulated radical political messages and de® ned clear political stances withthe people and against the regime, and for good government and against

authoritarian rule. Hence the Association of Police Of® cers not only expressed

that its members would ` disobey any orders to use force against the people of

Sudan’ , but also adopted the slogan ` no to NumaryõÅ and no to dictatorship’ .127

Similarly, the FAOO ’ s message was that ` the Sudan Armed Forces side with thepopular revolt against hunger, ignorance, and misrule, and for social justice

and equality’ .128

Conclusion

The assumption that the better a country’ s economic performance, the better its

chances for democracy, presents problems in the Arab Middle East. The bias of

this theory against poorer states is obvious. Two interconnected positions have

been de® ned. First, Arab democratisation seems to bene® t from austerity, notbounty. Second, there is reason to believe (in disagreement with Bienen and

Gersovitz) that domestic con¯ ict and protest can have long-term effects and

bene® cial outcomes, in the form of political reform.

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The role of anomie, social upheaval and political protest is largely presented

as marginal to democratisation. In general, substantial research has been directed

at the importance of civil society and an enlightened bourgeoisie as chief

instruments of democratisation. Almost universal consensus exists that suchinstruments do matter. The study of Arab democratisation presents awesome

challenges with regard to de® ning the role of what is often considered to be the

more or less amorphous force and very often ` apolitical clay’ identi® ed here as

the khubz-ists and the h½ it½t½-ists. Without the development of a methodological and

theoretical background to enable more focused analysis of these phenomena,understanding of Arab democratisation will remain incomplete. From the time of

the radically-minded al-khawaÅ rij (the seceders) in the seventh century AD, a

tradition of protest has been entrenched in Arabo-Islamic political culture,

whether in the pursuit of liberation from foreign rule or of justice.129

Nineteenth

century Lebanon is a microcosmic example of an Arab semi-autonomousgeopolitical unit where ½aÅ mmiyyahs (popular uprisings) in 1820, 1821 and 1857

by peasants not only struck at the very foundations of the iqt½aÅ ½ system, but also

led to the rewriting of the rules of the imaÅ rah’ s (princedom’ s) political game.130

According to Baaklini, the covenant that was conceived in the aftermath of the

second ½aÅ mmiyyah revolutionised, and in a sense democratised, Lebanese politicsthrough the institution of such notions as popular sovereignty and popular

consensus.131 That element of protest has not been absent in recent history. Its

operationalisation has been most evident in the khubz intifaÅ d½ aÅ t of the 1970s and

1980s in many an Arab country. Whether in Morocco or Egypt, these intifaÅ d½ aÅ tare part of a historical pattern:

In January 1952, rioters attacked symbols of Western in¯ uence in Cairo, discredited

the W afdist government, and paved the way for NaÅ s½ ir’ s military coup. Every decade

has witnessed a major jacquerie. A student rebellion stunned NaÅ s½ ir in 1968 and

simmered for the following six years. Violent strikes have periodically paralyzed

the country’ s major industrial complexes, including al-Mahalla al-Kubra (1975),

Kafr al-Dawwar (1976 and 1984), and Hulwan (1989). When Egyptians mention the

memory of 1977 they are not referring to an event, but invoking a symbol of a

powerful and ancient tradition of revolt.132

These intifaÅ d½ aÅ t have established that political deference is a function of thestate’ s capacity for redistributive justice and equity that renders political auth-

ority ipso facto good and worthy of deference. These have been the chief articles

of the state±society unwritten pact. Defectiveness on the part of the state,

whereby what society has been accustomed to as inviolable rightsÐ literacy,

subsidised health care and strategic staple foodsÐ become subject to recall,cancels that pact. Hence the khubz intifaÅ d½ aÅ t not only radicalise the street but also

serve as reminders of illegitimate political authority and pernicious governance.

GhalyuÅ n links Arab democratisation not only to Arab regimes’ realisation of the

futility of oppression and the necessity of bridging the gap between themselves

and their peoples but also to, among other things, the masses’ revitalisedcon® dence and increased capacity for sacri® ce in order to secure their rights.133

Thus the importance of these uprisings by formerly quiescent masses must not

be downplayed when assessing Arab democratic transitions.

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Notes

I would like to acknowledge the institutional support I received from the Centre for the Study of Asia and the

Middle East, Faculty of Arts, Deakin University, where I have been a visiting research fellow since July 1996.

1T R Gurr, ` On the outcomes of violent con¯ ict’ , in Handbook of Political Con¯ ict, T R Gurr (ed), New

York: Free Press, 1980, p 239.2

W J Dixon & B E Moon, ` Domestic political con¯ ict and basic needs outcomes: an empirical assessment’ ,

Comparative Political Studies, 22(2), 1989, pp 178±198.3

H S Bienen & M Gersovitz, ` Consumer subsidy cuts, violence, and political stability’ , ComparativePolitics, 19(1), 1986, pp 25±44.

4Dixon & Moon, ` Domestic political con¯ ict’ , p 179.

5See S P Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968.

6See W A Gamson, The Strategy of Political Protest, Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, 1975.

7See C Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publications, 1978.

8T Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative analysis of France, Russia, and China,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.9

Dixon & Moon, ` Domestic political con¯ ict’ , p 178.10

This linkage has been successfully demonstrated by Edward N Muller & Mitchell A Seligson in,

` Inequality and insurgency,’ American Political Science Review, 81(2), 1987, pp 425±451.11

H L Nieburg distinguishes between ` rational’ and ` irrational’ violence. The difference being that ` rational’

violence has ` a conceptual link to a given end, a logical or symbolic means±ends relationship which can

be demonstrated to others or, if not demonstrable, is accepted by others (but not necessarily all) as proven’ .

See footnote number 3 in his, ` The threat of violence and social change’ , American Political Science

Review, 56(4), 1962, p 866.12

F F Piven & R A Cloward, Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare, New York: Pantheon

Books, 1971, pp 226±227.13

See footnotes in Ibid, pp 257±258.14

Piven & Cloward, Regulating the Poor, p 272.15

Ibid, p 273.16

Ibid, p 227.17

Ibid.18

Ibid, p 229.19

Nieburg, ` The threat of violence and social change’ , p 865.20

Ibid.21

Ibid.22

Ibid.23

See A Pinkas, ` Garrison democracy: the impact of the 1967 occupation of territories on institutional

democracy in Israel,’ in E Kaufman, S B Abed & R L Rothstein (eds), Democracy, Peace, and theIsraeli± Palestinian Con¯ ict, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1993, pp 61±83.

24See M C Hudson, ` After the Gulf War: prospects for democratization in the Arab world’ , Middle East

Journal, 45(7), 1991, pp 407±426.25

Nieburg, ` The threat of violence and social change’ , p 865.26

E P Thompson, ` The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century’ , Past and Present,

50, February 1971, pp 76±136.27

Ibid, pp 76±77.28

Ibid, p 76.29

Ibid.30

Ibid, pp 78±79.31

Ibid, p 78.32

Ibid, p 79.33

Ibid, p 78.34

Burke, ` Understanding Arab protest movements’ , Arab Studies Quarterly, 8(4), 1987, p 336.35

Ibid, pp 342±343.36

Ibid, p 343.37

Ibid, pp 342±343.38

Ibid, p 342.39

Ibid, p 334.40

Ibid.41

Ibid.42

Ibid, p 335.43

Ibid.44

Ibid, p 343.

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45M Halpern, The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa, Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1965, p 229.46

Barrington Moore, Jr, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of

the Modern World, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1966.47

Halpern, The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa, pp 221±234.48

This term is used by the eminent late Lebanese scholar Malcom H Kerr. See his essay ` Decision-making

in a confessional democracy’ , in Leonard Binder (ed), Politics in Lebanon, New York: Wiley, 1966.49

To begin with, the discourse deals primarily with democratising political institutions and sources of

legitimacy and political power. Rarely does it deal with democratising equally important sources of

political power, namely, the economic, managerial, executive and entrepreneurial sources of and forms of

power. To perpetuate this neglect is to continue to underrate the in¯ uence of these sources and positions

of power in an increasingly interdependent world economy. The sway these kinds of power hold over

people’ s lives and their standards of living within and without national borders is indeed tremendously

frightening. The hundreds of TNCs that straddle the globe with their powerful and yet unelected executives

affect many a national economy and many a national polity in a way that sometimes rivals and, at times,

even cancels, many a people’ s will. ITT’ s in¯ uence in the overthrow of Chile’ s democratically elected

socialist government in 1973 is instructive. In the Middle East, Western oil interests precipitated many

occasions for interference in domestic politics, of which the US role in the overthrow in August 1953 of

Iran’ s prime minister Mossadeq ranks as a prime example. Another is epitomised by the Anglo-French-Is-

raeli invasion of the Suez Canal in October 1956.50

Rustow, ` Transitions to democracy’ , pp 337±363.51

For examples of these correlates see, P Cutright, ` National political development’ , in N W Polsby, R A

Dentler & P A Smith (eds), Politics and Social Life, Boston, MA: Houghton Mif¯ in, 1963, pp 569±582.52

S M Lipset, ` Some social requisites of democracy: economic development and political legitimacy’ ,

American Political Science Review, 53(1), 1957, pp ???±???. While Lipset’ s correlation meets with wide

acceptance, it does not mean there is not controversy or opposition. Cutright, who followed on Lipset’ s

footsteps, carried out empirical research to substantiate that high socioeconomic development corresponds

with higher levels of democratic development. His ® ndings have, for instance, been disputed by Deane E

Neubauer, ` Some conditions of democracy’ , The American Political Science Review, LXI(4), 1967,

pp 1002±1009.53

Lipset, ` Some social requisites of democracy’ , p 75.54

The association between economic growth and democracy and democratisation, as can be deduced from

Lipset’ s assertion, is posited on the following tenets: ® rst, the greater economic development is, the lesser

will, or at least should, socioeconomic inequalities be, and therefore the lower the potential for political

disturbance. The ` more well-to-do’ societies often pursue welfarist policies to minimise socioeconomic

cleavages and indirectly placate those potentially rebellious social forces who basically have nothing to

lose. Second, the greater economic development is, the more ` participant’ society is. Third, the greater

economic development is, the less the tendency for extremism. In other words, modernisation and tolerance

set in. Fourth, the greater economic development is, the smaller the margin for tyranny and dictatorship.

Again, the middle class, which is assumed to be politically well organised, tends to act as a counterweight

to the state.55

R A Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1971, p 68.56

Ibid, pp 68±74.57

Ibid, p 59.58

One of the ® rst scholars to look at the relation between socioeconomic variables and democracy in the

Middle East is Charles Issawi. See his, ` Economic and social foundations of democracy in the Middle

East’ , International Affairs, 32(1), 1956, pp 27±42.59

As ranked by Coleman on the basis of 11 indices of economic development in 1960. See table in G A A

& J S Coleman (eds), The Politics of the Developing Areas, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

1960, p 543.60

M C Hudson, ` The possibilities for pluralism’ , American± Arab Affairs, 36, 1991, p 4. Most of this edition

is dedicated to the subject of democratisation in the Middle East.61

Those that accrue huge earnings from external oil rent. The deviation applies to all the Gulf oildoms, Iraq

and Libya. Huntington points out examples of these deviationsÐ Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Oman, Libya

and Iraq. See his, The Third Wave, pp 59±72.62

See de® nition of a rentier state in Beblawi, ` The rentier state in the Arab world’ , in G Luciani, The ArabState, London: Routledge, 1990, pp 87±88.

63This view is, for instance, articulated by inter alia, Luciani, ` Allocation vs production states’ , in Luciani,

The Arab State, p 84; and S K Farsoun, ` Oil, state and social structure in the Middle East’ , Arab Studies

Quarterly, 10(2), 1988, p 166.64

Farsoun, ` Oil, state and social structure in the Middle East’ , p 166. See also useful statistical data provided

by H Batatu showing a tenfold growth of Syria’ s state bureaucracy between 1960 and 1979 and a nearly

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eightfold increase in Iraq’ s between 1958 and 1978. See his ` Political power and social structure in Syria

and Iraq’ , in S K Farsoun (ed), Arab Society, London: Croom Helm, 1985, pp 38, 43.65

See the case study on Egypt by R Springborg in ` Egypt’ , in Niblock & Murphy (eds), Economic andPolitical Liberalization in the Middle East, p 160.

66Farsoun, ` Oil, state and social structure in the Middle East’ , p 166.

67Ibid.

68Ibid, p 167.

69Ibid.

70Farsoun uses ` conglomerate’ , not corporatist. ` Corporatist’ is the author’ s interpretation. There is no

consensus on the meaning of corporatism, much less on its applicability in the Arab political setting. The

variations of meanings are both positive and pejorative. It could have authoritarian and quasi-pluralist

(accommodationist) connotations. Philippe C Schmitter de ® nes it to be ` a system of interest representation

in which the constituent units are organized into a limited number of singular, compulsory, noncompetitive,

hierarchically ordered and functionally differentiated categories, recognized or licensed (if not created) by

the state and granted a deliberate representational monopoly within their respective categories in exchange

for observing certain controls in their selection of leaders and articulation of demands and supports’ .

Schmitter, ` Still the century of corporatism?’ , in F B Pike & T Stritch (eds), The New Corporatism:Social± political Structures in the Iberian World (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974),

pp 93±94. The same article can be found in The Review of Politics, 36, January 1974, pp 85±131.

Application of the corporatist paradigm to Arab politics has been attempted by various scholars. Findings

on Egypt are not all compatible. The earliest, by Clement Henry Moore, ® nds no such corporatist structures

in Nasser’ s Egypt: ` Egypt lacks a tradition of corporate intermediaries just as it lacks a church¼ Hence the

authoritarian syndrome seems more ` natural’ to Egypt ¼ ’ Hare ` Authoritarian politics in unincorporated

society: the case of Nasser’ s Egypt’ , Comparative Politics, 6(2), 1974, p 216. More recently, Robert

Springborg, applying the concept to Mubarak’ s Egypt, tentatively concludes ` that Mubarak has tentatively

embarked on a course of exclusionary corporatism’ . Springborg, Mubarak’ s Egypt: Fragmentation of the

Political Order, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989, p 174. Robert Bianchi rejects Moore’ s proposition

of total absence of a corporatist tradition in Egypt. He advances three propositions: ® rst, Egypt’ s rulers

have mostly appreciated the ` instrumentality’ of ` corporatist associations {for} social control’ ; second, they

` generally have avoided the high levels of repression¼ necessary to eliminate the vestiges of pluralism and

to impose a cohesive corporatist design’ ; third, as a result, Egypt, with its amorphous ` strategies of

corporatization’ has developed neither of the South American or Western European corporatisms. The

corollary is ` a persistently heterogeneous system of interest representation in which both pluralist and

corporatist structures have played enduring roles¼ ’ Bianchi, Unruly Corporatism: Asociational Life inTwentieth Century Egypt, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, p 20.

71See Almond & Powell, Comparative Politics: System, Process and Policy, pp 286±288.

72Farsoun, ` Oil, state and social structure in the Middle East’ , p 167.

73Huntington, The Third Wave, p 65.

74Ibid.

75As a result of the oil boom, ` the combined Arab GNP jumped from $55 billion in 1972, the last year prior

to the sharp price change, to $145 billion¼ in 1975¼ Of this additional $90 billion, 54 per cent went to

three countriesÐ Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab EmiratesÐ which have less than 8 per cent of

the total Arab population. Another 26 per cent of the rise in GNP went to Algeria, Iraq and Libya, with 21

per cent of the Arab population. On the other hand, the non-oil-producing countries, with 70 per cent of

the Arab population, counted for only $15 billion or 17 per cent of the increase in Arab GNP in this period.

Another way of looking at the change is to compare the economies of Egypt, with 26 per cent of the Arab

population, and Saudi Arabia, with 5.5 per cent. In 1972 Saudi Arabia’ s GNP was $6.8 billion, or 86 per

cent of Egypt’ s GNP of $7.9 billion. By 1975¼ Egypt’ s GNP of $9.3 billion had become a fraction of Saudi

Arabia’ s $40.4 billion.’ See A Alnasrawi, ` The Arab economies: twenty years of change and dependency’ ,

Arab Studies Quarterly, 9(4), 1987, p 367. See also K el-Din Haseeb et al, The Future of the Arab Nation:Challenges and Options, London: Routledge, 1991, pp 120±121.

76Recently some leading Arab scholars have argued that democratisation is a necessary process for

integrating Arabs in a future Federal State. Refer to Haseeb et al, The Future of the Arab Nation,

pp 395±399.77

Huntington lists this as one of three factors contributing to third wave democratisations, in The Third Wave,

p 59.78

Author’ s interview with Professor Shalabi, Cairo, 1994.79

See Heydemann, ` Taxation without representation: authoritarianism and economic liberalization in Syria’ ,

in Ellis Goldberg, Resat Kasaba & Joel S Migdal (eds), Rules and Rights in the Middle East: Democracy,

Law and Society, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1993, p 74.80

For further details of the relationship between political instability and governments’ failure to provide

employment and subsidised services, see the author’ s MA thesis, ` Democracy, development and desert

storm’ Sydney: Sydney University, 1991.

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81Heydemann, ` Taxation without representation’ , p 76.

82See M Bin NabõÅ ’ s essays written in the 1950s and 1960s in Wijhatu al-©aÅ lim al-IslaÅ mõÅ (The Muslim

World’ s Direction), tr ©Abd al-SabuÅ r shaÅ h õÅ n, Damascus: Dar al-Fikr, 1981, pp 95, 133.83

See how J P Entelis applies the term when describing Algeria’ s political culture, describing bulitõÅ q as

` maneuvring and scheming to acquire more power’ by Algerian politicians. Entelis, Comparative Politicsof North Africa: Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1980, p 102.

84See David Seddon, ` Riot and rebellion in North Africa: political responses to economic crisis in Tunisia,

Morocco and Sudan’ , in Berch Berberoglu (ed), Power and Stability in the Middle East, London: Zed

Books, 1989, pp 114±135.85

Ibid, p 126.86

Ibid, p 127.87

Ibid.88

Ibid, pp 128±129.89

P Doherty & S Edge, ` Amman attempts to strike a balance’ , Middle East Economic Digest, 33(49), 1989,

p 4.90

R U Moench, ` The May 1984 elections in Egypt and the question of Egypt’ s stability’ , in Linda L Layne

(ed), Elections in the Middle East: Implications of Recent Trends, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987,

p 60.91

See, for instance, Jon Marks, ` Algeria: the debt dilemma’ , Middle East Economic Digest, 36(9), 1992,

p 8.92

See J King, ` Algeria: the new political map’ , Middle East International, 379, 1990, p 18. For details of

the oil impact on Arab economies see Samih K Farsoun, ` Oil, state, and social structure in the Middle

East’ .93

R Murphy, Statement Before the House of Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, US House

of Representatives, 15 March 1984, pp 231±250.94

This is also the case for Syria (12 to 36 million) and the new uni® ed Yemen (12 to 36 million). Algeria’ s

population will increase by some 120% by 2025 (from 24 million in 1988 to 52 million). Egypt’ s and

Morocco’ s will double from, respectively, 50 million in 1988 to 97 million and 24 to 47 million. In this

regard Tunisia and Lebanon are better off. Tunisia’ s population of eight million in 1988 is not expected

to exceed 14 million by 2025.95

D Pryce-Jones, ` Self-determination Arab style’ , Commentary, 87(1), 1989, p 40.96

According to Pryce-Jones, ` Europe today has between six and eight million Muslim immigrants, the

majority from North Africa. Millions more ask little better for themselves than to abandon their own

societies for a European one, so much so that Sweden, Denmark, West Germany and Switzerland are

among countries legislating against further Arab (or Iranian) immigration’ . Ibid, p 45.97

J Mortimer, ` We’ ll help because we have to’ , The Middle East, 191, 1990, p 36.98

P Goslin, ` Algeria stumbles on the road to reform’ , The Middle East, 179, 1989, p 23.99

Cooper, The Transformation of Egypt, p 238.100

Ahmad N Azim, ` Egypt: the origins and development of a neo-colonial state’ , in Berberoglu (ed), Power

and Stability in the Middle East, p 12.101

K Duran, ` The second battle of Algiers’ , Orbis, 33(3), 1989, p 403.102

On this question see the monograph by K Korayem, Distributing Disposable Income and the Impact ofEliminating Food Subsidies in Egypt, Cairo: The American University in Cairo/Cairo Papers in Social

Science, 1982.103

For a similar argument see, for instance, M N Cooper, The Transformation of Egypt, London: Croom

Helm, 1982, p 240.104

See Duran, ` The second battle of Algiers’ , p 406.105

Cooper, The Transformation of Egypt, pp 239±240.106

Ibid, p 240.107

Ibid.108

H Roberts, ` The Algerian state and the challenge of democracy’ , Government and Opposition, 27(4), 1992,

p 435.109

Ibid. The transliteration is added by the author.110

Duran, ` The second battle of Algiers’ , p 405.111

Author’ s interview with Jonathan Kuttab, 18 August 1988, Sydney, Australia.112

R Satloff, ` Jordan looks inward’ , Current History, 89(544), 1990, p 58.113

` The assembled heads of state promised to give the PLO a comradely $43 million a month. Only Saudi

Arabia has paid’ . See ` Arab summits, money talks’ , The Economist, 20 May 1989, p 58.114

See ` Mahrajan al-intifaÅ daÅ h ® d’ gash’ (The IntifaÅ d© aÅ h Festival in Degash), al-Mustaqbil, 262, 29 December

1989, p 4.115

See Fran Hazelton (ed), Iraq Since the Gulf War: Prospects for Democracy, London: Zed Books, 1994,

passim ; in the same book see Fateh á Abd al-Jabbar, ` Why the intifaÅ d© ah failed’ , pp 97±117.116

Cooper, The Transformation of Egypt, p 239.

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LARBI SADIKI

117Seddon, ` Riot and rebellion in North Africa’ , pp 119±124.

118According to Satloff, 12 people were killed in the Jordanian riots. See his ` Jordan looks inward’ , p 58. For

the Algerian ® gure see P Goslin, ` Algeria stumbles on the road to reform’ , p 23.119

Dougherty & Edge, ` Amman attempts to strike a balance’ , p 4.120

J Hooper, ` Fundamentalists sweep Algerian elections’ , Guardian Weekly, 24 June 1990, p 11.121

Gene Sharpe, ` The intifaÅ d½aÅ h and the non-violent struggle’ , Journal of Palestinian Studies, XIX(1), 1989,

p 5.122

See Bienen & Gersovitz, ` Consumer subsidy cuts, violence and political stability’ , pp 25±44.123

G Luciani, ` Economic foundations of democracy and authoritarianism: the Arab world in comparative

perspective’ , Arab Studies Quarterly, 10(4), 1988, p 465.124

For the rescinding of prices in Tunisia and Morocco see Seddon, ` Riot and rebellion in North Africa’ ,

p 114.125

For the reinstating of food subsidies following the 1977 riots in Egypt see Y M Sadowski, PoliticalVegetables? Businessmen and Bureaucrats in the Development of Egyptian Agriculture, Washington, DC:

The Brookings Institution, 1991, p 156. See also P Rivlin, The Dynamics of Economic Policy Making inEgypt, New York: Praeger, 1985, p 178.

126Seddon, ` Riot and rebellion in North Africa’ , p 121.

127Ibid.

128Ibid, p 122.

129See the excellent article by K Kishtainy, ` Violent and non-violent struggle in Arab history’ , in Crow et al

(eds), Arab Non-Violent Political Struggle, pp 9±24.130

Abdo I Baaklini, Legislative and Political Development: Lebanon, 1842± 1972, Durham, NC: Duke

University Press, 1976, pp 42±43.131

Ibid.132

Sadowski, Political Vegetables?, p 157.133

B GhalyuÅ n, ` Al-dimuqraÅ t½iyyah al-½Arabiyyah: judhuÅ ru al-½Azma wa afaÅ q al-Numuw’ (Arab democracy:

roots of the crisis and prospects of development) in GhalyuÅ n et al (eds), h. awla al-khiyaÅ r al-dimuqraÅ t½ õÅ :DiraÅ saÅ t naqdiyyah (On the Democratic Option: A Critique), Beirut: Markiz Dirasat al-Wahda al-

á Arabiyya, 1994, pp 110±111.

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