|
|
|
|
Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional Order
Michael N. Barnett
Fall 1998
8. The Making and Unmaking of Arab Politics
Arab states and societies have been involved in an ongoing debate about the desired regional order, imagining different possibilities for the future as they contemplated their present circumstances and reevaluated the past. As Arab states negotiated their response to the fundamental challenges of the day, as they strategically and symbolically jousted to establish those norms that would guard their interests, they also defined who they were, delineated the actions that were permissible and comprehensible, and generated a map of possible worlds. But these negotiations and dialogues have left a contemporary map that is far different from the one that existed decades ago. Arab states created a world of their own making and unmaking.
This narrative, organized as it is around dialogues in regional order, represents a decided alternative to the more familiar and accepted realist interpretation of Arab politics. The realist narrative begins with the presumption of anarchy and proceeds to examine how states attempt to maximize or maintain their security or power while constrained by the international distribution of power. This realist narrative leads to a consideration of different sorts of international events and processes, including the rise and decline of state power, the creation and dissolution of alliances, and the causes and consequences of wars. By importing these enduring themes to the study of Arab politics, realist-inspired accounts have aspired to demonstrate how the same concepts and theories that provide leverage over other regions and periods can be of equal value in evaluating Arab politics. In doing so they have thankfully corrected the unfortunate but all too frequently held insinuation that the region is driven by “irrational” forces that have their roots in its culture, religion, and ideology. But these realist-inspired frameworks come at a cost: they have generally shoehorned the history of Arab politics into the boxes provided by realism and ignored the social foundations of inter-Arab politics. The result is that although the region looks more familiar to many students of international politics, it looks exotic to students of the region.
My constructivist interpretation of inter-Arab politics is intended to capture what makes Arab politics distinctive and what makes it familiar. Arabism and not anarchy, I have argued, informs the debate about the desired regional order, the social, strategic, and symbolic interactions that unfold between Arab states that in turn are responsible for the changing norms of Arabism and ultimately normative fragmentation. But to claim that Arabism is part of the structure of regional politics is not to encourage a return to the idiographic or to assert that the region can be understood only in terms of categories that are specific to the region. Far from it. Arab politics has a social foundation that is culturally distinctive yet theoretically recognizable. Arabism will not exist anywhere except where an Arab identity exists, but how Arabism played itself out, or rather was played out, in inter-Arab politics is comprehensible from a broader framework. In short, this constructivist approach offers a set of analytic categories that attempt to approach Arab politics on its own terms while recognizing that Arab politics is intelligible from macrohistorical concepts and categories. 1
But this is a two-way street. The history of Arab politics can contribute to contemporary debates in international politics. The recognition that debates about the desired regional order also implicate the identities of the members, the prominence of symbolic exchanges, and how these interactions sustained and transformed the fabric of the group are not unique to Arab politics. They exist within most group settings. They may be more prominent, or at least more easily identifiable, in Arab politics for what may be historically specific reasons, but their prominence helps illuminate some features of global politics that have largely been ignored by scholars of international politics. By building a theoretical bridge between the history of Arab politics and theories of international politics, my modestly ambitious goal is to suggest how international relations theory can help us to better understand the making and unmaking of Arab politics and how its making and unmaking can help scholars of international relations theory think more analytically and creatively about global politics. This final chapter speaks to these twin themes.
The Game of Arab Politics
How Arab leaders played the game of Arab politics depended on the nature of that game. The pattern of inter-Arab interactions during a dialogue was defined by the underlying normative structure, in this instance Arabism and sovereignty, which shaped the Arab states’ identities, interests, strategic interaction, and technologies of power. That Arabism and not anarchy defines the structure of Arab politics is consistent with the claim that international politics is comprised of both social and material elements. 2 This structure, moreover, is a source of identities and the interests of the actors. 3 Actors are not weightless. They are social and historical beings, and their identities and interests are produced by a historical and institutional context.
Arab politics is Arab because of Arabism. Chapter 3 described the historical processes that generated Arabism and constructed the categories of Arab states with an accompanying set of interests. Intellectual movements, a series of political shocks, and competitive rivalries between Arab leaders and their societies created a set of concerns that came to be defined as Arab national interests. The West’s segmentation of the Arab nation into separate territories generated the fledgling demand for unification; Britain’s and France’s hold over these states established an Arab nationalism that became associated with anticolonialism and independence; and the Zionist movement made Palestine a defining Arab national concern. By the mid-1940s the Arab political identity was a chief category for political identification, mobilization, and organization. From then on Arab states routinely proclaimed themselves and identified each other as representatives of the Arab nation, vowed to follow its interests, and were obligated to follow its norms. The normative structure shaped by Arabism, then, is a source of identity and interests and contains the socially determined norms that restrict and guide what is considered to acceptable play.
Although Arab leaders and other social movements were responsible for creating and reproducing Arabism, it was in many respects external to them, a constraint on and potential aid to their objectives. Arab nationalism constrained Arab governments, circumscribing what was politically viable. Yet Arabism was not only a constraint. It also represented a resource that the Arab governments could use for other ends. Nasser might have believed that he was good for Arab nationalism, but he also knew that Arab nationalism could be good for him. Arab leaders, in short, simultaneously felt the weight of these normative expectations and manipulated them for ulterior purposes. Arabism could be a constraint one moment and an instrument the next. Arabism was not unique in this regard; the normative expectations that accompany social roles generally display this double-edged property.
Arab nationalism constituted, constrained, and could be a resource available for the pursuit of an Arab government’s various interests. Because Arabism was a source of identity, Arab leaders could be expected to genuinely care about those issues identified as matters of concern to the Arab nation. But Arab leaders had another and arguably more immediate and pressing concern: regime survival. Still, the quest for regime survival quickly became entangled with the regionwide expectation that as Arab leaders they were expected to protect the Arab nation. Most Arab leaders went to extraordinary lengths to be identified with the symbols of Arabism because it was instrumental to their other objectives. They pursued a strategy of symbolic accumulation, in short, because these symbols could be exchanged for other highly valued objectives. 4 If Arab governments competed for regional leadership, they did so in part because they could exchange such titles for political capital at home and financial and military concessions from abroad. Soon after gaining power Nasser realized that his bargaining leverage vis-à-vis the West would increase dramatically if he was identified as the “leader” of the Arabs. So Nasser did all he could to promote this image, and with title in hand he attempted to extract more strategic and financial rents from the West. After the 1970s Saudi Arabia exchanged economic capital for symbolic capital as it shipped petrodollars to the confrontation states in order to solidify its credentials as an Arab power in good standing.
Arab leaders pursued both private and socially determined interests. As Arabs they were likely to closely identify with Arab national concerns; as leaders they were likely to closely identify with regime survival. And as Arab leaders they were likely to portray and fashion their policies in ways consistent with the norms of Arabism because doing so was instrumental for regime survival. The attempt, then, was to blend the sociological and the economic actor. Sociological actors are social creatures; the institutions in which they are embedded can be a source of identities, interests, and meaningful behavior. But sociological actors can also resemble economic actors: they can be calculating and cunning creatures, acting purposefully upon the world in creative and artful ways that are intended to achieve their various objectives under a set of constraints. 5 Therefore, rather than commit to an oversocialized view of state action and presume that Arab leaders internalized the norms of the group, I allowed for the possibility that Arab leaders were genuinely committed to Arab nationalism but emphasized the incentives that encouraged them to adhere to these public interests. Arabism was instrumental for achieving their private pursuits. Individuals usually act from a mixture of motives, sometimes because of self-interest and sometimes because of self-understanding, and both private and public interests are likely to lead to action. Arab leaders are social and purposeful beings, and the alloy of sociological and economic models generates a richer and more accurate understanding of their practices.
The Pattern of Strategic Interaction
The game of Arab politics generated certain patterns in the strategic interactions among Arab states. But because actors will not mindlessly follow a “logic” imposed by the structure in which they are embedded, the object is to identify enduring patterns that are linked to the underlying structure while allowing for creative, imaginative, and skillful use of these norms by the actors in different ways from one game to the next. Therefore, the intent is not to explain any one move but to consider how these rules of the game generated certain enduring patterns. I organize these patterns around three defining themes: the overall objective of the game, which was to promote a definition of the situation; the symbolic technologies used to try to promote a definition of the situation and to control the foreign policies of other Arab states; and the endgame, the (temporary) closure to the dialogue.
The Objective of the Game of Arab Politics
A dialogue commenced when an event or development occurred that caused Arab States to debate the desired regional order. During these dialogues Arab governments competed to determine whether a norm properly applied to a situation, to fix the meaning of the events of the day, and to stabilize a norm. Arab governments did so because they recognized that their various domestic and foreign policy interests would be shaped and constrained by the norm that was established or revised by the dialogue. In this way, their overall objective during a dialogue was to create a definition of the situation that could sustain an interpretation of Arabism that was consistent with their various interests.
Because these dialogues revolved around issues that concerned the entire Arab nation and were connected to their shared Arab identity, they were withdrawn from the domain of private choice and calculations and subjected to a public reasoning process that constantly referred to the wider Arab nation. Issues that concerned how an Arab state was to conduct its relations with Israel, the West, and the wider Arab political community were categorized as “Arab” and thus had to be collectively legitimated through justifications that referred to the expectation and aspirations of the Arab political community. Arab states were therefore accountable to one another on these issues and obligated to have their actions formally or informally legitimated collectively. Although Arab leaders generally viewed this legitimation process as an unwanted intrusion on their foreign policy, they nevertheless submitted to this process because to do otherwise was to invite domestic and regional retribution. And as Arab states argued for a particular course of action or interpretation of Arabism, they almost always did so by claiming how it was consistent with previous interpretations of Arabism and the goals of the Arab nation. Arab states competed through the discourse of community and not the discourse of the territorial state to define the meaning of events.
The very fact that Arab leaders were competing to define the meaning of events highlights that they did not have an objective meaning but were made meaningful by Arab leaders who attempted to invest them with historical relevance, to use Arabism to guide their actions in ways that would favor their regime’s interests. Arab leaders used three distinct frames that derived from Arab nationalism to organize experience and mobilize action: injustice, insecurity, and cultural renaissance. Anwar Sadat attempted to frame Camp David as a major step toward finding justice in Palestine. Hafiz al-Asad offered a counterframe of injustice and insecurity and portrayed Camp David as illegitimate, divisive, and blasphemous. Although these alternative frames might have derived from rival interpretations of Arab nationalism, it just so happened that they almost always were consistent with the respective regimes’ interests. Nasser framed the Baghdad Pact as another instance of Western imperialism; it was not coincidental that this frame aided Egypt’s strategic and political interests. Nuri al-Said countered that the pact furthered Arab nationalism, was justified by Iraqi sovereignty, and necessary because of geopolitical pressures emanating from the north. Every frame had a counterframe. Arab nationalism, though, was the source of these frames, situated Arab states within a comparable set of interdependent social roles, and demanded collective action.
These frames derived from and were embedded in a story line that concerned and helped to reproduce the Arab political community. By situating an event within a frame that derived from Arab nationalism, Arab states tied it to other events and thus invested it with symbolic meaning and emotional content. Moreover, the connection of the present to the past was a fundamental feature of the organization of historical time; temporality is organized around events, turning points that are made meaningful by their placement within the context of a community that has some understanding of its origins and its life history. 6 Finally, communities produce narratives about themselves through events that have a common resonance and historical meaning. According to David Carr, “a community exists wherever a narrative account exists of a we which has continuous existence through its experiences and activities.” 7 The 1948 war. The 1967 war. These events were lived and experienced as a collective we. The 1948 war involved not only the expulsion of the Palestinians but a crisis for all Arabs, collectively referred to as al-nakba. The 1967 war was not experienced by Jordanians only as a disaster for Jordan, though it certainly was, but also as a tragedy for the Arabs. These events were communal because of their reference to the we and not because of their magnitude or their scale. Such events, in other words, constitute collective experiences, implicate all those who are recognized as members of the community, and are situated alongside other temporally and sequentially configured events that have a similar communal reference. 8 Therefore, as Arab states and societies debated the event under discussion, they were producing a narrative about who they were and establishing the boundaries of the community; reminding themselves of the historical linkage of the past, the present, and some imagined future; and defining these events as symbols of the community.
Symbolic Technologies and Exchanges
Arab leaders generally used symbolic and not military technologies to control the foreign policy of their rivals. Of course, they occasionally engaged in saber rattling and then some. 9 Syria and Jordan not only exchanged witty retorts but also contemplated overthrowing each other’s governments, sometimes through covert and sometimes through overt means. Iraq invaded Kuwait. But a notable feature of this survey of inter-Arab conflicts, and particularly those conflicts before the 1970s, was how rare military threats were in comparison to symbolic threats. 10
Why was symbolic politics so prominent in Arab politics? Perhaps Arab states did not possess the military and economic technologies of influence. But this explanation falls short for two reasons. Arab states accumulated the military means to confront Israel, military capacities that they could just as easily have aimed at each other. Yet if Arab states did not possess the military technologies, from the standpoint of realist theory—which presumes that a high-threat environment should lead to militarized responses—this is anomalous in itself. Although the Middle East is routinely celebrated as a high-conflict environment, Arab states nonetheless abstained from arms racing. Indeed, little evidence exists that alliances Arab states formed against each other were driven by military threats. 11
The prominence of symbolic competition is more directly attributable to the normative structure of Arab politics. The “thicker” the normative environment is—that is, the more embedded its actors are in a network of relations invested with symbolic content and a source of identity—the more dependent they will be on each other for social approval. This dependence on social approval in turn increases their susceptibility to normative suasion and symbolic sanctions. If Arab politics was symbolic politics, it was because Arab states were embedded in a shared normative order in which they were mutually dependent for social approval.
The more general point is that the group’s social fabric can be expected to imprint its patterns of conflict, competition, and conflict regulation. 12 International relations theory has generally focused on economic and military means of influence, reflective of a preference for treating the international system as comprised of states embedded in a nearly normless environment and whose interests are defined by wealth and security. But if the international environment is recognized as having a social character, if states are conceptualized as involved in patterns of relations that can confer social standing or moral censure, and if scholars are willing to concede that state officials desire social approval, states can be persuaded and embarrassed into submission through symbolic and diplomatic means. 13
The key concept here is symbolic sanctioning: the attempt by one actor to influence the actions of another by deploying the symbols of the community. Arab leaders deployed symbolic sanctions, symbols that derived from the Arab political community, to control each other’s foreign policies by raising the costs of a particular action. For Nasser to connect the Baghdad Pact to the mandate system meant drawing historical lines between imperialism, the proposed pact, and the continuing division of the Arab nation; in doing so he escalated the political costs for any Arab leader who contemplated following Iraq. During the 1980s the Steadfastness States discouraged other Arab leaders from flirting with a diplomatic settlement with Israel by calling it “Camp David.”
Three factors made symbolic sanctioning effective and possible. One necessary condition was that actors were embedded in a shared normative order that left them mutually susceptible and dependent on each other for dignity, honor, and approval. 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. Second, Arab leaders sought such approval not only from each other but also—and ultimately—from their societies. The effectiveness of symbolic sanctions, in short, depended on the anticipated or accomplished mobilization of Arab societies in order to raise the political costs of a particular course of action. This presupposes that these separate Arab societies identified with the symbols of the Arab political community and the frame that was being deployed by another Arab leader, again pointing to their embeddedness in a common normative structure.
A third ingredient necessary for symbolic sanctioning was that Arab states possess the technologies of communication. 14 Not all Arab states were equally capable of being part of symbolic exchanges because not all had access to the technology required. Consider the following description of the “transmitter” gap between Jordan and Egypt before the 1967 war:
| The Jordanian propaganda machine, compared with Egyptian, Syrian, and PLO machines, was small and ineffective. Egypt was broadcasting from Radio Cairo, from Sawt al-Arab, and from many other stations, with wave lengths reaching nearly every part of the globe, while the Jordanians had a small radio station. And the Egyptian press reached everywhere in the Arab world. The Jordanian press reached nowhere. 15 |
Because the principal means of competition and control were symbolic and communicative, Arab leaders were particularly attentive to the gaps in technologies that would make them competent and effective players. Accordingly, they were much more troubled by their inability to project their media into each other’s terrain than they were by their inability to project their military power. For this reason Arab leaders signaled their willingness to reduce their level of hostility through mutual media disarmament, as they did during the era of summitry.
The historical analysis suggests five ways that Arab leaders anticipated and realized the sting of symbolic sanctions. First, Arab leaders exhibited role-taking behavior; that is, they saw themselves as they imagined others saw them and therefore attempted to conform to those expectations because of self-image and self-interest. At various moments Arab leaders contemplated but ultimately shied away from a course of action because they did not want to leave themselves vulnerable politically. Second, because few formal mechanisms of political expression and protest were not controlled by the state, societal preferences were voiced through ad hoc demonstrations in the streets and on the airwaves.
Third, Arab leaders who were deploying symbolic sanctions did not leave mobilization to the power of the spoken word: frequently, they bought a coterie of politicians and rabble-rousers in other Arab capitals that the leaders could call upon at the proper moment to raise havoc and public opinion in their favor. Collective mobilization is rarely a spontaneous affair, and political elites were actively engineering it. The “struggle” for Syria involved other Arab states that were buying and influencing Syrian politicians and military officials, and Jordanian political parties and social movements frequently had strong ties to other Arab states. In such a context party politics was indistinguishable from Arab politics. Fourth, symbolic sanctions were part of intragovernmental competition and the calculus of regime stability and power. Arab leaders were frequently kept “honest” because they always had a domestic political rival—often controlled or aided by the military—who was ready to capitalize on a violation of a norm in order to bring down the government in power or to cause mayhem.
Finally, the effectiveness of the symbolic sanction depended on the credibility of the deliverer. Arab leaders frequently reminded their listeners that their credentials were unblemished and beyond reproach. During the debate about the Baghdad Pact Nuri al-Said constantly reminded the Iraqi people that he was the veteran Arab nationalist and Nasser was the upstart. To this day King Hussein parades his historical and ancestral ties to the leaders of the Great Arab Revolt. Ultimately, however, the credibility of an Arab leader depended on how Arab societies judged his past behavior. Nasser was unsurpassed in this regard. All else being equal, a phrase he uttered was more credible than the same phrase delivered by any other Arab leader at the time or since. By all accounts, part of Nasser’s success came from his charisma and ability to use the language of the street in a way that transcended the territorially segmented Arab societies. But charisma was not enough. His credibility increased after he undertook a string of bold acts—including his opposition to the Baghdad Pact, his consignment of Soviet weapons, and his nationalization of the Suez Canal—that surpassed anything ever done in the name of Arab nationalism. No Arab leader could match his reputation in part because no Arab leader had ever accumulated such a record. Although historical and geographic variations occurred, as a general rule Arab states were susceptible to symbolic sanctions in proportion to their dependence on each other for social approval, the degree to which their populations were stirred by the symbols of Arabism as it pertained to the matter of the day and were mobilized around it, and the credibility of the deliver of the message.
Symbolic sanctioning could feed into symbolic competition. Arab leaders often wanted to demonstrate that their credentials were unimpeachable and those of their rival were suspect. Sometimes such boasting and swaggering was more a nuisance than an actual threat, but at other moments such public displays became challenges that had to be answered. This could generate a dangerous game of brinksmanship that carried substantial rewards but equally substantial risks; after all, Arab governments might have cared about the issue at hand and enjoyed the prestige that accompanied such displays, but these frequently were not enough to cause them to sacrifice other highly valued objectives. This escalating process was a high-wire act, with Arab leaders challenging each other to step farther away from the ledge and sometimes to perform without a net.
Symbolic competition typically ceased in one of three ways. The first was the development of an alliance or institution designed to halt the bidding process and save face. Nasser created the summit system in 1964 to wrest control of Syria’s unilateral impulses with regard to Israel and to maintain his standing. In late 1966 he signed a defense treaty with Syria for much the same purpose. These were institutional expressions of impression management, designed to keep the Arab states from backing themselves into a corner and having to follow an unwanted course of action.
Second, Arab states often began the dialogue with a more “flexible” interpretation of the norm under discussion, but a competitive bidding process not only repaired but frequently tightened it. The Baghdad Pact began as a general discussion of when Arab states could enter into alliances with the West and ended with their near prohibition. The inter-Arab discussions regarding the termination of the mandate in Palestine began with few Arab leaders who wanted to expend many resources on the matter but ended with a military intervention; the negotiations that preceded the war contained the seeds of a political solution, but symbolic competition and the desire to maintain public face led to the norm prohibiting a separate peace with Israel. Strong hints exist that several Arab leaders believed that Khartoum’s “three no’s” were either unwise or unnecessary, but they could hardly make their objections public without being ostracized and called defeatist. The desire to save face and to manage their impressions could lead them to publicly pledge a course of action that they privately rued.
Finally, symbolic competition might devolve into symbolic entrapment, as when an Arab leader had his bluff called and was forced to take action in order to save face. Entrapment’s renowned episode was the 1967 war. During the mid-1960s Nasser maintained a strong verbal stand against Israel while cautioning that moderation was important, lest the Arabs find themselves in an unwanted war. By the spring of 1967, however, Israel and Syria were engaged in a spiraling number of skirmishes, and Nasser found himself under pressure to show his resolve. That he did. But Nasser was less concerned with Israel’s military power than he was with Arab public opinion, and he knowingly flirted with the former in order to impress the latter. Soon Nasser found himself locked into a course of action that delivered the war he privately feared. Symbolic entrapment also claimed King Hussein. After mercilessly daring Nasser to adopt this risky course of action, Hussein found himself in a similar predicament, forced to declare war on Israel lest his own society declare war on him. Symbolic entrapment also shaped the dynamics leading to the creation of the UAR. Neither the Syrian Ba’ath nor Nasser was enamored of the idea of a union, but once they put their credentials on the line, they felt pressured to proceed with a scheme that each privately predicted would be a disaster.
The Endgame
Strictly speaking, the debate about the desired regional order never ended. Rather, there was a temporary pause, or a lull in the conversation, once Arab states repaired or transformed the norm under discussion. Erving Goffman likened this to moral pacification, a decision to drop the matter at hand and get on with life—for the moment. Arab leaders generally welcomed such moments with testimonials to how they had banded together, successfully addressed the challenge of the day, and demonstrated their unwavering commitment to Arab nationalism. But at other times an Arab leader on the losing end of the dialogue lashed out at the other Arab states; Anwar Sadat received the news that Egypt had been expelled from the Arab League because of Camp David by publicly calling the leaders of the Gulf Arab states dwarfs who ruled nameless pockets of sand. In addition to these expressions of self-congratulations and sour grapes, three important developments accompanied the end of a dialogue: the creation of power, establishment or tightening of alliances and institutions, and accomplishment of solidarity and cooperation.
But before considering these developments, it is important to emphasize that the outcome of the debate about the desired regional order could rarely be properly reduced to the preferences of the most powerful states. These symbolic and strategic exchanges were informed by earlier dialogues, riddled with self-interest, justified with reference to and constituted by moral considerations, connected to public and community-wide aspirations, vetted through a public reasoning process, and checkered with power. The informal desire to proceed on the basis of consensus, moreover, handed other Arab states and nonstate actors a say in the decision. As such, even a modest coalition of less powerful Arab states could veto or severely complicate the policies sought by a coalition of stronger states. The most powerful Arab states frequently found themselves frustrated and unable to achieve their preferences—and certainly not without an exhaustive and sometimes highly costly public debate that had only the vaguest relationship to state power.
Consider the following examples. Egypt, the military giant of the Arab world, started down the path to the Camp David accords, supported by Saudi Arabia, the economic giant of the Arab world. But Egypt found the road impeded by normative restrictions erected by a coalition of weaker Arab states. In the end Saudi Arabia decided that although it privately supported Sadat it could not do so publicly, and Sadat could not change the norms to accommodate his policies. Thus he found himself on the outside of Arab politics looking in. Or consider the PLO’s role in Arab politics. Although the PLO did not have the material, economic, and organizational power that comes with being a sovereign state, the organization was invested with symbolic capital because it was recognized as the legitimate and sole representative of the Palestinian people. Such symbolic capital handed it tremendous leverage over the policies of Arab states, and few dared to get ahead of what the PLO was willing to accept on matters concerning Israel. Nasser’s preference before meeting with the Syrians in 1958 was to tell them to clean up their own house; Egypt’s military power could not save him from agreeing to a misbegotten union with a much weaker and internally divided Syria. The 1967 war was followed by a summer of debate about the meaning of the defeat. Some Arab intellectuals and officials argued that the problem was too little Arab nationalism and too much conservatism; now was the time for real Arab unity. Others argued for a more centrist conception of nationalism that accommodated the existing Arab states. The outcome was not unrelated to state power, but neither was it determined by it. Power was always a factor in these debates, but such power was mediated and defined by Arabism and a process of public contestation that referred to the existing normative order and pointed to community aspirations.
Power. Arab states competed to define the events of the day and to establish the norms of Arabism because doing so would further their interests and could act as a mechanism of social control over the foreign policies of other Arab states. Investing the situation with a particular meaning constituted an important source of power for Arab states because it oriented and constrained social action. Actors struggle over the power and the right to impose a legitimate vision of the world because doing so helps to construct social reality as much as it expresses it. 16 Nasser’s brilliance and power derived not from Egypt’s military capability, for what little he use he made of it was hardly awe inspiring. Rather, he is remembered for his ability to define the events of the day. E. H. Carr similarly claimed that the power over opinion is one of three forms of power. To mobilize the masses on behalf of foreign policy requires that the public be educated to identify with the state and its goals. To be able to sway public opinion in other countries constitutes an important foreign policy weapon; it also presupposes that these opinions are founded on international rather than strictly national ideas and aspirations. 17
Power also was bound up with symbolic exchanges, giving rise to hierarchy and segmentation. This is akin to what Peter Blau has called the “paradox of social integration”: the qualities that make an individual especially valuable as a group member “also constitute a threat to the rest” because those qualities can represent a claim to status and thus a threat to other members of the group. Group members may respond in several different ways—pretend that they are not easily impressed, compete for a similar social status, or belittle each other. 18 Various Arab leaders were forever attempting to prove their credentials by taking a commanding role on Arab issues. Although such leadership can help to overcome collective action problems and thus represent a useful contribution from the vantage point of the group, such contributions might force an individual Arab leader to engage in action that he privately opposes and place him in a subordinate position vis-à-vis the provider of the good. Furthermore, because Arab leaders wanted the social approval and legitimation of others, they were mutually susceptible and hence influenced by them. But some actors’ approval matters more than others.’ Nasser’s blessing, for example, was as sought after as his censure was feared because he was viewed as the personification and guardian of Arab nationalism. Arab leaders needed each other for social approval and thus had common interests, but they also had conflicting interests because of the inevitable status differentials that resulted from these exchanges. Nasser’s standing made him both a formidable ally and a threat.
In general, because power is bound up with the production of symbols, political struggles are frequently expressed through symbolic struggles. 19 As scholars of international relations continue to consider the different forms and instruments of power, they should give due consideration to how states use symbolic and normative means to define the situation in ways that orient and constrain action. Because symbols can orient action, shape identities, and draw boundaries, they are expressions of power and midwives of hierarchy.
Alliances and institutions. Sometimes dialogues ended with the establishment or strengthening of an Arab institution or inter-Arab alliance. But these institutions and alliances had their origins in and operated according to principles that depart from the traditional view of international relations theory. According to neoliberal institutionalism, states construct institutions in order to further their shared interests and to overcome problems associated with interdependent choice. 20 According to realism, states seek alliances primarily to enhance their capabilities through combination with others, which helps to deter a potential aggressor and avoid an unwanted war, to prepare for a successful war if deterrence fails, or more generally to increase one’s influence in a high-threat environment or maintain a balance of power in the system. 21 Although some Arab institutions and alliances followed a neoliberal or neorealist logic, their defining attributes derived from symbolic politics—specifically, their expressive role, their function as a symbolic means of social control and as an instrument of impression management.
Many Arab organizations were symbolically tied to the Arab identity and thus served an expressive function. 22 The establishment of the Arab League was celebrated as a confirmation of Arab nationalism’s existence and vitality. The recent and heated debate about its future—and particularly then–prime minister Shimon Peres’s suggestion that Israel be admitted as a member—revealed a loyalty and identification to the organization less for its material contributions than for its expressive foundations. Create other regional arrangements that include Israel, asserted many Arab officials and intellectuals, but keep the Arab League Arab.
Arab states constructed inter-Arab alliances and institutions as a mechanism of social control and as a response to a normative rather than a military challenge. The Arab League provided few formal or constitutional constraints on Arab states that were distinguishable from Dumbarton Oaks; indeed, the majority of the Arab states were keen to use it to protect their sovereignty from an Arabism that demanded unification. But Arab states later used the Arab League to display their allegiances, to hold each other mutually accountable, and as a mechanism of social control. Several famous alliances were designed to control the foreign policy of another Arab state. In 1950 Egypt proposed the Arab Collective Security Pact, not for the stated purpose of coordinating and integrating the Arab states’ military forces to confront a shared threat but to halt the possibility of Syrian-Iraqi unification. Egypt and Saudi Arabia used the Arab League to defend the principle of sovereignty and to contain the drive for unification. Nasser proposed a string of alliances in the mid-1950s designed to control the foreign policies of other Arab states and to ostracize Iraq—not to balance against Iraq’s or any other Arab state’s military power.
Many Arab alliances were bound up with impression management and presentational politics. 23 Because the inter-Arab threat derived from symbolic rather than military politics, Arab leaders constructed security institutions that had a comparable function. Arab states routinely joined alliances, but they frequently did so to maintain their image as an Arab state in good standing. 24 King Hussein joined the 1956 Treaty of Arab Solidarity to repair his image as an Arab nationalist even though—and actually because—it meant siding with the same Nasser who had made his life a living nightmare the month before. Normative considerations generally drove these alliances and institutions, so Arab states frequently felt considerable pressure to ally with the very state that presented a normative threat, lest they deliberately choose to be portrayed as outside the consensus. Call this bandwagoning behavior, though in these instances power that was the source of attraction and fear derived from normative and not material considerations.
Given that these alliances and institutions were frequently designed for presentational purposes and to control the actions of other Arab leaders, it should come as little surprise that they have accumulated a dismal record of furthering collective Arab causes. Generally that was not their primary function. Arab governments feared the interdependence that these institutions were ostensibly designed to promote. Their interest in regime survival told them to pledge allegiance to Arab unity and its organizational expressions, but those interests also warned them against anything more than a surface commitment. Because these states were highly permeable and had no domestic basis for legitimacy, they feared encouraging outside interventions that might undermine regime stability. This was not unfounded paranoia. All too often an Arab leader who sounded the call of Arab unity was attempting to control the foreign policy of another Arab state or destabilize it from within. The occasional unity calls by Jordan and Iraq frequently played havoc with Syrian domestic politics. The UAR was the extreme but classic example of what might happen if Arab states took their Arab unity too seriously. Consequently, although Arab officials recognized the symbolic advantages to be gained from pursuing inter-Arab cooperation, their political instincts told them to preserve their autonomy at all costs. The result was the continuing creation of organizations and alliances that had presentational, control, and symbolic functions and were never really intended to achieve their explicitly stated objectives of economic and military cooperation.
Moreover, Arab states might have welcomed a genuine show of inter-Arab cooperation, but they also worried—and this was particularly so from 1945 to the mid-1960s—that any major breakthrough might generate further expectations among their societies that Arab states should now push for political unification, leaving them more vulnerable than ever and perhaps even expected to surrender their territorial basis of power. In the context of Arab nationalism cooperation and interdependence could be discursively linked to Arab unity—and few Arab states wanted to encourage such sentiments.
In general, the results of these numerous experiments in regional institution building were dismal if evaluated from the vantage point of their public proclamations; if judged from the private and regime-sustaining intentions of their creators, however, they were remarkably successful. The imperatives of regime survival in the context of Arab nationalism explain the creation and impotence of these organizations and alliances.
Solidarity and cooperation. Arab states have sustained solidarity with the norms of Arabism, particularly in regard to Israel. But most studies of Arab politics tend to overlook this cooperation for four reasons: the notoriety of inter-Arab conflict; the impressive failure of integration efforts; the constant berating by Arab nationalists of Arab governments for failing to fulfill Arabism’s demands—the nationalists pray for more cooperation than is ever delivered; and models of international politics that begin with a given set of state interests predict much less solidarity than is actually accomplished. These historical patterns and structural models might help get a handle on conflict, but they do not explain the accumulated record of Arab solidarity.
How do we account for Arab solidarity and the remarkable compliance with the norms of Arabism? One possibility is that Arab states internalized and felt a degree of commitment to the group’s norms. Actors, in other words, are not only seekers of immediate gratification but also agents of moral purpose. International relations theorists generally dismiss such possibilities because of a commitment to methodological individualism, a belief that anarchy penalizes any hint of transnational obligations, and the methodological difficulty of tracing the causal significance of identity toward that end. But Arabism—not anarchy—was a source of state identity, interests, and strategies, creating the real possibility that Arab leaders might exhibit a responsibility to Arab issues. And although it is difficult to demonstrate empirically that a state actor has internalized norms that are linked to conceptions of self, the converse is also true—it is often asserted rather than empirically substantiated that an actor’s actions are driven by expedience and narrow self-interest and not by a sense of obligation that derives from mutual identification. Is it so incredible that Arab leaders might actually be committed to Arab nationalism?
My conclusion, however, suggests that although Arab leaders felt an obligation to these Arab issues, the primary mechanisms for keeping them honest were the entanglement of private and public preferences, the presence of symbolic sanctions, and the desire for social approval. This view in fact shares much with the more conventional way of representing compliance: actors abide by societal norms because the costs attached to any violation outweigh any potential benefit, and because third-party monitors, who can detect whether a violation has occurred, are present. 25 Considerable evidence exists that Arab leaders complied with the group’s norms because of the anticipation or the application of symbolic sanctions that could jeopardize their various goals. Often these sanctions were left unspecified in terms of who would do the sanctioning and what the exact sanctions would be. Indeed, the ultimate punishment came not from other states but from their own societies. Sadat, Nuri al-Said, and King Abdullah knowingly transgressed a norm of Arabism and subsequently found themselves sanctioned in a permanent way.
But at other times Arab states formalized these sanctions in Arab summits and Arab League resolutions; such formalization occurred when an Arab state threatened to unilaterally and defiantly violate a long-standing norm of Arab politics. Arab states portrayed these violations as representing a cancer that had to be isolated and expunged from the Arab body politic. For instance, when Sadat signed a separate peace with Israel and when King Abdullah was flirting with the idea, Arab states communicated the penalties for such heresy. The primary sanction on such occasions was the threat of expulsion from the organizations of, and the severing of all ties with, other Arab states. Nasser made it clear that Iraq was not an acceptable member in any inter-Arab security arrangement because of the Baghdad Pact. To ensure compliance with that norm, moreover, Arab states meted out sanctions to those Arab states that gave comfort to the violator; in the language of Robert Axelrod, these were metanorms. 26 For another Arab state to give comfort to Egypt at the time of Camp David was to willingly expose itself to the same accusations and repercussions directed at Egypt.
Thus Arab leaders brought about solidarity and compliance through their sense of self and desire for social approval. This was about identity and interests. Actors will be both self-interested and abide by certain standards and codes of conduct because they want to be viewed as a moral agent and maintain the presentation of self, if only for strategic purposes. Thus the normative structure of Arabism operated as an enforcement mechanism as it shaped the ends and the means that Arab leaders could pursue. 27 We do not have to submit to an oversocialized view of actors to recognize that they will adhere to societal norms for a variety of reasons, including consistency with their identity and material interests. 28 In general, the norms served to orient Arab states in the same direction, generated the expectation of some modest policy coordination, and left Arab leaders dependent on each other for social approval and thus susceptible to the sanctions that became the cornerstone of cooperation and norm compliance. 29
In sum, as Arab states debated the desired regional order, they exhibited centrifugal and centripetal tendencies, a dance of conflict and cooperation that corresponded to a rhythm of individuation and identification. The same Arabism that compelled them to work in concert and to identify with each other also represented a source of conflict and competition. This constructivist reading of Arab politics, then, runs counter to the standard treatment of conflict in two principal respects: in contrast to the belief that anarchy is the one true source of conflict, I have noted how Arabism provided a structural incentive for competition and conflict; in contrast to the implicit belief that a shared identity and norms are bound up with cooperation, I have continually stressed how identity and norms can be a source of conflict and that all social relationships transpire within a normative framework and exhibit elements of conflict. Arab states have impressively reproduced and maintained the group identity that they privately found so threatening and a source of conflict and did so because of a sense of self and a sense of survival.
An additional feature of this endgame points to a larger issue: the debate about the desired regional order implicated the definition of the game. Dialogues were, in effect, moments when Arab states reconsidered the Arab state’s identity, the norms that were expressive of that identity, and how those norms defined the Arab order. To recognize orders as negotiated is to remain attentive to the social, strategic, and symbolic interactions that sustain and transform them. 30 In this way Arab states were debating, creating, and sustaining the structure in which they were embedded. The norms of Arabism were not “concrete girders constraining action but, instead, [were] media through which action [became] possible, and which action itself reproduces and transforms.” 31 Arabism was not merely a constraint on their action but also a creation of their actions. Arabism was not simply external to Arab states but also was the mechanism of communication, reproduced and instantiated through their practices. The regional order in which Arab states were embedded was not a permanent fixture but was an accomplishment, repaired and transformed by them through their interactions.
A Narrative of Arab Politics
The history of international and regional politics can always be told in several ways. Different narratives have different ways of organizing history, rendering events intelligible and influential, and connecting them to generate an identifiable pattern. My narrative organizes the history of Arab politics according to dialogues about the desired regional order. Events are made meaningful in this broader narrative, and the pattern of these events generates a story line that concerns the changing debate about the desired regional order. I chose events because they revealed some enduring themes of Arab politics and because they were consequential for its development. As Arab states negotiated the desired regional order, they paused to reconsider their relationship to one another. Sometimes they sustained their relations, but at other times they transformed them. Sometimes these transformations brought them closer together, but at other times it pushed them further apart. But understanding the changing fabric of Arab politics requires a more detailed consideration of these seminal events in Arab politics.
Normative Fragmentation
I identified five distinct periods in inter-Arab politics defined by different themes regarding the relationship between Arab nationalism and the Arab state. The first period examined the historical evolution of the Arab states system and the inaugural debate about the enduring questions of Arab politics—who the members of the political community are, what its interests are, and what norms should regulate their relations. Beginning in the late nineteenth century in response to the breakdown of the old order that resulted from the demise of the Ottoman Empire, the emergence of nationalism, and the spread of the world economy, individuals in the Fertile Crescent were forced to reconsider their political identity, how they wanted to live with one another—who constituted the political community. 32 Modernity and imperialism, in other words, provided an impetus for Arabs to “discover” their common identity and destiny and to suggest that a meaningful response to these economic, cultural, and political dislocations required collective action on an expansive scale and under the banner of Arab nationalism. But the central debate between Arab states and societies centered on the (evolving) meaning of Arab nationalism in relationship to their (expected) status as sovereign states. This issue was provisionally addressed in the talks leading to the Arab League and led to a blueprint that inscribed a possessive sovereignty that kept at bay the most demanding and constraining features of Arabism. Sovereignty before Arabism, read the jury at the Arab League.
The second period occurred between 1945 and 1955 and was defined by the creation of more restrictive set of norms that increased the mutual accountability of the Arab states. This was not necessarily by design but through a process of symbolic competition. The prospect of a Syrian-Iraqi union led Egypt to dangle the Arab Collective Security Pact (ACSP) as a way of derailing the union in favor of an all-Arab security system. Although the ACSP had little operational effect, it did strengthen the view that the security of Arab states was interdependent and left them mutually accountable. Such matters reemerged during the debate about the Arab states’ relationship to the West. Almost all Arab states had some sort of political or financial tie to the West and wanted to see it continue in the future, though under more favorable conditions. But their debates about the Baghdad Pact led to general acceptance of Nasser’s concept of positive neutrality. The Baghdad Pact did more than favor Nasser’s view of alliances with the West—it also marked the passage to a more radical version of Arab nationalism, with Nasser as its unchallenged leader. By the beginning of 1956, then, Arab states were more mutually accountable to each other than ever before.
The third period began with the 1956 Suez War, ended with the 1967 war, and was defined by the rise and decline of the clash between the state and the nation, symbolized by the rise and decline of unification on the political agenda. But perhaps entrapment in the name of Arabism better characterizes the period. Egypt and Syria found that they had a shotgun marriage, but they possessed the guns, in the name of the UAR. Once was not enough, and so in 1963 they added Iraq to the mix and constructed a unity agreement that was even briefer and created more bitterness. As consequence, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt began to stress their diversity within unity. A direct outcome of the failures of 1963 was the Arab summit system, the détente between the radical and conservative Arab states that also represented a move to institutionalize a more centrist reading of Arab nationalism. But this détente was not long lasting. Significantly, the issue that divided them was not unification but the Arab-Israeli conflict. Soon Arab states were involved in a heated debate about their Israel policy, inviting symbolic competition and eventually entrapment in the form of the 1967 war. A decade’s experiences of symbolic competition and entrapment created a movement in favor of a more centrist version of Arab nationalism that was more consistent with state sovereignty and better able to accommodate the Arab states’ separate identities.
The theme of the post-1967 period was the relationship between the debate about the organization of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the emergent statism in Arab politics. One effect of the 1967 war was to encourage Arab states to more fully converge on the norms of sovereignty to organize their relations in order to reverse Israel’s victory. This new arrangement had its apparent payoff in the victory of the Arab states in the 1973 war. But such successes provided another moment for Arab states to revisit the relationship between the Arab-Israeli conflict and the meaning of Arab nationalism. By relaxing the norms of Arabism so that it could accommodate Sadat’s desire to retrieve the Sinai, his path to Camp David created an environment more favorable to statism. The Arab states responded to the heresy of Camp David by isolating Egypt and proclaiming their solidarity, but the 1980s continued the trend of fragmentation and division. By the late 1980s the norms of Arab politics were nearly indistinguishable from those of international society, save a founding concern with Israel, and Arab states looked to sovereignty to rescue themselves from each other.
The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait stirred the most recent debate about the desired regional order: what was, is, and will become of Arab politics. Whereas the earlier dialogues about regional order assumed that as Arab states they had shared interests that demanded collective mobilization, the Gulf War, coming on the heels of rising statism, sovereignty, a centrist definition of Arab nationalism, and political Islam, led Arab states to look for alternative mechanisms to further their interests. These alternative mechanisms in turn raised the issue of what remained of the Arab states system. The language of Arab nationalism can still be heard as Arabs continue to confront the fundamental changes in international and domestic politics within a new context—that of Arab sovereign states responding to perceived common challenges. In this way the continued existence of an Arab identity that serves as a bridge between Arab states, and the awareness by Arab governments of the permeability of their borders to cultural forces, preserves a nominal desire for policy coordination. This is particularly so when Arab states perceive themselves to be assailed by non-Arab forces. But there is no mistaking the current order for those of decades past.
This changing debate about the desired regional order elevates the current condition of normative fragmentation: Arab states are no longer as pressed toward mutual orientation because of underlying shared values and interests. At the outset of the Arab states system Arab nationalism was a defining source of the Arab state’s interests, encouraged Arab states to actively consider how they could further their interests, and generated the strong expectation that Arab states would foster close economic, cultural, and security ties to further their shared interests and deepen the sense of community. Although Arab governments were frequently resistant parties to these cultural assumptions and expectations, they generally honored them—even as they manipulated them—through word and deed.
But the existence of normative fragmentation has steadily replaced this search for normative integration. Inter-Arab solidarity has declined in the past few decades. However elusive and tortured the inter-Arab contest over the norms that should govern their relations might have been, at least it proceeded on the assumption that they should work to further their collective projects that derived from their shared identity. But now Arab states express grave reservations concerning the feasibility or even desirability of such collective projects, are no longer as dependent on each other for social approval, as active in coordinating their relations, or as oriented in each other’s direction. Arab states are now actively debating the relative merits of “Mediterraneanism,” “Middle Easternism,” and a “new Arab order,” punctuating how they are imagining themselves in new ways and orienting themselves in new directions.
This theme of normative fragmentation is quite familiar to students of Arab politics. “The end of pan-Arabism,” the debate about Middle Easternism, and the shift from the language of qawmiyya [national identity] to wataniyya [state identities] represent different ways that scholars and policy makers package what can be understood as normative fragmentation. Sometimes these labels are offered as a lament, and sometimes they are offered with a sigh of relief, but in either case there is general agreement that the structure of Arab politics has changed remarkably over the years, and such changes can be best understood at the level of identity politics.
Accordingly, how scholars and policy makers categorize the change that has occurred in Arab politics is decidedly closer to constructivism than it is to realism. Neorealism examines a change in the structure by examining shifts in the distribution of material power, viewing norms and rules as dependent on that distribution and holding constant the identities and interests of the states that are constrained by that structure. 33 But students of the region implicitly reject such formulations in favor of a characterization of structural change that is bound up with identity politics. In making these observations, they are favoring a constructivist claim that a theoretical connection exists between the regional order, the practices of states, and their identities. 34
The change in the structure of Arab politics and the normative fragmentation are detectable in three related areas: state identities, the norms that are constitutive of those identities, and the convergence on sovereignty to organize their relations. Scholars and practitioners generally agree that Arabism has declined. Although accounts differ regarding the motivating force for the revolution in identities and loyalties, they concur almost uniformly that state discourses and practices are reflective of a rise in statist identities and a decline in Arab national identities. This does not mean that statist identities are hegemonic and have captured the hearts and minds of Arab citizens; after all, religious, sectarian, and ethnic divisions and challenges to the state’s authority do exist. But there is little doubt that the Arab political identity has lost ground to these other identifications, and this is particularly so in the domain of the state’s foreign policy, where Arabism has become overshadowed by statism in recent years. 35
The rise of statist and the decline of Arab national identities are reflected in a change in the institutions and organizations that Arab states construct to pursue their interests. Whereas Arab states once handled many of their most important foreign policy issues in the confines of the Arab League and other all-Arab institutions, the decay of Arabism and the rise of statism have produced a decline in the centrality of the Arab League, a consideration of new regional organizations that do not use identity as a criterion for membership, and a proliferation of organizations and institutions that are reflective of state interests and designed to overcome collective action problems. A particularly propitious moment came after the 1967 war. Before that war Arab officials reflexively pointed to the idea of military integration and coordination when considering the means to confront Israel; after the 1967 war, however, they shifted to bilateral arrangements that stressed financial assistance and little else. The shift in the organization of security reflected an emerging belief that the best way to pursue inter-Arab goals was through more statist designs. But part of the reason was that the 1967 war provided a subtle but important shift in the Arab-Israeli conflict from an ideological to a territorial conflict.
The change in the formal organization of Arab politics became more apparent after 1980 and again after 1990. The establishment of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) at the beginning of the 1980s and of the Arab Maghrebi Union (AMU) and Arab Cooperation Council (ACC) at the end of the decade provided further evidence of declining Arabism and emerging statism. Since the Gulf War the Middle East has seen an explosion of different regional organizations that are unapologetically offered as furthering state interests irrespective of their Arab identities. Although Arab states still wave at the importance of all-Arab organizations to pursue their interests, they are emphasizing alternative arrangements that include non-Arab states for the first time; the current consideration of the Mediterranean region and Middle Easternism highlight such considerations. Indeed, in this context there arguably is an inverse correlation between the strength of Arabism and the prospects for strong regional organizations; that is, as Arabism has declined, Arab states have been more inclined to consider a prominent role for regional organizations because they have now agreed on some fundamental rules of the game and interdependence no longer appears as regime threatening. In general, a withering of the Arab identity produced a shift in the definition of the group, the attributes that are required to become a member of the region’s organizations, and the relationship between the region’s organizations and the identities of its members.
The changing state identities also are reflective of the changing definition of the threat. Historically, Arab states have been concerned with non-Arab entities defined as a source of insecurity to the Arab nation. Simply stated, the Arab identity and threat construction are connected. 36 Most prominent here are the West and Israel. Although the Arab states still view both suspiciously, particularly Israel, many Arab states now have alliances with the West and have been contemplating Israel’s “normalization” in the region in ways that include new sorts of security ties that were once unthinkable. Perhaps the surest barometer of the emergence of statist identities is Israel’s unprecedented integration into the region; the decline of the Arab political community, the hardening of the Arab states, and a diminished responsiveness to core Arab concerns mean that Israel is more fully recognized as a legitimate member of the region. 37 In general, the declining salience of the Arab national identity and the rise of statist identities contributed to a declining salience of the Israeli threat.
The norms that constitute Arab politics and that orient the actions of Arab states have also changed. During the first decades of the Arab states system Palestine, the West, and unification were central issues that animated Arab politics. All three retain some prominence in contemporary debates, but unification has dropped off the political agenda, the fear of the West is less connected to Arab nationalism than it is to political Islam, and Israel alone still registers a strong reaction. The decreased centrality and scope of Arabism are evident in the diminished ferocity of symbolic competition, which suggests that state-based identities are better able to compete with Arab national identities for citizens’ political loyalties. Conversely, Arab states are no longer as susceptible to symbolic sanctions—this is particularly evident in the Arab states’ fragmented approach to Israel’s place in the region, suggesting again the declining salience of the Arab national identity relative to other identifications. Those Arab states that have moved to carefully and cautiously integrate Israel into the region have done so despite the protests by Syria and others, providing indirect evidence that the symbolic sanctions that once proved so effective no longer are because other Arab states are no longer as desirous of social approval from each other, their populations are no longer as stirred by these symbols, and the deliverers of these symbols are no longer as credible. Following Pierre Bourdieu’s observation that different forms of capital are reflective of different structures, the declining value of symbolic capital relative to other forms of capital suggests a shift in the structure of politics.
Evidence that the structure of Arab politics has changed is also reflected by the Arab states’ convergence on sovereignty to organize their relations. The Arab states system has moved from state versus nation and the acrimonious debate about the region’s organizing principles to the simultaneous existence of separate sovereign states, a centrist conception of Arab nationalism that is consistent with sovereignty, and the establishment of relatively stable expectations and shared norms to govern inter-Arab relations. Arab states have been navigating between the sometimes contradictory expectations of sovereignty and Arab nationalism, or, more precisely, the meaning of sovereignty in relationship to a meaning of Arab nationalism. Arab governments in this respect had to negotiate between two roles as they performed on the regional stage. As representatives of sovereign states, they had a strong interest in defending the territorial and sovereign basis of their authority and power and recognizing the norms of sovereignty. But as Arab states they were expected to defend the Arab national interests, to pursue Arab unity that at the least undermined their autonomy and at the most instructed them to cede their sovereignty to a single Arab state, and to deny sovereignty’s distinction between the domestic and the international.
For much of the pre-1970 period Arab states had a difficult time establishing a stable set of normative expectations because of the simultaneous presence of sovereignty and Arab nationalism that provided contradictory incentives and normative expectations. If the theme of state versus nation dominated the divisive debate about regional order through the 1960s, since then it has quieted and apparently settled on sovereignty. 38 Arab states have exhibited a greater willingness to recognize each other’s sovereignty and honor the principle of noninterference as the basis of their relations. At one level, then, sovereignty is a focal point that has allowed Arab states to further their interests and to better handle contingencies. 39 But this particular focal point also implicated their state identities. As Arab states converged on sovereignty to organize their relations, they reconsidered the Arab state’s identity, which was bound up with the declining salience of the Arab identity.
Some scholars and practitioners of Arab politics portray this outcome as the “new realism,” suggesting that Arab states are now practicing their politics in ways that mimic how scholars of international relations understand international politics. But this “realist” conclusion would be erroneous for several reasons. This is a regional order that is secured not only through force but also through the establishment of relatively stable normative expectations that revolve around sovereignty. Arab leaders have had a never-ending series of discussions to get them to this point, discussions that labor to secure this outcome and to infuse it with legitimacy. In fact, this environment now looks more like an “anarchical (Arab) society” than it does a “new realism.” 40 Further, to claim that the Arab states system has moved from Arabism to realism is to advance the proposition that the Arab states have gone from a social world to an asocial world. Although Arab nationalism has declined, a normless environment does not, indeed cannot, exist, and Arab states still dwell within a normative structure—even if it is one that legitimates the discourse of state interests. In other words, this might be a normative structure that legitimates and fosters the discourse of state interests, but, as Emile Durkheim noted a century ago, even a society that is seemingly comprised of atomized actors contains both a set of relations that continue to exist outside the momentary exchange and a set of social rules that legitimate those practices. 41 Although Arab nationalism no longer informs inter-Arab politics the way that it once did, and although this evolving states system has been characterized as realist by many policy makers because Arab states are favoring the language of state interests over Arab national interests, the discourse of state interests is an emergent rather than a taken-for-granted property of Arab states. State interests are being legitimated with reference to a normative order, and the regional order is still secured through negotiation and not military coercion alone.
This narrative of Arab politics tells the story of normative fragmentation. Arab states began by nominally professing the desire to deepen their sense of community and coordinate their political, economic, and security relations. Although highly wary of a too-close association, their initial interactions increased their dependence on and orientation toward each other. This drift toward normative integration halted abruptly in the mid-1960s and slowly yielded to a dynamic that generated fragmentation. The change in the desired regional order was detectable not only by what Arab leaders said but, more important, by what they did. Because of the decline of Arab national identity and the rise of statist identities, Arab states began constructing new foreign policies, organizing themselves according to new groupings, and orienting themselves in new directions. By following these dialogues about the desired regional order, we have been able to chart the ebbs and flows of the Arab states system.
Dialogues and the Changing Game of Arab Politics
How Arab leaders played the game of Arab politics transformed that game. Although the structure in which they were embedded constrained what they could do, they acted upon and were capable of transforming the norms that defined the structure in which they were embedded. 42 Structures leave a great deal of slack that can be capitalized on—or not—by actors who can work creatively, imaginatively, skillfully, and strategically to defy the structures that supposedly determine their actions. 43 To understand how the Arab states’ interactions transformed the normative structure requires a detailed consideration of events, that is, the “structuring of social action in time.” 44 The events examined were unique to the extent that the conjunction of factors that produced them was unlikely to be replicated, but my interest in them was not to understand their details but to gain leverage over their relationship to the structure of Arab politics. These events were the sinews of regional order and group identity.
Sometimes their social, strategic, and symbolic interactions led to outcomes that more clearly proscribed their behavior, as was the case for many of the pre-1965 events, but events since have precipitated normative fragmentation. That their encounters led them in this direction is somewhat paradoxical. After all, they began every encounter with the assumption that because of their common past and common fate they had to coordinate their actions. But these cultural touch points also were principal reasons that these encounters were laden with suspicion and that their interactions deposited animosity and created the foundations for fragmentation. How so? Recall that Arab leaders looked upon Arab nationalism as savior and as threat: it was a source of symbolic capital and a resource of domestic stability, but it also allowed—indeed, invited—other Arab leaders to engage in predatory and regime-threatening behavior. Rare was the encounter that Arab leaders did not approach guardedly. As Goffman understood, performing on the public stage is always a risky proposition because one must put one’s self on the line; such performances are made doubly disconcerting by the fear that other actors might alter the script in midscene.
Because of the mutual suspicions that permeated their every encounter, Arab leaders engaged in various practices that were designed to protect themselves from unwanted encroachments and interventions. But these same practices intentionally and unintentionally encouraged their fragmentation. One such practice was to construct a grammar of Arabism that accommodated itself to and highlighted regional and local differences. 45 To deter the symbolic tentacles of others, Arab governments frequently stressed the theme of diversity within unity and that, while they were members of the same family, they should be allowed some latitude because of their separate circumstances and geographies. This discourse was particularly visible when an Arab state was proposing a policy that departed from the prevailing consensus. Nuri al-Said claimed that the Baghdad Pact was permitted by Arabism and necessitated by Iraq’s geostrategic location. King Hussein sounded the theme of the legitimacy of the separate Arab experiments as he welcomed the British troops into Jordan to deter the tide of Nasserism from claiming another victim. Sadat continuously stressed that Egypt’s negotiations with Israel were consistent with Arabism and permitted by sovereignty, emphasizing that Arab states should not be accountable on all Arab issues because each had special circumstances that exempted it from the prevailing consensus. No Arab leader rejected the legitimacy of Arab nationalism outright, but many attempted to limit Arab nationalism’s claims on their behavior by stressing their individual circumstances and separate features.
Alongside these defensive positionings, Arab leaders portrayed each other as threats. Such depictions were particularly pronounced during symbolic competition. “Our problem in the Arab nation,” reflected Hosni Mubarak, “is that if you express your opinion, and this opinion is different from someone else’s, you are considered an enemy.” 46 There were good reasons for this tendency. During a dialogue Arab governments vied to establish the norms of Arabism because it was bound up with power and regime interests. To do so successfully, however, required persuading others that one’s message was consistent with Arabism, whereas another’s was a betrayal. But Arab governments frequently attempted to discredit the message by discrediting the messenger. To shield themselves from such attacks Arab governments would emphasize the unblemished character of their own credentials and the tarnished reputation of their rivals.’ Such displays of enmity and rivalry undermined the prognosis for unity.
Their mutual suspicions were equally evident in their unwillingness to establish effective and functional all-Arab institutions. Their failure to do so soon discredited the idea of joint Arab action and encouraged Arab states and societies to pursue other means to achieve interests that were increasingly defined in statist terms. The search for interdependence and integration was a state-led affair, but those doing the leading were fearful of the unity they were proposing because it represented a potential threat to their autonomy, if not their sovereignty. As such, the promise of integration that began on cultural foundations was never followed by the material elements that would create a greater incentive for deepening the transnational networks of association. Arab nationalism began as a romantic movement that asserted the primacy of language and history as the bedrock of shared identification. It was an imagined community in the truest sense of the concept. But marrying this identification with material and political interests depended on the policies of the same Arab leaders who privately feared that integration would further erode their autonomy and only leave them more fully exposed to the predatory behavior of other Arab governments.
But even when Arab states did act collectively and did establish inter-Arab alliances and institutions, the results frequently reinforced a desire for separateness, not solidarity. Recall that many of these inter-Arab institutions and alliances were driven by a desire to save face and to control the foreign policy of a rival, that is, not necessarily to obtain collective Arab action. The result was that their accomplishments fell far short of their public rhetoric, causing Arab leaders and Arabism to suffer a normative deficit. The Arab Collective Security Pact, the Unified Arab Command, and other arrangements were welcomed with high hopes and euphoric rhetoric but rarely were implemented. A chain of these impotent inter-Arab arrangements decreased the demand for them and increased the acceptability of unilateral arrangements. The most dramatic move in this direction occurred in response to the 1967 war. Convinced that if he waited for a collective Arab effort, he would probably wait forever, Nasser led a move to jettison the multilateralism of the past and move toward more selective groupings. The move away from all-Arab arrangements became a defining feature of the 1980s, embodied in the emergence of subregional organizations that was attributed to a decline in the Arab identity and a “return to geography.” 47 These unfulfilled promises led Arab societies to make their peace and identify more closely with the state. These failed promises also took their toll on the sensitivity among Arab societies to all-Arab issues. As dramatically demonstrated by the relatively muted response by the Arab states to the beginning of the intifada, by the end of the 1980s the Palestine conflict no longer resonated with Arab societies the way that it once did, a result not simply of fatigue but also of decreased sensitivity after years of instrumental appropriation. 48
But even when the Arab states did contribute to their collective causes, their mutual suspicions hindered their efforts to coordinate their actions, and subsequently contributed to their fragmentation. The UAR and the 1963 unity agreement were defined and undermined by mutual suspicions, and their collapse triggered a vindictive period of name calling that included highly vocalized claims regarding the legitimacy and authenticity of the separate states. The disappearance of unification from the Arab agenda after 1963 had everything to do with how Arab states and societies reevaluated the prognosis for unification, deciding that unification was unlikely to breed anything other than hostility. King Hussein accused Egypt of supplying him with faulty intelligence information during the 1967 war that directly contributed to the loss of Jerusalem and the West Bank. Because of such experiences, Hussein subsequently claimed, Jordan should follow a more Jordan-centered policy that better distinguished between Arab and Jordanian interests. Even the pinnacle of inter-Arab collective action, the 1973 War of Ramadan, was laced with mutual suspicions that shaped the Arab states’ generally uncoordinated military plans and the postwar political phase. After these and other fatal encounters Arab states stressed first how Arab unity was premised on the recognition of their diversity and second that, although they were members of the same family, their individual personalities and identities had to be respected and protected.
Arab states conducted themselves during a dialogue in ways intended to preserve domestic stability, and they pursued their various interests in the context of an Arab nationalism that placed unwanted restrictions on their activities and invited encroachments from other Arab states. To manage the tensions endemic in a situation in which they were expected to associate with the same movement that posed a potential danger, Arab states took evasive action that intentionally and unintentionally encouraged Arab societies to more fully identify with the territorial state and to draw distinctions and differences between Arab states. Arab states began each and every encounter with testimonies to their shared identity and their common fate. And then they proceeded to engage in policies and practices designed to protect them from the predations of other Arab leaders and to construct norms that bettered their standing. These new norms slowly privileged their separate identities and thus stressed their differences. Arab states sustained a pattern of interactions that eroded their shared fabric, created new identities, and oriented them in new directions.
But certain encounters and episodes represented historical turning points, moments of punctuated equilibrium when Arab states decisively turned toward new and separate directions. To understand how these events contributed to normative fragmentation requires an appreciation for how they were sequentially and causally connected, how Arab states charted a course of action after subjectively and strategically describing and situating the particular event in relationship to earlier events. 49 A decisive moment came after the failed 1963 unity agreements. But this moment was a testimony not only to the events of 1963 but also to the failure of the UAR in 1961 and the growing belief that unity as political unification was a breeding ground for rivalry. To protect themselves from the consequences of their failures Egypt, Syria, and Iraq began to stress the authenticity of the territorial state. The string of failures and confrontations surrounding the goal of unification, moreover, led Nasser to invent the summit system, to move away from the idea of unification, and to make (a temporary) peace with the conservative Arab states. The significance of the 1963 unity talks lies in how Arab states perceived those talks in relationship to past and present circumstances and in how the talks propelled Nasser in directions that moved him away from the idea of integration.
The 1967 war represented another such turning point. But to understand why the war led Arab states to conclude that their confrontation of Israel depended on their converging on sovereignty in inter-Arab relations requires an appreciation for how the Arab states understood the 1967 war in relationship to what had proceeded it. The return of the “Arab cold war” after the collapse of the summit system in 1964, and the subsequent symbolic competition among Arab states that was held partially responsible for the defeat, convinced most Arab states that Arabism had encouraged them to react to each other in the most destructive ways. Accordingly, they agreed to rechannel their energies away from each other and at Israel, and this required their convergence on a meaning of Arabism that was consistent with their separate sovereignties and the legitimacy of their separate “experiments.”
Egypt’s path to Camp David represented a similar turning point of considerably longer duration. Sadat claimed that his negotiations with Israel were permitted by sovereignty and consistent with Arabism, though this required him to relax the meaning of Arabism so that it left him less accountable to the other Arab states. For most of the 1970s he was relatively successful. However, Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem represented shock therapy for both the Israelis and the Arabs, forcing both to revise their understanding of Egypt’s place in Arab politics. His astounding journey demonstrated how imaginative and skillful actors can defy the constraints that supposedly shackle them. The rejectionist states successfully framed Camp David as antithetical to Arabism and thus discouraged other Arab states from following Sadat, but the long-term consequences of Sadat’s policies were to relax the meaning of Arabism and encourage Arab states to orient themselves in new directions.
And, finally, there was the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The sight of one Arab state swallowing another Arab state whole in the name of Arab nationalism encouraged Arab states to orient themselves in new directions. This was the lesson of the Gulf War—Arab states had already tired of Arabism and could confidently assert, as they could not before, that policies taken in the name of Arab nationalism had contributed to more defeats than victories. The Gulf War, in other words, was understood and situated alongside other events that were similarly interpreted as miserable encounters registered in the name of Arabism. Given such realities, many Arab leaders argued, it was time to become more “realistic,” which was tantamount to privileging the discourse of state interests over Arab national interests.
The unity talks, the 1967 war, the Camp David process, and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait were historical turning points, causing the region’s inhabitants to reconsider who they were, with whom they wanted to associate, and according to what norms. These events were like ice crystallizing in a cracking edifice, pushing Arab states further apart and leading them to stress their separate identities and interests. But they charted this course after situating that event in relationship to their actively, strategically, and collectively interpreted history and as a guide for their future directions. Arab states looked forward after understanding where they were in relationship to an imagined past.
Arabism encouraged Arab states to pursue both identification and individuation, but how they played the game of Arab politics, itself a product of their interest in regime survival, led to estrangement rather than collaboration, difference rather than fraternity, fragmentation rather than integration. Strategic and symbolic interaction was responsible for creating new and separate identities, roles, and interests that encouraged Arab leaders to adhere to the norms of sovereignty and to privilege the discourse of state interests over Arab national interests. Years of such interactions in the context of challenges that were supposed to unite them produced a regional order in which they stressed their growing diversity within unity and looked to sovereignty to rescue them from their worst hostilities. What began as a romantic movement at the beginning of this century has nearly returned to its original form at its end.
Arab states created a world of their own making and unmaking. As they discussed their collective response to the events of the day, they reconsidered their identities, roles they might assume, and eventual worlds. For most of this century Arab states were oriented toward each other, a movement that produced a rich mixture of conflict and cooperation. But the Arab world today is a far cry from the one that was demanded and desired only a few decades ago; the conflict that once marked the region has receded, but so too have the forms of desired and realized cooperation. Such historical developments are a testimony to the politics of identity and regime survival as Arab states negotiated the regional order.
Endotes
Note 1: On the relevant distinction between historical and analytical particularism as it pertains to the study of the Middle East, see Fred Halliday, “The Middle East in International Perspective: Problem of Analysis,” in R. Bush et al., eds., The World Order: Socialist Perspectives, pp. 201–20 (London: Polity Press, 1987). Back.
Note 2: See Robert Powell, “Anarchy in International Relations Theory: The Neorealist-Neoliberal Debate,” International Organization 48, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 337–38; Ron Jepperson, Alexander Wendt, and Peter Katzenstein, “Norms, Identity, and Culture in National Security,” in P. Katzenstein, ed., Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, pp. 33–75 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, “Security Communities in Theoretical Perspective,” in E. Adler and M. Barnett, eds., Security Communities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming); Emanuel Adler, “Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics,” European Journal of International Relations 3, no. 3 (September 1997): 319–63; Christian Reus-Smit, “The Constitutional Structure of International Society and the Nature of Fundamental Institutions,” International Organization 51, no. 4 (Autumn 1997): 555–90. Back.
Note 3: Jepperson, Wendt, and Katzenstein, “Norms, Identity, and Culture”; Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International Society (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996). For general statements on the social construction of interests, see Jutta Weldes, “Constructing National Interests,” European Journal of International Relations 2, no. 3 (1996): 275–318; William Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983), chap. 2; Jeffrey Isaac, Power and Marxist Theory (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987). Back.
Note 4: The expectation that the Arab governments would further the goals of the wider community, moreover, can be linked to a related function of the Arab state’s foreign policy: it was designed to give its citizens the sense that they were part of, and included in, a wider community. This is consistent with Clifford Geertz’s understanding that one function of the foreign policy of the postcolonial state is to connect marginalized individuals to a community. “The Integrative Revolution,” in C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), p. 258. For the general point about the expressive features of group participation see Randall Collins, “On the Microfoundations of Macrosociology,” American Journal of Sociology 86, no. 5 (March 1981): 984–1014; Jonathan Turner, A Theory of Social Interaction (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 49, 52–53, 59. Back.
Note 5: For statements on the potentially complementary character of sociological and economic models, see Peter Blau, Exchange and Power in Social Life (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1992), p. xiv; Erving Goffman, Strategic Interaction (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1969), pp. 85–145; Randall Collins, “Conflict Theory and the Advance of Macrohistorical Sociology,” in G. Ritzer, ed., Frontiers of Social Theory, pp. 69–87 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990); Michael Hechter, Principles of Group Solidarity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), p. 185; Barry Weingast, “A Rational Choice Perspective on the Role of Ideas and Shared Beliefs: State Sovereignty and International Cooperation,” Politics and Society 23, no. 4 (1995): 449–64; Robert Bates and Barry Weingast, “Rationality and Interpretation: The Politics of Transition,” paper presented at the Midwest Political Science Association Meetings, Chicago, March 1997; James Johnson, “Symbol and Strategy in Comparative Political Analysis,” American Political Science Association–Comparative Politics Newsletter (Summer 1997): 6–9; Donald Searing, “Roles, Rules, and Rationality in the New Institutionalism,” American Political Science Review 85, no. 4 (December 1991): 1239–60; Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 167. Back.
Note 6: David Carr, Time, Narrative, History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), p. 166; also see A. P. Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community (New York: Tavistock, 1985). Back.
Note 7: Carr, Time, Narrative, History, p. 163. Back.
Note 9: For a survey of militarized disputes see Malik Mufti, “A Brave New Subsystem: Inter-Arab Conflict and the End of the Cold War,” unpublished 1997 manuscript, Tufts University, Boston. Back.
Note 10: Paul Noble, “The Inter-Arab System,” in B. Korany and A. Dessouki, eds., The Foreign Policies of the Arab States (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1984), p. 61. Back.
Note 11: Also see Stephen Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 149. Back.
Note 12: 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); Ann Swidler, “Culture in Action: Symbols in Strategies,” American Sociological Review 51, no. 2 (April 1986): 273–86. Back.
Note 13: For a similar claim regarding the relationship between normative structure and the means of influence, see Rodney Hall, “Moral Authority as a Power Resource,” International Organization 51, no. 4 (Autumn 1997): 591–622. Back.
Note 14: For a general argument on access to the media as applied to the Middle East, see Gadi Wolsfeld, The Media and Political Conflict: News from the Middle East (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), chap. 2. Back.
Note 15: Samir Mutawi, “The Jordanian Response,” in R. Parker, ed., The Six-Day War: A Retrospective (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996), p. 179. Back.
Note 16: Michael Williams, “Hobbes and International Relations: A Reconsideration,” International Organization 50, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 213–37. Back.
Note 17: E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964), pp. 132–45. Back.
Note 18: Blau, Exchange and Power in Social Life, pp. 43–50. For general statements on power and symbols see Marshall Sahlins, Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), chap 5; Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 12–15. Back.
Note 19: Pierre Bourdieu, “On Symbolic Power,” in P. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 167–68. Back.
Note 20: See Robert Keohane, After Hegemony (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984); Stephen Krasner, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982). Back.
Note 21: For various realist and neorealist statements see Walt, Origins of Alliances; Glenn Snyder, “Alliance Theory: A Neorealist First Cut,” in R. Rothstein, ed., The Evolution of Theory in International Relations, pp. 83–104 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992); Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979), chaps. 6, 8. Back.
Note 22: On the symbolic function of organizations see Paul Dimaggio and Walter Powell, “Introduction,” in P. Dimaggio and W. Powell, eds., The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, pp. 1–40 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); W. Richard Scott, Institutions and Organizations (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1995). Back.
Note 23: The imperatives of political survival and “budget security” are also sources of many Arab alliances. See, respectively, Michael Barnett and Jack Levy, “The Domestic Sources of Alignments and Alliances,” International Organization 45, no. 3 (Summer 1991): 369–96; Laurie Brand, Jordan’s Inter-Arab Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). Back.
Note 24: Walt, Origins of Alliances, p. 149. Back.
Note 25: Both rationalist and sociological approaches recognize that norms are accompanied by sanctions. For rationalist approaches see Jack Knight, Institutions and Social Conflict (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); for sociological approaches see Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (New York: Free Press, 1968); Erving Goffman, Relations in Public (New York: HarperBooks, 1971). Back.
Note 26: Robert Axelrod, “An Evolutionary Approach to Norms,” American Political Science Review 80, no. 4 (December 1986): 1095–1112. Back.
Note 27: Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Anchor, 1959), and Strategic Interaction. Back.
Note 28: Dennis Wrong, Power (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1988), chap. 9; Goffman, “The Interaction Order,” American Sociological Review 48, no. 1 (February 1983): 5–7; Barry Barnes, The Elements of Social Theory (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 13–14; Hechter, Principles of Group Solidarity, p. 157. Back.
Note 29: Barry Buzan’s concept of “concentric circles of commitment” builds on the recognition that some states are better able and more willing to adhere to the norms of the community than are others because of their “proximity” to certain core identities. “From International System to International Society: Structural Realism and Regime Theory Meet the English School,” International Organization 47, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 349. But the case of Arab politics suggests that compliance is accomplished not simply by state identity, which presents an oversocialized view of state actors, but also because governments want the social approval that comes from being viewed as part of the group. Back.
Note 30: Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969), p. 19; Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967). Back.
Note 31: David Dessler, “What’s at Stake in the Agent-Structure Debate?” International Organization 43, no. 3 (Summer 1989): 467. Also see Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, chap. 4. Back.
Note 32: See Charles Tilly, “States and Nationalism in Europe, 1492–1992,” Theory and Society 23 (1994): 131–46, for a discussion linking the demise of empires and the rise of nationalism. Back.
Note 33: See Richard Ned Lebow, “The Long Peace, the End of the Cold War, and the Failures of Realism,” International Organization 48, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 252–59, for a good overview and criticism of the neorealist focus on the role of force for understanding international stability and change. On the polarity debate see Kenneth Waltz, “The Stability of the Bipolar World,” Daedalus 93, no. 3 (Summer 1964): 881–909. On hegemonies see Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). On balances of power see Waltz, Theory of International Politics, chap. 6. Back.
Note 34: Dessler, “What’s at Stake?” p. 455; William Sewall, “Three Temporalities: Toward an Eventful Sociology,” in T. McDonald, ed., The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), p. 263; Rey Koslowski and Friedrich Kratochwil, “Understanding Change in International Politics: The Soviet Union’s Demise and the International System,” International Organization 48, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 216; George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934), p. 309. Back.
Note 35: Martin Kramer, “Middle East: Old and New,” Daedalus 126, no. 2 (Spring 1997): 89–112; Saad Eddin Ibrahim, “Future Visions of the Arab Middle East,” Security Dialogue 27, no. 4 (1996): 425–36. Back.
Note 36: For general statements on identity and threat see William Connolly, Identity/Difference (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991); David Campbell, Writing Security (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992); Iver Neumann and Jennifer Welsh, “The Other in European Self-Definition: An Addendum to the Literature on International Society,” Review of International Studies 17 (1991): 327–48. Back.
Note 37: Paul Noble, Rex Brynen, and Baghat Korany, “Conclusion: The Changing Regional Security Environment,” in B. Korany, P. Noble, and R. Brynen, eds., The Many Faces of National Security in the Arab World (New York: St. Martin’s, 1993), p. 281. Back.
Note 38: See Michael Barnett, “Nationalism, Sovereignty, and Regional Order in the Arab States System,” International Organization 49, no. 3 (Summer 1995): 479–510; F. Gregory Gause III, “Sovereignty, Statecraft, and Stability in the Middle East,” Journal of International Affairs 45, no. 2 (Winter 1992): 441–67. Back.
Note 39: On sovereignty as a focal point see Weingast, “A Rational Choice Perspective on the Role of Ideas and Shared Beliefs.” Back.
Note 40: Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (New York: Macmillan, 1977). Back.
Note 41: Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (New York: Free Press, 1984), p. 173. Back.
Note 42: For the general claim see Koslowski and Kratochwil, “Understanding Change in International Politics”; Dessler, “What’s at Stake?”; Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics. Back.
Note 43: See Richard Ned Lebow and Thomas Risse-Kappen, eds., The End of the Cold War and International Relations Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), for this broad point as it pertains to international relations theory. Back.
Note 44: Philip Abrams, Historical Sociology (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982), p. 192. Back.
Note 45: Roger Owen, State, Power, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 21. Back.
Note 46: Cairo Domestic Service, August 8, 1990, cited in “Mubarak Gives News Conference 8 August,” FBIS-NES-90–153, August 10, 1990, p. 8. Back.
Note 47: Ghassan Salame, “Inter-Arab Politics: The Return to Geography,” in W. Quandt, ed., The Middle East: Ten Years After Camp David, pp. 319–56 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1988). Back.
Note 48: Rex Brynen, “Palestine and the Arab State System: Permeability, State Consolidation, and the Intifada,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 24, no. 3 (September 1991): 613. Back.
Note 49: As Charles Tilly aptly notes, “When things happen within a sequence affects how they happen.” Big Structures, Large Processes, and Huge Comparisons (New York: Russell Sage, 1984). Back.
Email this citation