Rethinking the Arab States and Their Future

In 2011, the world watched in awe as Arab citizens poured into the streets of Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere in the Middle East, and, in some cases, managed to topple long-standing authoritarian regimes through persistent protest. The uprisings and the ensuing turbulence have forced scholars to re-examine previously accepted propositions about legitimacy, the state, civil society, religion, and regional stability.

This semester, Professor Michael C. Hudson, a Kuwait Foundation Visiting Scholar with the Belfer Center’s Middle East Initiative, sought to tap into this intrigue. Through his well-attended study group, “Rethinking the Arab State,” Hudson led discussions about the erosion of political legitimacy in states following the Arab Spring.

“This is an intrinsically important place to be studying in a multi-disciplinary way because so many dramatic things have happened,” says Hudson.  “It is important for us to collectively grapple with issues of political change, political transition, democratization, and the role of religion in politics.”

Hudson came to Harvard Kennedy School from Georgetown and Singapore. In Singapore, he was founding director of the Middle East Institute and professor of political science at the National University of Singapore. At Georgetown University, he is the Seif Ghobash Professor of International Relations and Arab Studies, Emeritus. Among his books are Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy (Yale, 1977) and The Arab Uprisings: Catalysts, Dynamics, and Trajectories (co-editor, contributor, Rowman and Littlefield, 2015).

He says he designed the study group to help scholars identify the causes of the region’s continued state of political unrest and turmoil that followed the revolution.

During the semester, Hudson invited eight leading scholars in the field to come to the study group. Among them:

Samer Shehata, an associate professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, presented “The Resurgence of Egypt’s ‘Deep State.’” “Deep state” refers to the idea that a powerful and clandestine group of people work to influence governmental control and law within the state. In Egypt, this has led to an increase in military control over the nation and is bringing the process of democratization to a screeching halt.

Yezid Sayigh, a senior associate and professor at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, spoke with study group participants about “ISIS: A State in Waiting.” Sayigh argues that ISIS is a clone of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi state in terms of itsuse of violence and ideology. He says the group’s ties with other provinces resemble that of the Iraqi Ba’th Party of the 1980s.

Amaney Jamal, the Edward S. Sanford Professor of Politics at Princeton University, presented “The U.S. Military Deployments and the Status of Women in the Arab World.” Jamal’s hypothesis is that as U.S. military presence in Arab nations increases, women’s political rights suffer, especially in strong Islamist states. States will concede to Islamists’ demands, not on foreign policies, but on gender, she says. “Women’s rights are negotiated away.”

Harvard Kennedy School Professor
Stephen Walt, discussed the question: “Can the United States ‘Manage’ the Middle East? Should it try?” His answer was no. U.S. involvement, he says, has created more chaos than stability. Hudson says the study group came to several conclusions, the most poignant being that states continue to be hostile to political participation except in their very limited terms, thus weakening legitimacy and contributing to instability Through continued study and observation, Hudson says he hopes to find out whether a more mobilized civil society can overcome this blockade.

“This would lead to a more democratic and stable Arab world,” he says. “Hopefully, the fruits of our study group will add something positive to the ongoing debate about where the Arab world is going.”

Podcasts of the "Rethinking the Arab States" study group series are available here.