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Political Culture Approach to Middle East Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Gabriel Ben-Dor
Gabriel Ben-Dor
Affiliation:
University of Haifa Haifa, Israel
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Extract

Ten years ago dissatisfaction with the state of studying Middle East politics may well have led one to believe that to a very large extent, the shortage of scholars qualified in the esoteric languages, elaborate traditions, and long history of the area was to blame. In fact, at the time there was a good deal of justification to speak of an expected shortage of experts in Middle Eastern studies, to the point where importing such scholars from abroad was considered as an alternative. Today, the problem seems to be more to find positions for fair numbers of fresh Ph.D.s in Middle Eastern history, sociology, and politics. The dissatisfaction with the state of the field, however, remains intact.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , January 1977 , pp. 43 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

1 Halpern, Manfred, “Middle Eastern Studies: A Review of the State of the Field with a Few Examples,” World Politics, 15 (10 1962), 108–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 La Palombara, Joseph, “Macrotheories and Microapplications in Comparative Politics: A Widening Chasm,” Comparative Politics, 1 (10 1968), pp. 57–78.Google Scholar

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8 Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton, 1963), p. 13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Chapter I of this book lists many relevant works from the fields of social psychology and anthropology.

7 Verba, Sidney, “Comparative Political Culture” in Pye, Lucian W. and Verba, , eds., Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton, 1966), p. 513.Google Scholar For the sociological origins of many of these conceptions see the “theory of action” in Parsons, Talcott, The Social System (New York, 1964), pp. 45–53, 56–58, and chapters 8, 9.Google Scholar

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9 For a good, short survey among these lines see “Political Cultures” in Merkl, Peter H., Modern Comparative Politics (New York, 1970), pp. 148–232.Google Scholar

10 This paragraph is based on Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture, chapter I.

11 Pye, Lucian W., Politics, Personality, and Nation-Building: Burma's Search for Identity (New Haven, 1962).Google Scholar

12 See, for instance, Holt, Robert E. and Turner, John, The Political Basis of Economic Development (Princeton, 1966), pp. 24–34.Google Scholar

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17 ibid., pp. 22–24.

18 Almond, Gabriel A. and Powell, G. Bingham Jr., Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston, 1966), p. 23.Google Scholar

19 ibid., p. 24.

20 For a partial and fairly unsystematic utilization of the concept of political culture in a textbook, see Beer, Samuel H. and Ulam, Adam B., eds., Patterns of Government (3d ed.; New York, 1958)Google Scholar; Political culture in this book is treated in the following way (p. 33; italics in the text): “Certain aspects of the general culture of a society are especially concerned with how government ought to be conducted and with what it should try to do. This sector of culture we call political culture. As with the general culture of a society, the principal components of the political culture are values, beliefs, and emotional attitudes. In turn, within each of these we can distinguish between elements that emphasize means and those that emphasize ends—between conceptions of authority and conceptions of purpose.”

21 Binder, Leonard, “Prolegomena to the Comparative Study of Middle East Governments,” American Political Science Review, 51 (09 1957)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Eckstein, Harry and Apter, David E., eds., Comparative Politics: A Reader (New York, 1963), p. 686.Google Scholar

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24 The best in “conventional wisdom” on these is to be found in the works quoted in the previous note, and in Lewis, Bernard, The Arabs in History (New York, 1964)Google Scholar; idem, The Middle East and the West (New York, 1964)Google Scholar; von Grunebaum, G. E., Medieval Islam (Chicago, 1954)Google Scholar; Gibb, H. A. R., Studies on the Civilization of Islam (Boston, 1962)Google Scholar; idem, Mohammedanism (London, 1968)Google Scholar; and Schacht, Joseph, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford, 1964).Google Scholar

25 As in von Grunebaum, , Medieval Islam.Google Scholar

26 This point is made repeatedly in the aforementioned literature.

27 Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 1 (10 1942), 383–395.Google Scholar

28 For an interpretation of Islam as a “charismatic community” see Watt, W. Montgomery, Islam and the Integration of Society (London, 1961).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Modern Trends in Islam, passim.

30 Medieval Islam, passim.

31 For a catalogue of what we know - and how little we really know - about politics in the Ottoman period, see Gibb, H. A. R. and Bowen, Harold, Islamic Society and the West, Vol. I, Islamic Society in the XVIIIth Century, Parts I and II (London, 1950–1957).Google Scholar The main theoretical source of the book, Lybyer, Albert H., The Government of the Ottoman Empire in the Time of Suleiman the Magnificent (Cambridge, 1913)CrossRefGoogle Scholar must be read with the modifications suggested in Itzkowitz, Norman, “Eighteenth Century Ottoman Realities,” Studia Islamica, 16 (1962), 73–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 A possible exception to this statement is Rustow, Dankwart A., “Turkey: The Modernity of Tradition,”Google Scholar in Pye, and Verba, , Political Culture and Political Development, pp. 171–198.Google Scholar Like most other essays in that volume, Rustow's paper is full of interesting and suggestive ideas, but clearly does not fit into any systematic, theoretical framework.

33 For a few suggestive ideas along such lines, see Inalcik, Halil, “The Nature of Traditional Society: Turkey,” in Ward, Robert E. and Rustow, Dankwart A., Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton, 1964), pp. 42–63.Google Scholar

34 A most intriguing question in this context, of course, is that the existence, role, and impact of political parties seem to fare so much better in Turkey than in the Arab countries.

35 New York, 1962.

36 ibid., chap. 5 and parts of chap. 2.

37 New York, 1960.

38 Berger, , Arab World Today, pp. 136–137.Google Scholar

39 Middle East Journal, 5 (Summer 1951), 284–302.Google Scholar

40 All the points mentioned here are taken from Berger, , Arab World Today, chap. 5.Google Scholar

41 “Egypt: The Integrative Revolution,” in Pye, and Verba, , Political Culture, pp. 396–449.Google Scholar

42 ibid., p. 409.

43 ibid., p. 410.

44 ibid., pp. 410–411.

45 ibid., p. 413.

46 London, 1954.

47 The following citation of Ammar's ideas from his Fi Binaa al-Bashar: Dirasat fi'l Taghyeer al-Hadari wa'l: Fikr al Tarbawi (On Building Human Beings: Studies in Cultural Change and Educational Thought), first published in Lebanon in 1964, and republished in a new edition in 1971, is taken from the review by Rejwan, Nissim, “Culture and Personality: Building the New Egyptian Man,” The New Middle East, 41 (02 1972), pp. 16–18.Google Scholar

48 Ibid., p. 17.

49 Quandt, Revolution.

50 Ibid., p. 280.

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54 ibid., p. 321.

55 ibid., p. 77.

56 ibid., p. 66.

57 Moore, , “On Theory and Practice among Arabs,” p. 120.Google Scholar

58 These were indeed among the original purposes for developing the political culture approach. See chap, I of Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture.

59 In general, the political theory and attitudes of Shiites and other minorities have been relatively neglected and are clearly in need of much more research.

60 Such a hypothesis almost inevitably emerges even at the reading of a single recounting of contemporary Syrian politics, e.g., Scale, Patrick, The Struggle for Syria (London, 1965)Google Scholar, or a general history as Tibawi, A. L., A Modern History of Syria (New York, 1969).Google Scholar

61 Cf. one of the leading contemporary approaches to the study of political development, Huntingdon, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, 1968).Google Scholar

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69 E.g., Halpern, Manfred, The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa (Princeton, 1963), p. 46Google Scholar, and Kedourie, Elie, The Chatham House Version and other Middle Eastern Essays (London, 1970), chap. 12.Google Scholar

68 Many relevant, but scattered remarks on the connection between cultural background and contemporary politics in the Arab world can be found in Hottinger, Arnold, The Arabs (Berkeley, 1963)Google Scholar, and Berque, Jacques, Les Arabes D'hier a demain (Paris, 1969).Google Scholar For more systematic, if less consciously “cultural,” remarks see Halpern, , The Politics of Social ChangeGoogle Scholar, and Kedourie, , Chatham Hottse Version.Google Scholar

67 Khaldun, Ibn, The Muqaddimah (New York, 1958)Google Scholar; Mahdi, Muhsin, Ibn Khaldun's Philosophy of History (Chicago, 1964), chap. 5.Google Scholar

68 Kedourie, , Chatham House Version, p. 384.Google Scholar

69 Halpern, , The Politics of Social Change, chap. I.Google Scholar

70 See the excellent book Politics in North Africa by Moore, Clement Henry (Boston, 1970), chap. 1. This work uses in a modified, partial way the Almond scheme of comparative politics, and has much of value to say on North African political culture.Google Scholar

71 “Submissiveness and Revolt of the Fellah,” in his Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt (Chicago, 1969), pp. 93–108.Google Scholar

72 Peristiany, J. G., ed., Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society (London, 1965)Google Scholar, and Pitt-Rivers, Julian, ed., Mediterranean Countrymen (Paris, 1963).Google Scholar

73 Scott, Robert E., “Mexico, The Established Revolution,”Google Scholar in Pye, and Verba, , Political Culture, pp. 330–395.Google Scholar

74 Weiner, Myron, “Political Participation: Crisis of the Political Process” in Binder, Leonard, eds., Crises and Sequences in Political Development (Princeton, 1971), pp. 159–204.Google Scholar

75 For a good review of the literature on patron-client relationships see Lamarchand, Rene and Legg, Keith, “Political Clientelism and Political Development: A Preliminary Analysis,” Comparative Politics, 4 (01, 1972), pp. 149–172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

76 Geertz, Clifford, Islam Observed (New Haven, 1968).Google Scholar

77 Berger, , The Arab World Today, chap. 5.Google Scholar

78 Hamady, , Temperament and Character of the Arabs.Google Scholar

79 This was also the case ten years ago, according to Halpern, “Middle Eastern Studies.”

80 Halpern, Manfred, “Dialectics of Continuity, Change, Collaboration, Conflict, and Justice in Traditional Muslim Societies,”Google Scholar paper delivered at the plenary session of the second annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, Austin, Texas, November, 1968. See also his forthcoming The Dialectics of Transformation in Politics, Personality and History (Princeton University Press). Halpern's original and provocative approach has much to offer also to the “conventional” study of political culture in the Middle East.

81 In order to accomplish this, of course, there is need to go beyond the somewhat formal-istically oriented scheme of reference of constitutional arrangements in Flory, Maurice F. and Mantran, Robert, Les Regimes Politiques des pays arabes (Paris, 1968), pp. 130–157.Google Scholar Even that limited series of observations, however, has something relevant to offer, particularly in terms of symbols and images of leadership.