Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional Order

Michael N. Barnett

Columbia University Press

Fall 1998

2. The Game of Arab Politics

 

Arab states have been engaged in a continuous, often bitter, and divisive debate about regional order, the norms that should regulate their relations, and how those norms express their Arab identities. Although these debates were an almost daily feature of the political landscape, they became dramatically visible, heated, and politically consequential at certain historical moments. When an event triggers an intensified discussion among the members of the group about the norms that are to guide their relations, I call such moments dialogues. The Baghdad Pact of 1955, the establishment of the United Arab Republic in 1958, the Arab summit meeting of 1964, the disengagement agreements between Israel and Egypt in the mid-1970s, the Camp David accords of 1979, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and other events catalyzed a fervent debate about the relationship between the Arab state and the Arab nation.

These dialogues about how to handle relations with the West, integrate their states, and confront Zionism invited participation from all Arab states because the outcome of that debate would affect their interests. These were Arab issues, connected to their shared Arab identity, blurring the distinction between the domestic and the international and thus arresting any claims of sovereign prerogatives and making their behavior accountable to a regional audience and part of a collective undertaking. Arab states had every reason to take part in debates whose outcome would determine what policies were and were not available to them. But Arab states had a more immediate reason to register their opinions: they leaned heavily on Arab nationalism to legitimate their rule and justify their actions and generally honored the norms of Arabism because they desired the social approval and symbolic capital that came from being identified by their societies as Arab leaders in good standing. Arab governments were more animated by a challenge to the norms of Arabism than they were by a shift in the distribution of military power because the former, and not the latter, was a more concrete and direct threat to their various interests. Predictably, then, they competed fiercely to draw a line between the regime’s interests, the norms of Arabism, and the events of the day. Determining whether a norm applied in a social situation was an act of power, closely attached to the government’s popularity and future plans, and a mechanism to control the foreign policies of other Arab states.

Dialogues can be understood as moments of strategic interaction, when actors are “in a well-structured situation of mutual impingement where each party must make a move and where every possible move carries fateful implications for all of the parties.” ₁ At such moments of interdependence the ability of actors to obtain their preference depends on the choices made by other actors. As a consequence, actors will select a course of action that incorporates the probable choices of other actors. But they also are likely to try to find ways to increase the likelihood that they will obtain their preference. Actors attempt to coordinate their actions, and to manipulate each other’s choices, in order to achieve the best result possible. Arab leaders were in a social situation defined by mutual dependence: because of their shared Arab identity, they determined the norms of Arabism collectively, were expected to honor those norms, and generally did so because of their desire for the social approval that came with being associated with Arabism.

Social scientists typically liken such social and strategic interactions to a game. For scholars of international relations such game metaphors are closely associated with game theory. Game theory examines the strategic choices among self-interested rational actors who operate under a specified social situation in the context of interdependence of choice among other utility-maximizing actors. Many realist-inspired analyses of Arab politics approach inter-Arab relations in ways that parallel game theory’s basic approach to international politics. Specifically, they proceed on the belief that Arab states attempt to maximize their security or power, that their ability to achieve these goals depends on the actions of other Arab states, and that the structures that condition their choices are anarchy and the distribution of power.

Sociologically minded students of strategic interaction provide an alternative understanding of a game: a “normative structure” that is both external and internal to each player. ₂ The game is external to the players because they tend to treat the social situation as a constraint on their ability to achieve their goals; thus the game encourages them to act strategically. But the game also is internal to the players because the normative structure establishes the culturally and historically specific terms in which actors think and relate and thus is a source of the players’ collective beliefs and strategies. Following this tradition necessitates an attempt to identify the rules of the game, that is, the socially determined norms that restrict and guide what play is considered acceptable, to “display the associated normative expectations, and thus attempt to understand action as doing of what is normatively expected in a situation structured by rules.” ₃ Sociological conceptions of a game, then, begin not with the asocial actor but with a social whole that determines the normative enactments and rule-governed conduct that actors are expected to follow during their social encounters. In this view the choices made by actors are linked not simply to private wants but also to societal expectations. ₄

This sociological approach departs from realist-inspired assessments of inter-Arab politics in three important ways. First, the normative structure defined by Arabism and by sovereignty is why Arab states identify themselves as Arab and delineate a set of Arab national interests. In other words, whereas realist approaches bracket the identity and interests of the players and treat the environment as a constraint, constructivist approaches treat the environment as a source of identity and interests for the players of the game. ₅ This move, however, is only meant to balance out the stark asocial view of actors advanced by many microeconomic approaches, not to replace it with an equally artificial view of actors as completely socialized and domesticated. Actors are not simply the bearers of social roles and enactors of social norms; they also are artful and active interpreters of them. Such a view allows for the possibility that the actors can both honor and manipulate those norms. Arab leaders were not simply instruments of the will of the Arab nation. They also were active interpreters of that will, spinning interpretations that frequently incorporated their other agenda items in a highly manipulative way. States are still calculating strategic egoists a fair bit of the time. But the underlying normative structure shapes their calculations and strategies. ₆ Not all is fair in love and war. And not all was possible in Arab politics. The normative structure constituted and constrained Arab states, generating incentives for state action and presenting the states with opportunities to twist these social roles for ulterior motives.

Second, the normative structure shapes the technologies of power that actors use to influence the actions of other actors. Students of Arab politics have frequently described how Arab leaders attempted to control the policies of their rivals through discursive means and the manipulation and deployment of symbols, but they have failed to explicitly theorize how such technologies are possible because of a normative structure that leaves actors susceptible to such technologies. The more general point is that international relations theorists tend to focus on material means of influence because they conceive of the environment as asocial, defined by the distribution of power, and populated by “billiard-ball”–like actors who care about their military and economic standing and little else. But if international politics is understood as social, defined by a normative structure, and populated by actors who care about their reputation, the means of influence can include discursive, symbolic, and communicative action.

Third, the analysis of strategic conduct must be attentive to how actors “draw upon structural properties” as they make and unmake their relations. ₇ Because Arab states are addressing whether to revise or repair a norm of Arabism, their strategic interactions conceivably can lead to a transformation of the norms that govern their relations. Normative structures, then, are not fixed and permanent entities but are produced through social interactions and social processes. Social processes and not social structures, interstate interactions and not the distribution of power, are responsible for normative change. But unlike most approaches to strategic interaction in international politics that hold constant the identities and interests of states, the constructivist approach adopted here allows for the possibility that during a dialogue Arab states are reconsidering their political identities as they reconsider the norms that govern their relations. Strategic interaction could lead to normative integration or normative fragmentation, and a central concern here is why it led to the latter in Arab politics.

Beginning with the normative structure and not with realism’s simplifying assumptions regarding the interests of states and their constraining environment certainly complicates the effort to generate a precise and deductive model of strategic interaction. But the promise is that such complications are generously compensated by the presentation of a more accurate understanding of inter-Arab politics. Although Arab leaders maintained a strong interest in regime survival, Arabism and not anarchy provides leverage over the Arab governments’ central objectives, presentation of self, and strategies; the technologies of power that they employed as they debated the norms that were to govern their relations; and the reasons that their interactions, which allowed for repair or reform of a norm, led to fragmentation in Arab politics.

This chapter begins by considering how the structure of Arab politics, a structure defined by social and material elements, represented a source of identity and interests for Arab states. Arab leaders, however, were not bearers of these structures; they were at once constrained by and manipulated the norms of Arabism. But the content of these norms was a matter of debate. Because these norms of Arabism were connected to the regimes’ various interests, the regimes competed to determine their content. The next section argues that Arab leaders competed to establish the norms of Arabism through symbolic exchanges, discusses why symbolic exchanges were so prominent in Arab politics, and outlines the distinct characteristics of these symbolic exchanges. The concluding section considers how these dialogues were sites of normative change and, in the case of Arab politics, led to normative fragmentation.

 

The Structure of Arab Politics

The structure of any regional or international society is comprised of both material and normative elements. ₈ Although international relations theorists sometimes have a penchant for reducing political life to its base material components and for eradicating the social, the structure of any politics—whether it is interpersonal, domestic, or international—always has a defining social element that must be situated alongside the material. But this structure is not only part of the environment that actors confront as they attempt to pursue their interests. The environment is also a source of their identities and interests.

These issues are central for considering the structure of Arab politics. To be sure, Arab states lived in a formal anarchy, but these were hardly states that could easily and clearly distinguish the “inside” from the “outside”—that could discriminate the political community that resided within its borders from that which existed on the other side—and whose societies clearly and consistently differentiated between “us” and “them” based on territorial markers. The boundaries of the Arab identity and the territorial lines drawn by the colonial powers pushed and pulled the debates in Arab palaces and cabinets. We call these Arab states with Arab national interests for a reason, and the reason is Arabism.

That the normative structure of Arab politics is comprised of both sovereignty and Arabism, and that this structure is a source of identity and interests can be best appreciated through the concept of social roles and norms. Social roles concern a position in a set of social relations and therefore are autonomous from and can exist apart from the individual actor who might occupy that role. ₉ Roles, in other words, are socially recognized positions accompanied by normative expectations and demands; the normative expectations attached to the social roles constrain the behavior of actors. Norms are expectations that constrain action within a specific social context. ₁₀ In this way, “when an individual follows a norm, she acts in a way learned by familiarity with previous accepted instances or examples. The intention is to act in proper analogy with those examples.” ₁₁

The analytic distinction between regulative and constitutive norms is useful for thinking about Arab politics. ₁₂ Regulative norms enable actors to overcome collective action problems associated with interdependent choice. In other words, even when actors desire some degree of cooperation to further their self-interest, they still need to negotiate explicit rules to encourage compliance and reciprocity. Constitutive norms, on the other hand, are a direct expression of the actor’s identity—they tell actors how to enact a particular identity and how to present themselves. Actors frequently behave in certain ways and not others because of the relationship between such behavior and their identity. As Erving Goffman observes, to follow a norm is a communicative act, expressive of one’s self and self-understanding in the situation. ₁₃ In this way constitutive norms provide a link between agency and structure to the extent that they instruct players how to enact their identity and accompanying social role.

The norms that animated the debates in Arab politics largely concerned how they would enact their identities to accomplish their collective aspirations. In one sense these norms were intended to help them overcome collective action problems. But at a more fundamental level these norms were tied to their very identity as Arab states and allocated to them their very interests. Arabism, for instance, did not simply instruct them to avoid bilateral settlements with Israel, although it did; it also helped to construct Zionism as a threat and as a defining element of the Arab national interest. To contemplate relations with Israel, to violate the taboo of Arab politics, was to invite public ridicule and charges of having betrayed the Arab nation. Although various Arab governments privately believed that they gained little from the state of war with Israel and might profit materially from a reduction, if not resolution, of the conflict, they knew better than to air such ideas in public. In 1950 King Abdullah of Jordan calculated that Jordan’s economic and political interests might be better served by ending the state of war with Israel, concluding some commercial agreements, and arranging for an outlet to the sea; a Jordanian and Arab public that viewed such agreements as blasphemy overruled such material calculations. The norms of Arabism sanctioned some strategies and placed others outside the normative reach of Arab states, regardless of their capabilities or how they calculated their material incentives.

Arab leaders occupied social roles that contained normative expectations as they performed on the regional stage. In fact, they occupied two roles: agent of a sovereign state and agent of the wider Arab political community. ₁₄ What are the normative expectations associated with sovereignty? Such norms have varied considerably over the years, but at a minimal level they accord a measure of possessiveness and exclusivity to the state. It has authority over its domestic space and the authority to act as a legitimate member of international society, and such entitlements are embodied in the principle of noninterference. As John Ruggie has argued, the development of the institution of sovereignty differentiated “among units in terms of possession of self and exclusion of others,” and created an international order that enabled states to become the principal unit of international life. ₁₅ Being recognized as sovereign amounts to a social permission granted by the community of states to act with certain powers and implies a certain measure of self-restraint by other members of this community, that is, a live-and-let-live attitude. ₁₆

Arab states were sovereign states, and their leaders had a strong interest in defending the territorial and sovereign basis of their authority and power. The mandate system and colonialism created the territorial boundaries of these states, and the anticolonial tide in these countries largely demanded immediate independence and sovereignty rather than rewriting the borders that were a gift of the West. Having worked so hard for their independence, Arab governments were hardly excited about turning over their newly won sovereignty to a larger entity in which they would have reduced political power. From such considerations came the decision by the Arab states to construct a charter for the Arab League in 1945 that made generous references to their sovereign basis of authority and the sanctity of their territorial confines. As Arab leaders competed on the regional stage, they did so as heads of sovereign states, and they wielded sovereignty as a normative shield against encroachments from other Arab leaders.

Arab states were formally sovereign states, but they also were Arab states. What made them Arab states was their shared identity. Because of a confluence of historical processes Arab nationalism emerged from its standing as a romantic movement at the beginning of the twentieth century to tower over the political landscape and shape the region’s political identity and discourse of political protest. ₁₇ Quite simply, this is why these were Arab states with Arab national interests. ₁₈ Arab states presented themselves as Arab because of their shared language, heritage, and future; they shared a common story line that enjoined them and separated them from non-Arab states. As Arab states they also had shared interests, which largely concerned the struggle for formal independence and autonomy from the West, the struggle against Zionism, and search for unity. Because these interests derived from the shared Arab identity that enveloped the separate Arab states, these interests frequently overrode those of sovereignty to the extent that sovereignty provided a degree of possessiveness that Arabism denied. As Walid Khalidi has observed, “Raison d’état no less than raison de la révolution can invoke raison de la nation, while even raison de la status quo can invoke both these latter. Only explicit or transparent raison d’état is heresy.” ₁₉ An Arab state that attempted to claim a sovereign prerogative when it sought a strategic alliance with the West was quickly reminded by other Arab states that such an alliance was a public and not a private matter because it concerned the Arab nation. Most famously, an Arab nationalism that demanded territorial unification represented a direct challenge to the sovereign authority and territorial basis of Arab states. In these and other ways, although Arab states were formally sovereign, they had to work out the meaning of sovereignty in practice, in conflict, and in relationship to a (prior) set of claims that derived from Arab nationalism. Arabism and not anarchy was why they had a shared Arab identity and interests.

If Arab leaders had automatically pursued these Arab interests and mindlessly conformed to the norms of Arabism, we would study Arab politics for its impressive solidarity and awe-inspiring cooperation, and Arab leaders would have a reputation for subordinating their personal interests to the Arab nation. But Arab politics is renowned for its conflict, and Arab leaders are famous for caring more for themselves than for the Arab nation. I am certain that many students of the region would be willing to extend what the historian Kamal Salibi has called the “confidence game” of Lebanese politics to all of Arab politics: “The game involved a succession of devious transactions between players who invariably pretended to stand for nationalist ideals and principles aimed at the common good, while they strove to outwit and overturn one another, motivated by atavistic loyalties and insecurities for which the professed ideals and principles normally served as a mere cover.” ₂₀ If they could act so cynically, if not instrumentally, with regard to the norms of Arabism and be more accomplished at demonstrating their commitment through words than through deeds, how meaningful were these norms? And, more to the point, how can such norms, if they are as ephemeral as they seem, shape the game of Arab politics?

A good place to begin is with the recognition that structures make possible and circumscribe what actors can do in concrete situations, but they do not determine action. In this regard individuals are not cultural dupes; they are not perfectly mannered representatives of a static, harmonious, and securely anchored society. “Structure provides the condition for the possibility of action and guides how actions are to be performed, but it is agents who produce and reproduce this structure by means of activity.” ₂₁ The roles and norms that they are expected to follow demand interpretive activity on their part. But this interpretive activity also allows actors to be skillful and willful manipulators of those societal expectations. Rather than construct an image of a normative structure that is honored at all times or is pronounced as meaningless, it is better to conceive of a normative structure that provides incentives for actors to honor and manipulate the social roles and norms of that structure. The gap between theory and practice in Arab politics is as expected here as in any social setting.

Erving Goffman’s classic The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life offers a synthetic, sophisticated, and systematic statement concerning the relationship between self-interested actors, the roles they perform on a public stage, and the underlying moral order. ₂₂ Goffman recognized that although actors occupy roles as they interact on a public stage, they also maintain some autonomy from their roles that allows them to be creative occupants and cynical manipulators. Social roles are generally permissive and provide the actors who occupy them some degree of autonomy; the actors can be expected to follow norms some of the time but disregard them at others. Actors, in short, maintain “role distance.”

Although actors are likely to try to ensure that their performances are consistent with the expectations of their audience, they frequently want to satisfy not only their audiences but also themselves—and they will use their roles for such a cause. Actors can exploit their social roles, manipulating them to serve ulterior ends. Goffman’s concluding statement is worth quoting at length:

In their capacity as performers, individuals will be concerned with maintaining the impression that they are living up to the many standards by which they and their products are judged. Because these standards are so numerous and so pervasive, the individuals who are performers dwell more than we might think in a moral world. But, qua performers, individuals are concerned not with the moral issues of realizing these standards, but with the amoral issue of engineering a convincing impression that these standards are being realized. Our activity, then, is largely concerned with moral matters, but as performers we do not have a moral concern with them. As performers we are merchants of morality. Our day is given over to intimate contact with the goods we display and our minds are filled with intimate understandings of them; but it may well be that the more attention we give to these goods, then the more distant we feel from them and from those who are believing enough to buy them. To use a different imagery, the very obligation of profitability of appearing always in a steady moral light, of being a socialized character, forces one to be practiced in the ways of the stage. 23

Goffman brilliantly highlighted how actors are performers who interpret their roles and occasionally exploit them for purposes for which those roles were not generally intended. Yet actors are able to manipulate their image because a moral fabric exists (something denied by materialist approaches), and they understand these normative expectations. Goffman’s dramaturgical imagery, in short, suggests how actors manipulate the underlying moral framework in the service of ulterior ends.

But all this cynical manipulation can be dangerous: actors might soon have their reputations and moral character called into question. To avoid this outcome they will engage in “face work” and “impression management” to convince their audience that they are operating according to society’s moral framework. Not only does such maneuvering reveal that society has a normative character but a convincing performance requires more than talk—it requires action that is consistent with these expectations. Therefore actors will abide by social norms for a host of reasons—including self-interest and self-image—but in either case their desire to be viewed as moral creatures, to be operating according to society’s standards, will shape their behavior. ₂₄

This understanding of society—that actors stand distant from their social roles and can manipulate them for ulterior purposes, though for reasons of self-interest and self-image are prone to act according to society’s normative expectations—is a cornerstone of my approach to Arab politics and provides theoretical leverage in regard to how Arab states are likely to handle and conduct themselves on the public stage. I begin with the assumption that Arab leaders were fundamentally concerned with regime survival. Regime survival and domestic stability were daily concerns for state elites that governed societies that openly questioned the legitimacy of the state and the government’s ability to accomplish the myriad tasks expected of state building in the modern era. Accordingly, when peeling back the layers of motivations that drove the Arab governments’ policies, regime survival was nearly always at the top of the list. ₂₅ Indeed, sometimes Arab leaders knowingly and willingly subordinated the “logic of anarchy” and state power to the logic of regime stability and personal power; the creation of the UAR in 1958 and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War were driven by the logic of regime survival and not the logic of anarchy. As former Jordanian ambassador Adnan Abu Odeh put it, “The survival instinct dominates all else.” ₂₆

Arab governments worked daily and strenuously to maintain political stability and quickly found that they could harness Arab nationalism for the cause. Arab leaders desired the social approval and prestige that came from being associated with Arabism because it could help bolster political stability and infuse their regimes with the social purpose and legitimacy unavailable from domestic foundations. ₂₇ These were Arab regimes standing at the helm of Arab states that were porous and shot through by transnational forces, states that they and their societies frequently described as artificial, illegitimate, and agents of the Arab nation. Accordingly, Arab societies judged their governments according to how well they defended a “national interest” defined by an Arab nation that enveloped the state’s territorial borders.

Arab officials, then, had every conceivable reason and incentive to present themselves as acting on behalf of the Arab nation and to articulate a discourse that referred to the Arab nation and shunned the language of state interests. ₂₈ They studiously cultivated the image that they were Arab leaders in good standing. By attending Arab league meetings, contributing to collective Arab causes, speaking out on behalf of the Palestinians at international gatherings, in these and other ways Arab governments could support the collective good and better their political standing. Although adhering to these norms and articulating the discourse of the Arab political community was no guarantee of political stability, I argue that they had no better way to invite trouble than to deviate from such expectations. Even if an Arab leader cared little about the Palestinian conflict, only a leader with a strong self-destructive streak would publicly confess such views or pursue policies that hinted at such betrayals.

In general, Arab leaders had both private preferences that concerned political stability and social preferences that concerned the norms of Arabism. This perspective suggests that the normative structure in which actors are embedded shapes their public pursuits and that actors can be expected to appropriate these norms for their private interests. Arabism shaped the social interests of Arab leaders, and Arab leaders used these norms to further their personal objective of regime survival; as representatives of the Arab nation they were expected to pursue its interests, but as flesh and blood politicians they manipulated its norms for more secular concerns. These were social actors with private preferences who recognized that obtaining their private preferences depended on effecting and pursuing social interests. ₂₉

Arab leaders sought the social approval that came from being identified with the Arab cause because such approval could further their other domestic and foreign policy objectives. In other words, Arab states desired the symbolic capital they could amass from their association with Arab nationalism because they could exchange it for capital that they needed for their other objectives. Different strands of sociological and anthropological theory observe that capital (sometimes referred to as resources) can take different forms—symbolic, economic, political, and cultural—that are acquired by the actor’s activities in different networks that generate social status and material rewards. ₃₀ These different forms of capital can be exchanged for one another. Some actors will exchange economic capital for political capital, others will exchange political capital for economic capital, and still others will exchange the capital that they generate from being associated with the aspirations of the community for other highly valued objectives.

Arab leaders pursued a strategy of symbolic accumulation in part to advance or protect their domestic political situation. This highlights an important facet of Arab politics: power was associated less with accumulating military force than with accumulating the symbols of Arabism, presenting and projecting a particular image, and demonstrating an alliance and affinity with a vision of political life. Arab leaders attempted to attach themselves to and become identified with the symbols of the political community—and in this instance those symbols largely derived not from domestic but from transnational politics—not only because the leaders were dedicated to the cause but also because such identification would strengthen their domestic standing. ₃₁

This suggests one reason that Arab governments competed for the privilege of being recognized as the leader of the Arab world: a government could exchange the symbolic capital that accompanied this status for its other objectives. Consider, for instance, Egypt’s long-standing desire to maintain a leadership position in Arab affairs. Among the various reasons Egypt coveted this role was that it could exploit this status for its other objectives. During the 1950s Egypt intentionally played up its role in Arab politics to increase its bargaining leverage during its negotiations with Britain regarding the Suez Canal. During the cold war Egypt promoted itself as the leader of the Arab world as a way of generating greater military and economic assistance from the superpowers. Syrian leaders promoted Syria as a rival to Egypt’s leadership position, in part because they recognized that such a position could generate substantial military assistance from the Soviet Union, economic assistance from Saudi Arabia, and prestige from Syrian society.

In general, Arab leaders wanted to be associated with the norms of Arabism for reasons of self-image and self-interest. Because they were Arab leaders, they could be expected to genuinely express Arab nationalist sentiments. Although some academic circles find it fashionable to dismiss the possibility of transnational obligations and identification, is it so absurd to suggest that Arab leaders were committed to Arab unity, fearful of Zionism, and mistrusting of the West? Intuition and evidence suggest that such sentiments could be quite genuine. But if their self-image did not encourage them to work for collective causes, self-interest surely would. Because they were Arab leaders whose popularity depended in part on adhering to the Arab consensus, they presented their policies and themselves in ways that were consistent with society’s expectations. And Arab leaders, like all actors, maintained some distance from the roles that they occupied, and such distance allowed them to be creative and cynical occupants of them. These were mannered and manipulative politicians, not unlike politicians of other times and places who will fashion themselves and their policies in ways that are consistent with the community’s expectations in order to remain popular and in office.

All this presupposes that Arab leaders agreed on what the norms of Arabism were. But this was hardly the case. The norms of Arabism have never been fixed; Arab states never attained a concrete consensus. Over the years Arab states and societies debated long and hard about what constituted the practical and political meaning of Arab nationalism. Arab politics is not unique in this regard. All social orders are contested, and the norms that define that order are negotiated, repaired, and transformed during social interaction. ₃₂

These negotiations over the regional order are particularly pronounced when an incident forces actors to consider whether a norm properly applies. To properly follow a norm, as Barry Barnes has observed, is to extend an analogy. But not all analogies are identical, self-evident, or taken for granted. “Although it is equally possible to assimilate the next instance to a norm by analogy with existing examples of the norm, it is equally always possible to resist such assimilation, to hold an analogy insufficiently strong, to stress the differences between the instance and the existing examples.” ₃₃ A defining feature of a dialogue was the attempt by Arab leaders to determine whether a norm properly applied to a social situation. Did the Baghdad Pact between Iraq and Turkey violate the norm of Arabism that regulated strategic alliances with the West? Did the 1975 disengagement agreement between Israel and Egypt violate the normative prohibition against bilateral arrangements? Arab states and societies held differing views regarding such matters, whether the present instance was analogous to earlier instances or whether extenuating circumstances made the present instance a legitimate exception.

Controversy nearly always accompanied a debate about whether a norm properly applied. Sometimes these divisions were driven by principled differences. After all, individuals can have genuine disagreements about what constitutes proper and legitimate behavior. This might be particularly so in Arab politics because Arab leaders occupied the social roles of sovereignty and Arabism that might instruct them to follow potentially contradictory expectations or, at the least, provide some measure of indeterminacy about how they should behave. For instance, although Arab nationalism instructed Arab states to proceed cautiously with regard to their ties to the West, what the states had to determine on a case-by-case basis was what caution meant. Arab states could be expected to have genuine differences of views regarding what constituted caution or caprice. Indeed, a defining feature of inter-Arab politics was the attempt by Arab states to reconcile the potentially competing expectations of Arabism and sovereignty, and they had different views over how such reconciliation should best be accomplished. But the controversy that ensues during a debate about norms also can derive from more immediate and worldly concerns. After all, whatever norms are established will determine the boundaries of appropriate action, rendering some action possible and raising the costs of others. Arab states always asserted that their positions were driven by unadulterated principles. Perhaps. But their more secular concerns nearly always colored these principled positions. Not without good reason: the public judgment would affect their various interests and future freedom of action.

Accordingly, Arab states competed to fix an interpretation of events—to determine whether a norm applied—that was consistent with their interests. ₃₄ Simply put, they attempted to draw a line between the regime’s various interests, the norms of Arabism, and the events of the day. Because this was a collective undertaking—whatever norm emerged would constrain their future freedom of action and potentially implicate their political stability—and because Arab states had divergent views of these norms, they competed to impose their interpretation of the social situation. ₃₅ Actors are oriented toward objects based on the meaning that they have for them. But meanings of these events and objects are not given and do not stand outside experience. Instead, they are constructed through a social and political process. Was the 1975 disengagement agreement between Egypt and Israel a violation of the norm of Arabism that prohibited bilateral arrangements, as Syria claimed, or was it consistent with Arabism, which allowed for the reclamation of Arab territory, as Egypt claimed? Did the Baghdad Pact violate a norm of Arabism, as Egypt claimed, or was it consistent with Arabism and Iraq’s sovereign prerogatives, as Iraq asserted? Arab leaders competed long and hard to construct the meaning of these events, to determine the interpretation of the social situation, because doing so would protect their various interests and control the actions of other Arab states.

To define the situation was an act of power. Power was not generally manifested through military coercion or economic sanctions but rather through symbolic means. Perhaps one of the defining characteristics of inter-Arab conflict was that Arab leaders used symbolic technologies to construct the norms of Arabism to circumscribe the actions of other Arab states; a highly effective way to halt an action of an Arab leader was to portray him as violating the norms of Arabism, as harming the Arab nation. The question is how Arab leaders arrived at their definition of the situation and stabilized those norms.

 

Symbolic Exchanges

Arab leaders attempted to define the social situation, determine the norms of Arabism, and control the actions of their rivals through strategic framing and symbolic exchanges. These means derived from a cultural tool kit made available by the normative structure of Arabism. ₃₆ The “thicker” the normative environment is—that is, the more embedded actors are in a network of relations that are invested with symbolic content and that provide a source of identity—the more dependent the actors will be on each other for social approval and the more susceptible they will be to symbolic and affective mechanisms of control. In other words, if Arab politics was symbolic politics, it was because Arab states were embedded in a shared normative structure in which they were mutually dependent on each other for social approval. ₃₇ This dependence on social approval in turn increased their susceptibility to normative suasion and symbolic sanctions.

The presence of this normative structure, moreover, reduced the efficacy of the military and economic instruments of statecraft. This position is in direct contrast to realism’s golden rule: those that have the gold make the rules. No immediate or causal relationship existed between military and economic power and the ability to establish the norms of Arabism. I am not suggesting that economic and military power were inconsequential or insignificant to the outcome, but I am arguing that the normative structure defined and constrained the forms of power, for several reasons.

First, because the norm under discussion was part of the public process, it became connected to public and community-wide aspirations and withdrawn from the domain of private calculations and choice. ₃₈ Arab leaders had to offer reasoned and persuasive arguments directly tied to existing norms and ideas that were in turn connected to community-wide standards. ₃₉ Arab leaders appealed to a regionally situated audience, justified their actions in relationship to Arab nationalism, and thus were constrained in what they could do. Second, Arab states wanted their decisions to have the veneer of legitimacy; receiving this legitimacy meant subjecting themselves to a legitimation process, and this process gave state and nonstate actors plenty of opportunities to shape the result. One consequence of this process was that in countless instances the more powerful state was constrained by the previously established set of norms and was unable to revise those norms to fit its current plans. Third, an informal decision-making rule was that any change in a norm should be done through consensus. This consensual decision-making principle evened the playing field and handed less powerful states and nonstate actors, like the PLO, important decision-making power. In general, in this game the military and economic tools of statecraft were not the generally accepted and used means of influence; instead, Arab states attempted to stabilize a set of norms through means that were available from a cultural tool kit that was available to all other Arab states.

We begin with the earlier observation that Arab leaders attempted to draw a line between their various interests, the norms of Arabism, and the meaning of the events of the day. But because events do not have an objective meaning, Arab leaders attempted to make them politically meaningful and intelligible by locating them within an overarching narrative that provided a link between an interpretation of the past and an image of the future. ₄₀ This is achieved through a frame. Frames “are specific metaphors, symbolic representations, and cognitive cues used to render or cast behavior and events in an evaluative mode and to suggest alternative modes of action.” ₄₁ To frame an event means to situate it within a particular story line in order to locate that event, organize the experience, and guide the action.

This suggests a close connection between frames and interests. Although frames and interests are independent concepts logically, frames will shape interests and actors will select certain frames based on their interests. ₄₂ To frame an event or action is potentially to alert others that their interests are at stake. When Palestinian Arabs framed Zionist immigration as a threat to the Arab nation, they galvanized support for their cause from Arabs in other lands; this frame, in other words, nurtured the image of Zionism as a threat to those living in Baghdad or Damascus even though they might not find that their lives or livelihood were immediately at stake. This also suggests that actors carefully select frames based on their interests. The Palestinian Arab leadership attempted to frame Zionist immigration as a concern for the entire Arab nation in part because the leaders recognized that they would be more likely to generate diplomatic and financial support from Arab states. Frames became a way to “discover” interests, and interests are frequently advanced by the careful and strategic adoption of a frame.

Frames have three key characteristics that are particularly relevant here. Actors compete to frame the event because how the event is understood will have important consequences for mobilizing action and furthering the actors’ interests. This competition can be understood as a strategic framing process: the “conscious strategic efforts by groups of people to fashion shared understandings of the world and of themselves that legitimate collective action.” ₄₃ Political elites attempt to mobilize collective action by drawing on “cultural symbols that are selectively chosen from a cultural toolchest and creatively converted” into frames for action. ₄₄ Arab leaders attempted to frame an event by locating it within a narrative of Arab history that included some reference to the norms of Arabism and the desired regional order. Their selection of a frame and their references to past historical experiences, moreover, were generally the product of strategic calculations intended to galvanize regionwide support for their position. Although state officials were not alone in their efforts to frame the events of the day—various social movements and intellectuals also played an important part—for a variety of reasons, including control of the media and other perks that attend to rule, state officials had a decided and consequential advantage.

Also, during this framing process Arab officials implicated themselves and other Arab leaders in that narrative. As actors tell stories to each other, they define each other in various ways—the actions that are permissible and comprehensible, and a “map of possible roles and of possible worlds in which action, thought, and self-definition are permissible (or desirable).” ₄₅ As Arab leaders offered their interpretation of the challenges at hand, they usually blanketed their speeches with references to their Arab nationalist credentials and the failings of their rivals, and as they did so they tied themselves to an interpretation of Arabism that elevated their fortunes and hurt their rivals.’

Finally, Arab officials usually framed the event as part of a long history of injustices and injuries to the Arab nation. Arab politics is not unique here: collective mobilization is frequently accomplished by framing events in terms of injustice. ₄₆ Although Arab nationalism was not animated and defined by injustice and grievances alone, these were powerful and ever-present themes. If part of Arab nationalism was the promise of a political and cultural renaissance that is uplifting and empowering, the flip side was that the West committed a series of historical injuries through acts of imperialism, beginning with colonialism and continuing through the present day, that has crippled the Arab nation. A related frame was that the Arabs were weak in relationship to the West, and they were weaker still when they were divided and fragmented; therefore they had to act collectively to protect themselves against further intrusions and to achieve their interests. Consequently, a powerful line in Arab politics was to frame an event or another Arab leader as potentially threatening the goal of Arab unity, dividing the Arab ranks, and providing an opening for the West. Usually, another Arab leader was responsible for provoking the challenge or making matters worse, so to frame the event as potentially weakening the Arab nation invariably involved accusing another Arab leader of being an accomplice to the crime.

By framing the event within a story line, Arab leaders transformed it into a symbol, its meaning produced by virtue of its connection to and placement within a cultural context. ₄₇ Arab politics was symbolic politics. Nasser turned the Baghdad Pact into a symbol of Western imperialism and Arab treachery. During the 1980s Syria referred to many diplomatic efforts to achieve a breakthrough in the peace process as “Camp David,” transforming such efforts into a symbol of selling out the Palestinians and dividing the Arab ranks. During the Gulf War Arabs who were opposed to Desert Storm portrayed it as akin to San Remo (which established the mandate system), thus transforming the Western-led force into a symbol of imperialism and drawing symbolic boundaries between Arabs and non-Arabs. An international relations discipline that has been raised on the centrality of force for regulating political life will be suspicious of the claim that symbols are anything but cosmetic. But few political orders are ever successfully contested or sustained by force alone; many if not most political contests are often waged over and through symbols. Rare is the act of collective mobilization that is without symbolic content, and actors attempt to guide and constrain action through symbolic means and technologies.

What are symbols? Symbols can be generically understood as standing for or representing something else. The earlier examples suggest how symbols, which derive from a shared historical memory, language, and culture, are rooted in political community and bound up in identity. The symbols are intelligible because they have a cultural resonance and define the group and its boundaries. Therefore, although symbols stand for something else, they cannot be drawn from thin air; that “something else” must be part of reality if such symbols are to be consequential in political struggles. ₄₈ Although Arab leaders might exploit the language and symbols of Arab nationalism to further their domestic and regional standing, they could exploit only what existed and could do so because it was generally consistent with the sentiments and historical memories of their citizens.

Symbols do not merely stand for something else. They are made meaningful by political actors. Political actors use symbols to galvanize sentiments, mobilize and guide social action, and control the direction of political change. ₄₉ Symbols become part of political struggles as elites attempt to use them, often in a strategic and manipulative way, to communicate with and mobilize members of society. ₅₀ In this central way symbols are part of social control, capable of being manipulated and deployed in order to stir emotions—to mobilize action in one’s favor and do so at the expense of one’s rivals. ₅₁ But part of what makes symbols politically effective is their ambiguous nature. This ambiguity allows diverse interests to mobilize around shared symbols to which they might well bring contested meanings. For instance, the symbols revolving around anticolonialism could unify both those who adhered to an Arab nationalism that demanded territorial unification and those who offered a vision that kept the territorial configuration intact. In general, during a dialogue Arab leaders attempted to appropriate and wield the symbols of Arabism for collective mobilization, to define the meaning of events, and to influence their domestic and regional audience.

These symbolic exchanges had three different forms: symbolic sanctioning, symbolic competition, and symbolic entrapment. Arab states attempted to undermine their rivals and control their foreign policies through symbolic sanctioning: the attempt by one actor to influence the actions of another by deploying the symbols of the community. ₅₂ “When a movement organization chooses symbols with which to frame its message, it sets a strategic course between its cultural setting, its political opponents and the militants and ordinary citizens whose support it needs.” ₅₃ Time and time again Arab leaders took to the airwaves to broadcast a message that used the various symbols of Arabism to communicate how the actions, both anticipated and taken, by other Arab leaders were either permitted by or inconsistent with the norms of Arabism. Gamal Abdel Nasser had few peers on this score. When he spoke “the streets emptied as everyone went into their houses to listen to him on their radios.” ₅₄ And sometimes when they returned to the streets, they demanded that their governments follow Nasser’s directions. Accused of destabilizing Lebanese politics in 1958, Nasser was asked by the United Nations to suspend his Voice of the Arabs broadcasts. His response was highly revealing of the power of symbolic sanctioning: “If you ask me for radio disarmament, you are asking for complete disarmament.” ₅₅ When Arab states sought a détente, their first step was to put down their weapons, which in this case was to suspend their highly inflammatory and destabilizing communiqués; such developments were to be expected in a social setting where power derived from the deft and destabilizing deployment of symbols. Sticks and stones might hurt, but Arab leaders were particularly threatened by symbols and speeches.

Two factors made symbolic sanctions an effective strategy. One necessary condition is that actors be embedded in a shared normative order that leaves them mutually susceptible to and dependent on each other for dignity, honor, and approval. In this view actors can be pressed into action, solidarity, and conformity because of their concern with nurturing their self-image and protecting their self-interest. Actors use norms and symbols to influence the actions and directions of others, and they are able to use such means because others are susceptible to them and desire to maintain a public face. The care that Arab leaders took to guard their images reflected a more generalized desire for social approval; such desires steered them away from crudely self-interested behavior and encouraged them to contribute to the maintenance and collective goals of the group. And if one leader’s behavior seemed out of step with the emerging consensus, the other Arab leaders were more than willing to remind him of his obligations.

Second, Arab governments directed their message not only at other Arab leaders but also at their societies. If an Arab government wanted to use persuasion to convince another Arab leader of the error of his ways, they could always use private, discrete, diplomatic démarches. But their public broadcasts and pronouncements were also targeted at other Arab societies. In short, one way to influence another Arab state’s foreign policy was to press the norms and symbols of Arabism in order to mobilize its citizens, thus raising the domestic political costs (or benefits) of a particular course of action. This suggests one way that Arab public opinion shaped the policies and actions of Arab leaders. But Arab leaders did not always wait until the populace was mobilized to factor public opinion into their decisions. Arab leaders were constantly managing their impressions and images, and they understood from past examples of transgressions that their behavior would be judged harshly if they were perceived as venturing outside the consensus. Stated somewhat differently, they engaged in “role-taking behavior.” ₅₆ Arab leaders saw themselves as others saw them; they recognized that their societies expected them to conform to the social roles that they occupied, and so they came to accept those roles. In general, symbolic sanctions were effective because the actors wanted to maintain their dignity, honor, and face, and if self-image was not enough to bring them along, survival instinct surely would.

This raises an important consideration. Although all Arab leaders participated in the game of Arab politics, not all were equally active, equally desirous of accumulating the symbols of Arabism, equally likely to discharge them against their rivals, or equally vulnerable to such symbolic weaponry. The historical and regional variations on such matters are obvious, and a key variable here is domestic politics in general and the domestic vulnerability of Arab governments to symbolic sanctions in particular. It will be difficult to provide an a priori linkage between domestic configurations and foreign policy outputs because of foreign policy and domestic policy substitutability, ₅₇ and because no immediate or well-defined relationship exists between Arabism and the Arab state’s position during a dialogue outside a specified historical setting. This recognition begs for a healthy dose of induction.

Still, Arab states were more likely to participate in these dialogues, and were more involved in symbolic accumulation and susceptible to symbolic sanctioning, under two conditions. The first was when the political identities of the population were more stirred by the symbols of Arabism than they were by the symbols of the state. Arab states’ interest in appropriating the symbols of Arabism was piqued to the extent that those symbols resonated with the citizenry at large and key societal actors; under such conditions Arab governments had a direct political incentive to be associated with and to appropriate such symbols. The second condition was the extent to which the norm that emerged from the dialogue affected the regime’s political, strategic, or economic interests. An Arab government was more likely to become embroiled and enmeshed in these dialogues when its interests were implicated. Not all conversations were of equal interest or importance to Arab leaders because they were not equally threatened by or likely to profit from the outcome. ₅₈ In general, Arab states were more likely to be involved in these dialogues if the symbols of Arabism challenged the symbols of the state and the eventual definition of the event affected the government’s interests.

Because Arab leaders were involved in a competitive situation, the possibility of symbolic competition was ever present. This form of symbolic exchange occurred when Arab leaders wanted to demonstrate that they were more ready to commit and contribute to Arab nationalism than were other Arab leaders. Consider the following description of the symbolic competition before the 1967 Arab-Israeli War:

In the campaign Nasser was saying that Wasfi Tal [the Jordanian foreign minister] was a spy for the British and the CIA. The Jordanians were being branded all the time as imperialist tools, traitors, and spies. The continuous and severely hostile campaign affected the stability of the regime and its very survival. So they [the Jordanians] had to reply. They devised this method of trying to show that it’s not they who were allies of Israel and imperialist tools but that Nasser was not actually serious in wanting to confront Israel or in being the real champion of the Palestine cause, because he was shielding himself behind UNEF [the United Nations Emergency Force, which separated the Israeli and Egyptian armies in the Sinai]. Of course, many people, many wise people, in Jordan realized that indeed this was playing with fire, because it would push Nasser into taking action which they knew was detrimental to the Arab cause. But there was no way, or no other way, let me say, of defending themselves against the charges that were pouring out against them day and night from Egypt and other propaganda machines. 59

Symbolic competition could ensnare even those Arab leaders who believed that such competition was harmful to their collective and personal fates. But resisting the lure of competition was difficult because resisting meant inviting charges of being a charlatan and of being unwilling to contribute to the cause. Call this the logic of a “symbolic” security dilemma.

An artifact of this competition was that Arab leaders created a more austere interpretation of Arabism. Who was ready to sacrifice his sovereignty for unification? Willing to wage war against Zionism and for Palestine? Committed to no alliances with the West? Arab leaders had no better way to demonstrate their leadership credentials, candidacy, or character than by proclaiming a defiant or strident stand on such issues, and they had no better way to embarrass an opponent than by claiming a willingness to sacrifice when others exhibited reluctance to do so. In this competitive dynamic, Arab leaders were continually forced to decide whether to fold ’em, see ’em, or raise ’em. Symbolic competition, then, was a high-stakes poker game: to fold was to allow another Arab state to determine the norm of Arabism and to acknowledge one’s shortcomings, to see that bid might be to commit to a unwanted course of action, and to raise it was to hope that one’s bluff would not be called and that action would not be required. Such competitive moments are reminders that all encounters are something of a gamble, for they are laden with opportunities and dangers because of having to lay oneself on the line and because of the potentially dramatic consequences for one’s relationship to others after the encounter is over. ₆₀

Yet sometimes those who live by the symbol and the speech are expected to deliver with action and material commitments. An Arab leader who identified with the symbols and slogans of Arabism might at some point be asked to make good on this talk or endanger his reputation and standing. This can be understood as symbolic entrapment because during the “decision making process . . . individuals escalate their commitment to a previously chosen, though failing, course of action in order to justify or ‘make good on’ prior investments.” ₆₁ In other words, an initial association with the wider normative expectations later restricts what the actor can do because of reputational considerations. Arab officials sometimes called this one-upmanship: as they competed to demonstrate who was the most loyal supporter of Arabism, they risked having to make good on their promises in order to maintain their reputation, even at the sacrifice of their other interests. As Nasser found to his subsequent horror in the events preceding the June 1967 war, his attempt to maintain his Arab nationalist credentials by acting defiantly and aggressively toward Israel led to an unwanted war, which subsequently undermined the Egyptian state’s and his regime’s interests. Using the symbols of the wider community to portray themselves as adhering to, and a rival as departing from, the goals and aspirations of Arab nationalism meant that at some level they were obligated to honor its norms even when doing so might sacrifice other valued interests. Symbols could be double-edged swords.

Perhaps the distinguishing sign that the dialogue was coming to a close was the yielding of conflict to exchanges of congratulations for having demonstrated eternal commitment to the Arab nation. The intense episode of conflict, then, frequently succumbed in a somewhat clumsy manner to proclamations of solidarity. However contrived this spirit of cooperation might appear, once Arab states agreed on a norm, they oriented themselves in each other’s direction and coordinated their policies. ₆₂ The stabilized norm, then, served as a focal point for organizing their actions and for considering their identity. To be sure, the level of commitment was not awe inspiring much of the time, but such evaluative measures run the risk of denying the very real and impressive movement toward solidarity and the substantial political and material contributions to central and defining Arab issues. ₆₃

Inter-Arab cooperation is best approached from the vantage point of the relationship between the interests of actors and the structure in which they are embedded. Collective action was not a testimony to heroic efforts of atomized actors who stood outside society or who acted because of norm internalization, socialization, or value consensus. Rather collective action and mobilization were largely accomplished by Arab officials who recognized that they were vulnerable to enforcement action and sanctions if they violated the norms of Arabism. The sanctions might be financial, political, military, or symbolic, and sometimes the methods of enforcement were formally institutionalized, whereas at others they depended on spontaneous and informal organization. The enforcer of these norms might be international and/or domestic actors. But in any event enforcement mechanisms and sanctions usually encouraged compliance with the group’s norms. ₆₄ The rhythm of the dialogue was defined by a prolonged period of normative contestation, followed by a rapid burst of normative consensus.

The game of Arab politics was played by self-interested Arab leaders whose understanding of how to play the game was shaped by the underlying structure defined by Arabism and sovereignty. This game commenced when an event forced Arab leaders to reconsider a norm of Arabism. Arab governments used strategic frames to situate the event in a particular way; as they situated it conceptually and historically, they attempted to draw a line between their proposed response, the norms of Arabism, and the regime’s interests. As they framed that event, moreover, they transformed it into a symbol that could enhance their own standing and be wielded against their rivals. In this fundamental way symbolic politics was bound up with social control, a defining element of the state’s attempt to protect its domestic situation and influence the foreign policies of other Arab states. Through strategic framing and symbolic exchanges Arab leaders competed to stabilize the norms of Arabism.

The norms of Arabism encouraged and sometimes dragged Arab governments toward cooperation, collective action, and some show of solidarity; provided a symbolic and literal brake on the centrifugal tendencies toward narrow self-interest; and represented a principal reason behind the sustained cooperation amid apparent acrimony. Any tendency toward crass self-interest among Arab leaders and centrifugal tendencies in Arab politics were checked by the recognition that the stated goals of Arab leaders and their available means were guided and limited by the norms of Arabism, as defined at that particular historical moment. As occupants of social roles, Arab leaders, like all actors, could manipulate them. But only within reason. Their desire to be associated with the symbols of Arabism, to be viewed as operating according to its norms, and their susceptibility to symbolic sanctions explain why they would subscribe to the norms of Arabism, whether they were sincere champions or not.

 

The Changing Game of Arab Politics

During a dialogue Arab states were discussing whether to repair or revise a norm of Arabism. Thus normative structures were not fixed and permanent entities but were produced through social and strategic interactions. Arab nationalism was always a work in progress, pushed along and amended by the strategic and symbolic exchanges by Arab states. But such changes were not an everyday occurrence. Not every interaction and exchange produced a new set of arrangements and rules of the game; powerful forces made it quite likely that the status quo would prevail. After all, the structure in which Arab states were embedded constrained their behavior and provided incentives that increased the probability that the previously established norms would be repaired.

But in some instances Arab states revised a norm of Arabism, and when they did so, they also reconsidered their political identities. Crises and dialogues, in this regard, can be a place of “punctuated equilibrium,” a point of passage from one identity to another. ₆₅ Because Arab states were addressing the relationship between the desired regional order, the norms of Arabism, and their own political identities, the repair or transformation of the norms of Arabism also implicated their identities. As G. H. Mead observed:

The changes that we make in the social order in which we are implicated necessarily involve our also making changes in ourselves. The social conflicts among the individual members of a given organized human society, which, for their removal, necessitate conscious or intelligent reconstructions and modifications of that society by those individuals, also and equally necessitate such reconstructions or modifications by those individuals of their own selves and personalities. 66

The norms of Arabism were tied to their Arab identities, and as they made adjustments in those norms, they also revised how they understood and presented themselves. The post–Gulf War debate about the parameters of the region—whether it is Mediterranean, Arab, or Middle Eastern—testify dramatically to how the debate about the regional order was inextricably tied to their identities. The historical analysis therefore will consider how Arab states revised their identities as they revised the norms of Arabism.

A central claim of this book is that there is new environment to Arab politics, one largely created by and through the actions of Arab states; this environment can be characterized as normative fragmentation because Arab states are no longer as pressed toward mutual orientation because of the decline of underlying shared values and identities. The extent to which Arab leaders feel the weight of expectations derived from the norms of Arabism, the degree to which they are more concerned with being perceived as working for the Arab nation than for the state, their desire to determine the understanding of the event, their necessity of appearing to act in concert with other Arab leaders in the pursuit of common ends—these and others features of Arab politics have dissipated in the recent past and reflect a decline in the salience of the Arab identity.

Why did the interactions of Arab states, although seemingly informed by a sense of community and shared purpose, lead to estrangement rather than collaboration, difference rather than fraternity? The reasons can be found in a structure of Arab politics that encouraged survival-seeking Arab leaders to act in ways that hastened individuation. Arab leaders wanted to be associated with Arab nationalism for a variety of reasons, including the accumulation of the symbolic capital that was vital for regime survival. But the more they leaned on Arab nationalism to legitimate their rule, and the more their societies held them accountable to the norms of Arabism, the more vulnerable they were to the encroachments and symbolic sanctions of other Arab leaders. The result was that Arab nationalism was both an aid and a threat to domestic stability, the government’s autonomy, and perhaps even the state’s sovereignty.

Under such circumstances Arab leaders could be expected to first try to create an Arab nationalism that could legitimate their separate authorities and second to portray other Arab leaders as potential threats. By stressing the legitimacy of each Arab state and the differences between them, and by doing so in fairly aggressive ways, Arab leaders created the conditions for individuation and fragmentation. Although the remainder of the book explores the dynamics that led to this outcome, let me offer two preliminary observations.

Arab leaders frequently attempted to define the norms of Arabism and to frame the events of the day in a manner that would protect the regime’s interests. This framing process often included Arab leaders distinguishing their interpretation of these events from those of others. Sometimes this attempted distinction was done through more passive and defensive strategies; for instance, they appealed to sovereignty and pluralism in Arab politics in order to protect themselves from the normative interventions, assaults, and symbolic sanctioning of other Arab leaders. King Hussein, for example, continually echoed a theme, strongly voiced during the heyday of unification, that Arab nationalism allowed for different political “experiments.” Sovereignty here was premised on the recognition that although Arabs were, after all, Arabs, they were also citizens of particular territorial states to which they owed additional political obligations and loyalties that must be recognized.

But this framing process was competitive, and Arab governments sometimes adopted a more aggressive stance as they championed their interpretation by portraying a rival as part of the problem, not the solution, and perhaps even covertly complicit in the threat to the Arab nation. Most of these dialogues brought out the worst brand of unity among Arab leaders, one based on mutual animosity and name calling. Accordingly, Arab leaders encouraged differentiation to the extent that they portrayed each other as threats. Although they were usually careful to distinguish between the population and the regime, the overall result was to accentuate their separate paths. Differences and threats contributed to the development of distinct identities and normative fragmentation. ₆₇

Further, Arab governments frequently viewed all-Arab institutions and projects as an unwanted constraint on their actions and as a potential threat to domestic stability. The result was that they had an incentive to create alliances and institutions that preserved the appearance of collective action without really delivering it—or at least delivering it to its fullest, and expected, expression. By creating institutions that gave the appearance of action but delivered little of it, Arabism came to be identified with the self-interested and manipulative acts of Arab states. Arabism soon acquired a normative deficit. This is most famous in the constant refrain that a gap existed between ideology and practice in Arab politics and that this gap manufactured widespread and regionwide disillusionment with Arabism. ₆₈ Thus the danger for Arab governments was that by routinely failing to follow through on Arabist-inspired rhetoric and promises, they undermined the symbols and norms that they used to prop up their legitimacy. The end result was to tarnish such projects. As individuals came to have less confidence in the viability of Arabism, or at least as long as this generation of leaders was in power, individuals increased their identification with and orientation toward the territorial state.

Yet the transformation of these norms was not a wholly interstate affair. If over time Arab leaders were presenting themselves differently, if they appeared less inhibited about asserting the interests of the state, we can thank not only strategic interaction but also state formation. Although nearly all Arab states relied on the language of Arabism to further their domestic and foreign policy objectives, they also engaged in state formation that was designed to transfer subnational and transnational identities to the state and therefore to enhance the state’s legitimacy and domestic stability. State formation projects were instrumental in producing new political identities, shrinking the salience of transnational loyalties; to the extent that such ideational shifts occurred among the population Arab governments had a greater incentive to act consistently with broad parameters of sovereignty and to articulate the discourse of state, as opposed to Arab national, interests. As a general rule, the search for integration at the local level has translated into increased fragmentation and a decreased sense of collective obligation at the regional level. ₆₉ But to understand why state formation in this instance led to fragmentation requires a focus on inter-Arab interactions. The historical analysis therefore focuses on dialogues as a source of norm creation and inductively traces how state-society relations contributed to the state’s foreign policy at such moments.

In general, interstate interactions and state formation processes begin to suggest why dialogues about regional order encouraged (1) a revolution in identities—a transfer of loyalties from subnational and transnational affiliations to the state; (2) a closer identification by citizens with the symbols of the state relative to other transnational symbols; (3) the development of a centrist understanding of Arabism that was consistent with sovereignty and statist identities; and (4) normative fragmentation. Regional and domestic practices transformed the structure in which future interactions played themselves out and unfolded.

This chapter offered a conceptual framework for analyzing dialogues in Arab politics and observed how these dialogues offer both a window into the debates about regional order and a method for tracing the change that has taken place in the organization of Arab politics. The remainder of the book uses these categories to observe how Arab states have been involved in an ongoing series of negotiations over their desired regional order, to understand how these negotiations shaped basic patterns of conflict and cooperation as Arab leaders attempted to frame the events of the day and used symbolic exchanges to stabilize a particular order, and to explore how and why these dialogues represented a source of normative transformation and ultimately fragmentation.

 

Endotes

Note 1: Erving Goffman, Strategic Interaction (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1969), pp. 100&-;101. Back.

Note 2: Martin Hollis, The Philosophy of Social Science: An Introduction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 159. Also see Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 98–100. Back.

Note 3: Hollis, Philosophy of Social Science, p. 159–60. Also see Martin Hollis, The Cunning of Reason (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 140; Goffman, Strategic Interaction, p. 113; K. M. Fierke, “Multiple Identities, Interfacing Games: The Social Construction of Western Action in Bosnia,” European Journal of International Relations 2, no. 4 (1996): 470–71; Roger Hurwitz, “Strategic and Social Fictions in the Prisoner’s Dilemma,” in J. Der Derian and M. Shapiro, eds., International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics, pp. 113–34 (New York: Lexington, 1989); Aaron Wildavsky, “Indispensable Framework or Just Another Ideology? Prisoner’s Dilemma as an Antihierarchical Game,” Rationality and Society 4, no. 1 (1992): 8–23. Back.

Note 4: A tenet of social interaction and social exchange models is that the social structure in which actors find themselves will shape the strategic interaction that follows. See Peter Blau, Exchange and Power in Social Life (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1992), p. ix; Linda Molm, Coercive Power in Social Exchange (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 11–13. Back.

Note 5: On the importance of ascertaining the identity of the players before trying the game, see Goffman, Strategic Interaction; Frederick Frey, “The Problem of Actor Designation in Political Analysis,” Comparative Political Studies 17, no. 2 (January 1985): 127–52; Nicos Mouzelis, Sociological Theory: What Went Wrong? (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 37; Wildavsky, “Indispensable Framework.” Back.

Note 6: Jeffrey Alexander, Twenty Lectures (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 170; Barry Barnes, The Elements of Social Theory (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 14. Back.

Note 7: Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 288. Back.

Note 8: Structures contain normative and material elements, which drive complex overlying rules or schemas—that is, they have “generalizable procedures applied in the enactment/reproduction of social life,” and human and nonhuman resources. William Sewall, “A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation,” American Journal of Sociology 98, no. 1 (July 1992): 8. Back.

Note 9: For the concept of roles see Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (New York: Anchor, 1967), pp. 72–74; Sheldon Stryker, Symbolic Interactionism: A Social Structural Perspective (Reading, Mass.: Benjamin/Cummings, 1980), p. 57; Heinrich Popitz, “The Concept of Social Role as an Element of Sociological Theory,” in J. A. Jackson, ed., Roles (London: Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 16–17; Ralf Dahrendorf, “Homo Sociologicus,” in R. Dahrendorf, Essays in the Theory of Society, pp. 15–25 (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1968); Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Anchor, 1959); Hollis, Philosophy of Social Science, chap. 8. Back.

Note 10: See Dennis Wrong, The Problem of Order (New York: Free Press, 1994), p. 46; J. R. Landis, Sociology: Concepts and Characteristics (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1971), p. 288; Kent Bach, “Analytic Social Philosophy: Basic Concepts,” Journal of the Theory of Social Behavior 5, no. 2 (October 1975): 196. Back.

Note 11: Barnes, Elements of Social Theory, p. 55. Back.

Note 12: For this distinction see Hollis, Cunning of Reason, pp. 137–41, and Philosophy of Social Science, pp. 152–53; Brian Fay, Contemporary Philosophy of Social Sciences (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1996), pp. 65–67; John Heritage, “Ethnomethodology,” in A. Giddens and J. Turner, eds., Social Theory Today (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 240–48; Ron Jepperson, Alexander Wendt, and Peter Katzenstein, “Norms, Identity, and Culture in National Security,” in P. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, pp. 33–75 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987). Back.

Note 13: Tom Burns, Erving Goffman (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 40. Back.

Note 14: In this respect Arab states experienced “role conflict,” a situation in which actors occupy more than one social role, which confers contradictory behavioral expectations. “Such expectations may call for incompatible performances; they may require that one hold two norms or values which logically call for opposing behaviors; or they may demand that one role necessitates the expenditure of time and energy such that it is difficult or impossible to carry out the obligations of another role.” Stryker, Symbolic Interactionism, p. 73. Also see Hollis, Philosophy of Social Science, chap. 8; Ralph Turner, “The Role and the Person,” American Journal of Sociology 84, no. 1 (July 1978): 1–23. In this view Arab states were expected to reconcile the potentially contradictory expectations of Arabism and sovereignty. For this argument see Michael Barnett, “Institutions, Roles, and Disorder: The Case of the Arab States System,” International Studies Quarterly 37 (September 1993): 271–96. Back.

Note 15: John Ruggie, “Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity,” in R. Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 145. Back.

Note 16: See Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy Is What States Make of It: Anarchy and the Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization 46, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 391–426; Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (New York: Macmillan, 1977); Thomas Biersteker and Cynthia Weber, “The Social Construction of State Sovereignty,” in T. Biersteker and C. Weber, eds., State Sovereignty as Social Construct, pp. 1–21 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg, “Why Africa’s Weak States Persist: The Empirical and Juridical in Statehood,” World Politics 35, no. 1 (October 1982): 1–24. Back.

Note 17: Identities are social—shaped by the actor’s interaction with and relationship to others; the process of interacting and participating within an institutional context, which the actor ascribes to a particular identity, takes on a conception of one’s self in relationship to another. George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934). On national and state identities that build on this definition, see Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). On corporate identities see Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1986); David Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 17–19. Back.

Note 18: In The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1981) Barry Rubin similarly argues that Arabism shaped the definition of state interests. On identities as the basis of interests see Mark Granovetter, “Problems of Explanation in Economic Sociology,” in N. Nohria and R. Eccles, eds., Networks and Organizations: Structure, Form, and Action, pp. 25–56 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 1995). Back.

Note 19: Walid Khalidi, “Thinking the Unthinkable: A Sovereign Palestinian State,” Foreign Affairs 56, no. 4 (July 1978): 696. Back.

Note 20: Kamal Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Modern Lebanon Reconsidered (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 55. Back.

Note 21: Fay, Contemporary Philosophy, p. 65. Back.

Note 22: Also see Nicos Mouzelis, “The Interaction Order and the Micro-Macro Distinction,” Sociological Theory 10, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 126; Hollis, Cunning of Reason and Philosophy of Social Science; Stryker, Symbolic Interactionism; Peter Berger, Invitation to Sociology (New York: Anchor, 1963), pp. 135–36; Donald Searing, “Roles, Rules, and Rationality in the New Institutionalism,” American Political Science Review 85, no. 4 (December 1991): 1239–60. Back.

Note 23: Goffman, Presentation of Self, p. 251. Back.

Note 24: Also see Erving Goffman, “The Interaction Order,” American Sociological Review 48, no. 1 (February 1983): 5–7; Randall Collins, “On the Microfoundations of Macrosociology,” American Journal of Sociology 86, no. 5 (March 1981): 984–1014; Blau, Exchange and Power, chap. 3. Back.

Note 25: For a more general argument regarding how the logic of regime survival imprints the state’s foreign and domestic policies, see Mohammad Ayoob, Third World Security Predicament (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Reinner, 1994); Christopher Clapham, Africa and the International System: The Politics of State Survival (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Back.

Note 26: Adnan Abu Odeh, interview by author, Washington, D.C., April 2, 1996. Back.

Note 27: Michael Hudson, Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977). Back.

Note 28: Nazih Ayubi, Overstating the Arab State (London: I. B. Taurus, 1995). Back.

Note 29: For similar analytic points see Blau, Exchange and Power; Amartya Sen, “Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of Economic Theory,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 6 (Summer 1977): 317–44; Timur Kuran, “Private and Public Preferences,” Economics and Philosophy 6 (1990): 1–26. Back.

Note 30: Scholars from a variety of disciplines and theoretical dispositions have considered how the resources that are valued and exchanged may be cultural or symbolic. See Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (New York: Norton, 1967); Marshall Sahlins, Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), chap. 5; Karen Cook, Jodi O’Brien, and Peter Kollock, “Exchange Theory: A Blueprint for Structure and Process,” in G. Ritzer, ed., Frontiers of Social Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), p. 169; Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Blau, Exchange and Power, p. 132; Karen Cook, ed., Social Exchange Theory (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1986); Randall Collins, “Conflict Theory and the Advance of Macrohistorical Sociology,” in Ritzer, Frontiers of Social Theory, pp. 69–87; Mouzelis, Sociological Theory, pp. 143–45; Molm, Coercive Power, p. 15. Back.

Note 31: Arab politics is not unique here, for state elites in the context of newly developing societies have tended to use symbols for nation building. See Christopher Clapham, Third World Politics (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1985); Clifford Geertz, “After the Revolution: The Fate of Nationalism in the New States,” in C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 193–234 (New York: Basic Books, 1973). Back.

Note 32: Mead, Mind, Self, and Society; Anselm Strauss, Negotiations (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1978), p. 215; Barnes, Elements of Social Theory, p. 58, and The Nature of Power (Cambridge, Mass.: Polity, 1988). For various discussions and definitions of the “problem of order,” see Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (New York: Free Press, 1968), pp. 89–91; Wrong, Problem of Order, chap. 3; Alexander, Twenty Lectures, chap. 1; John Rhoads, Critical Issues in Social Theory (College Station: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), chap. 5; Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p. 31. Back.

Note 33: Barnes, Elements of Social Theory, p. 55. Back.

Note 34: Stewart Clegg called this “strategic agency.” “Power and Institutions in Organization Theory,” in J. Hassard and M. Parker, eds., Toward a New Theory of Organizations (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 36. Back.

Note 35: Goffman, Presentation of Self, pp. 8–14. Back.

Note 36: Ann Swidler, “Culture in Action: Symbols in Strategies,” American Sociological Review 51, no. 2 (April 1986): 273–86. Back.

Note 37: George Simmel, Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliations (New York: Free Press, 1955), chap. 2; Marc Howard Ross, Culture of Conflict (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993); Blau, Power and Exchange; Molm, Coercive Power. Back.

Note 38: or a general statement see Friedrich Kratochwil, Norms, Rules, and Decisions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 11. Back.

Note 39: As Martha Finnemore notes, “Normative claims become powerful and prevail by being persuasive; being persuasive means grounding claims in existing norms in ways that emphasize normative congruence and coherence.” National Interests in International Society (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 141. Back.

Note 40: Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), p. 21; Murray Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Jonathan Turner, A Theory of Social Interaction (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 108–13. Also see David Snow and Robert Benford, “Master Frames and Cycles of Protest,” in A. Morris and C. Mueller, eds., Frontiers in Social Movement Theory (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 138; David Snow et al., “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation,” American Sociological Review 51, no. 3 (August 1986): 464; Morris and Mueller, Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. Back.

Note 41: Mayer N. Zald, “Culture, Ideology, and Strategic Framing,” in D. McAdam, J. McCarthy, and M. Zald, eds., Comparative Perspective on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framing (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 262. Back.

Note 42: Donald Schön and Martin Rein, Frame Reflection: Toward the Resolution of Intractable Policy Controversies (New York: Basic Books, 1994), p. 29. Back.

Note 43: Doug McAdam, John McCarthy, and Mayer Zald, “Introduction,” in McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald, Comparative Perspective on Social Movements, p. 6. Back.

Note 44: Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 119. Also see Swidler, “Culture in Action”; Jean Cohen, “Strategy or Identity: New Theoretical Paradigms and Contemporary Social Movements,” Social Research 52, no. 4 (Winter 1985): 663–716. Back.

Note 45: Jerome Bruner, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 66. Also see Scott Hunt, Robert Benford, and David Snow, “Identity Fields: Framing Processes and the Social Construction of Movement Identities,” in E. Larana, H. Johnston, and J. Gusfield, eds., New Social Movements: From Ideology to Identity (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), pp. 190, 193, 198. Back.

Note 46: Tarrow, Power in Movement, pp. 122–23; William Gamson, Talking Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), chap. 3. Back.

Note 47: On symbols and historical movements and social organization see Sherry Ortner, “Theory in Anthropology Since the 1960s,” Comparative Study of Society and History 26, no. 1 (January 1984): 126–66; Zdzislaw Mach, Symbols, Conflict, and Identity (New York: State University of New York Press, 1994); A. P. Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community (New York: Tavistock, 1985); Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power. Back.

Note 48: Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power; Hunt, Bedford, and Snow, “Identity Fields,” p. 195. Back.

Note 49: Mach, Symbols, Conflict, and Identity, p. 36; Robert Benford and Scott Hunt, “Dramaturgy and Social Movements: The Social Construction and Communication of Power,” Sociological Inquiry 62, no. 1 (February 1992): 36–55. Back.

Note 50: Cohen, Symbolic Construction of Community; David Kertzer, Politics and Symbols (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996); Dale Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), chap. 1; Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). Back.

Note 51: Mach, Symbols, Conflict, and Identity, p. 37. Back.

Note 52: Barnes, Elements of Social Theory, pp. 77–78; also see Michael Hechter, Principles of Group Solidarity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), p. 157. Back.

Note 53: Tarrow, Power in Movement, p. 123. Back.

Note 54: Amin Hewedy, interview by author, Cairo, March 16, 1996 Back.

Note 55: Mohamed Heikal, The Cairo Documents (New York: Doubleday, 1973), quoted in Marc Lynch, Contested Identity and Security: The International Politics of Jordanian Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, forcoming). Back.

Note 56: Mead, Mind, Self, and Society. Back.

Note 57: Benjamin Most and Harvey Starr, “International Relations Theory, Foreign Policy Substitutability, and ‘Nice’ Laws,” World Politics 36, no. 3 (April 1984): 383–406. Back.

Note 58: Stated more formally, the “more dependent a member is on the group (that is, the more costly it is to leave the group in terms of opportunities foregone), the greater the tax that the member will be prepared to bear for a given joint good.” Hechter, Principles of Group Solidarity, p. 10; emphasis in original. Back.

Note 59: Samir Mutawi, “The Jordanian Response,” in R. Parker, ed., The Six-Day War: A Retrospective (Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 1996), p. 179. Back.

Note 60: Goffman, Presentation of Self. Back.

Note 61: Joel Brockner and Jeffrey Rubin, Entrapment in Escalating Conflicts: A Social Psychological Analysis (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1985), chap. 6, p. 5. Back.

Note 62: For general statements on the relationship between identity and collective action, see Craig Calhoun, “Problem of Identity in Collective Action,” in J. Huber, ed., Micro-Macro Linkages in Collective Action, pp. 51–75 (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1991); Alexander Wendt, “Collective Identity Formation and the International State,” American Political Science Review 88, 2 (June 1994): 384–96; Morris and Mueller, Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. Back.

Note 63: According to Barnes, “sanctioning the collective good may or may not effect its enactment, depending upon the individual sacrifice required and the power and the coherence of the sanctioning.” Elements of Social Theory, p. 84. Back.

Note 64: Goffman, “Interactive Order,” pp. 5–7. Back.

Note 65: William Sewall, “Three Temporalities: Toward an Eventful Sociology,” in T. McDonald, ed., The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences, pp. 245–80 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); Andrew Abbott, “Sequences of Social Events: Concepts and Methods for the Analysis of Order in Social Processes,” Historical Methods 16, no. 4 (Fall 1983): 129–46; Peter Burke, “Identity Processes and Social Stress,” American Sociological Review 56, no. 4 (December 1991): 836–49. On interaction and new roles, identities, and interests, see Wendt, “Anarchy Is What States Make of It,” pp. 406–407; George McCall and J. L. Simmons, Identities and Interactions (New York: Free Press, 1978); Nicholas Abercrombie, “Knowledge, Order, and Human Autonomy,” in J. Hunter and S. Ainlay, eds., Making Sense of Modern Times: Peter Berger and the Vision of Interpretive Sociology (New York: RKP, 1986), pp. 18–19; Turner, Theory of Social Interaction. Back.

Note 66: Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, p. 309. Back.

Note 67: William Connolly, Identity/Difference (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991). Back.

Note 68: Clement Henry Moore, “On Theory and Practice Among the Arabs,” World Politics 24, no. 1 (October 1971): 106–26; Fouad Ajami, “The End of Pan-Arabism,” Foreign Affairs 57, no. 5 (Winter 1978–79): 355–73. Back.

Note 69: Giacomo Luciani and Ghassan Salame, “The Politics of Arab Integration,” in G. Luciani, ed., The Arab State, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 398. State formation can occur through myriad activities and processes, but figuring centrally in the comparative politics and the Middle Eastern literatures are material incentives, the presence of external threats, and the manipulation of symbols. On economic and political developments see F. Gregory Gause III, “Sovereignty, Statecraft, and Stability in the Middle East,” Journal of International Affairs 45, no. 2 (Winter 1992): 460; Malik Mufti, Sovereign Creations: Pan-Arabism and Political Order in Syria and Iraq (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996). See Eric Davis, “State Building in Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf Crisis,” in M. Midlarsky, ed., The Internationalization of Communal Strife, pp. 69–92 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1992), for the relationship between war and Iraqi nation building. On symbols see Eric Davis and Nicolas Gavrielides, ed., Statecraft in the Middle East: Oil, Historical Memory, and Popular Culture (Miami: Florida International University Press, 1991); Samir al-Khalil, The Monument: Art, Vulgarity, and Responsibility in Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Neil Asher Silberman, Between Past and Present: Archeology, Ideology, and Nationalism in the Modern Middle East (New York: Holt, 1989); Roger Owen, State, Power, and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 92; Amatzia Baram, “Territorial Nationalism in the Middle East,” Middle Eastern Studies 26, no. 4 (October 1990): 426–27. Back.