Dennis Kostakoglu Aydin
Iraq and Syria have a well-documented modern history of oppressive regimes. As is generally common in MENA, in Saddam’s Iraq and Hafez al- Assad’s Syria, legitimacy was determined by specific state policies designed to ensure social compliance with the existing regime. This is the traditional definition of legitimacy: the state’s adherence to its citizens’ demands and its ability to deliver those demands (Hossein Razi 70). However, this definition neglects the state’s capacity to determine its own legitimacy (Anderson 14). As demonstrated in Syria, to garner popular support, these policies need to appear democratic; however, they are realistically not so, and instead are vehicles to manipulate citizens using state power (Kedar 45). This is facade democracy.
Alongside facade democracy, manipulation can occur through social contracts. The states are typically rentier states, where all of their income comes from exports- foreign states pay money (“rent”) to the rentier state, to gain access to its often-valuable resource (for example, the world pays to import Saudi oil). The state then sets forth this social contract: the state alone will provide for its citizens and, using its great fiscal power, drive the economy. In exchange, the rulers will continue to rule and democracy will erode. This is the rentier state social contract. However, which citizens and the quality of aid are often dependent on patrimonialism, a type of aid acquired through individual connections to the state. Thus, legitimacy can be engineered through social contracts struck with the government. More democratically, it can also be provided through social movements, which can however be endangered by their volatility or erased by the state’s use of façade democracy. Of course, the regime may also use security groups to directly control any opposition.
via AP/PA images
Patrimonialism allows the state’s regime to build support by providing for certain citizens. (Theobald 550). Especially common in rentier states with strong welfare, a patrimonial state’s legitimacy derives from its ability to control and provide resources to specific clientele, regardless of the demands of the broader citizenry (Lemarchand and Legg 152). Identity links such as tribal or religious affiliations determine receptors of state assistance, which comes not only in the form of welfare but also in opportunities to gain power (Eisenstadt 15). Patrimonialism is especially common in the military, which, holding physical power, is one of the strongest state groups (Eisenstadt 17). Participation in the military thus acts as a means by which individuals may improve their social standing and access state power. By being given opportunities as well as welfare, recipients of patrimonialism are more loyal to the existing regime.
In Saddam’s Iraq, patrimonialism occurred along tribal lines. When Saddam seized control, he was assisted by military officers from his town, Tikrit, whose loyalty he could be assured of (Baram 94). More importantly, within the Ba’athist government, Tikritis were more easily promoted and enjoyed preference, and of that group, members of Saddam’s tribe, the Albu Nasir, comprised a significant majority of the security forces (Baram 95). This included Saddam’s Special Republican Guards, who acted as a “parallel army” to prevent coups from the official military (Hashim 24) (Quinliven 141). Similarly, the Syrian military was controlled by members of the minority Alawite group prior to the 1963 coup (Kedar 22) (Van dam, 32). During the intra-Ba’athist coup of 1966, the military Alawites, led by Gen. Hafez al-Assad, took power in Syria, elevating the Alawite minority to power (Pipes 10). Under Hafez’s presidency, poor rural Alawites received welfare, while middle-class Alawites were given jobs in important state positions, as part of a plan to retain governmental loyalty to Hafez (Van Dam 79). Such patrimonialism is the method by which regime allies permeate the state, with their loyalty to it ensuring stability within the regime. This makes it easier for the regime to implement unified policies, including against its citizens.
To some degree, however, legitimacy of a state is also determined not just by the regime but by the capability of its citizens; to achieve this, states within the MENA region use a variety of indirect actions to limit public opposition and ensure complacency. Hannah Arendt defines power as the ability of groups to act collectively (Haldén 317). A democratic state is thus comprised of many groups, varying in ideology, who need to cooperate to form a state, and yet who are in constant competition to control power (Bermeo and Yashar 13-14) Thus, democracies occur as a consequence of citizen actors’ beliefs and policies. (Ibid. 15) These beliefs manifest in social movements, and it is these movements whose success or failure the state may affect to achieve public compliance.
Social movements act as official and sustained challenges to the state; they are the manifestation of a ‘group purpose’, with its members connected through social or identity links. (ibid. 21) However, these groups face several obstacles in achieving their purpose. Firstly, in the Middle East, success is sustained only when groups cooperate and remain organized (ibid. 21). Even after regime change, organizational failure, as shown in post-2003 Iraq, will result in parallel administrations who do not provide materially for the country’s citizens; in Iraq specifically, the regional chaos induced by a weak central state allowed for greater Iranian control within the state as well as the rise of ISIS (Wozniak 161-2). Additionally, the existing regime, particularly if its legitimacy is questionable in the eyes of the citizens, will likely attempt to preserve itself by crippling public challenges. In Syria, loss of government legitimacy was, and remains, likely to endanger the ruling Alawi religious minorities; consequently, Hafez advanced a policy of Syrian unification as a preventative mechanism against sectarianism (Kedar 22). He specifically prohibited media mention of minority groups such as the Alawites or the Druze, erasing historically common sectarian divides in favor of a broader Syrian-Arab identity (Kedar 18, 28-9, 32).
via AFP
Regimes may also respond to challenges by implementing policies designed to restrict the capabilities of movements (Bermeo 159-60). The history of the Iraqi state, for example, is marked by Kurdish uprisings, and Saddam’s policy reactions to this errant minority often strove to erase the Kurdish identity (Stansfield 63, 68-9). In Iraq, official policy was preferential to the Sunni minority; however, state controlled media channels may also disseminate policies of limitation, as occurred with Hafez’s Syrian unification policy (Stansfield 68-9).
State policy can also focus on legitimizing power through their control over state elections, a tactic called façade democracy (“political pluralism” in Hafez’s Syria and “democratic centralization” in Saddam’s Iraq). Elections, being a means by which the people may act collectively to define the state, align with Arendt’s definition of power. In non- democratic states, the existence and administration of elections highlights and thus legitimizes the coexistence of democratic ideals and authoritarian mechanisms (Kedar 47).
Some regimes in the MENA region, in the implementation of façade democracy, manipulate official means of social change, such as elections, in order to maintain the status quo. In these states, the perceived existence of democracy is believed to be proof of social change and of the success of social movements; the regime, then, maintains its legitimacy as people accept its existence as the outcome they desire (Ibid. 44). In Hafez’s Syria, it was not the success of elections (referred to as referendums) but their existence alone that was meant to pacify the people: the state portrayed citizen participation in referendums as the collective action desired by social movements, ignoring the policies of who actually took power (ibid. 42-44).
Hafez again distributed this message through his control over Syrian mass media (ibid. 44).
Newspapers called on citizens to vote in order to maintain democracy; simultaneously, they demanded loyalty to the President as the progenitor of Syrian democracy via the 1963 coup. Continuation of the President’s rule thus became associated with democracy and with freedom of opinion for the citizens.
Throughout his tenure, Saddam held several elections designed to impress upon the people a sense of collective action. These elections often took place during volatile moments in history, being held to ensure the legitimacy of Saddam’s regime and to pacify the people, who were breaking apart as a consequence of sectarian identity differences. Like Hafez, Saddam professed a need for unity.
Saddam also actually elected candidates- to positions which held no real power (Isakhan 106). The existence of Iraqi elections hampered the country’s social progress by convincing the people that that progress was already achieved.
In summary, there are a variety of policies by which the state may indirectly achieve public complacency, and thus a semblance of legitimacy. Through façade democracy, control of the media, and as a result of the opposition’s organizational failures, social movements against the regime are rendered less likely to succeed. It thus makes it easier for the state to convince its broader citizenry that democracy already exists under the current system, and thus surreptitiously gain its support.
However, when the citizens refuse to accept a state’s false democracy, it may use its power to spread violence in order to retain control. Max Weber defines a state as a construct that monopolizes the use of force under legitimate means (Haldén 314). Since the state may acquire legitimacy through manipulation of the people’s will, by using the state’s security systems to control the type and extent of social challenges to the regime, the regime is able to directly control public opinion. Use of such state power is weak, as it fails to convince the people that they are the arbiters of legitimacy; to the citizens, the state then becomes openly illegitimate. This makes subsequent challenges more potent.
When authoritarian regimes suppress social groups, violence becomes increasingly likely, on the part of both the state and the people (Bermeo 25).
Suppression of isolated social groups is more likely to succeed, and in the MENA region, challenges to the regime often occur along identity divisions (ibid. 18-19). For example, in Syria, Hafez’s unification policy and the government’s Alawi identity was rejected by the country’s Sunni majority, who view the Alawi religion as heretical (Kedar 83-4). In the 1980s, the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood attacked the Syrian government on sectarian grounds; the government subsequently mobilized to arm Ba’ath party members and supporters (Van Dam 105).
Hafez effectively used civilians as an ideologically motivated, private military force against the Brotherhood, who, in response, escalated attacks on the regime and Hafez personally. This eventually caused an uprising in the Syrian city of Hama (Ibid 107).
Through patrimonialism, the Syrian army, particularly the chain of command and the elite troops, were composed of Alawites. In a sectarian battle for the city, the army was able to brutally repress the Brotherhood (ibid. 111.5) (Danin).
Hafez’s scorched-earth policy was successful: religious opposition in the country was effectively crushed (Van Dam 116-7). Additionally, despite increased sectarian tensions, many citizens were willing to accept the subsequent peace offered by the regime (Danin). This severely limited the changemaking capabilities of oppositional social movements.
Saddam also enforced similarly repressive policies in attempts to maintain political hegemony; however, he did so not only against citizen opposition, but also against powerful members of his own state. After the 1968 coup, Saddam used his position to purge non- Ba’athist military officers as a means of disorganizing the military and crippling its power (Hashim, 19). Saddam’s parallel military organizations used patrimonialism to curtail military strength; he staffed such organizations with ally groups, including Sunnis and members of Saddam’s tribe, the Albu Nasr (ibid. 25).
Furthermore, he deterred citizen attempts at regime change by attacking specific groups, and by arbitrary violence against any member of the public (EUAA) (Hashim, 26). To some degree, his attempts at control succeeded: despite being aware of the regime’s injustices, Iraqi citizens could not affect real change and were thus forced to retain a level of Ba’athist loyalty (Ishkahan, 110).
However, after Iraq’s loss in the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraqi Kurdish minority was able to take advantage of the state’s weakness and establish autonomy within the state (ibid. 112). Before the war, Kurdish opposition to the Ba’athist regime had prompted Saddam to violently suppress the Kurdish population of Iraq, even to the degree of genocide. Thus, the development of a Kurdish state in Iraq was only possible because of consistent organization among the various Kurdish movements. In 1992, the Kurdish Regional Government was established, with its own media outlets outside of Ba’athist influence; it was consequently able to directly criticize the regime and to call for greater democracy. Yet the region’s economic difficulties still force it to remain under Iraqi control, illustrating that limitations on collective action need not be purposefully implemented by the state.
In conclusion, legitimacy of a regime is often measured through the success of several policies common among authoritarian MENA regimes. For example, the state may use force to control opposition groups, although this can further escalate violence until there is a definitive victor, which need not be the regime. States have greater success with indirectly controlling social movements through façade democracy, although to some degree, success of such movements is also contingent on their unity and organization. Finally, the state can build legitimacy through patrimonialism, using identity links to control the regime and ensure loyalty. However, failure of these policies, while it may lead to the overthrow of the regime, need not induce democratic change- as shown in Iraq, if a dominant group doesn’t hegemonize, greater instability is possible in post-regime states. In any case, then, the citizens’ freedoms will suffer.
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