The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life

283 Pages·2012·1.72 MB·English

by  Roger Owen

The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life

The Rise and Fall of
Arab Presidents for Life
With a New Afterword
Roger Owen
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, En gland
Copyright © 2012, 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America

First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2014
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Owen, Roger, 1935–
The rise and fall of Arab presidents for life / Roger Owen.
p. c m.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978- 0- 674- 06583- 3 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978- 0- 674-73537-8 (pbk.)
1. A rab countries— Politics and government— 1945–
2. M iddle East— Politics and government— 1945–
3. Presidents—Arab countries— History. 4. Presidents—Middle East— History.
5. Arab countries— Kings and rulers. 6 . M iddle East— Kings and rulers.
7. M onarchy—Arab countries. 8. M onarchy— Middle East.
9. A uthoritarianism—Arab countries. 1 0. Authoritarianism— Middle East.
I. Title.
DS39.O84 2012
352.230917'4927—dc23 2011045764
To the members and Teaching Fellows of the Harvard
History 1891 classes of 2009/2010 and 2010/2011

Contents
ix
Preface
Introduction 1
1. The Search for Sovereignty in an Insecure World 12
2. The Origins of the Presidential Security State 23
3. Basic Components of the Regimes 37
4. Centralized State Systems in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria,
and Algeria 61
5. Presidents as Managers in Libya, Sudan, and Yemen 94
6. Constrained Presidencies in Lebanon and Iraq
after Hussein 111
7. The Monarchical Security States of Jordan, Morocco,
Bahrain, and Oman 125
8. The Politics of Succession 139
Contents
9. The Question of Arab Exceptionalism 153
10. The Sudden Fall 172
Conclusion 192
Afterword 202

Notes 213
Bibliography 227
Ac know ledg ments 237
Index 239
viii
Preface
I became interested in the part icu l ar subject of Arab republican presi-
dents for life in the spring of 2009 when I learned that President Ab-
delaziz Boutefl ika of Algeria had engineered a constitutional amend-
ment allowing him to remain in offi ce for a third term and so, in eff ect,
for as long as his wished. In so doing he joined an exclusive band of Arab
rulers, fi ve in North Africa and two in the Arab east, who governed
more or less as kings with every intention of creating dynasties for
themselves, just as Hafi z al- Asad had managed to do in Syria. The
decision to write a book on the subject followed almost immediately,
and the project was virtually completed by the end of December 2010,
just as the fi rst rumblings of opposition to President Zein El Abidine
Ben Ali of Tunisia suggested that these systems of quasi- monarchical
government w ere much more vulnerable to popu l ar pressure than al-
most anyone had previously imagined.
This unexpected situation created an obvious dilemma. Should I
publish the manuscript as it was before any of the presidents had been
actually pushed from offi ce, or should I seek to incorporate the begin-
nings of that extraordinary story by which insistent demands for the
removal of dictatorial presidents and for personal freedom suddenly
appeared almost everywhere in the Arab world? In the end I decided
ix