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ABSTRACT
This study examines the micro foundations of political support in Arab polities. Most Arab states rank highly in aggregate human development or economic wealth, but they lag behind in democracy defying the predictions of modernization theory. Modernization and human development perspective implies that increased resources and self-expression values will induce critical political outlooks toward the regime. This study questions the applicability of this theory to the Arab region and proposes that colonial state formation history, international patron–client relations, and the domestic patronage networks have more leverage in explaining regime support in the Arab region. A series of multilevel and fixed effects regression estimations utilizing the Arab Democracy Barometer reveal that modernization perspective has some relevance. However, world system theory inspired patron–client perspective and loyalty generation through domestic distributive mechanisms play a greater role in shaping political attitudes. The results provide important insights about micro foundations of Arab authoritarianism and the differential utility of emancipative values formed in the context of hierarchical world order.
Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this paper was presented at “After the Uprisings: The Arab World in Freefall, Fragmentation or Reconfiguration?” workshop, March 4 and 5, 2016, at Princeton University. The author would like to thank all workshop participants at Princeton University for their valuable comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Gause, “Why Middle East Studies Missed the Arab Spring.”
2. Bellin, “The Robustness of Authoritarianism.”
3. Brownlee, Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization.
4. Lust-Okar, “Competitive Clientelism”; Blaydes, Elections and Distributive Politics.
5. Anderson, “The State in the Middle East”; Herb, “No Representation without Taxation?”; Heydemann, Networks of Privilege; Yom and Gause, “Resilient Royals”; and Brownlee, Masoud, and Reynolds, The Arab Spring.
6. Wallerstein, “The Capitalist World Economy”; Hinnebusch, “The Middle East in the World Hierarchy.”
7. Telhami, “Arab Public Opinion”; Tessler et al., “New Findings on Arabs.”
8. Tessler, “Do Islamic Orientations Influence”; Ciftci, “Secular-Islamist Cleavage.”
9. Benstead, “Why Do Some Arab Citizens.”
10. Jamal, “Reassessing Support for Islam”; Ciftci, “Modernization, Islam, or Social Capital.”
11. Jamal, The Other Side.
12. Jamal and Robbins, “Social Justice”; Filali-Ansary, “The Languages of the Arab Revolutions”; Korany, “Redefining Development.”
13. Brownlee, Masoud, and Reynolds, The Arab Spring.
14. Anderson, “The State in the Middle East”; Fromkin, “A Peace to End All Peace.”
15. Migdal, “Strong Societies.”
16. Hinnebusch, “The Middle East in the World Hierarchy”; Tagma, Kalaycioglu, and Akcali, “‘Taming’ Arab Social Movements.”
17. Lustick, “The Absence of Middle Eastern Great Powers.”
18. UNDP, Arab Human Development Report.
19. Inglehart and Norris, Rising Tide; Inglehart and Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change.
20. Wallerstein, “The Capitalist World Economy”; Hinnebusch, “The Middle East in the World Hierarchy”; Gause, “Why Middle East Studies Missed the Arab Spring.”
21. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities”; Cox and Sinclair, “Approaches to World Order”; Hinnebusch, “The Middle East in the World Hierarchy”; Tagma, Kalaycioglu, and Akcali, “Taming Arab Social Movements.”
22. Easton, “A Re-assessment of the Concept.”
23. Ibid.
24. Norris, Making Democratic Governance; Dahlberg and Holmberg, “Democracy and Bureaucracy”; for an exception see, Shin “Cultural Hybridization.”
25. Various dimensions of quality of government as reported by the World Banks’s worldwide governance indicators data can be accessed at http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/index.aspx#home
26. See http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi for a detailed account of measurement of HDI. In statistical estimation, ten-year average of HDI is used.
27. Henry and Springborg, Globalization and the Politics of Development.
28. The author thanks one of the reviewers for suggesting this very important discussion.
29. Anderson, “The State in the Middle East”; Fromkin, “A Peace to End All Peace.”
30. Wallerstein, “The Capitalist World Economy.”
31. Ibid.; Hinnebusch, “The Middle East in the World Hierarchy.”
32. Hinnebusch, “The Middle East in the World Hierarchy.”
33. Halliday, The Middle East.
34. Hinnebusch, “The Middle East in the World Hierarchy.”
35. In the latest incarnations of this hegemonic relation, the implementation of global neoliberal policies requires reproduction of patron-client arrangements targeting social movements and neoliberal governmentality (Tagma et al., “Taming Arab Social Movements”; Plehwe, Walpen, and Neunhöffer , Neoliberal Hegemony).
36. Hinnebusch, “The Middle East in the World Hierarchy”; Tagma et al., “Taming Arab Social Movements.”
37. The author thanks one of the reviewers for this important insight.
38. It should be noted that foreign troops and some peacekeepers exist in these countries and several other nations in the sample. The analysis is focused on the US troops to gain leverage in the contextual effects associated with the world hegemon’s involvement in the periphery.
39. Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society; Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy.”
40. Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization; Inglehart and Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change; Inkeles, Exploring Individual Modernity; Welzel, Inglehart, and Klingemann, “Human Development as a Theory.”
41. Welzel, Inglehart, and Klingemann, “Human Development as a Theory”; Welzel, Freedom Rising.
42. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies.
43. Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions.
44. Campante and Chor, “Why Was the Arab World Poised for Revolution?”; Jamal and Robbins, “Social Justice”; Harris, “Did Inequality Breed the Arab Uprisings?”; Kuhn, “On the Role of Human Development.”
45. Norris, Critical Citizens.
46. Welzel, Inglehart, and Klingemann, “Human Development as a Theory.”
47. Inglehart and Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy.
48. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities.”
49. Sen, “Capability and Well-Being.”
50. Hinnebusch, “The Middle East in the World Hierarchy”; Halliday, The Middle East.
51. Sometimes, the centre elites may choose to target certain civil society sectors to improve neoliberal governmentality as proposed by Tagma et al., “Taming Arab Social Movements.”
52. Harris, “Did Inequality Breed the Arab Uprisings?”
53. Beblawi, “The Rentier State in the Arab World”; Yom and Gause, “Resilient Royals.”
54. Lust, “Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East”; Blaydes, Elections and Distributive Politics; De Miguel, Jamal, and Tessler, “Elections in the Arab World”; Corstange, The Price of a Vote.
55. De Miguel, Jamal, and Tessler, “Elections in the Arab World.”
56. Benstead, “Why Do Some Arab Citizens.”
57. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations”; Kedourie, Democracy and Arab Political Culture.
58. Tessler, “Do Islamic Orientations Influence”; Jamal and Tessler, “Attitudes in the Arab World; Tessler et al., “New Findings on Arabs”; Ciftci, “Secular-Islamist Cleavage.”
59. Inglehart and Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy.
60. Jamal, The Other Side.
61. Ibid., 77; Ciftci and Bernick, “Utilitarian and Modern.”
62. Gold and Naufal, “Wasta: The Other Invisible.”
63. Anderson, “The State in the Middle East.”
64. Buehler, “Do You Have ‘Connections’ at the Courthouse?”
65. ADB is an award-winning dataset that meets scientific standards in survey data collection in non-democratic settings. On its website, the main objective of the ADB is described as being “to produce scientifically reliable data on the politically-relevant attitudes of ordinary citizens.”
66. These questions are selected based on factor analysis. The results of the multivariate analysis (presented below) remain robust when alternative indices of regime support are used. These alternative indices measure institutional and policy performance and political trust. These results are available from the author upon request.
67. Welzel, Inglehart, and Klingemann, “The Theory of Human Development.”
68. Gelman and Hill, Data Analysis Using Regression; Rabe-Hesketh, Skrondal, and Pickles, “Maximum Likelihood Estimation.”
69. Intra-class correlation is <0.20 in most models indicating that there is substantial variation to be explained at the country level. The results remain unchanged in fixed and random effects regressions. Hausman test results confirm that fixed effects are preferable to random effects estimations. These results are available upon request.
70. Welzel, Inglehart, and Klingemann, “The Theory of Human Development”; Inglehart and Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change; Welzel, Freedom Rising.
71. Lust-Okar, “Legislative Elections in Hegemonic Authoritarian Regimes”; Jamal, The Other Side; Blaydes, Elections and Distributive Politics; De Miguel, Jamal, and Tessler, “Elections in the Arab World”; Corstange, The Price of a Vote; Jamal, The Other Side; Inglehart and Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change; Welzel, Freedom Rising.
72. Buehler, “Do You Have ‘Connections’ at the Courthouse?”
73. Inglehart and Norris, “The True Clash of.”
74. Walker and Kehoe, “Regime Transition and Attitude.”
75. Logan and Bratton, “The Political Gender Gap.”
76. Tessler, “Islam and Democracy”; Ciftci and Bernick, “Utilitarian and Modern”; Ross, “Oil, Islam, and Women.”
77. It should be noted that Iraq is also among the top recipients of foreign aid. In addition, Kurdish regions are relatively safe zones and presumably are ranked higher in government performance. Given this disparity, pooled analysis and a split-sample model for low QoG-low HDI is estimated by (i) dropping observations from the Kurdish provinces and (ii) excluding all observations from Iraq. The results remain very similar with only very small differences. These additional estimations are available upon request.
78. Full results of these models are presented in Appendix A. Additional split-sample analysis based on the distribution of countries in is available upon request.
79. Jamal, The Other Side.
80. Korany, “Redefining Development”; Jamal and Robbins, “Social Justice.”
81. Inglehart and Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy; Welzel, Freedom Rising.
82. Lust-Okar, “Legislative Elections in Hegemonic Authoritarian Regimes”; Jamal, The Other Side; Jamal, Of Empires and Citizens; Blaydes, Elections and Distributive Politics; Ciftci and Bernick, “Utilitarian and Modern”; De Miguel, Jamal, and Tessler, “Elections in the Arab World”; Brownlee, Masoud, and Reynolds, The Arab Spring.
83. Hinnebusch, “The Middle East in the World Hierarchy”; Tagma et al., “Taming Arab Social Movements.”
84. Wallerstein, “The Capitalist World Economy”; Hinnebusch, “The Middle East in the World Hierarchy.”
85. Jamal, “Of Empires and Citizens.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Sabri Ciftci
Sabri Ciftci is an Associate Professor and Michael W. Suleiman Chair in Arab and Arab-American Studies in the Department of Political Science at Kansas State University. His research is on Islam and democracy, Arab Public Opinion, and Turkish politics. His research appeared in Political Research Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, and International Journal of Middle East Studies among others.