Throughout the Middle East, Islamist charities and social welfare
organizations play a major role in addressing the socioeconomic needs of Muslim
societies, independently of the state. Through case ...studies of Islamic medical
clinics in Egypt, the Islamic Center Charity Society in Jordan, and the Islah
Women's Charitable Society in Yemen, Janine A. Clark examines the structure and
dynamics of moderate Islamic institutions and their social and political impact.
Questioning the widespread assumption that such organizations primarily serve the
poorer classes, Clark argues that these organizations in fact are run by and for the
middle class. Rather than the vertical recruitment or mobilization of the poor that
they are often presumed to promote, Islamic social institutions play an important
role in strengthening social networks that bind middle-class professionals,
volunteers, and clients. Ties of solidarity that develop along these horizontal
lines foster the development of new social networks and the diffusion of new
ideas.
In recent years, authoritarian states in the Middle East and North Africa have faced increasing international pressure to decentralize political power. Decentralization is presented as a panacea that ...will foster good governance and civil society, helping citizens procure basic services and fight corruption. Two of these states, Jordan and Morocco, are monarchies with elected parliaments and recent experiences of liberalization. Morocco began devolving certain responsibilities to municipal councils decades ago, while Jordan has consistently followed a path of greater centralization. Their experiences test such assumptions about the benefits of localism.Janine A. Clark examines why Morocco decentralized while Jordan did not and evaluates the impact of their divergent paths, ultimately explaining how authoritarian regimes can use decentralization reforms to consolidate power.Local Politics in Jordan and Moroccoargues that decentralization is a tactic authoritarian regimes employ based on their coalition strategies to expand their base of support and strengthen patron-client ties. Clark analyzes the opportunities that decentralization presents to local actors to pursue their interests and lays out how municipal-level figures find ways to use reforms to their advantage. In Morocco, decentralization has resulted not in greater political inclusivity or improved services, but rather in the entrenchment of pro-regime elites in power. The main Islamist political party has also taken advantage of these reforms. In Jordan, decentralization would undermine the networks that benefit elites and their supporters. Based on extensive fieldwork,Local Politics in Jordan and Moroccois an important contribution to Middle East studies and political science that challenges our understanding of authoritarian regimes' survival strategies and resilience.
We seek to better understand recent changes in social mobilization in the MENA region by analysing the formation and evolution of social networks. We propose an interactive perspective linking up ...contentious politics with routine governance through a dynamic articulation of repertoires of contention. At the heart of our analysis of social networks lie important questions regarding agency, strategic action and outcomes that have significance for social mobilization, social movements and politics at large. We outline how mobilization can change suddenly in the face of dramatic social and political events that transform societal interactions and adopt a bottom-up approach that highlights how micro level interactions in times of crisis produce specific logics and dynamics inside networks and shape what the networks achieve. By starting with descriptions of interactions at the grassroots level, we seek to explain macro level dynamics between networks and other players, including the state. In our approach, the role of other players becomes as important as, if not more than, structural characteristics. By adopting an interactionist orientation, we reveal the temporal dimension of strategic and non-strategic choices of these different players. In this perspective, the internal dynamics of the networks play a crucial part in determining the strategy of mobilization at the time of unrest; they also shape the possibilities for reformulating of the identity of the movement. Equally, the interactions between networks and other social and political players during episodes of contention contribute to validate or invalidate the internal choices of the networks; they also shape the impact of the networks' mobilization on the trajectory of the protests. Finally, the resonance of the networks with the behaviours and identities activated by the upheaval simultaneously empower them as players and tie their fate to a specific type of demands and needs which may be more or less transient.
In 1989, Jordan suspended marshal law, lifted media restrictions, expanded freedoms of association, and reintroduced parliamentary elections. Although these steps ushered in a dramatic, albeit ...limited, political opening, by 1997, many of these measures had been reversed. Indeed, today throughout most of the Middle East, the incipient democratization processes of the 1990s are labeled as “stalled” at best. However, as Jillian Schwedler states, these structural openings and closings do not provide the whole story of these Throughout the region, Islamists, liberals, leftists, and conservatives frequently sit together in opposition blocs and coordinate activities against the state—activities on which they did not cooperate a decade earlier—while remaining bitter rivals in other areas. The Higher Committee for the Coordination of National Opposition Parties (HCCNOP) in Jordan, founded in the mid-1990s in response to normalization efforts by Jordan with Israel, is one such example. A committee of thirteen opposition parties, it includes the Communist and Baءthist parties and the Muslim Brotherhood's Islamic Action Front (IAF). The IAF is very proud of its participation in the HCCNOP and claims that it is a democratic model for the Arab world. It points to the fact that it coordinates deals and “shakes hands” with secularists as evidence of the Party's moderation. The IAF's participation in the HCCNOP raises a variety of questions regarding the relationship between cooperation and democratization. What is the significance of cross-ideological cooperation for political liberalization and democratization? What are the conditions and mechanisms of cooperation? Finally, to what extent do Islamists moderate as a result of cooperation?
This study sheds light on the relationship between local and national elites during political transitions. Examining local councils in post-revolutionary Tunisia (2011-2013), it examines why and when ...the composition of councils changed in the absence of local elections. The study yields two important lessons. First, changes in councils resulted from a power struggle between national and local elites. Councils were more likely to remain in place when local parties and unions helped council members resist pressures from above. The interplay of local and national actors, and not the council's competencies, explains when changes took place. Second, all councils became politicized in the process. Far from being caretaker councils impartially addressing local needs, the councils were institutions playing important roles in the struggles between local and national political elites. Councils were arenas in which political power, and notions of legitimate representation, were contested in the absence of elections. The argument is supported by quantitative analyses of original data and four comparative case studies based on qualitative fieldwork. The findings highlight the importance of local councils in transition processes and provide a basis for further work exploring local-national engagement in democratization.
This article explains the endurance of sectarian identities and modes of political mobilization in Lebanon after the civil war. This is done by examining three case studies that demonstrate a ...recursive relation between sectarian elites and civil society actors: on one side of this relation, sectarian elites pursue their political and socioeconomic interests at the expense of civil society organizations (CSOs); on the other side, civil society actors instrumentalize the sectarian political system and its resources to advance their own organizational or personal advantage. These mutually reinforcing dynamics enable sectarian elites to penetrate, besiege, or co-opt CSOs as well as to extend their clientelist networks to CSOs that should otherwise lead the effort to establish cross-sectarian ties and modes of political mobilization or that expressly seek to challenge the sectarian system. The article fills a gap in the literature on sectarianism in postwar Lebanon and helps explain a puzzle identified by Ashutosh Varshney in the theoretical debate on ethnic conflict, namely the reasons behind the “stickiness” of historically constructed ethnic identities.
Throughout the Middle East, Islamists, leftists, and other ideological streams are forming coalitions in opposition to their authoritarian regimes. Yet little research has been conducted on the ...conditions under which these cross-ideological coalitions fail or succeed. Three cases of
successful coalition building and one case of failed coalition building in Jordan indicate that cross-ideological coalitions are initiated in the context of external threat and facilitated by organizational forms that ensure the members gain or maintain their ability to pursue their independent
goals. Most important, in contrast to other studies, these cases show that the plentifulness of recruits impedes cooperation. Rather than alleviating competition, an abundance of potential recruits increases competition and hinders cross-ideological cooperation.
In recent years, a growing chorus of voices in the political science
discipline has become concerned with the balance among alternative
methodological approaches in empirical research and ...publications.
Accordingly, these scholars have issued a call to further develop and
refine rigorous methods for qualitative studies, in contrast to studies
that rely on quantitative methods and formal modeling (Bennett, Barth, and
Rutherford 2003; Yanow 2003; George and Bennett 2005). My own interest and reason for conducting the
following survey is rooted in the observation, even frustration, that the
literature on qualitative research methods largely focuses on democratic
and not on authoritarian regimes or the Middle East in particular.
Research in the Middle East is clearly essential and has received
increased attention since the terrorist attacks of 9-11, but given how
critical this work is and will continue to be in coming years, what are
the challenges? Do qualitative methodological tools need to be adapted for
research in the Middle East? And, if so, how?The author would like to thank Anna Szczurk for her help in
designing the survey and the contributors to the symposium and Melissa
Gabler for their help in the research and writing of the article. The
author also is grateful to the survey respondents for the time and effort
they devoted to answering the questions.
Using the case of international donors' municipal strengthening and poverty alleviation projects in Jordanian municipalities, this article traces how local elites adapt to and adapt neo-liberal ...reforms to local dynamics and agendas. It demonstrates how economic reforms at the municipal level are not driving forces in and of themselves, but are subordinated to established patterns of political contestation among local actors who seize on the opportunities that reforms offer to advance their political agendas. The article is based on interviews gathered in 2010 and 2012.
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