Informal Politics in the Middle East

Suzi Mirgani, Suzi Mirgani

• Publisher: Hurst Publishers
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781787387287
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Geopolitics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The culture of politics within any system of governance is influenced by how state and society interact, and how these relationships are mediated by existing political institutions, whether formal or informal. The chapters in this volume highlight two broad types of informal political engagement in the Middle East: civil action that works in tandem with the state apparatus, and civil action that poses a challenge to the state. In both cases, these activities can and do achieve tangible results for particular groups of people, as well as for the state.

For many, informal politics and civil mobilisation are not a choice, but a necessity to secure—collectively—some kind of social security, through communal reciprocity and everyday activism. Ironically, Middle Eastern authorities often turn a blind eye to informal organising, because 'self-help' schemes allow certain social groups to survive—reducing their instinct to make demands of, or seek support from, the state. People are discouraged from political action and dissent; yet they are simultaneously encouraged to seek their own betterment, often leading to politicised groups and associations. By analysing these formations, the contributors shed light on informal politics in the region.

1

AN OVERVIEW OF INFORMAL POLITICS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Suzi Mirgani

Introduction

The culture of politics within any system of governance is influenced by how states and societies interact with each other, and how these relationships are mediated by existing political institutions—whether formal or informal. State–society relationships in the Middle East have been largely defined by patriarchal and patrimonial principles that serve to strengthen the authority of the state and to keep society in check.¹ The characteristic of authoritarian governance has been a historical feature of most Middle Eastern countries long before the formation of nation states, and has continued unabated despite these nations’ attempts at modernization and their increased integration into a global market economy.² The imbalanced relationships of power between states and societies in Middle Eastern countries have been key to maintaining societal subservience, and ensuring the lack of a fully functioning—and thus challenging—civil society.

Everyday sociopolitical behavior in private and public spheres has been shaped, guided, and supervised by concentric circles of control—a pyramid scheme of influence headed by the state, and its inevitable strongman, that must simultaneously dance to the vagaries of the market as it attempts to contain the effects of growing socioeconomic inequalities.³ The state puts pressure on the country’s sociopolitical substructure, the legal system, the policing apparatus, religious authorities, educational entities, the family institution, and, finally, the ordinary individual who occupies the weakest position. These institutions constitute both formal and informal regulatory networks that take turns at identifying, punishing, reforming, or excising deviant behavior—especially aberrant political behavior, which, in many cases, amounts to speaking out. In this environment, opinions, ideas, and actions that challenge the political status quo on a mass public scale are rare. But, every so often, when frustrations reach a breaking point and can no longer be contained, there is an abrupt demonstration of mass civil disobedience—most recently witnessed in the Arab uprisings beginning in 2010. In many ways, these nation-wide protests were “a response to the absence of effective institutionalized mechanisms of conflict resolution.”⁴

In between these moments of mass outburst, however, there are quiet, determined, and enduring pockets of political mobilization and group action—women’s associations, farmers’ collectives, and labor and student unions—all working towards improving daily life, and perhaps even effecting sociopolitical transformation, in one family, neighborhood, farm, factory, and university at a time.⁵ For many, it is not a choice to engage in informal political activity and civil mobilization, but a necessity in order to secure, collectively, some kind of social security through communal reciprocity and everyday activism. Ironically, because these “self-help” schemes are allowing certain social groups to get by, reducing their instinct to make demands and to seek subsistence from the state, authorities often turn a blind eye to informal activities. Not only are people discouraged from political action and dissent, they are simultaneously—and seemingly paradoxically—encouraged to seek their own betterment, often leading to the many politicized groups and associations discussed in this volume.

In many countries of the region, states and societies survive by bypassing, exceeding, or undermining formal institutions in a nondemocratic environment controlled by largely unaccountable governments. The enveloping market-centric and politically authoritarian environment has pushed people towards increasing informality. In this sense, both formal and informal economies exist side by side, and are mirror images of each other. It is within this precarious environment that we see the emergence of “a salient feature of grass-roots activism in the region: it is characterized less by demandmaking movements than by direct actions, be they individual, informal, or institutional.”⁶ Consequently, relationships of affinity are formed among likeminded groups of people, in both rural and urban areas, who are attempting to better their daily lives and to gain advantage in countries of the Middle East that do not offer reliable safety nets—a condition of existence for many.

In the immediate post-independence period, wealth accrued from industry—whether hydrocarbon, agricultural, or manufacturing—on the one hand, and remittances on the other, kick-started Middle Eastern governments into establishing basic social welfare services as a means of gaining support from the general public in the early days of nation-building. The states took broadly varying paths “largely dominated by either nationalist-populist regimes (such as Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Turkey) or pro-Western rentier states (Iran, Arab Gulf states).”⁷ In whichever direction these nations veered, the characteristics they steadfastly shared was an authoritarianism with fixed patriarchal underpinnings, and the establishment of networks of patronage and privilege among business and political elites.⁸ Having been initiated in the guise of provider—whether actual or imagined—the postcolonial Middle Eastern state has, from its inception, enacted an ideological, patrimonial, and patriarchal role that offers little room for challenge, for participation, or for diversity of thought—those elements that form the basic building blocks of civil society.

A global move toward market deregulation in the 1980s encouraged Middle Eastern governments to enact various degrees of economic restructuring in order to operate within an increasingly neoliberal environment. While these development reforms were hugely beneficial to some—business and political elites and the private sector in particular—for the public sector and for society in general, benefits were stripped and opportunities diminished, creating deteriorating social conditions and an emerging anxiety-filled class of unemployed people, or what Standing terms “the precariat,”⁹ a disempowered generation beset by “the gradual closing of the commons, the disenfranchisement of workers and demise of citizen rights and due process.”¹⁰ Even those who are employed are affected by this combination of deteriorating conditions, producing a “global class of people who labor in circumstances of extreme structural insecurity.”¹¹

In the contemporary period, states have failed to live up to “the social responsibilities that characterized their early populist development. Many social provisions have been withdrawn, and the low-income groups largely have to rely on themselves to survive.”¹² Subsidies, provisions, the commons, and welfare are no longer words recognized in the new neoliberal language. Instead, the average individual has had to learn—the hard way—the meaning of terms such as privatization, closures, austerity, downsizing, survival strategy, and crony capitalism.¹³ Neoliberal policies are geared towards ensuring less reliance on government and more submission to the market—despite the many structural obstacles and socioeconomic challenges that fail to secure jobs in a limited labor market.

In order to wring out a living, or to have some sense of control within their own precarious positions, teetering on the edge of the formal—often corrupt or corrupting—institutions, many are doing exactly what is being asked of them in a market economy: they are no longer relying on the state, but instead exhibiting all the skills and knowhow of survival through their own efforts and other “direct actions of individuals and families to acquire the basic necessities of their lives (land for shelter, urban collective consumption, informal jobs, business opportunities) in a quiet and unassuming, illegal fashion.”¹⁴ Some individuals are indeed helping themselves: they are helping themselves to unoccupied plots of land by squatting and through unlawful construction; they are helping themselves to water and electricity by illegally tapping into mains and redirecting resources to their makeshift homes; and they are helping themselves to market share and ad hoc employment opportunities by setting up small businesses in a parallel informal and black market economy.¹⁵

The underlying paradox, however, is that “when states are unable to meet the needs of these classes, they resort to (and encourage the establishment of ) civil associations to fulfill them,”¹⁶ and can tacitly support community selfhelp schemes. On the one hand, informal social schemes relieve the state of responsibility as people make their own way—whether building their own slum housing, creating small businesses, or resorting to charity—but, on the other, these processes challenge the authority of the state by growing in directions that cannot always be controlled or monitored, taking on a life of their own. Such self-help mechanisms are both encouraged and yet are under suspicion by ruling authorities.

The studies in this collection highlight two different types of informal political engagement in the Middle East: civil action that works in tandem with the state apparatus, and civil action that poses a challenge to the state—in either case, these are informal political engagements that can and have achieved tangible results for particular groups of people, as well as for the state (albeit indirectly). These studies highlight the informal political activity that is practiced by both states and societies as they navigate through the nondemocratic environments of the Middle East. As with any edited volume, this collection of studies is not, and cannot be, comprehensive in its coverage of the politics of the Middle East. We acknowledge the impossibility of covering all topics related to the central theme and are aware that geographic omissions and subject selections are a condition of space constraints. Nevertheless, the studies presented in this collection serve as case study examples of the varying, nuanced, and evolving ways in which formal and informal political actors and institutions interact in different Middle Eastern contexts.

Converging Formal and Informal Politics

To begin, the first part of this collection highlights some of the ways in which formal and informal political processes engage in a symbiotic manner in the countries of the Middle East. While these state and society groups engage with each other on the margins of constitutional or legal lines, this type of ruling bargain is often a continuation of preexisting sociopolitical formations that predate the formation of the nation state. Even after independence, many Middle Eastern countries have retained various sociopolitical configurations that allow tribal and kinship bonds to reach beyond socioeconomic, political, and rural–urban divides.

In this collection, Charles Schmitz, Michelangelo Guida, Clemens Chay, and Paulino Cozzi examine the deeply-rooted relationships between the state and society, and the ways in which they work together to different degrees and with varying results. The politically powerful—yet politically informal—institutions discussed in this volume include communities that have direct and symbiotic relationships with the formal state, such as the tribes of Yemen and their continued fundamental importance to country-wide politics; villages and rural leaders and their power over regional vote mobilization in Turkey; the public–private power of the dīwāniyya in Kuwait where elite members of society engage in social politicking from within this household debate space; and, finally, the discreet yet persistent Shiʿa community in Qatar that has managed to negotiate its continued existence within the Sunni state. These communities experience similar endemic issues, but address them in different ways depending on their geographic and historical specificity.

These interactions between formal and informal institutions are mutually maintained by both political authorities and by social groups as a matter of course and in order to negotiate political and daily survival on both sides. Tribal and kinship networks of patronage have been historically cultivated and exploited by both the state and social groups—though imbalanced and with varying degrees of success—through entrenched, complex, and overlapping interactions. Regardless of how skewed the balance of power is between formal and informal political institutions in these cases, these sectors of society work directly with political authorities as a condition of daily life. In these contexts, both state and society rely on each other in a mutual twoway process of gaining benefits.

Although tribalism and political ethnicity have long and strong historical roots that extend into the contemporary period, these networks evolve and transform over time and according to the prevailing political context. As we have seen recently in situations of conflict and complete or near state collapse in Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, the founding principles that serve to form cohesion among ethnic and kinship groups can be fluid, flexible, and especially sensitive to times of crisis. Such groups can form new politically motivated alliances and pragmatic bonds that may or may not complement traditional kinship loyalties. In the contemporary period:

[…] numerous countries in the Middle East are currently in the grip of intense civil conflict that is tearing apart the social and cultural fabric that has held these societies together. With increasing sectarianism spreading across much of the region, the collapsing of state structures and evaporation of national borders, and open conflict and warfare engulfing whole swathes of the region’s geography, questions of the resilience of ethnicity and religious identity are becoming increasingly relevant.¹⁷

This is especially true in relation to the informal means through which many communities of the Middle East struggle to survive.

In his contribution, “Weighing the Tribal Factor in Yemen’s Informal Politics,” Charles Schmitz looks at how formal and informal politics are extensions of each other in the case of Yemen; one creates, relies on, and sustains the other. Specifically, in the political quagmire that is Yemeni politics, the central government must engage in multiple alliances with competing local and regional actors, who, in turn, benefit from these networks of patronage. In the fractured Yemeni political scene, relationships of power are ever-shifting and dependent on varying tribal structures and networks of patronage. Schmitz complicates the notion of formal politics by introducing the structural relationship of dependence between tribes and a central government that operates through a system of balances of power. He argues that “if we understand formal politics to be the institutions of government and the public political processes of modern states (political parties and elections), and informal politics to be relationships of power outside those formal institutions, then governance in Yemen is mostly informal.” Similarly, tribes can also be considered as having both informal as well as formal power in that they exist both within and outside of the formal institutions of state, acting as both a part of, and a challenge to, the state’s sovereignty. Tribes guard their own geographies and domains of power, and exercise a certain degree of autonomy over their particular entities by having their own alternative security apparatus, rule of law, and conflict dispute mechanisms—powers that pose a challenge to the central government, even as they are sometimes exploited by formal political institutions and authorities.

Schmitz continues by arguing that the central government deliberately pits tribes against one other in order to weaken potential alliances between them and to ensure that all institutions—military, economy, political parties, and tribes—however weak, fall under the orbit of the president as a means of preserving state power and control. Largely because there is no consensus or strong alliance between different tribes, tribal leaders have looked elsewhere for support, forming relationships of convenience—rather than conviction—with outside forces, whether the Muslim Brotherhood, the Baʿth Party, pro-Houthi, pro-Salafi, pro-Saudi, or pro-Iraq groups. These relationships, however, are fragile, noncommittal, and easily manipulated, and in the current contentious political quagmire, tribes do not necessarily take a steadfast political position but change depending on what can be gained from any one alliance. However, even though some tribes might engage in questionable transnational relationships, the influence of tribes scarcely goes beyond their territories of influence: while “local tribes may challenge the state’s local authority,” Schmitz argues, “they do not threaten the formal institutions of the state at the national level because they are politically fractured and because they benefit from national political institutions.” As Yemen continues to be the battleground for foreign forces, the country’s tribal divisions and informal political makeup mean that factions will continue to remain disconnected from each other, and thus easier to manipulate by regional powers in an attempt to impose their foreign policy agendas vicariously through Yemen.

Similarly, Guida’s study, “Çay Politics: Informal Politics in Turkey and Vote Mobilization in Istanbul and Şanlıurfa,” highlights how the state and politically lucrative communities reach out to each other across the urban–rural divide through “çay politics,” or tea politics, in Turkey. This is a hybrid formal–informal political strategy in which politicians make pilgrimages to various villages ahead of elections in order to solicit their votes over a friendly conversation and a glass of tea. As elsewh...