Political Development after WW2: Types of governments, states.

Political Development after WW2: Types of governments, states

Caveat:

Clusters of states rather than cross-regional generalizations (traditions, demographic composition, external influences, geographic location).

Structural (international) conditions:

Modernization as a norm;

Cold war “realities”;

Alternative models of economic development.

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Turkey and Iran (similarities)

A move away from agriculture.

Industrial development (Etatism in Turkey; White Revolution in Iran).

Urbanization

Demographic change (population boom)

Turkey and Iran (further similarities)

Literacy rates up (improved education and health care)

Emancipation of women (politics, education); Iran: 1967 and 1975: family protection laws granted women greater legal equality within marriage.

Political upheaval.

Turkey and Iran (some significant differences in the 1950s)

Turkey: Proliferation of political parties (competing with the Republican People’s Party);

Iran: Foreign intervention. Afterwards: the military and the monarchy bound by common interests.

Turkey (1950-60): anitsecularization measures (not against Kemalism)

Religious instruction in the primary school system.

Calls for prayers in Arabic legalized,

The number of schools for training Muslim prayer leaders was increased,

Turkey (1950-60): anitsecularization measures Considerable government expenditures for the repair of

existing mosques and the construction of new ones.

Expansion in the publication of books and pamphlets dealing with religious subject.

A renewed public observation of the Ramadan fast and the pilgrimage to Mecca.

Saudi Arabia

The only exception to secularization.

Rejected Western (secular) influences.

Promoted strict adherence to religious practices.

Saudi Arabia

Governed by a strong royal family.

A consultative branch of limited powers, and a judiciary that implemented a mixture of customary law and shari`a-based law.

(Criminal laws based on the Islamic tradition).

Ideological orientations of other Arab countries

Decolonization (political and economic); Nationalism; Pan-Arabism; Socialism (not to be confused with communism!!); Non-alignment; and Islamism

Short history of statehood:

Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia Algeria, Lybia

The post-colonial state (i.e., after WW2)

Most Arab states went sequentially through the two modes of government:

Monarchy under foreign tutelage or direct foreign administration, and

Authoritarianism either as a presidential system (Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Tunisia) or military dictatorship (Libya, Algeria). (Monarchy as a form of government survived in Morocco and Jordan).

Arab nationalism:

Liberation from colonial rule was the common wish of all Arab peoples by the 1940s.

Most people in the Arab world believed they were united by a common language, history, and culture grounded in the Islamic past, a culture shared by Muslims and non-Muslims.

Some Arab nationalists

Wanted to dissolve the frontiers drafted by the imperial powers to divide the Arabs.

and build a new commonwealth based on the deep historic and cultural ties that bound the Arabs.

Egypt: March 1950 through October 1951 The Wafd government conducted talks with the British

government.

After 19 months of talks failed to produce results, the Wafd government unilaterally abrogated the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty.

The British refused to recognize the abrogation, which would have turned their forces in the Suez Canal Zone into an illegal army of occupation.

The strategic importance of the Suez Canal

A cornerstone of British foreign policy.

The armed struggle in the Canal Zone; the Brits responded with arms.

The events of early 1952: the end of the political order in Egypt.

A shift…

The old nationalist politicians, and the kings they served, were discredited for their failure to make a clean brake form British imperial rule.

A rise of radical new parties ranging from the Islamist Muslim Brothers to the Communists.

Egypt: The Free Officers

United by the belief that Egypt’s monarchy and parliamentary government had failed the country.



The 1948 Arab-Israeli war (triggering cause):

The defeat had discredited the old regime.

Nasser and other Free Officers had been appalled by their experiences in the Palestine War (sent to battle without adequate weapons and found themselves besieged by the Israelis for months and ultimately defeated).

Nasser

Agreed to form a new, largely civilian, government in September of 1952.

Created a committee of military men (the Revolutionary Command Council) to oversee the work of the revolution, ostensibly in collaboration with the government.

Reform programs: Free Officers’ six-point political program

1. The destruction of British colonialism and the removal of its Egyptian collaborators;

2. The elimination of feudalism;3. The ending of the political controls of the state by

foreign capital;4. The establishment of social justice;5. The formation of a strong national army; and6. The creation of a healthy democratic life.

The military men

Were quick to purge Egyptian politics of party pluralism.

In January 1953, in response to pressures from the Wafd and the Muslim Brothers, the RCC banned all parties and expropriated their funds from the state.

Nasser

Introduced a state-sponsored party: Liberation Rally.

Argued that party factionalism was largely responsible for the divisive politics of the interwar years.

Hoped the Liberation Rally would serve to mobilize popular support behind the new regime.

Made the final break with the old order when the RCC abolished the monarchy on June 18, 1953.

Egypt: Progressive Policies

Land reform to reduce the wealth and power of the landed elite while improving the living conditions of the peasants;

Laws abolishing all civil titles (pasha, bey) a bill of rights that protected Egyptians from discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, language, or religion.

Women were permitted to vote.

Nasser:

Projected a spirit of hope.

The new Egyptian government

Inherited an array of economic problems.

The country was over-reliant on agriculture, and agricultural output was constrained by Egypt’s desert environment.

There was no way to expand the land under cultivation without the water resources for desert reclamation.

Egyptian industry remained largely underdeveloped

Agriculture contributed 35 percent of the Egyptian GDP in 1953, industry contributed on 13 percent (services 52%).

Low levels of public and private investment.

Overall population growth well outstripped the rate of job creation.

The officers of the RCC

Decided to build a hydroelectric dame on the Nile (near the town of Aswan).

The new Dam would store enough water to allow and expansion of land under cultivation by anywhere between 35 and 75 percent.

Such a project would cost hundreds of millions of dollars -- far more than Egypt could raise from its source.

In order to pose a credible threat to Israel, Egypt needed to

Acquire arms from abroad.

Nasser turned first to the US approaching for assistance in November 1952.

The US was willing to assist (mediate between Israel and Egypt) but wanted Egypt to commit to a regional defense pact (Middle East Defense Organization) with the US and the UK against the Soviet Union.

Nasser

Next approached the French alternate source of military hardware.

But the French had misgivings about Nasser due to his support for nationalist movement in North Africa (Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria).

September 1955: Nasser flirting with the Soviets (who do not make conditions).

He presented the Americans with a fact by announcing that Egypt would obtain arms from the Soviet satellite state of Czechoslovakia. The magnitude of the arms deal dramatically changed the ablance of power in the Middle East.

May 1956: Nasser extended diplomatic relations to the People’s Republic of China.

Aswan Dam:

The US government tried to make the loan contingent on a commitment from the Egyptian government not to buy more arms from the Soviet Union.

The military purchases would undermine the ability to pay back the loan.

Nasser in Alexandria (July 1956)

If the Western powers refused to help the Egyptians, he planned to argue, then Egypt would pay for the dam itself by nationalizing the Suez Canal and diverting the canal’s

revenues to meet the cost of the dam.

The British, French, and Israelis

Wanted to change Egypt’s government altogether.

The 1956 war.

No Arab leader has exercised such influence on the Arab stage before

Or since…

By 1957

Both the Ba’ath Party and the Communists approached Nasser with proposals to unite Syria and Egypt,

The Ba’ath proposed a federal union, The Communists raised the stakes with the

suggestion of a full merger of the countries into a single state.

The Syrian army got involved in the merger.

The army had already staged three coups against the Syrian government and many of its officers were avowed Ba’athists.

They were drawn to the military government of Nasser’s Egypt and believed that union would favor them as the dominant power in Syrian politics.

Nasser:

Had always promoted Arab unity, He understood the expression to mean Arab

solidarity, a unity of purpose and of goals. he had never aspired to formal union with other Arab

state. Egypt, he recognized, had a very distinct history

from the rest of the Arab world.

An all-Arab state

Prior to the revolution most Egyptians would not have identified themselves as Arabs, reserving the term either for the residents of the Arabian Peninsula or for the desert Bedouin.

The new state would be non-contiguous. QuickTime™ and a decompressor


Incentive for Nasser:

As head of a union of two major Arab states he could secure his position as the unrivaled leader in the Arab world.

So he called for: full union, with Syria ruled from Cairo by the same institutions

that governed Egypt;

the Syrian army to come under Egyptian command and would have to stay out of politics;

all political parties to be disbanded and replaced with a single state party to be known as the National Union (once again: party pluralism equated with divisive factionalism).

Egypt:

The 1964 constitution: added the requirement that 50 percent of the delegated to the national assembly had to be workers and peasants).

Education

In terms of raw numbers, the advances in education were impressive;

since 1962 Egypt guaranteeing a government job to every university graduate.

Egypt: pluralistic society was circumscribed

Political parties were officially banned;

Instead mass organization: the Liberation Rally later replaced by the National Union;

Decision-making authority was further centralized by constitutional provisions that gave extensive powers to the president.

Political repression:

The (print) media brought under state control (Egypt);

Prominent government-appointed ulama were persuaded to issue decrees and write articles on the harmony between Islam and Arab socialism.

From constitutional monarchies and parliamentarism to authoritarian regimes

Egypt (Free Officers 1952) Iraq (Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim 1958) Syria (Colonel Husni Za’im 1949)

Egypt, Iraq (political change)

Monarchy abolished Republic declared

The principle o democracy (Egypt: a 350-member national assembly) adopted.

A partial exception (Syria): returned to civilian parliamentary government,

held three free elections from 1947 to 1954 that all broke down along sectarian and regional lines.

the military continued to interfere in politics,

between 1954 and 1958, the Syrian political structure was so fragmented that government could barely function.

The political leadership of the core Arab states changed during the 1950s:

Upper class civilian politicians educating in European-style institutions were replaced by young military officers from the lower urban or rural strata of society.

From: the sons of the landed or professional elite (Egypt); urban notable classes (Syria)

To: the sons of small peasant proprietors, minor government officials, and petty merchants.

New leaders

pragmatic nationalists;

military bureaucrats;

no predetermined views on a political organization or ideological orientation.

The post-colonial state (internal structure):

continued the mission of the colonial state to transform the societies over which it ruled;

outlined a vision of development to be pursued in the name of common good;

inherited significant autonomy from the colonial state.

Arab socialism:

Nationalization: domestic enterprises;banks and insurance companies;import agencies;hotels.

State responsible for all capital formation (state capitalism rather than Marxist socialism).

Nationalization

enabled the government to weaken rival power centers (landlords, business community or foreign oil companies).

satisfied the large sector of the population that was employed by, and dependent on, the state.

Central planning:

Planning agencies were set up to manage the economy.

Five-year plan economic plans (heavy emphasis on industrial development; huge expenditures)

During the 1960s, industrial output increased substantially, especially in the production of textiles and food an beverages.

Reform programs:

The very nature of their objectives led them to expand the role of the state and introduce planned economies and new networks of

social control.

Syria and Iraq:

The Ba’th party

The rise of the Communist Parties.

The Ba’ath ideology

Arab rebirth;

Dedicated to revolutionary activism aimed at bringing about a complete transformation of Arab society: to bring an end to social injustice, class exploitation,

and tyranny and to establish freedom, democracy, and socialism.

The Ba’ath ideology (cont.)

the failure of the Arabs to achieve the promise of pan-Arab unity blamed on the West;

the assertion of the country's economic independence.

the transformation of the economic system from free enterprise to collectivism;

Syria: political conditions

A large number of military coups and coup attempts shook the country in the period 1949-1971.

Between 1946 and 1956, Syria had 20 different cabinets and drafted four separate constitutions.

Power increasingly concentrated in the military and security establishment.

Hafez el Assad

1971: President for a 7-year term.

March 1972, to broaden the base of his government, Assad formed the National Progressive Front, a coalition of parties led by the Ba'ath Party.

A new Syrian constitution went into effect on March 1973

The 1973 Constitution defines Syria officially as a secular socialist state with Islam recognized as the majority religion.

Followed by parliamentary elections for the People's Council (the first such elections since 1962).

The Assad regime:

Policies adopted from the 1960s through the late 1980 included nationalization of companies and private assets.

Syria was under Emergency Law from 1963-2013, effectively suspending most constitutional protections for citizens.

Iraqi political development:

1921-1958: Constitutional monarchy;

1958-1968: Republican (military) regimes;

1968-2003: Government controlled by the socialist, pan-Arab Baath Party.

General Qasim and his key advisors influenced by socialist models:

a planned economy,

elimination of foreign economic influences (notably in the oil sector),

and land reform.

The transformation of Iraq from Third World to developed country driven by:

the need to spread wealth more equitably;

the need to diversify Iraq’s economy to avoid overdependence on a single commodity (oil).

Expropriations and nationalizations:

In 1961, the partly British-owned Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC). The rest of petroleum industry was nationalized in stages until 1973;

expropriation of land;

large-scale industry, banking, insurance and services were nationalized in 1964 (the Arif government).

Reasons for nationalization

1. in line with the Ba’ath Party ideology;

2. enabled the government to weaken rival power centers, whether landlords, the Shia business community or foreign oil companies;

3. to satisfy the large sector of the population that was employed by, and dependent on, the state.

The oil boom following the first Arab oil embargo

Iraq was able to pursue its socialist model without having to make hard choices between solvency and other priorities such as welfare benefits, infrastructure development, and even armed forces modernization.

The country was earning $75 billion a year in the early 1970s from oil exports (in 2003 dollars).

Per capita income had peaked at over $7,500 in 1980.

Early 1980s

one of the Arab World’s most advanced economies;

It had besides petroleum -- a considerable industrial sector, a well-developed transport system, and comparatively good infrastructure.

Iraq:

had a relatively large middle class, per capita income levels comparable to Venezuela, Trinidad or Korea (it rose from 28% of urban population in 1958, to 54% in 1988).

one of the best educational systems in the Arab world, a well educated population and good standards of medical care.

Security Apparatus

The Ba’ath party’s cellular structure;

System of military commissars;

The Republican Guard; and

Party’s paramilitary militia force.

Political Development after WW2: Types of governments, states.

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