Adaptable Autocrats

Regime Power in Egypt and Syria

Joshua Stacher

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780804780636, 9780804780629
• eBook ISBN: 9780804782098
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The decades-long resilience of Middle Eastern regimes meant that few anticipated the 2011 Arab Spring. But from the seemingly rapid leadership turnovers in Tunisia and Egypt to the protracted stalemates in Yemen and Syria, there remains a common outcome: ongoing control of the ruling regimes. While some analysts and media outlets rush to look for democratic breakthroughs, autocratic continuity—not wide-ranging political change—remains the hallmark of the region's upheaval.

Contrasting Egypt and Syria, Joshua Stacher examines how executive power is structured in each country to show how these preexisting power configurations shaped the uprisings and, in turn, the outcomes. Presidential power in Egypt was centralized. Even as Mubarak was forced to relinquish the presidency, military generals from the regime were charged with leading the transition. The course of the Syrian uprising reveals a key difference: the decentralized character of Syrian politics. Only time will tell if Asad will survive in office, but for now, the regime continues to unify around him. While debates about election timetables, new laws, and the constitution have come about in Egypt, bloody street confrontations continue to define Syrian politics—the differences in authoritarian rule could not be more stark.

Political structures, elite alliances, state institutions, and governing practices are seldom swept away entirely—even following successful revolutions—so it is vital to examine the various contexts for regime survival. Elections, protests, and political struggles will continue to define the region in the upcoming years. Examining the lead-up to the Egyptian and Syrian uprisings helps us unlock the complexity behind the protests and transitions. Without this understanding, we lack a roadmap to make sense of the Middle East's most important political moment in decades.

1 DEBATING AUTHORITARIANISM

THE NUMBER OF ELECTORAL DEMOCRACIES IN THE WORLD grew from 76 to 120 between 1990 and 2000.¹ During the decade that followed, democracies started to decline. In 2010, the fifth consecutive year of decline, the number dipped to 115.² Citizens in the political systems of the Arab world did not notice this expansion and contraction. Their systems have defied global democratizing trends for decades. Freedom House lists all Arab governments as “not free” with the exception of Morocco, Iraq, and Lebanon.³ Yet, even these exceptions are suspect. Thoroughly authoritarian systems remain in the Arab world after democratization’s “Third Wave,”⁴ the Soviet Union’s implosion, and decades of continuing failures by the US government’s “democratization industry.”⁵ The region’s exceptionalism left some academics perplexed despite protests from regional experts.⁶ Some credited the region’s predominately Islamic or Arab cultures as the obstacle for democracy in the region.⁷ Yet, even those who do not resort to cultural arguments were seduced by the prospects of democracy.

Despite the recalcitrance of autocracy in the region, democratization frameworks and assumptions informed many of the research agendas during the 1990s.⁸ So much so that, in 1999, Lisa Wedeen argued, “There are, oddly, few recent writings on authoritarianism in comparative politics and they tend to be concerned primarily with the transition from authoritarian to democratic forms of rule.”⁹ It is not that social scientists believed the region was experiencing democratization.¹⁰ Irrespective of intentions or beliefs, the transitology framework became stitched into the work in the 1990s. While studies continue to vacillate between bottom-up and top-down approaches, research production shifted to explicitly explaining authoritarian durability in the 2000s. With the 2011 uprisings in the region, research agendas arrive at a fresh—if yet still unsettled—junction.¹¹ If those working on the Arab world follow the trail blazed by those who researched the post-Soviet transitions, then there will likely be more work on social groups than on elites in the coming period. Yet, given the convoluted transitions that emerged after 1989, democratization will likely be just as complicated as it has always been in the Arab world. There will not likely be a wholesale adoption or return to studying democratic transitions. Just because studying authoritarianism has been the dominant paradigm for the past decade does not mean that others were listening. For example, US policy circles have failed to move away from their liberalizing aims and rhetoric in the Arab world irrespective of the realities on the ground.

Successive American administrations also deployed foreign aid and other incentive programs to promote democracy in the Arab world.¹² Following the September 11 attacks, the US government viewed the lack of democracy as a national security question.¹³ The Bush administration responded with the “Freedom Agenda.”¹⁴ Except for the military intervention into Iraq, Bush’s agenda was just a repackaged attempt to democratize and “electionize” autocratic states. Yet, US democracy promotion efforts and aid has not directly impacted rulers’ tenures in office. These efforts also have not improved educational standards, strengthened institutions, empowered women, or created middle classes in Arab states. The UN’s Arab Human Development Reports record the lack of progress in these “deficit” areas regularly.¹⁵

Diplomatic exchanges between the United States and Arab governments dramatize this struggle over democratization. On one side of this reform struggle stand US political elites, who argue that Arab governments should reform by increasing freedoms and democracy. The Arab ruling elites respond by reconfiguring their ranks to appease international actors but continuing to block openings for greater inclusion. When American officials speak of reform, they seem to imply a change in the character of governance. When Arab leaders initiate reform, they have precluded such changes. This looks like a heated battle of wills between right and wrong, but it has traditionally been much ado about nothing.

This drama plays out every few years. The democratization industry amplifies the refrain that the American government has insufficiently or incorrectly promoted democracy. Congressional funding is channeled throughout the bureaucracy to sponsor various programs such as the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). Diplomatic exchanges occur whereby American officials ask for greater inclusive reform from their Arab counterparts. Secretaries of State visit and appeal for spectacles, such as elections, to demonstrate compliance. Arab elites, however, are not rendered defenseless in this performance. They respond. Leaders warn ominously of chaos if reforms are not managed responsibly. Government ministers and party apparatchiks claim that they are already democratizing. Newspaper editorials levy allegations of foreign meddling in their affairs. After bilateral relations are described as “tense,” the incumbent regime reorders its hierarchy and produces measures that recalibrate their entrenchment.¹⁶ Kienle has called this “political deliberalization”;¹⁷ and Pool notes the tendency for “a retreat to a stricter authoritarianism” when pursing reforms.¹⁸ While US officials and policy centers claim victory over the superficial actions of Arab leaders, the outcome is cosmetic.¹⁹

Some analysts cite the importance of Washington’s pressure as an impetus for Arab reform measures. This exuberance should be tempered. For example, Michele Dunne, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues that Washington positively nudged Egypt to establish multicandidacy presidential elections in 2005.²⁰ She fails, however, to disclose that the incumbent cruised to victory with nearly 90 percent of that contest’s vote. It seems clear that no amount of incentives,²¹ political will,²² or strategic appointments within the State Department will reverse the barren fortunes of the US democracy promotion.²³ Regardless, the aid and democratization enterprises continue to double down on their failed efforts rather than change the assumptions or accept the projects’ limitations.

Despite the ardency that these diplomatic face-offs produce in terms of impassioned exchanges and spilled ink by those across the transnational ideological spectrum, such maneuvers fail to correlate with their stated goals. Furthermore, irrespective of their vocal protests and superficial alterations, ruling elites in Arab states do not seem to worry much about American pressure to politically liberalize. This is because the political sound and fury overwhelmingly produce do-si-dos back to the status quo. Why, then, is this the case?

One answer is that such systems are buttressed from such external pressure. The elites exist in structures that can absorb and neutralize American pressure while favorably reordering the state’s hierarchy. This serves the ruling elites by introducing changes to reinforce the current power relationships. But the actions of elites alone are not enough. They need vehicles. Hence, state institutions play a central role in the process. They help the ruling elites override, redirect, and funnel away foreign pressure as they channel domestic dissent. The institutions also benefit ruling elites by encouraging cohesion and making them agile when adjusting to pressure. The structures also preclude outcomes that may transfer or redistribute power to social forces. As Jason Brownlee showed, institutions are “the nerve center of authoritarianism” because they are “incisive for explaining regime change and stability.”²⁴ In such systems, foreign diplomatic pressure has neither threatened nor challenged these regimes in existential ways.

Not all regimes, however, are created equal. The degree that an executive office has centralized authority over state institutions affects whether elites respond in a unified or disjointed manner.²⁵ Some systems possess centralized control over state institutions, which facilitate the ruling elites’ cohesion and a regime’s ability to respond in an efficient manner. Others do not. This complicates the emergence of consensus from across the political field’s organizations. The origins of state institutions and the degree to which ruling elites exert authority over those arenas determine the range of possibility and shelter answers to durability.

Authoritarianism is not a stagnant governing approach. Political elites in Arab states constantly work to ensure that they remain in the regime and the system remains viable. They guide change to protect and replicate the status quo. All of the region’s governments have undertaken or are pursuing legislative, constitutional, and institutional changes. Some of the states are confronting the aftermath of popular uprisings. While some may dispute the durability of authoritarian political systems in Arab states in the wake of the 2011 uprising, history shows that more likely than not authoritarianism—not democracy—emerges from moments of political transition. Nevertheless, this abstract concept requires some discussion given the intellectual history of studying such political systems.

STUDYING AUTOCRACY

Since Max Weber’s identified traditional, charismatic, and legal-rational forms of authority,²⁶ social scientists have predominantly classified autocratic systems accordingly. This produces either overly generalized or specific definitions of authoritarianism. For example, Juan Linz provides a macrodefinition:

Political systems with limited, not responsible, political pluralism, without elaborate or guiding ideology, but with distinctive mentalities, without extensive nor intensive political mobilization, except at some points in their development, and in which a leader and occasionally a small group exercises power within formally ill-defined limits but actually quite predictable ones.²⁷

While this definition is accurate, it does not capture the intricacies or varieties of authoritarian rule. This is because the extensive diversity of such regimes makes defining authoritarianism difficult. Paul Brooker agrees when he argues, “The term ‘authoritarian’ is so widely applicable that it is difficult to develop a theory which can cover so many diverse cases without becoming either banal or incoherent.”²⁸ Rather than ascribe or develop a single definition, social scientists have atomized the study of such systems by creating typologies to characterize regime types. Some of these typologies include dictatorships. Others include military, single-party, sultanistic, or hybrid regimes as well as personalized rule, semiauthoritarianism, pseudodemocracies, and liberalized autocracies. Others prefer to refer to such systems as electoral or competitive authoritarianism. None of these classifications are incorrect despite the pejorative biases that some imply. However, classifications can restrict comparability because a typology can get so specific that it applies only to a single case. Similarly, these imagined categories permit political systems to be incorrectly classified through deduction. Rather than allow theory building to emerge from the case, typologies are often mislaid on top of it. Beyond adding typologies, scholars have also enriched Weber’s original theory on governing styles.²⁹

The most widely used in contemporary debates is neo-patrimonialism, which descends from Weber’s traditional type. In addition to the personalized attributes of a regime, the state’s institutions also are argued to contribute to its ability to expand power. Bratton and van de Walle created the most established definition of neo-patrimonialism. It is

hybrid political systems in which the customs and patterns of patrimonialism co-exist with, and suffuse, rational-legal institutions. As with classic patrimonialism, the right to rule in neopatrimonial regimes is ascribed to a person rather than to an office, despite the official existence of a written constitution. . . . The chief executive and his inner circle undermine the effectiveness of the nominally modern state administration by using it for systematic patronage and clientelist practices in order to maintain political order. Moreover, parallel and unofficial structures may well hold more power and authority than the formal administration.³⁰

Such regimes, therefore, combine traditional rule with “modern” (but not legal-rational) bureaucratic institutions of a state.³¹ As a consequence, neither form of governance prevails in a pure form. But differences emerge. Some systems might be more legal-rational than traditional while other states exhibit opposing trends. When studying authoritarianism in Arab states, neo-patrimonialism is attractive because it reflects the mixed character of the region’s regimes. Yet, just because the theory accounts for variance does not imply that theoretical blind spots have not surfaced in such analyses.

Some scholars working on the politics of Arab states have rightly considered neo-patrimonialism as an explanatory frame. “Neopatriarchy,” as Hisham Sharabi calls it, reveals a process where a state blends its patrimonial inherited culture into its institutions. The remnants of tradition pollute the development process and reinforce dependency on the Western core.³² As this relationship of unequal (capital versus dependent) states deepens, traditionalism flourishes.³³ The prevalence of such corrupted institutions hinders a state’s ability to encourage economic development because elites pursue a distorted development strategy. While Sharabi’s work focuses on Arab societies’ poisonous effect on the economy, other academics consider neo-patrimonialism’s effects on political development.

Halim Barakat uses neo-patrimonialism to explain the impotence of civil society in the Arab world. As Barakat argues, the potential for opposition to rise organically to challenge the state is unlikely because neo-patrimonialism discourages political contestation. In his words, “The conditions described above—dependency, underdevelopment, patriarchal and authoritarian relationships, social and political fragmentation, class distinctions, successive historical defeats, and a generalized state of repression—have rendered the Arab people and society powerless.”³⁴ Barakat argues that Arab elites have so successfully channeled wealth and resources to serve their own benefits that their polities became apathetic, demobilized, and depoliticized. This depravity has reached such a degree that the “Arab world does not seem to have a society that functions well.”³⁵ As he sees it, this eliminates the possibility that a political opposition can contest the ruling class.

In addition to being empirically wrong, using the theory in this way is corrosive. It fails to distinguish between authoritarian states or the historical context of their institutions. Sharabi and Barakat do not draw out distinctions between various authoritarian regimes as they focus on the “Arab World.” Similarly, neo-patrimonialism is primarily a social phenomenon that impedes political and economic development. Yet, social and cultural explanations fail to illuminate the wider causal chain because they exclude alternative theories. For example, the lack of political development in individual Arab states stems from other institutional, historical, economic, and transnational geopolitical geneses—not cultural or social causes.

This also reveals a common misstep when employing neo-patrimonialism. While many scholars mention institutions when discussing such hybrid regimes, the organizations merely serve as exploitable façades without vested political power. While there are some notable exceptions where scholars cite venues of contestation,³⁶ many scholars do not bring theoretical clarity to the concept of a regime. For example, many simply reduce “a regime” to the chief executive and his cronies. This, in turn, excludes a state’s elaborate bureaucratic structure or quotidian practices, which also discipline and condition the live...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Fmt
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations and Acronyms
• Introduction: Changing to Stay the Same
• 1 Debating Authoritarianism
• 2 The Origins of Executive Authority
• 3 Adaptation and Elite Co-optation
• 4 Adaptation and Nonelite Co-optation
• 5 The 2011 Uprisings and the Future of Autocratic Adaptation
• Reference matter
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Stanford Studies