Decentralization in the Arab world: Conceptualizing the role of neopatrimonial networks

ABSTRACT

Since the early 1990s, government-led decentralization strategies have emerged in the Arab world, with an additional surge after the Arab uprisings in 2011. Western donors and Arab civil society activists expected an increase in participation and autonomy. Yet the outcome of the reforms varies considerably. We develop a new conceptual approach for the analysis of decentralization processes in the Arab world. We suggest that decentralization is guided, inspired, and used by informal neopatrimonial elite networks on the national, regional, and local levels of government. Fiscal and budgetary policies are suggested as empirical tools to investigate the gap between normative claims connected with formal decentralization and the much more complex reality of decentralization.

KEYWORDS:

• Decentralization
• neopatrimonialism
• elite networks
• formal institutions
• informal institutions
• fiscal policy

Acknowledgments

This paper is based on the findings of the research project ‘Decentralization in the Arab world: Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan from a comparative perspective’ funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – DE 1829/4-1/Stu 122/14-1.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Nation state is hereby a descriptor of the analytical (national) level not a normative concept with the notion of Westphalian statehood (see further Tilly, 1993).

2. It is noteworthy, however, that we witness widespread tendencies of ‘creeping centralization’ (Pallaver & Karlhofer, 2017) in established Western democracies – even within federal polities – for the sake of governance efficiency.

3. This argument is in line with earlier criticism of international decentralization agendas which stated that non-democracies benefitted from democratization agendas (Burnell, 2010; Sturm, 2002).

4. In most cases, we have to differentiate between state and regime. We follow Hoffmann et al. (2013) in their critique of rigid and centre-biased concepts of the state: ‘[S]ocial order should be seen as an empirical observable continuum of social structures, which provide the basis for social interaction’ (Mielke et al., 2011, p. 2).

5. Research on neopatrimonial networks and co-optation in authoritarian political systems has undergone a silent shift from the notion of the dictator (as individual actor) (Gandhi & Przeworski, 2006, 2007; Pawelka, 2002; Perthes, 2004) to the regime (as collective actor) (Gerschewski, 2013) that co-opts strategic elites. The importance of the core elite in alliance with the ruler (or ruling family) is evident and the analytical shift from an individual to a collective centre of authoritarianism was necessary. The regime does still interact in clientelist relationships with national elites. However, the regime already includes some of these elites. The often supposedly clear-cut dichotomy between regime and elite networks is fuzzy.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [Stu122/14-1 and DE1829/4-1].