The Arab world is probably not the first region in which to search for legitimate rule.
Area-specific research on legitimacy has long been a relatively neglected field which has only recently come to the fore again. Existing literature in this domain focuses on two central themes, which will be discussed in more detail below: crises of legitimacy and strategies of legitimation. Apart from these contributions by area specialists, the Arab world usually does not figure prominently in quantitative comparative datasets.
One noticeable exception is the work by Bruce GILLEY (see above), which includes the Arab cases of Morocco, Egypt, Jordan and Algeria. In this medium-to-large-N study, the Arab cases range among intermediate levels of legitimacy. The highest and lowest ranks are held by Denmark and Russia with 7.62 and 2.27 respectively. All Arab cases are situated between 4.48 and 5.25, thus falling in Gilley’s “medium-legitimacy” group (Gilley 2006: 16). Obviously, these cases are the ones that happened to be included in the World Values Survey (WVS), Gilley’s most important primary source for his da-taset. While these countries comprise the majority of the Arab population, they are but a small percentage of the total number of states in this region. As the decision about whether to have the World Values Survey conducted inside a country is dependent upon the general level of political freedoms, first of all the findings are not representative for the region. Secondly, the results of the World Values Survey have to be treated with caution as the usual problems of polling are even exacerbated when dealing with poli-tics in authoritarian regimes.25 Especially the fact that Egypt and Jordan have the exact same value in Gilley’s legitimacy index for the late 2000s, with Egypt experiencing a regime breakdown only a few years later, shows the debatable validity of his approach.
Experts on the region offered a diverging assessment already before the Arab uprisings.
Most clearly, Sedgwick (2010) was able to show that a very low degree of legitimacy in Egypt was apparent even before the toppling of the Mubarak regime.26
Regarding the literature on crises of legitimacy, the authoritative text of the 20th century was written by Michael HUDSON (1977). He perceives a legitimacy gap in the Arab world that results from the existing structures of legitimacy. Following Easton’s typolo-gy, these structures are personal or even charismatic, ideological, and structural (institu-tionalized) sources of legitimacy. The different structures correspond with empirical
25 For a more detailed methodological critique of the World Values Survey, see chapter 3.1.
26 See also below.
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regime types, as “modernizing monarchies” and “revolutionary republics” possess tradi-tional-personal and ideological legitimacy respectively. In Hudson’s normative and in-stitution-centered view, however, Arab states nevertheless suffer from a lack of legiti-macy because of the absence of democratic institutions. He thus states a threefold crisis of legitimacy in the Arab world: a crisis of authority, a crisis of identity and a crisis of equality (1977: 4).
More recently, Emma MURPHY (1998) was among the first to notice an increased crisis of legitimacy due to economic problems. The decline of previous massive flows of oil rents into the Arab region posed a threat to the states’ allocative capacity during the 1980s. At the dawn of the 21st century, rulers had begun to employ new strategies to attain legitimacy. In the wake of the recent post-democratization trend in comparative politics, legitimacy has been brought back in various contributions. ALBRECHT and SCHLUMBERGER (2004) described some of the newer strategies in detail that were sup-posed to compensate for the loss in structural legitimacy (traditional-religious, material, and ideological legitimacy) and helped equilibrate authoritarianism. The authors re-jected the expectation of democratization in the Arab world that was widespread after liberalization processes of the 1990s as “Waiting for Godot”. Instead, they point at re-cent strategies of legitimation that partly used liberalization in order to indefinitely off-set calls for democratization, in other words change in regime to prevent a change of regime (Albrecht & Schlumberger 2004: 375). While the classical sources of legitimacy are treated as an overarching variable and complemented by external legitimation, the newer strategies are elite change (both rotation and maintenance), ‘imitative’ institution building along Western models but with different functions, co-optation in order to wid-en the power base through inclusion rather than allocation, and the transformation of external constraints into opportunities for rent-seeking (Albrecht & Schlumberger 2004:
376 ff.). Rolf SCHWARZ (2004) described similar new strategies of legitimation, focus-ing on the aspect that they are used in both republics and monarchies, the regime types that had hitherto been analyzed as distinct from one another.
The probably best-known account of modern forms of authoritarian governance in the Arab world is by Steven HEYDEMANN (2007). Under the title “Upgrading Authoritari-anism” he differentiates between five areas in which new strategies in varying mixes are observable: “1. Appropriating and containing civil societies; 2. Managing political con-testation; 3. Capturing the benefits of selective economic reforms; 4. Controlling new
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communications technologies; 5. Diversifying international linkages” (Heydemann 2007: 5). These pioneer contributions relayed anecdotal evidence from a multitude of countries in order to illustrate the region-wide, general prevalence of the mentioned strategies. While they did not offer a coherent, theoretically guided categorization for the analysis of the described strategies, let alone an operationalization, it is these works’
credit to put the scholarly focus on relevant processes.
In a more focused vein, HOSTRUP HAUGBØLLE AND CAVATORTA (2012) analyzed one sector of authoritarian upgrading, new private media in Tunisia, and through study-ing the societal response showed how strategies that are devised as top-down policies can have unintended consequences. In this case, the display of a higher degree of plural-ism in a previously tightly controlled field may have played a role in actually encourag-ing non-mainstream opinions and competition, although in apolitical domains. While the approach that includes the societal response is highly commendable, parallel politi-cal developments such as repressive measures in the same field are only casually men-tioned (Haugbølle & Cavatorta 2012: 110). The focus on possible social change does not make up for the fact that consequences in the political realm can hardly be traced (ibid.). In this sense, the mechanism through which a contagion across areas could have taken place remains obscure.
Among the more systematic approaches towards legitimacy in the Arab world, Oliver SCHLUMBERGER and André BANK (2002) have made an explicit attempt at measuring legitimacy in Jordan despite the acknowledged difficulties. They were able to detect an increase in overall legitimacy from the rule of King Hussein until 1999 to his successor Abdullah II. They did so by diachronically analyzing the different components of legit-imacy and legitimation and found the maintenance of old sources of legitlegit-imacy and simultaneous introduction of additional strategies. BANK (2004) went further in setting up a framework for systematic comparative analysis which he used to analyze legitima-tion strategies of three new rulers. His categorizalegitima-tion entails three areas that cut across policies in classical analyses: rent-seeking and allocation, the politics of participation, and the politics of symbolism.
Further approaches to the phenomenon of non-democratic legitimacy can be discerned.
Peter BURNELL (2006) links the different bases of legitimation to possibilities for inter-national democracy promotion. Oliver SCHLUMBERGER (2010) elaborates on theoreti-cal aspects of the nature of non-democratic legitimacy and distinguishes between four
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different approaches to its study as an outline for further research: a focus on address-ees, the measurement, sources, and modes of legitimation. Schlumberger focuses on a discussion of the sources or types of legitimacy present in the Arab World from an em-pirically informed perspective. Both Mark SEDGWICK (2010) and Julie PRUZAN -JØRGENSEN (2010) offer different general taxonomies of legitimacy and apply these comprehensively to one case study each. Sedgwick uses his typology as a checklist to assess the level of legitimacy in pre-revolutionary Egypt and finds it to be very low – an assessment that was proven correct only one year afterwards. Pruzan-Jørgensen takes a different point of departure in choosing one specific policy issue, the 2003 reform of the personal status law in Morocco, examining the legitimation strategies that accompanied the ensuing political process. Moreover, she grasps justifications towards different in-volved actors and accounts for the reciprocal character of legitimation by analyzing the perceptions that these societal actors held towards the various strategies. However, it is problematic that Pruzan-Jørgensen departs from the various societal groups and tries to establish which type of legitimacy they bestow to a particular policy. For the purpose of categorization, her focus is on the narrative of addressees of strategies instead of the strategies themselves. This on the one hand helps reveal the balancing act inherent in catering to different audiences through one single policy issue. On the other hand, it leads to confusion on an analytical level and makes the study more prone to misunder-standing. One example is that Pruzan-Jørgensen frames a statement by an Islamist leader as bestowing ideological legitimacy on the king, while the framing is actually purely religious, just different from the argumentation of other religious actors (2010:
281).27 Moreover, it is methodologically problematic to treat the statements of elites or sub-elites towards a foreigner as objectively valid regarding their real intentions or atti-tudes, as open criticism of authoritarian structures can only be expected to a very lim-ited degree. What is after all an important finding is how the Moroccan king conveys to each group what they want to hear. The consequence that the accompanying contradic-tions entail the risk of losing overall credibility is somewhat underrated. In a similar vein and focusing more on the ambivalence of targeting strategies, Catherine WARRICK
(2009) analyzes the interplay of legitimacy and political culture in Jordan within the policy area of gender politics. She investigates gender-related regulations in the legal
27 Besides, it contradicts her own definition of ideological legitimacy (Pruzan-Jørgensen 2010: 271).
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system and seeks to account for the lack of modern legislation, focusing on tradition in the sense of “sociocultural legitimacy” as the “cultural appropriateness” of rule (2009:
4). Her study shows the ambiguity of legitimation strategies in Jordan “which safe-guarded the monarchy’s power by offering a way for nearly every subject to find some-thing legitimate about it”, a quality that does not lead to stability from her point of view (ibid.: 35). While this mechanism grasps a general pattern of Jordanian politics, the nar-row focus of the analysis leaves lots of room for further research.
Regarding repression, there are fewer contributions on the Arab region than on legitima-tion. This is strange enough, as the Arab states have been known to rank among the most repressive regions in the world (Spinks, Sahliyeh & Calfano 2008) and therefore constitute a “natural” area of research. However, repression is at least as difficult to study as legitimation, as it means touching upon a very sensitive topic. Therefore, quali-tative studies are rare. Eva BELLIN (2004) elaborates on the coercive capacity of Arab states, invoking it as the most important factor contributing to the durability of authori-tarian regimes. According to her argumentation, moreover the will to repress is decisive, which is more likely in (neo)patrimonial regimes because of a close relation between the coercive apparatus and regime elites, which makes the continuity of repressive insti-tutions dependent upon the survival of the regime (Bellin 2004: 150). Especially in the-se cathe-ses of low institutionalization of the military, the latter is more inclined to defend incumbents than to serve a national mission (ibid.: 145f.).28 Jason BROWNLEE (2005) also stresses the capacity to repress as the main reason for regimes’ survival in political crises. In particular, he finds that “brutal rule can make a regime more, not less, dura-ble” (Brownlee 2005: 58).