The Theory of Uneven and Combined Development and the Sociopolitical Transformations in Syria and Libya

Abstract:

This article explores the constitutive impact of the ‘international’ on the sociopolitical transformations in Syria and Libya through the lens of the theory of Uneven and Combined Development (UCD). The conventional and numerous critical analyses of Syrian and Libyan sociopolitical change suffer from a Eurocentric and stagist understanding of development. This paper argues that development problems can be better conceptualized with an interactive framework made possible by the UCD theory. In this context, we focus on how the expansion and consolidation of capitalism through the dynamics of UCD have concretely shaped the process of sociopolitical transformation in Syria and Libya to shed light on how the international and the local have articulated to produce the socioeconomic and political outcomes in these two states. We conclude by arguing that the theory of UCD provides an alternative conceptualization in explaining the specific development trajectories in both countries.

Key Words:

• Development
• Libya
• Syria
• Trotsky
• Uneven and Combined Development

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and editors of the journal for their valuable feedback and constructive comments on an earlier version of this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 See Justin Rosenberg (2006) Why Is There No International Historical Sociology?,European Journal of International Relations, 12(3), pp. 307–40; (2010) Basic Problems in the Theory of Uneven and Combined Development. Part II: Unevenness and Political Multiplicity, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 23(1), pp. 165–189; (2013) The “Philosophical Premises” of Uneven and Combined Development, Review of International Studies, 39(3), pp. 1–29; (2020); Results and Prospects: An Introduction to the CRIA Special Issue on UCD, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 34(2), pp. 146–63; (2022) Debating Uneven and Combined Development/Debating International Relations: A Forum, Millennium, 50(2), pp. 1–37.

See also, Alex Callinicos & Justin Rosenberg (2008) Uneven and Combined Development: The Social-Relational Substratum of 'the International'?:An Exchange of Letters, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 21(1), pp. 77–112; Jamie Allinson & Alexander Anievas (2009) The Uses and Misuses of Uneven and Combined Development: An Anatomy of a Concept, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 22(1), pp. 47–67; Alexander Anievas & Kerem Nişancıoğlu (2015) How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism (London: Pluto Press); Sam Ashman (2010) Capitalism, Uneven and Combined Development, and the Transhistoric, in Mark Rupert & Hazel Smith (eds) Historical Materialism and Globalization, pp. 183–96 (London: Routledge); Neil Davidson (2009) Putting the Nation Back into ‘the International', Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 22(1), pp. 9–28; Davidson (2018) The Frontiers of Uneven and Combined Development, Historical Materialism, 26(3), pp. 52–78; Ray Kiely (2012) Spatial Hierarchy And/Or Contemporary Geopolitics: What Can And Can’t Uneven And Combined Development Explain?, Cambridge Review Of International Affairs, 25(2), pp. 231–48; John M. Hobson (2011) What’s at Stake in the Neo-Trotskyist Debate? Towards a Non-Eurocentric Historical Sociology of Uneven and Combined Development, Millennium, 40(1), pp. 147–66.

2 Fouad Makki (2015) Reframing Development Theory: The Significance of the Idea of Uneven and Combined Development, Theory and Society, 44(5), pp. 471–97.

3 Anievas & Nişancioğlu, How the West Came to Rule, p. 93.

4 Rosenberg, Why Is There No International, pp. 310–313.

5 See Jamie Allinson (2020) The Middle East and North Africa in the Lens of Marxist International Relations Theory in: RaymondHinnebusch & Jasmine K. Gani (eds) The Routledge Handbook to the Middle East and North African State and States System; pp. 211–224 (London: Routledge).

6 See Kamran Matin (2018) Lineages of the Islamic State: An International Historical Sociology of State (De-)Formation in Iraq, Journal of Historical Sociology, 31, pp. 6–24; Matin (2013), Recasting Iranian Modernity: International Relations and Social Change (London: Routledge); Felipe Antunes de Oliveira (2019) The Rise of the Latin American Far-Right Explained: Dependency Theory Meets Uneven and Combined Development, Globalizations, 16(7), pp. 1145–64; de Oliveira (2020) Of Economic Whips and Political Necessities: A Contribution to the International Political Economy of Uneven and Combined Development, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 34(2), pp. 267–95.

7 Gilbert Achcar (2013) People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising (London: University of California Press), p. 78; Adam Hanieh (2013), Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East (London: Haymarket Books), p. 17.

8 See Matteo Capasso (2020) The War and the Economy: The Gradual Destruction of Libya, Review of African Political Economy, 47(166), pp. 545–67; Capasso (2021) IR, imperialism, and the Global South: From Libya to Venezuela, Politics, 0(0), pp. 1–16. 

9 Ussama Makdisi (2017) The Mythology of the Sectarian Middle East. Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, February 13. Available at: https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/mythology-sectarian-middle-east, accessed August 15, 2023.

10 Felipe Antunes de Oliveira (2020) Development for Whom? Beyond the developed/underdeveloped Dichotomy, Journal of International Relations and Development, 23, p. 925.

11 Makki, Reframing Development, p. 492.

12 Oliveira, Development for Whom?, pp. 925–926.

13 Ibid. p. 940.

14 Ibid, p. 936.

15 Matin, Recasting Iranian Modernity, p. 16.

16 Leon Trotsky (2008) The History of the Russian Revolution (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books).

17 The classical example is Walt WhitmanRostow’s (1960) The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (London: Cambridge University Press). Also see Samuel Philips Huntington (1971) The Change to Change: Modernization, Development, and Politics, Comparative Politics 3(3), pp. 283–322.

18 Anievas & Nişancıoğlu, How the West Came to Rule, p. 44.

19 Rosenberg, Why Is There No International, p. 310.

20 Allinson, The Middle East and North Africa, p. 211.

21 Nazih N. Ayubi (2009) Over-Stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris); Simon Bromley (1994) Rethinking Middle East Politics, (Austin: University of Texas).

22 Immanuel Wallerstein (1974) The Modern World-System, V.1: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press); Fernando Henrique & Enzo Faletto (1979) Dependency and Development in Latin America (Oakland: University of California Press).

23 Isam al-Khafaji (2004) Tormented Births: Passages to Modernity in Europe and the Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris), p. 9.

24 Allinson, The Middle East and North Africa, p. 211.

25 Ibid, p.218.

26 Michael Burawoy (1989) Two Methods in Search of Science: Skocpol versus Trotsky, Theory and Society, 18 (6), pp. 759–805.

27 Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, p. 5.

28 Ibid, p. 4

29 Ibid, pp. 6–12.

30 See Rosenberg, Basic Problems; Rosenberg, The “Philosophical Premises”; Rosenberg, Uneven and Combined Development; Rosenberg, Results and Prospects.

31 Justin Rosenberg & Chris Boyle (2019) Understanding 2016: China, Brexit and Trump in the history of uneven and combined development, Journal of Historical Sociology, 32, pp. e52–e53.

32 Ashman, Capitalism, Uneven and Combined Development; Davidson, Putting the Nation Back.

33 Matin, Recasting Iranian Modernity; Rosenberg, Why Is There No International; Rosenberg, Basic Problems; Rosenberg, The “Philosophical Premises.”

34 Allinson & Anievas, The Uses and Misuses.

35 Davidson, Putting the nation back.

36 Anievas & Nisancıoğlulu, How the West Came to Rule, p. 55.

37 Oliveira, Development for Whom?, p. 936.

38 Rosenberg et al., Debating Uneven and Combined Development, p. 5.

39 Ali A. Ahmida (2008) From Tribe to Class: The Origins and the Politics of the Resistance in Colonial Libya, Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell’Istituto italiano per l'Africa e l’Oriente, 63(2), p. 298.

40 Adham Saoli (2020) States and state-building in the Middle East, in Raymond Hinnebusch & Jasmin K. Gani (eds) The Routledge Handbook to the Middle East and North African State and States System, pp. 40–50 (London: Routledge); Bromley, Rethinking Middle East, p.61; Raymond Hinnebusch (2003) The International Politics Of The Middle East (Manchester: Manchester University Press), p. 15.

41 Ahmida, From Tribe to Class, p. 299.

42 Raymond Hinnebusch (2020) Historical context of state formation in the Middle East: structure and agency, in Raymond Hinnebusch & Jasmin K. Gani(eds) The Routledge Handbook to the Middle East and North African State and States System, pp. 21–39 (London: Routledge), p. 25.

43 Ibid, p.25.

44 Ali Kadri (2016) The Unmaking Of Arab Socialism (London: Anthem Press), p. 55.

45 Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, p. 5.

46 Ibid, p. 5.

47 Leon Trotsky (1962) The Permanent Revolution and Results and Prospects (London: Labor), p.31.

48 Leon Trotsky (1973 [1908]) 1905 (Harmondsworth: Penguin), p.67, as quoted in Rosenberg & Boyle, Understanding 201, p. e37.

49 Hinnebusch, Historical context of state formation in the Middle East, p. 25.

50 Ali A. Ahmida (2012) Libya, Social Origins of Dictatorship, and the Challenge for Democracy, The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 3(1), p. 73.

51 Larbi Sadiki (2011) Libya: Filling the void of a stateless state, Al Jazeera, 27 April 2011.

52 Anievas & Nişancıoğlulu, How the West Came to Rule, p. 62.

53 See Ayubi, Over-Stating the Arab State.

54 Ibid, pp. 26–27.

55 Hanieh, Lineages of Revolt, pp. 13–14, 174.

56 See, for example, Henri Barkey (1992) Political Economy of Stabilization Measures in the Middle East (New York: St. Martin’s Press); Eva Bellin (2004) The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective, Comparative Politics 36(2), pp. 139–157.

57 Neil Davidson (n.d.) Uneven and Combined Development: Modernity, Modernism, Revolution. Available online at: https://core.ac.uk/download/ pdf/296196763.pdf, accessed August 15, 2023.

58 Ibid.

59 See Fanar Haddad (2020) Understanding ‘Sectarianism’: Sunni-Shi’a Relations in the Modern Arab World (London: Hurst).

60 Ayubi, Over-Stating the Arab State, pp. 196–203.

61 Linda Matar (2016) The Political Economy Of Investment In Syria (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 65–90; Capasso, The War and the Economy, pp. 552–553.

62 See Salam Said (2018) The Uprising and the Economic Interests of the Syrian Military-mercantile Complex; in R. Hinnebusch & O. Imady (eds) The Syrian Uprising: Domestic Origins and Early Trajectory (London: Routledge), pp. 56–76.

63 Kadri, The Unmaking Of Arab Socialism, pp. 58–68.

64 See Matar, The Political Economy Of Investment In Syria, 6; Capasso, The War and the Economy, pp. 555–558.

65 Angela Joya (2007) Syria’s Transition, 1970–2005: From Centralization of the State to Market Economy, in: P. Zarembka (ed.) Transitions in Latin America and in Poland and Syria (London: Emerald Group Publishing Limited), pp. 183–189.

66 Hanna Batatu (1981) Some Observations on the Social Roots of Syria's Ruling, Military Group and the Causes for Its Dominance, Middle East Journal, 35(3), p. 340.

67 Matteo Capasso (n.d.) Wars, Capital and the MENA region. Available online at: https://pomeps.org/wars-capital-and-the-mena-region, accessed August 15, 2023; Capasso, IR, Imperialism, and the Global South.

68 Benjamin Selwyn (2011) Trotsky, Gerschenkron and the political economy of late capitalist development, Economy and Society, 40(3), p. 432.

69 Oliveira, Development for Whom?, p. 924.

70 See Matteo Capasso (2023) The perils of capitalist modernity for the Global South: the case of Libya, Review of International Political Economy, 30(2), pp. 632–653 on how ‘new every day imaginaries’ created by combining capitalism with local cultural structures put ‘limits to mobilising for political change.’