Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa
Social Covenants: The Missing Ingredient in State Building Efforts
Political theorists have for the most part focused on the state when thinking about how to make countries work better for their populations. This has naturally led to a concern with state-society relations, how governments are chosen and run, and institutions. There is wide consensus that social contracts play the central role in state building.
This thinking has heavily influenced how the international community approaches fragile states, post-conflict situations, and transitions as well as development in general. As the OECD/DAC explained in Concepts and Dilemmas of State Building in Fragile Situations:
Fragility arises primarily from weaknesses in the dynamic political process through which citizens’ expectations of the state and state expectations of citizens are reconciled and brought into equilibrium with the state’s capacity to deliver services. Reaching equilibrium in this negotiation over the social contract is the critical if not sole determinant of resilience, and disequilibrium the determinant of fragility. [page 7]
This focus on the state shapes responses to crises in places such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan, compelling the international community to prioritize the establishment of a transitional regime and fast track elections under the belief that this is the sole way to create legitimacy no matter the circumstances or the context.
But many of these countries have deeply-entrenched problems that a focus on the state cannot solve. Different religious, ethnic, and clan groups do not work together well, and see any competition for power as a zero sum game for exclusive control of the state. Government is weakly institutionalized, and unable to act as an independent, equitable arbitrator between different interests. Judges and officials are beholden to personal relationships, power politics, or money (and sometimes all three). In such places, winners of elections rarely see it as their duty to serve all their people, and often define their rights as whatever they can get away with—negating whatever social contract the process was supposed to establish. (more…)
Discordant Development – Progress That Increases Instability
Samuel Huntington argued in his 1968 classic Political Order in Changing Societies that rapid development could be highly destabilizing:
Social and economic change—urbanization, increase in literacy and education, industrialization, mass media expansion—extend political consciousness, multiply political demands, broaden political participation. These changes undermine traditional sources of political authority and traditional political institutions; they enormously complicate the problems of creating new bases of political association and new political institutions combining legitimacy and effectiveness. The rates of social mobilization and the expansion of political organization are high; the rates of political organization and institutionalization are low. The result is political instability and disorder. The primary problem of politics is the lag in the development of political institutions behind social and economic change.
Richard Joseph, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Professor at Northwestern University, discusses a similar point in a recent article on Africa. In it, he introduces the very useful phrase “discordant development,” defining it as:
More than just “unequal development,” but rather how deepening inequalities and rapid progress juxtaposed with group distress can generate uncertainty and violent conflict. (more…)
Bahrain: The Three Conflicts Shaping the Broader Crisis
Justin Gengler, who recently completed his PhD dissertation on Bahrain, presented a keen analysis of the social and political dynamics driving the conflict in the country during a presentation at the Brookings Institute in Doha at the end of November. These dynamics shape and help explain what each actor or group is doing and what they are likely to do next. According to Justin, Bahrain is more than divided between a government and an opposition (as often interpreted). Rather, it is facing three mutually reinforcing conflicts, each of which is working to preclude resolution of the others and making the overall political crisis intractable.
Although Justin emphasizes the sectarian element, the picture he presents is much more complicated. The Sunni government is divided, the Shiite opposition is divided, and the Sunni population is divided. Each contain moderates and extremists. Action by extremists in one group empowers extremists in another, creating a vicious cycle with no obvious way out. (more…)
Graduate Level Course on Fragile States
I will be teaching a course this fall (780.718 Promoting Development in Fragile States) in the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University:
Hindered by weak institutions, social divisions, and difficult historical legacies, fragile states face fundamentally different challenges than other countries. This course focuses on understanding the drivers of state fragility and what steps might counteract these. It encourages participants to think deeply about the nature of development, political incentives, the role of geography in governance, social identities, the nature of public authority, and a variety of other issues relevant to state building in difficult circumstances. It will be of interest to students working on African and Middle Eastern issues, conflict management, comparative politics, and economic/political development.
The syllabus for the course provides a good reading list for anyone wanting to understand the problems facing fragile states and what policies might deal with their unique problems.
If anyone wants more information, contact me at seth@sethkaplan.org.
Can Informal Accountability Replace Elections?
Improving the accountability of leaders tops the agenda of just about everyone involved with development. But the preferred solution—elections—often comes up short in countries with divided populations and democratic structures that are not well institutionalized. There is a great need for alternatives.
Such alternatives can take many forms—including improving governance, enhancing the rule of law, promoting transparency, decentralizing government (where leaders might be held more accountable in some cases), ensuring equity in governance and the distribution of resources (which may matter more than better governance), and increasing the leverage of societal groups to monitor the performance of state officials.
One neglected area that deserves much more attention is promoting social cohesion. Indeed, it can be argued that the greatest difference between the successful developmental states and their far less successful developing country peers is the degree of social cohesion.
But how do you promote social cohesion when it is lacking? (more…)
Promoting Human Rights in non Western Countries
A key challenge faced by those engaged in international human rights policy and practice is adopting an effective framework for protecting and promoting human rights around the world in a way that preserves and articulates their universal nature, while at the same time respecting local values and practices.
One way to approach this challenge is to examine values, norms, customs and practices in non-Western cultures which can act as ‘receptors’ for human rights principles and practice. A new Dutch collaborative research project adopts just such an approach (and is thus called the ‘Receptor Approach’). It brings together experts from around the world and from a variety of disciplines – law, anthropology, sociology, political science, international relations and philosophy among others. (more…)
More on Africa, East Asia, Middle East and North Africa, Policies, Poverty, Religion, South Asia
Strengthening the Rule of Law in Developing Countries
Many fragile states suffer from incoherent legal systems. Whereas in developed countries, one single system exists and is effectively enforced, in fragile states multiple systems work side-by-side, each weakly enforced, and often operating in contradiction with each other. Creating a unified and robust system of law is one of the biggest challenges these countries face.
In most cases, this incoherence is a direct product of colonialism. One system, often with the greatest relevancy to local populations, has roots in the precolonial system of governance. It may have evolved a lot since then, but is still based on local circumstances and institutions. The state, itself a product of foreign rule, follows another system, based on Western legal tradition, imported from abroad. Neither is consistently or equitably implemented. Corruption distorts outcomes. Officials (whether those of the state or local leaders) lack training. Favoritism is common.
In some places, religion comes into play with its own system (such as Sharia), creating three legal layers, each with its own logic. Outcomes and incentives can be widely divergent. Local systems may also vary tremendously by location, creating a complex mosaic of different mixes of different systems depending where in a country one is. (more…)
Differentiating Between Fragile States and Transition Countries
The term “fragile states” is much abused.
Policymakers, development researchers, politicians, and the media seem to think that every country experiencing a period of instability or bothered by certain governance problems is “fragile.” As a result, they group a wide range of countries experiencing vastly different types of problems together—creating a mass of confusion in the process.
Such thinking means that the term as currently used has very little value as an analytical tool. Instead it has become a catchall phrase to explain any situation that seems “fragile” even if the fragility is likely to be ephemeral. It also means that states that are structurally fragile but that have none of the most obvious symptoms of fragility (such as Syria before 2011) do not get considered as one.
The Arab Spring shows the vacuousness of this approach. Before 2011, few of the countries currently in turmoil were considered fragile. Now almost all of them are. How can both these things be true? (more…)
Middle Eastern Religious Identities
What is the religious makeup of Middle Eastern countries? How does this affect the fragility of countries?
As Bernard Lewis wrote in The Multiple Identities of the Middle East, the region is made up of “old and deep-rooted identities” and that
not nationality, not citizenship, not descent, but religion, or more precisely membership of a religious community, is the ultimate determinant of identity.
Knowing the strength and geographical spread of these identities is crucial for identifying potential fault lines and devising measures to reduce their saliency. Stability in many places depends on ensuring political settlements are inclusive. Syria, Libya, Bahrain, Iraq, and Yemen are all struggling to find a proper balance in their deeply divided states.
This map shows detail from Egypt to Afghanistan and everything in between.
Bahrain: Analyzing Inequities Between Sunnis and Shiites
Bahrain is again in the news this week. The country and Saudi Arabia are discussing a closer political union—with the obvious aim of safeguarding Sunni control in a Shiite majority country. Meanwhile, Shiite activists burned tires and blocked roads in a protest against detention policies.
Bahrain’s crisis has many causes: the Middle East’s wider Shiite-Sunni rivalry; the region’s longstanding Persian-Arab rivalry; ideas released during the Arab Spring; rising political aspirations from years of watching satellite television.
But the key driver is the horizontal inequities (i.e. inequalities between culturally formed groups) that exacerbate the fault line between the Shiites and Sunnis within the kingdom. Shiite demands may not all be reasonable, but their relative disadvantage in economic, social, and political spheres feed dissatisfaction, and promote instability. Reducing at least some of these inequities is crucial to reducing the instability, which otherwise is likely to fester for years to come. (more…)
