Why does clientelism play a prominent role in the politics of the Middle East?

Why does clientelism play a prominent role in the politics of the Middle East?

Introduction

Cliental networks have played a prominent role in shaping the relationship between Middle Eastern states and their societies throughout the last half century.  Although these informal networks of top-down patronage and reciprocal loyalty have provided relative stability for authoritarian regimes in the region, they have also become obstacles to economic and political development.[1]  This leads us to the following questions: why was clientelism prevalent in almost every Middle Eastern country during their early period of state formation a half century ago, and why has clientelism continued to persist in the region when it has declined in other parts of the developing world like Latin America in recent decades?  

Although it is tempting to blame certain aspects of the region’s culture, like the influence of Bedouin tribal traditions, for the persistence of clientelism in the region, the cliental networks most commonly found in the Middle East today are not based on traditional bonds that tie a peasant to his landowner or a nomad to his tribe.[2]  Instead, the form of clientelism that has become pervasive in the region is a modern and urban phenomenon connected with party machine politics operating in the context of a modern state.[3]   We normally find these kinds of cliental networks in countries experiencing the early stages of modernity where peasants have been forced off their land due to the importation of modern agricultural technology but struggle to find work and social stability in urban centers that are often overcrowded and underdeveloped.   In these unstable circumstances, many political parties, whether operating under an authoritarian or democratic regime, have used the strategy of promising or providing benefits like government services, jobs, subsidies, and cheap housing to urban dwellers in exchange for votes or political loyalty.   Some clients—particularly those that share the same religion, ethnicity, and/or tribal background of those in power—are purposely given better benefits than others to weaken the potential for horizontal group formations like labor unions that could potentially challenge the power of the political elites.  These kinds of patron-client networks has been found in places as diverse as mid-nineteenth century New York, mid-twentieth century Mexico, and present day Venezuela, so the Middle East is not unique in this respect.[4]   Although culture has affected the nature of modern cliental networks in the times and places that they developed, only rational choice and structuralist theories can explain why these networks share so many similarities despite the fact that they developed in separate parts of the globe at different points in time.

Furthermore, culture does not explain why this modern form of clientelism has remained pervasive throughout the Middle East over the last half century.  One of the most important reasons why it has lasted in the region for so long while it has begun to diminish in importance in other parts of the developing world is that authoritarian regimes in the Middle East have had greater access to rents.[5]  This source of revenue does not only come from fossil fuel extraction but location rents like oil pipelines and the Suez Canal; migration rents through the remittances of emigrants working in the Gulf and the West; and strategic rents like military aid and economic investment from Western countries.   Whereas other authoritarian regimes in the developing world struggled to maintain the cost of their cliental networks throughout the global economic crisis of the 1970’s and the sharp rise in oil prices, most authoritarian regimes in the Middle East have been able to use these extra rents to help maintain their base of power.   Furthermore, since access to rents creates less of an incentive to industrialize, there is also less of need to invest in long term development.[6]   Cliental networks become harder to maintain as economies diversify, educational institutions improve, and the standard of living rises for the average person.  

Of course, rents are not the only reason why authoritarian regimes and their cliental networks have persisted in the Middle East.  Regimes in the region have relied as well on a variety of other strategies to control their populations and protect their power base, including state coercion; media manipulation; faux liberal institutional reforms; and outsourcing welfare programs to Islamic charity networks with ties to the regime.[7]  Whereas states in the Gulf have far more substantial access to oil rents due to small populations and enormous deposits of fossil fuels, regimes in North Africa and the Levant had to show a greater degree of political creativity to keep their respective regimes from collapsing or giving in to pressures to liberalize the political system.   

 

The Dependent Variable: Clientelism in the Middle East

                During the 1970’s and 1980’s, scholars such as S.N. Eisenstadt, Rene Lemarchand, John Waterbury, and Robert Putnam began to study the effect of cliental networks on political economies with a particular focus on the developing world.[8]  Following several decades of independence from European hegemony, third world countries did not perform as expected in terms of political and economic development.[9]  Many experienced disappointing growth rates and failed transitions to democracy.  Countries that theoretically had liberal constitutions were being ruled by single party regimes, military juntas, and personalized dictatorships, and laws were subjectively interpreted to benefit business owners with connections to the regime.  To understand these struggles with political and economic development, it was not enough to study formal institutions like constitutions, parliaments, or bureaucracies because politics in the third world was dominated by unwritten rules and informal political hierarchies.  Clientelism, which was a concept that was formulated in the field of anthropology, was adopted by political scientists to understand some of the informal aspects of many of these regimes.  Specialists in the Middle East, who often call the concept by its informal Arabic title “Wusta,” have taken a great interest in patron-client networks as they help explain why authoritarian regimes in the region have lasted so long yet are also terrible at governance.

                Scholars focusing on the subject generally define cliental networks as informal, voluntary, personal, and hierarchical relationships between patrons and clients where services, favors, and financial benefits are given to those below in exchange for loyalty.[10]   These vertical networks are distinguished from horizontal groups where members interact with each other on an equal basis like labor unions and civil society organizations.  Furthermore, cliental networks need to be distinguished from merit-based bureaucracies and competitive businesses where workers are hired and given promotions based on performance and not connections.   Bureaucrats only become part of a cliental network when there are high rates of corruption in the government, allowing workers to use their political office for personal gain.  Also, cliental networks are supposed to be voluntary; groups where members are forced to participate technically do not qualify.  A totalitarian regime that has absolute control of society through coercion and ideological domination does not use clientelism to gain support for the government.   Regimes that want to control parts of the population without resorting to force can use clientelism as a way to buy off support.

                Although this definition is pretty straight forward, applying it to reality is far more convoluted.   For example, many patron-client networks often involve some forms of coercion.   Mafia syndicates in Southern Italy will give protection to businesses in exchange for money, but those same organizations will often use violence against businesses that refuse the protection.[11]   Therefore, would mafia syndicates qualify as patron-client networks?  Also, ideology often plays a role in reinforcing the bonds between patrons and clients.  Islamist organizations in the Middle East like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Justice and Development Party in Morocco, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and the Nahda party in Tunisia use a mixture of charity, services, and Islamist ideology to win over supporters.[12]   Like any other cliental network, their charity networks are the backbone of their support, but Islamist ideology gives them added legitimacy and allows them to collect more donations from wealthy patrons.  Many of their supporters are motivated not by the services they receive but the ideals of the organization itself.  In conclusion, patron client networks can emerge in a diversity of situations and take on many different forms.  Over time, these organizations can evolve.  For example, Hezbollah, which began as a Shi’a militia in Southern Lebanon to fight the Israelis, has evolved into a political party with an extensive patron-client network that cuts across many different confessional groups.  This is why it is important not to make overt generalizations about clientelism in the Middle East.

For example, although clientelism is most often associated with authoritarian regimes in the region, it has emerged in underdeveloped democracies as well.[13]   In Turkey in 1950, following several years of internal political pressure, the ruling Republican People’s Party in Turkey, which was a developmental party, decided to allow relatively free and fair elections for the first time.[14]  Their main opposition, the Democratic Party (DP), was able to win that election by promising to enact populist welfare policies and provide extensive benefits for loyal clients in exchange for votes.   Populist parties like the DP consistently won elections from the 1950’s to the 1970’s in Turkey, and once in power, they drove up the country’s debt, politicized the bureaucracy, and took money away from long term developmental programs.  The debt problems caused cyclical political crises that led to coup d’états in 1960, 1971, and 1980.  Only in the 1980’s did Turkish political parties begin to pursue more fiscally responsible policies due to pressure from international banks and their own military.  To describe this situation, Peter Evans uses the term precocious Keynesianism, which is when states spend heavily on populist welfare policies before they have a vibrant industrial sector to pay for it.  It is a great for winning popular support in the short term but awful for long term development.

                We also find competitive cliental networks in democratic Lebanon, but they developed under very different circumstances.  Whereas Turkish cliental networks were relatively homogenous in terms of ethnicity, Lebanese parties tend to cater more to specific religious and ethnic minorities due to the unique demographic and geopolitical nature of the nation, which consists of eighteen different ethnic groups.  For example, sectarian parties like Hezbollah tend to provide benefits to clients from a Shi’a background in exchange for political support and votes.[15]  This does not mean that political parties only cater to specific religious groups.  For example, the Harriri family’s Future Movement, whose main base of support is Sunni, also provides goods and services to other confessional groups.   Even Hezbollah has a Christian wing within its militia, and some of its charities serve the other religious denominations.  However, in comparison with Turkey, Lebanese clientelism takes on a sectarian, and therefore more violent, nature.  Due to the weakness of the state, many of these cliental networks have created their own personal fiefdoms within the country. 

                On the other hand, in the rest of the Arab Middle East, it is more common to find cliental networks existing within an authoritarian context.  Syria is one of the most extreme examples.  Following two decades of coup d’états and political instability in the 1950’s and 1960’s, Hafez al-Assad, with the support of the minority Alawite community and the Ba’ath party, was able to create stability by repressing the opposition with violence and using state resources to build a relatively small but very loyal base of clients.[16]  Unlike Turkey or Lebanon, participation in these cliental networks was less voluntary and was much more limited in terms of who could participate.  Only patron-client networks connected with the ruling regime were tolerated.  Due to ethnic divisions in the state, several decades of political instability, and less access to rents than other countries in the region, the Syrian regime has had to rely on coercion far more than most other governments in the regime.   It helps explain why the revolution that began there in 2011 was the most violent of all the uprisings. 

                Egypt during the Mubarak era (1981-2011) represents an intermediate case study as its regime was not democratic but was also not as authoritarian as Syria.   In response to internal and external pressures for political liberalization in the 1970’s and 1980’s, Egypt’s government allowed very limited competition in legislative elections in 1986.[17]  Although access to the media was restricted and certain parties were banned from participating, the regime allowed limited competition among candidates under the condition that they did not challenge the legitimacy of the regime in power.  Candidates won elections by making and fulfilling as many promises as possible to potential clients.  As in many other states in the Middle East, voters in these illiberal elections were far more likely to choose candidates based on the personal services they could provide rather than their ideology or long term plans for the country.   Once elected, legislators would than use their political offices to obtain state rents for their loyal clients in the form of jobs, access to licenses, public contracts, tax breaks, housing, and other benefits.  The system allowed new clients to be co-opted into the system as long they did not challenge the legitimacy of the regime.  This created a very limited form of pluralism. 

                The Gulf presents us with another scenario.  Unlike the “republics” in the region, the monarchies tend to distribute state rents through the royal family, whose members control most of the major government bureaucracies.   Only recently have parliaments and political parties become an aspect of political life in the Gulf, and only in Kuwait do they have any significant effect on the regime.[18]  Due to the excessive amounts of oil rents and relatively small populations, governments like Qatar can deal with political opposition by simply throwing money at the problem.  For example, governments in the region responded to the Arab Spring in 2011 by increasing state salaries and social welfare; this was not an option available to Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, or Yemen.[19]   The only monarchy in the Gulf that could not use this strategy in 2011 was Bahrain, which has less oil rents than its neighbors and a small minority of Sunni Muslims ruling over a majority of Shi’a.   One only wonders why the Kaddafi regime in Libya didn’t pursue a similar strategy as the other rentier states.  Although Gulf regimes are autocratic like the regime in Syria, they are able to more easily contain opposition to their regimes without violence due to their excessive oil wealth. 

                Not only are cliental networks in the region diverse, but they are also difficult to quantify and analyze with precision.  This is necessary if we seek to compare and contrast the phenomenon across different countries and regions.  Scholars like Robert Cunningham and Samer Shehata have chosen micro approaches, analyzing individual cases of patron client relations in detail.[20]  Although these kinds of anecdotal studies are valuable in terms of understanding how individual patron client relationships work, we can’t use them to make larger conclusions about clientelism in the Middle East.  Other scholars like Peter Evans, John Waterbury, and Robert Putnam chose instead to look at public expenditures, measuring how much is spent on populist policies versus developmental programs.[21]  Institutions like Transparency International and the International Country Risk Guide use multiple surveys to measure perceptions of corruption, the rule of law, the quality of a bureaucracy, government transparency, and other factors to indirectly measure the effects of clientelism and corruption in each country.  Although it is impossible to fully quantify this variable, it is quite clear from the statistics and the individual case studies that the Middle East has had significant problems with clientelism over the last sixty years with little improvement in governance over that time period in spite of significant economic growth.   On the other hand, regimes in Latin America have made greater improvements in terms of political development in the same period of time. 

The Dependent Variables: Explaining the Resilience of Clientelism in the Middle East

                Why than did clientelism become entrenched in the politics of the Middle East?  Much of it has to do with the initial period of state formation in the 1950’s and 1960’s when Arab regimes became independent from European powers.  During this time, there were extensive economic, social, and political changes brought about by the influence of modernity that were causing violent social cleavages in society.[22]  Upon gaining independence, the puppets regimes of the region that were loyal to the West were having problems dealing with increasing urban poverty, growing gaps in wealth, the rise of political Islamism, the influence of communist states, and the xenophobic attitudes of fascist parties.  To make matters worse, the creation of the Israeli state inflamed attitudes against the West during this time period.  The Gulf regimes, backed very strongly by the West, were able to survive the politically tumultuous period, but the monarchies in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Libya collapsed following massive protests and coups d’état throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s.  Although the new military dictators of the regime preached the need to industrialize and invest in long term development, they spent enormous resources expanding the size of the state to provide welfare and services to loyal clients.[23]  Access to these cliental networks were based on connections and loyalty; not hard work or qualifications.   These regime leaders were more interested in political stability than long term development.   Although these regimes did use coercion and ideology to win support, clientelism played a large role in stabilizing many Arab regimes.

                Although the creation of a vast welfare state and a large cliental of loyal supporters created short term stability, it was also expensive to maintain.[24]  State industries were bogged down by inefficiency due to the lack of competition and the lack of qualified workers.  Furthermore, state bureaucracies suffered from corruption and inefficiency.  As a result, the rates of growth, which averaged about 4 percent a year for Arab countries, were disappointing.  Rapid population growth only made matters worse.[25]  By the late 1960’s and 1970’s, many Arab countries found themselves in massive debt with populations that were losing interest in Arab nationalist ideology. 

                Many other states in the developing world experienced similar problems by the 1970’s.  In the ensuing decades, debt ridden countries were often forced to take loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in exchange for making structural reforms.  This would often mean cutting government spending, which in turn would reduce the government’s ability to win the support of clients in society.  The end result in Latin America and Sub-Saharan was the decline of many authoritarian regimes and the rise of more pluralistic and democratic systems.[26]  Along with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the spread of democracy into Eastern Europe, scholars call this movement the third wave of democratization.  Patron-client networks with connections to the state either collapsed or went into decline as labor unions, civic organizations, and chambers of commerce began to compete for access to power. 

However, this third wave did not have the same affect on the Middle East.  Although several regimes, like Egypt and Tunisia, did make several attempts at economic restructuring programs to obtain foreign aid and investments, authoritarian regimes throughout the region never transitioned to democracies or pluralistic societies over the ensuing decades.[27]   Part of the reason is the surge of oil prices in the 1970’s, which brought enormous benefits to the Gulf, allowed many regimes to maintain their client bases.  Furthermore, even countries without extensive amounts of oil, like Egypt, had other sources of rent they could use that were unique to the region.[28]  Several countries in the Levant have oil pipelines that run through their country, giving them access to transport rents.  Egypt’s Suez Canal provides another source of transport rent as well.  Furthermore, since the United States and the Soviet Union were keenly interested in maintaining stability in a very volatile region with two thirds of the world’s oil wealth, they gave substantial amounts of foreign aid to allied countries.   Lastly, many Arabs who migrated to the Gulf looking for work in the country’s booming oil industry sent their money home to their families.  States were able to tax these remittances.  These rents continue to provide Middle Eastern states with sources of revenue than enable them to maintain their patron client networks without having to invest in economic development. 

However, the long term future of many authoritarian regimes and their loyal cliental networks are by no means certain as witnessed by the 2011 revolutions.  For one, a lot of these rents are dependent on a single resource: fossil fuels.  If the supply one day runs out or demand decreases, access to rents will significantly diminish.  It is probably not a coincidence that Middle Eastern countries that have far less access to rents like Tunisia and Turkey have made greater strides with economic and political development in comparison with their neighbors.[29]  Furthermore, as access to educational institutions and modern media improves throughout the Middle East, it will become harder for patrons to retain the loyalty of their clients.  Citizens that are well educated are more likely to demand better governance and accountability from state institutions than their illiterate counterparts.

Work Cited Page

1. Angrist, Michele.  “Party Systems and Regime Formation in the Modern Middle East: Explaining Turkish Exceptionalism," Comparative Politics, 36 (2), Jan, 2004: 229-249.

2. Bellin, Eva Rana.  "Contingent Democrats: Industrialists, Labor, and Democratization in Late-Developing Countries," World Politics, 52 (2), Jan, 2000: 175-205.

3. Brumberg, Daniel. 2002 “The Trap of Liberalized Autocracy,” Journal of Democracy Vol.13, No. 4: 56-68.

4. Cammett, Melanie and Sukriti Issar. “Bricks and Mortar Clientelism: The Political Geography of Welfare in Lebanon,” World Politics 62 (3), 2010: 381-421.

5. Cunningham, Robert and Yasin Sarayrah. “Taming Wasta to Achieve Development,” Arab Studies Quarterly, 16 (3), 1995: 29-41.

6. Eisenstadt, S.N. and Rene Lemarchand, eds.  Political Clientelism, Patronage, and Development.  Sage Publications: London, 1981.

7. Haddad, Bassam. “Syria’s State Bourgeoisie: An Organic Backbone for the Regime,” Middle East Critique, 21 (3), 2012: 231-257.

8. Herb, Michael. 2004. “Princes and Parliaments in the Arab World,” Middle East Journal, 58 (3): 367-384.

9. Hinnebush, Raymond.  “Toward a Historical Sociology of State Formation in the Middle East,”  Middle East Critique, 19 (3), Fall 2010: 201-16.

10. Korany, Bahgat, ed.  Arab Human Development in the Twenty-First Century: The Primacy of Empowerment.  The American University in Cairo Press: Egypt, 2014.

11. Leenders, Reinoud and Lust-Ellen. “Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East,” Journal of Democracy, 20 (3), 2008: 122-135.

12. Lynch, Marc, ed. The Arab Uprising Explained: New Contentious Politics in the Middle East.  Columbia University Press: New York, 2014.

13. Owen, Roger.  State, Power, and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East. Rutledge: London, 2004.

14. Putnam, Robert.  Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy.  Princeton University Press: New Jersey, 1993.

15. Richards, Alan, John Waterbury, Melani Cammett, and Ishac Diwan.  A Political Economy of the Middle East, third edition.  West View Press: United States, 2014.

16. Ross, Michael. "Does oil hinder democracy?" World Politics, 53 (3): 325-361.

17. Schlumberger, Oliver.  Debating Arab Authoritarianism: Dynamics and Durability in Nondemocratic Regimes.  Stanford University Press: Stanford, 2007.

18. Waldner, David.  State Building and Late Development.  Cornell University Press: New York, 1999.

19. Weiner, Myron and Samuel Huntington.  Understanding Political Development. Little, Brown and Co.: Boston, 1987.

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[1] See Waldner, David.  State building and Late Development, and Korany, Bahgat. Arab Human Development in the Twenty-First Century: The Primacy of Empowerment. 

[2] For resources that have culture as the independent variable to explain cliental networks, see works by Robert Putnam, Robert Cunningham, and Yasin Sarayrah. 

[3] Lemarchand, Rene.  "Comparative Political Clientelism: Structure, Process, and Optic," in Political Clientelism, Patronage, and Development. Eisenstadt, S.N. and Rene Lemarchand, eds.: pg 7-32.

[4] S.N. Eisenstadt and Rene Lemarchand’s book on clientelism goes into numerous case studies that include Southern Italy, Poland, Peru, Turkey, and other developing countries throughout the globe.

[5] Heydemann, Steven.  "Social Pacts and the Persistence of Authoritarianism in the Middle East," pg 21-38, and Richter, Thomas.  "The Political Economy of Regime Maintenance in Egypt: Linking External Resources and Domestic Legitimation," pg 177-193.  Both articles are found in Schlumberger’s book. 

[6] Ross, Michael. "Does oil hinder democracy?" World Politics, 53 (3): 325-361.

[7] Oliver Schlumberger’s edited book Debating Arab Authoritarianism: Dynamics and Durability in Nondemocratic Regimes has numerous articles by political scientists that discuss the different reasons why authoritarianism in the Middle East has survived in the region for the last five decades.

[8] Richards, Alan, John Waterbury, Melani Cammett, and Ishac Diwan.  A Political Economy of the Middle East, third edition.  West View Press: United States, 2014, Putnam, Robert.  Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy.  Princeton University Press: New Jersey, 1993, and Eisenstadt, S.N. and Rene Lemarchand, eds.  Political Clientelism, Patronage, and Development.  Sage Publications: London, 1981.

[9] Weiner, Myron and Samuel Huntington.  Understanding Political Development. Little, Brown and Co.: Boston, 1987.

[10] Eisenstadt, S.N. and Rene Lemarchand, Ibid.

[11] Putnam, Robert. Ibid.

[12] Pioppi, Daniela.  "Privatization of Social Services as a Regime Strategy: The Revival of Islamic Endowments (Awqaf) in Egypt," in Schlumberger, Oliver.  Debating Arab Authoritarianism: Dynamics and Durability in Nondemocratic Regimes.  Stanford University Press: Stanford, 2007, pg 129-142.

[13] By underdeveloped democracy, I mean a democratic system that is not full consolidated and country that is still developing economically.

[14] Angrist, Michele.  “Party Systems and Regime Formation in the Modern Middle East: Explaining Turkish Exceptionalism," and Evans, Peter.  Ibid.

[15] Cammett, Melanie and Sukriti Issar. “Bricks and Mortar Clientelism: The Political Geography of Welfare in Lebanon,” World Politics 62 (3), 2010: 381-421

[16] Haddad, Bassam. “Syria’s State Bourgeoisie: An Organic Backbone for the Regime,” Middle East Critique, 21 (3), 2012: 231-257.

[17] Leenders, Reinoud and Lust-Ellen. “Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East,” Journal of Democracy, 20 (3), 2008: 122-135.

[18] Herb, Michael. 2004. “Princes and Parliaments in the Arab World,” Middle East Journal, 58 (3): 367-384.

[19] Lynch, Marc, ed. The Arab Uprising Explained: New Contentious Politics in the Middle East.  Columbia University Press: New York, 2014.

[20] Cunningham, Ibid, and Shehata, Ibid.

[21] Evans, Ibid, Waterbury, Ibid, and Putnam, Ibid. 

[22] Evans, Ibid.

[23] Owen, Roger.  State, Power, and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East. Rutledge: London, 2004.

[24] Richards, Alan, John Waterbury, Melani Cammett, and Ishac Diwan, Ibid.

[25] Richards, Alan, John Waterbury, Melani Cammett, and Ishac Diwan.  A Political Economy of the Middle East, third edition.  West View Press: United States, 2014.

[26] Bellin, Eva Rana.  "Contingent Democrats: Industrialists, Labor, and Democratization in Late-Developing Countries," World Politics, 52 (2), Jan, 2000: 175-205.

[27] Schlumberger, Ibid. 

[28] Richter, Ibid.

[29] Brumberg, Daniel. 2002 “The Trap of Liberalized Autocracy,” Journal of Democracy Vol.13, No. 4: 56-68.