Contentious Politics in the Middle East: Political Opposition under Authoritarianism

Concluding Remarks. Opposition in Support of the Arab State, Revisited

Concluding Remarks Opposition in Support of the Arab State, Revisited I. William Zartman Two decades ago, an international study Durability of the Arab State (Dawisha and Zartman 1988) identified the opposition as a support of the state (Zartman 1988), highlighting the complementary roles of the two institutions. The state did its “thing” and the opposition did its “thing,” the state’s “thing” being the maintenance of its position as the authoritative political institution that is sovereign over the population in a recognized territory and the opposition’s interest being survival. The state permits and protects the opposition, within careful limits, as a safety valve for popular disaffection and as evidence of its democratic rule. The opposition legitimizes the state as its protector and as a defense against dangerous rivals. Two decades later, is this picture still accurate ? If not, what has changed? Apparently, everything has changed (except Mubarak and Qaddafi)! Not only has the Cold War ended and al-Qa‘eda’s attacks shocked the world; the leader of every regime in the region with two exceptions has changed. On the other hand, except for Iraq, all of the states of the Arab Middle East and North Africa have the same (type of) regime as they had two decades ago, emphasizing that rulers come and go but the Arab state is indeed remarkably durable. It takes an external invasion or an internal revolution to effect regime change, and in the second case (and maybe the first, in the end) there are legitimate doubts. Yet, in fact, the previous analysis no longer holds, or, more precisely, it is no longer adequate to the situation. What has changed is, in some cases, the evolution of oppositional status into a real government party and, above all, the rise of the Islamic parties, which opens the status of opposition to new dimensions not contained in the earlier evaluation. The Reality Thanks to the pounding of democratization as a constant theme from both inside and outside, unrelatedly, alternance, or the coming to power of the op- 230 / I. William Zartman position, has become a reality in the Middle East and North Africa, both to be cultivated and to be feared, depending on the regime and the opposition. States with a multiparty system—as different as Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq—regard their opposition parties as potential government partners. States with a single (or quasi-single) party system—such as Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria—but also the multiparty states cited above have suddenly found themselves confronted with an Islamic protest movement that poses a real threat to their regime and—legalized or not—to its stability. Both types tend to fall in the category Agnieszka Paczynska calls “hybrid regimes” (see chap. 2), mitigated authoritarian regimes with opposition located somewhere in the political system, often in evolution but not necessarily in transition to anything else. Before developing these notions, let it be stated that “opposition” can refer either to the Western concept of loyal opposition, i.e. opposition within the established political system, or to extrasystemic opposition, and the line between the two in practice is neither sharp nor stable nor clear. In either meaning, opposition is not a concept native to the Arab Muslim world (see Albrecht, chap. 1, and Sluglett, chap. 3; see also Leca 1997). There is a Kharajite doctrine that justifies overthrow of the corrupt ruler, based on the Qur’an, but it does not refer to an ongoing opposition party or a continuing minority in a council. The anticolonial movement, also a modern phenomenon, was a total opposition to the political system, and it has left its shadow on current notions, particularly Islamic, of opposition. The existence of such notions poses again the distinction between loyal and extrasystem opposition: opposition to the incumbent government (with the expectation of meeting similar opposition should the current opposition itself become the government), and opposition to the current political system (with the expectation that similar oppositions will no longer be necessary when the current opposition takes over the political system). These questions raise the question whether or which (or when) Islamic oppositions are indeed within the political system. In a number of states, opposition parties have become acceptable candidates for participation in government. The state buys its stability from this arrangement, keeping its balance with nimble footwork like a lumberjack on rolling logs, assembling a workable coalition that will trade off participation in government for good manners within the political system. Parties are not...