Fawwaz Traboulsi<\/p>\n
————————-<\/p>\n
european university institute istituto universitario europeo<\/strong> Fifth Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting<\/p>\n Florence \u2013 Montecatini Terme 24\u201328 March 2004 Firenze \u2013 Montecatini Terme 24\u2013 28 marzo 2004<\/strong><\/p>\n Public Spheres and Urban Space: A Critical Comparative Approach.<\/strong> ————————-<\/p>\n Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n This paper is mainly intended as a contribution to the workshop discussions and contains reflections partly inspired by the papers and debates of last workshop. Its guiding assumption is that theories, concepts and notions that arise in one national or regional situation are not necessarily applicable in another. Although many ideals and values have become universal, irrespective of their initial birthplace, not every theory or concept or idea produced in one theoretical field- the West in this case under study- is necessarily endowed with the vocation of universal application, in theory or in practice, without prior testing or critical verification. In fact, the notion of public sphere is one which seems to be very much identified with the experience of Europe and North America to claim a priori universal value and application..<\/p>\n To dispel any misunderstanding, I hasten to distance myself from two of the implications usually associated with such a statement.<\/p>\n First, the method implied by this assumption: far from adopting any form of national or cultural essentialism, leads us primarily to engage in a historical critical and comparative approach to the question of public sphere.<\/p>\n Second, the mere fact that ideas, concepts and notions are conceived and propagated by international institutions and declared ‘global’ does not, by itself, render them any more universal. Likewise, the claim to ‘globality’ does not bestow upon such notions and concepts any semblance of innocence. Names are rarely neutral. In most cases, they are charged with strong identitarian connotations. They claim to distill in one word or two the revelation of an origin, of an ethnic, national, sub-national or cultural essence. Denominations, in the last resort, are rarely chosen. They are assigned, more often even imposed. Names are determined by relations of power inasmuch as they express such relations. After September 11 and the global campaign against ‘terrorism’, the Middle East denomination was confirmed and formalized in the US official discourse while the UN was progressively dropping the term ‘Arab World’ in favor of the likewise geographically based designation of ‘The Middle East and North Africa’ (MENA). It should be noticed, nevertheless, that ESCWA still uses the term ‘Arab Region’ for some reason or other. Presently, a new name is being advanced by US diplomacy: the Greater Middle East (GME) as if to bar any possible confusion with the post-Cold War denomination and confirm Israel’s central place in the region, with or without peace accords.<\/p>\n It would not be an exaggeration to say that no other region in the world has been so much identified in geo-political terms according to the geo-strategic interests of the Western powers as has the Arab region. Similarly, no other region in the world has found its name\/s changed so often, following modifications and changes in those interests, with all the implied changes in the region’s national and cultural identity and identification and without any consideration for the opinion, feelings and aspirations of its peoples. Should every such denomination be taken for granted and followed blindly, without any prior questioning as to the reasons why those names have been externally imposed, to start with, and why have they been externally changed, even without any prior investigation as to the opinion of the peoples concerned and irrespective of what they might think of the political connotations that are implied in the identity of their countries and of themselves an of the changes in that identity? The question is worth pondering on.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, let us return to our paper. After a number of preliminary remarks inspired by the above-mentioned assumption, the first part of this paper will establish a comparison between the situations that gave rise to public spheres in Europe and North America and the Arab World. The second will deal with the problematic role of the public sphere in the democratization process. Habermas has often repeated that the idea of the public sphere is motivating not simply instrumental. He is here emphasizing the public sphere’s independent<\/strong> influence on action, political action in particular. However, the aim in both cases remains the same. It is the contribution of public spheres to the democratic process, whether as a factor in the transition to democracy, in countries with non-democratic regimes or as a corrective agent of the distortions and the corruption of democratic institutions and practices in the advanced countries of the Eurpoe and the U.S.<\/p>\n I. Preliminary Remarks<\/strong><\/p>\n The prevailing uncritical acceptance of much of the globalized intellectual production in the countries of the South during the post-Cold War era raises a number of critical and methodological questions and comments.<\/p>\n The ever-shifting modes of approach to the questions of the region have generated a tabula rasa<\/em> approach to the production of social knowledge. Thus intellectual production changes course with every ‘intellectual fashion’ globally imposed, frequently blocking any attempt to critically assess the previous ‘fashion’, which is generally castigated as obsolete or unfit for coping with new international developments or the new world order. The result is invariably little or no accumulation of knowledge as elements of social reality are redefined, redesigned and sometimes simply renamed. Human rights and civil society occupy the political stage as the same treatment mentioned above is reserved for the State \/ Civil Society dichotomy. Rather than being a welcome complement and a corrective to the rich and complex body of knowledge on State \/ Society relations, developed by the social sciences over long decades, the famous ‘couplet’ is turning out to be a factor of theoretical impoverishment due to its imposition as a simplistic and reductionist formula over all the theoretical field in question.<\/p>\n I shall limit myself to two observations on this matter.<\/p>\n The first has to do with the intellectual production on democratization in the Arab World. This has been increasingly dominated by the explanations, and even theorization, of an absence- the absence<\/strong> of democracy- rather than the most elementary and pressing task of explaining, analyzing and diagnosing the presence<\/strong> of the actually existing authoritarian and despotic regimes. On the other hand, ‘filling’ that absence tends to increasingly take the form of simple modeling or wish fulfillment both focused on the Western democratic model. Not that there is anything wrong with wishing that model, though it is not very clear to what extent its advocates have assimilated it. The problem resides rather in the fact that very little attention and even less intellectual effort have been devoted to the diagnosis of authoritarianism<\/strong> and to the tracing of the ways and means of the transition<\/strong> from authoritarian and despotic regimes to democracy. Such intellectual effort needs to create awareness at least of the costs<\/strong> requires in and for that transition (in terms of priorities, sacrifices, etc.) and of the time<\/strong> span involved (in terms of the stages of that transition, the accumulation of its necessary and sufficient conditions and measures, etc.). Is a weak state always a guarantee of a strong civil society? What effect does a weak state have on the cohesion and integration of society in general, any society, that is? Can we maintain the claim that Western democracies are distinguished by weak states? In what sense can we say, to take the extreme example of liberalism in politics and economics, that the United States of America is a weak state\/government? Conversely, are all dictatorships characterized by ‘strong’ states and what does that precisely mean? Finally, does the weakening of the state always lead to an expansion of the public sphere and of civil society and consequently to progress toward democracy?<\/p>\n Such questions, and other similar ones, need to be seriously addressed in the intellectual production concerning democratization in the countries of the ‘South’. This is not the place where the matter can be dealt with in detail. Nevertheless, we might content ourselves with noting that the state plays, in many countries of the South as it had played in the historical experience of the countries of the North, an important – at times primordial- role in the cohesion<\/strong> and integration<\/strong> of the different components and constituents of society as a whole. In that case, the weakening of the state, or its breakup, may be tantamount to the breakup of society itself rather than the construction of a strong civil society or the progress toward democracy.<\/p>\n The recent US-led invasion of Iraq is a tragic illustration of that problem. During that short war, the semi-planned, semi-spontaneous (read: anarchic) breakup of the Iraqi State – which was not by any means a necessary requirement for the overthrow of the Ba`thi regime- merits ample and deep reflection inasmuch as it has been and still is a cause of deep concern. By the ‘semi-planned breakup of the Iraqi state’ we refer to the process that had for its code name ‘Nation building’ rather than ‘Regime change’. It comprised the refusal by the US-led occupation forces to defend any government institution save the Ministries of Oil and of the Interior in addition to the post-occupation decisions to disband the whole of the Iraqi army and the Ba`th party. ‘State Destruction’, not ‘Regime Change’, turned out to be the precondition, as it were, of ‘Nation Building’.<\/p>\n If we wish to evade the question of intentions, the least that can be said about that process is that it had two quite disastrous consequences. First, let us assume, for the sake of argumentation, that the democratization process in Iraq was a serious concern of the US-led coalition (it constitutes, at least, a widespread desire for many Iraqis, as the recent campaign for elections testifies). Then we can safely say that that democratization process has been relegated to a minor position as the issue of security and the rebuilding of the Iraqi State takes priority over everything else. Second, the Iraqi case is an illustration of a situation in which the State – which is not synonymous at all with Saddam Hussein’s Ba`thi regime – was a vital component of the unity of the multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian Iraqi society. We cannot merely attribute the increasingly rapid division of Iraq and the Iraqis along ethnic and sectarian lines exclusively to Saddam Hussein’s policies. The objective<\/strong> factor of the destruction of the Iraqi state- as a state- has a lot to do with the above-mentioned situation. Of course, the relationship here can be said to be dialectical. One can even venture to propose that the present Iraqi crisis can be partially looked at as the result of a weakened state that is becoming increasingly incapable of achieving the minimum required degree of unity and integration of its society at the time when that society- laden with all the consequences of thirty years of a ruthless and bloody dictatorship on which was grafted a foreign military occupation- finds itself increasingly incapable of generating the forces required to organically produce a new state.<\/p>\n II. On the role of public sphere in the transition to democracy in the European Experience.<\/strong><\/p>\n Is the public sphere a cause<\/strong> of the democratic transformation of European societies or a product<\/strong> of it, or is it both?<\/p>\n Habermas seems to be quite ambivalent in his answers to the question. To begin with, he attributes the idea of public sphere historically to the Europe of the Eighteenth century where ‘bourgeois’ public spheres arose as counterweights to the absolutist state and were independent of it, the second characteristic being the pre-condition for the first function. It is precisely this historical reference that raises a number of questions concerning the conditions and forces that operated in the transition from absolutism to democracy.<\/p>\n I will limit myself to raising only two questions.<\/p>\n First, are the proposals for recreating a civil society in countries outside Europe and North America anything more than attempts to re-create one of the historical processes that Europe already passed through, that of the development and consolidation of industrial capitalism? In answer to this question, Partha Chatterjee says that “the central assumption of this proposal is that it is only the concepts of European social philosophy” such as that of ‘civil society’ “that contain within them the possibility of universalization”. Hence, he continues, “the provincialism<\/em><\/strong> of the European experience [is] taken as the universal<\/em><\/strong> history of progress”.[1]<\/a><\/sup> In fact, Habermas never pretended that his own analysis of advanced capitalism and his notions of civil society and public sphere contain any lessons for the rest of the world. He readily agreed that his is a ‘eurocentrically limited view”.[2]<\/a><\/sup> This admission constitutes additional proof – not that there is nothing to learn from that experience- but that what is required is a critical historical approach that draws inspiration and lessons from it. In answering this question, I wish to argue that Habermas seems to underestimate and underrate the role of a decisive factor in the democratization of European societies; the non-bourgeois and anti-bourgeois forces in effecting radical revolutionary<\/strong> changes in their societies which culminated in the final transition to democratic systems. This Habermassian b\u00e9vue<\/em> can be attributed to a set of different but converging and interrelated factors:<\/p>\n i) Habermas views public spheres primarily as arenas of peaceful<\/strong> rational-critical debate, in which are emphasized language, discourse, deliberations, opinion formation and education, all contributing to his famous concept of ‘discursive interaction’. Perhaps the most succint characterization of Habermas’s public sphere is contained in Nancy Fraser’s definition: “a theater in modern societies in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk”.[3]<\/a><\/sup> But let us quote Habermas himself:<\/p>\n “The public sphere is a social phenomenon just as elementary as action, actor, association, or collectivity, but it eludes the conventional concepts of ‘social order’. The public sphere cannot be conceived as an institution and certainly not as an organization. It is not even a framework of norms with differentiated competences and roles, membership regulations, and so on. Just as little does it represent a system; although it permits one to draw internal boundaries, outwardly it is characterized by open, permeable, and shifting horizons. Th public sphere can best be described as a network for communcation, information, and points of view (i.e., opinions expressing affirmative or negative attitudes); the streams of communication are, in the process, filtered and synthesized in such a way that they coalesce into bundles of topically specified public<\/em> opinions (\u2026) the public sphere is reproduced through communicative action, for which mastery of a natural language suffices<\/em>\u2026”[4]<\/a><\/sup> iii) his rejection of any radical<\/strong> change in contemporary society and in political power, at least in Europe and the United States, especially as Habermas’s warnings against ‘social revolutions’ increased after the collapse of the Soviet experience. The classical Marxist project of workers’ power is abandoned by him because the working class had failed in making good the promise of liberalism. It revealed itself incapable of bringing capitalist social and political institutions into conformity with such professed ‘bourgeois’ ideals as freedom, equality and democracy. He even goes to say that capitalism (i.e., the capitalist market and the capitalist state) cannot be superceded.[6]<\/a><\/sup> The surprising thing about Habermas thesis here is his assumption that equality was a ‘bourgeois’ ideal. The confusion no doubt arises from the assumption that the French Revolution was itself a ‘bourgeois’ revolution.<\/p>\n The point to be made here is that the decisive transition in Europe to democracy was not only<\/strong> a function of the political influence of the public sphere, but the product of radical violent<\/strong> political and social revolutions in which the popular masses played a major role. The end result was finally a radical change not only in the form of the State but its very nature and function. The democratization process was thus a historical process that combined radical revolutions (four in the case of France in 1789, 1830, 1848 and 1870) and protracted periods of cumulative change to finally produce the structural transition from absolutism to democracy.<\/p>\n In fact, each of the two major European revolutions, the English and the French, unleashed not one but two revolutionary processes: a revolution for liberty and a revolution for equality. Each represented a different alliance of forces. In the English experience, the radical elements were represented by such movements as the Familists who called for the abolition of private property. The Levellers opposed both feudalism and capitalism and advocated equality of all Englishmen and the representative franchise to all males without property requirements. The end result in both revolutions was a forced compromise in which the idea of equality was restricted to the legal and political fields whereas inequality remained the norm in the socio-economic field. It is of course known that that compromise – which in the French experience produced the famous trinity of Libert\u00e9, Egalit\u00e9, <\/em>Fraternit\u00e9 (in which the latter mediates between the former two values)- was imposed upon the representatives of the subaltern classes by the violence of the State and its legislation.<\/p>\n III. Public Spheres in Historical Perspective: An Arrested Development <\/strong><\/p>\n I would like to advance here the argument that in two historical moments the emergence of the public sphere in the Arab World, spurred by the development of peripheral capitalism, was arrested mainly by the exacerbation of the colonial, national and identitarian questions.<\/p>\n 1. The Ottoman Tanzimat<\/em> of 1839 and 1856 were simultaneously an ambitious program of centralization, secularization, modernization and political reform. They were spurred by a contradictory drive: i) to bow to European pressures to reform the structures of the Empire; ii) to adopt some of European values and state institutions in the hope of creating the conditions for a viable competition with the growing economic and military power of the European states. The countryside was not on the margin of those developments. In the 1860s and 1870s, a cycle of rural revolts by commoners and peasants swept over Algeria, Tunisia, Palestine, Northern Syria and Mount Lebanon. The rebels had in common a resistance to exorbitant taxation and the demand for land and for political and judicial equality. The period 1820-1860 in Mount Lebanon witnessed three major commoners’ revolts in 1820, 1840 and 1858 which established the tradition of elected village representatives, the wakils<\/em><\/strong>, commissioned to lead their fellow villagers as long as they remain “faithful to their own conscience and to the interests of the villagers and to those of the general public”.[7]<\/a><\/sup> In the Kisrawan revolt of 1858-1861, which combined an anti-tax resistance and a peasant jacquerie<\/em>, the region was ruled for some three years by a council of a 100 elected wakils<\/em> ruled in the name of “the power of the republican government’ (Bi-Quwwatt al-Hukumah al-Jumhuriyyah<\/em>). Their leader Tanius Shahin often refered to the edicts of 1839 and 1856- that declared the equality of all Ottoman subjects- to demand ‘full equality and complete freedom” (Taswiyyah `ammah wa-Hurriyyah Kamilah<\/em>).[8]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Culturally, the renaissance of Arab culture, the Nahdah in its two main centers Cairo and Beirut, relied on a rapidly developing cultural infrastructure of expanded education networks, private and public schools, increased literacy and mixed education, a progress in printing press and the development of ‘print capitalism’ represented by an impressive number of newspapers and magazines. Ahmad Faris al-Chiyaq’s al-Jawa’ib,<\/em> published in Istanbul, was both semi-official yet jealously independent of the Ottoman authorities (suspended publication by official order more than once) and read all over the Empire from Algeria to Yemen. Common to all those developments was the increased emergence of the ‘individual’ as opposed to the ‘subject’ and the member of the community. Both the Islamic reform of Afghani and `Abdu and the secular Lebanese intellectuals were proposing rationalism, education and individual freedom in bot religious and secular affairs. In 1861, for example, Butrus al-Bustani freely translates Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe <\/em>as if to declare the birth of the individual in the Ottoamn Empire. His colleague Ahmad Faris Shidyaq would emphasize the ideal of equality, including social equality, the work ethic, the liberation of women and the respect for Time.<\/p>\n However, as the Ottoman Tanzimat declared the political and judicial equality between the Empire’s subjects, and measures taken to impose it and launched a growing process of secularization of the State, European powers reverted to the policy of ‘protecting the religious and ethnic minorities’ in the Ottoman Empire. That policy would constitute the basis for the legitimization of the post WWI mandates of Britain and France over the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire.<\/p>\n The defense by France of its ‘rights’ over natural Syria took the form of the defense of the Christians, Shiites, Druzes and Alawis. On the other hand, the famous Balfour declaration tells everything concerning the manipulation of the question of minorities to serve colonial interests. The promise of a national home for the Jews in Palestine not only recognized the national character of the Jews all over the world and denied it to the Arab people of Palestine- negatively defined as “the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”- but the Palestinians themselves were viewed as ‘communities’ and their defined rights as “civil and religious” but not political.<\/p>\n The same logic would preside over the partition of the Middle East after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Sunni minority rule was imposed on Iraq where ethnic Kurds were deprived of their rights to self rule, the Bedouins constituted the basis of the new Emirate of Transjordan, and Syria partitioned into five states along sectarian lines: two states for the Sunnis (in Aleppo and Damascus) a Christian state in Greater Lebanon, and one Alawite and one Druze autonomous region.<\/p>\n I would like to argue that the transformation of clans, ethnic groups and religious communities into political organizations had a direct bearing on the development of the public sphere. Not only did those political entities sanction sub-national forms of identification and solidarity as communal repositories of rights and duties. They also established patronage networks encouraging the growth and development of notables who entertained an ambiguous relationship between state and society, in which the communities were neither fully autonomous nor completely representative of their members and, more importantly, the individuals constantly being reduced to a dominated status.<\/p>\n 2. The second point concerns the relationship between nationalism and democracy in the comparative experiences of Europe and the Arab World. Nationalism and democracy were complementary in the European case, as the dissolution of the absolutist state opened the way for the emergence of the individuals whose loyalties were progressively gained to the Nation- embodied by the Nation-State- away from the family, region, religion, and ethnic community. In the second case, the colonial experience created a situation in which a break occurred between the anti-colonial movement for independence and unity on the one hand and the democratic demand on the other. During that period, colonialism and the resistance to it played a major role in blocking the public sphere as an agent of democratization. The Palestinian Nakbah<\/em> of 1948 and the intensification of the Arab-Israeli conflict served to justify the imposition of authoritarian military regimes, on the one hand. On the other, a big confusion in public opinion and in public discourses arose and is being constantly reproduced between rejecting Western colonialism on the one hand and rejecting democracy and modernity as being Western products on the other. The present debate on Iraq’s occupation is a stark example of the resilience of this schism, which produces its own dichotomies. On the one hand, there are those who want to mythically resolve the duality by simply wishing away ‘nationalism’ as a defunct ideology in the era of globalization – while the very factors that reproduce it even in its most extreme forms are increasing. On the other, you will find those who want to wish away democratization. This is done for a multiplicity of justifications: in the name of the primacy of the national question or because democracy is considered a Western ploy (a means of domination) at best a Western product which is either foreign to the national and religious heritage of Arabs and Muslims or initially present in that heritage in the form of the shura<\/em>.<\/p>\n IV. City and Countryside<\/strong><\/p>\n Civil society, Enlightenment and public spheres have been commonly associated with the urban setting. I wish to argue here the relativity of this assumption.<\/p>\n Let us begin with the European experience. Can we safely say that the role of the countryside in the democratic transformations in Europe can be reduced to a reactionary role, in this case meaning an anti democratic one? Is the French Vend\u00e9e province the only model for the intervention of the countryside in the democratization process in European societies? The answer seems to be rather negative. Not only because of the Jacobin feat of linking the peasant masses to the Revolution by incorporating the land question in the revolutionary program but also because of the fact that the ultimate sociological foundation of the French Republic became the independent peasant and farmer.[10]<\/a><\/sup> Revisionist historians of the French Revolution, have come to question many aspects of the traditional, mainly Marxist interpretation of the revolutionary process. Francois Furet, for instance, focuses on the role of clubs and middle class professionals in the revolutionary process and maintains that revolutionary power was in fact exercised by a small militant oligarchy; yet, he still maintains that the French Revolution was a ‘popular revolution’.[11]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Similarly, rural social groups played a major role in the English experience. The Familists called for the abolition to private property. It was the Levellers, who opposed both feudalism and capitalism, who advocated equality of all Englishmen and the representative franchise to all males without property requirements and not the merchants of the City.<\/p>\n Similarly, but on a much limited scale, in the history of the elective systems in the Arab World, the role of the countryside cannot be overlooked. The Kisrawan commoners revolt (1858-1861), discussed above, succeeded in imposing the first electoral system on the Mutassarifiyyah<\/em> of Mount Lebanon (1861-1915), the first practice of electoralism in the Ottoman Empire.<\/p>\n On another but intimately related register, can we safely say that ‘civility’ is an urban exclusivity? Gramsci distinguishes between industrial cities and non-industrial cities. The first only are endowed with the quality of being more advanced than the countryside whereas in the second, the urban nuclei are drowned in a sea of non-urban inhabitants.[12]<\/a><\/sup> Despite the fact that Gramsci deals with the issue in terms of progressive\/reactionary, this couple can easily be subsumed into the couple democratic\/anti-democratic. Frederic Jameson puts the matter more bluntly when he says: “Perhaps the most momentous specification of this opposition between the country and the city\u2026is that between planning and organic growth”. Jameson is referring here to the debates over the French revolution in which for the first time in history was asserted “the primacy of the human will over social institutions and the power of human beings\u2026to reshape and fashion society according to a plan, an abstract idea or ideal”[13]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n That distinction leads to the question about the role of merchant cities, rentier cities, administrative cities and the like in the production of a public sphere. The question can de addressed from another angle: are all public spaces necessarily public spheres and necessarily contributive to the democratic process?[14]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Inasmuch as a public sphere is an area of inclusion, it is simultaneously an area of exclusion. In societies in which tribes, regions, religious sects, and ethnic groups are organized as political institutions and representative bodies, can we safely assume that a public space restricted to part of a community- or hypothetically to the whole community- constitutes a component of the public sphere and is conducive to democratization? Is the constitution of an urban space for Hizbullah in the southern suburb of Beirut a closed space<\/strong> (because restricted to one sect to the exclusion of other sects) or is it a public sphere<\/strong> because it brings together members of otherwise closed and exclusive families, clans, regions, etc.?<\/p>\n Do family associations, politicized religious sects and organized ethnic groups belong to civil society or are they its opposite? In the civil society discourse in Lebanon the question was circumscribed by the creation of two ‘societies’, as it were: i) communal society (al-Mujatama` al-Ahli<\/em>) to cover the above-mentioned, and ii) civil society (al-Mujtama` al-Madani<\/em>) which contains the voluntary associations such as trade unions, political parties, NGOs and the like. The same problem could be applied to Jordan, the Gulf States, Yemen, etc. But that distinction remains incomplete as it requires further research and definition concerning i) the influence of the former in the latter, i.e. in the form of traditional loyalty on voluntary associations; ii) the degree of relative independence of civil society proper vis-\u00e0-vis the state. Research in Egypt has shown that the majority of existing NGOs were either created by the State or dependent on it.<\/p>\n In short, the countryside is capable of unleaching social forces that contribute to democratization inasmuch as the city may contain social forces that constitute obstacles to it.<\/p>\n V. The transition to democratic society<\/strong><\/p>\n Many critics have made the point that Habermas treats the question of public spheres as if the capitalist market and the capitalist state were immuable and final. The best that can be achieved is counteracting their worst effects on democracy- the mal distribution of income and of government services on the one hand and the ills of bureaucracy on the other. For that purpose, Habermas has recommended three models. Firstly, the siege model<\/strong> in which the state is besieged by the public sphere in order to counterbalance the power of money and of the bureaucracy. This is the more modest and passive model. Secondly, the sluice model<\/strong>, in which public opinion influences decision-making through the inner periphery of power- universities, charitable organizations, foundations, etc.- and thus acts on the administrative center.[15]<\/a><\/sup> Thirdly, and in the worst of cases, Habermas admits civil disobedience as the ultimate recourse for the opposition popular forces. “What if we cannot simply supplement instrumental Reason with communicational Reason, since the primacy of instrumental Reason is constitutive of modern Reason as such?” [17]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n However, the issue is still the process of democratization itself. The above-mentioned measures suggested by Habermas are designed to rectify the corruption of the public sphere- and, ultimately, to deal with the crisis of democracy- in post-modern advanced industrial societies<\/strong>. The big misunderstanding likely to arise here is to treat those tactics as if they were necessary and sufficient<\/strong> measures for democratization in the non-Western<\/strong> countries of the world, i.e. for the transition from authoritarian and despotic rule to the democratic elective rule under the rule of law and the alternation of power.<\/p>\n VI. The question of means: how to dislodge authoritarian regimes? <\/strong><\/p>\n Is the political influence of the public sphere, as designed in the above three models, enough to dislodge authoritarian regimes in the countries of the South?<\/p>\n To begin with, it is worth noting the co-relation between the reluctant and partial democratization measures taken in a number of Arab countries and the social rebellions occuring in all these countries. The urban turmoil of January 1977 in Egypt was greatly instrumental in the political liberalization measures, including the recognition of the political ‘forums’. The 1988 rebellion of the youth (the ‘hitistes’) in the Algerian cities was the prime factor that brought about the collapse of the FLN’s one-party rule, imposed the recognition of the media and political and the organization of free elections, that were later interrupted by the army as they gave a substantial lead to the Islamists. The liberalization measures taken by King Hassan II of Morocco in the second half of the 1990s- the drafting of a new Constitution, the acceptance of the principle of the alternation of power which finally brought the main opposition party- the Socialist Union of Popular Forces- to form a government, the release of political prisoners- all those measures were made under the pressure of the bread revolts that rocked the major Moroccan cities. The same could be said of Jordan where the revolts of Salt and Ma`an in the Southern part of the country had a great bearing on bringing about the liberalization measures of King Hussein in his last years. Paradoxically, those contestation movements were primarily socially motivated (the ‘bread riots’ in Cairo, Morocco, the poverty and unemployment motives behind the youth rebellion in Algeria, and the regional economic and social marginalization in the Jordanian case). Yet their main achievements were in the political field. Herein lies a further co-relation to meditate upon between the socio-economic and the political. Finally, the overthrow of the Iraqi regime is a crucial case for research into the modalities of transition to democracy in the Arab World. The tragedy of the popular insurrections of March 1991, the climax of the opposition by large sections of the Iraqi people to the Baathi regime over two long decades, raised the question of the relative weakness of large scale armed popular insurrections even facing an army that had just been defeated in an external war. While this problematic does not in any way justify the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, it does raise serious questions concerning the question of the dismantling of authoritarian regimes in the Arab World. The least that could be said is that it requires the application of stronger popular power in which violence is unfortunately not to be excluded. Or, to use Hebermas’ own terminology, the intervention of popular power is required in order to move the process of democratization from the ‘discursive’ level to the ‘strategic’ level.<\/p>\n Bibliography:<\/strong> Public Spheres and Urban Spaces in the Middle East and North Africa Fawwaz Traboulsi ————————- european university institute istituto universitario europeo robert schuman centre for advanced studies Fifth Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting Florence \u2013 Montecatini Terme 24\u201328 March 2004 Quinto Convegno di Studi Socio-politici sul Mediterraneo Firenze \u2013 Montecatini Terme 24\u2013 28 marzo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[],"content_type":[531],"themes":[305,314,318],"country":[421],"language":[66],"archive_type":[113],"archive_author":[246],"media_type":[],"keywords":[669,706,738,766,775,794,904,1102,1143,1154,1168,1186,1208,1227,1678,1605,1335,1599,1541],"ft_dossier":[3361],"ft_categories":[],"published_in":[439],"class_list":["post-862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","content_type-papers-en","themes-history-en","themes-politics-en","themes-sociology-en","country-arab-world-en","language-english","archive_type-by-ft-en","archive_author-fawwaz-traboulsi-en","keywords-arab-world-kw-en","keywords-beirut-en","keywords-civil-society-en","keywords-colonialism-en","keywords-comparative-politics-en","keywords-cultural-criticism-en","keywords-geopolitics-en","keywords-lecture-en","keywords-mediterranean-en","keywords-middle-east-kw-en","keywords-modernity-en","keywords-naming-and-power-en","keywords-north-africa-en","keywords-orientalism-en","keywords-philosophy-en","keywords-postcolonialism-en","keywords-public-sphere-en","keywords-urban-history-en","keywords-western-theory-en","ft_dossier-beirut-public-sphere-en","published_in-conference-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"content_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content_type?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"themes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/themes?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"archive_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/archive_type?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"archive_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/archive_author?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"keywords","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/keywords?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"ft_dossier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ft_dossier?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"ft_categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ft_categories?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"published_in","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/published_in?post=862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nrobert schuman centre for advanced studies<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nQuinto Convegno di Studi Socio-politici sul Mediterraneo<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nFawwaz Traboulsi<\/strong>
\nLebanese American University, Beirut-Lebanon
\nWorkshop X<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nOn this second issue, I would like to take one example concerning an imposed denomination: the modern name of the region under study. Since modern times, i.e. the times of colonization, the region has traditionally been given a geo-strategic name viewed from the West (as a geographic location) and imposed by the Western powers. The ‘Levant’, the ‘Eastern Mediterranean’, the ‘Near East’, etc. were the denominations adopted up to WWII. While the appellation ‘Near East’ predominated during WWII, with the beginning of the Cold-War, the region was re-baptized the ‘Middle East’, by virtue of which the Near East was expanded to include countries of the famous ‘Northern Tier’ lying on the borders of the Soviet Union such as Iran, Turkey and beyond into Pakistan. That was the period of ‘containment’, when the strategic priority was to build anti-communist security and political cooperation and anti-Soviet military blocs. With the rise of Arab nationalism, the name ‘Arab World’ imposed itself and came to be widely used even in the Western official and semi-official discourses and in international institutions. The change was significant, in those days of Non Alignment and national liberation movements in the three continents, as it imposed the recognition of the Mashriq and the Maghrib as one entity, ‘from the Ocean to the Gulf’. The situation will be drastically reversed after the end of the Cold War when a return was effected to the ‘Middle East’. The main task, then, was the integration of Israel (alongside Turkey and Iran) into the region as the Arab-Israeli peace process raised hopes that a permanent peace will open prospects for a new era of regional economic cooperation and prosperity within the context of a globalized world.<\/p>\n
\nThis tendency can be traced in practically all fields of intellectual production. ‘Human development’ now replaces ‘development’ as the idea of development itself is displaced from the economic realm (now left to the deregulated markets and referred to at best by the more modest term of ‘growth’) to cover the new trinity of Freedom, Knowledge and Gender. That displacement, rather than incorporating the novelty into the body of real problems of the region or its assimilating it in its theoretical problematics, more often than not simply occults them. Studies in poverty replace studies on income distribution- the latter restricted to the global level (the rich billion and the rest)- as poverty begins to resemble a natural catastrophe or a contagious disease. Consequently, we study poverty- without studying wealth. We define the ‘poor’ but not the ‘rich’. As for the middle classes, they are either pictured as being reduced in size and effectiveness and consequently dying out or are assigned the role of repositories of the democratic mission. In both cases, very little in terms of socio-political effort is invested in studying the political behavior of the middle classes, assuming that they might tend toward a homogeneous and unidirectional political behavior. As for the solution to the problem of poverty, it is no less an ambitious UN project to eradicate poverty on the world scale with fixed dates to complete the ‘job’. Remains that the final eradication of poverty is annually deferred as its meager results are revealed.<\/p>\n
\nThe second observation concerns the dominant State\/Society relationship. Here we suffer a double confusion. One is the confusion between State- i.e., between the institutional forms of political society- on the one hand, and the transient political regime\/system in place in a specific historical moment, on the other. The second confusion is the one between society and civil society, i.e. between the general form of human social organization on a specific territory, including its state<\/strong>, and the sum total of autonomous collectivities and forms of voluntary associations within society that have in common their autonomy vis-\u00e0-vis the State.<\/p>\n
\nSecond, were the ‘bourgeois’ public spheres- that undoubtedly played the role of counterweights to the despotic state- a necessary and<\/strong> sufficient<\/strong> factor\/condition in the transition of Britain and later of France and the other European countries to democracy?<\/p>\n
\nii) Habermas further insists on the bourgeois<\/strong> nature of public sphere implying that it is permanently threatened by the non-bourgeois social strata gaining access to it, namely the subaltern classes. That initiates the debate about the dialectics of inclusion\/exclusion in Habermas’s conception of democracy, namely his exclusion of class and gender as many critics have reproached him. Habermas explicitly warns against “populist movements” which represent “the frozen traditions of a lifeworld endangered by capitalist modernization” movements that he considers as basically “antidemocratic”.[5]<\/a><\/sup> In fact, his main contention here is that such intrusions would blur the necessary distinction of State\/Civil Society.<\/p>\n
\nThere seems little doubt among historians that the Ottoman Tanzimat<\/em> (codified in the two edicts of 1839-1856) were one of the last attempts to create an Ottoman individual whose allegeance is rather to the State rather than to his community, his millet <\/em>or even to the Sultan. The impact on the Arab regions of the Empire was quickly noticeable as that region had already known Mohammad `Ali’s modernist and reformist movement which was itself thwarted by The Empire and its British allies.
\nThe post-Tanzimat period witnessed the flowering of different aspects of an emerging public sphere all over the Arab regions of the Ottoman Empire. Though this is not the place to discuss and analyze that multi-faceted movement in detail, it is necessary to highlight some of its most salient aspects.
\nThe impressive modern urban development was perhaps the most noticeable aspect of the emerging public sphere. Not only were urban spaces opening up, in the form of public squares, gardens, wider roads, promenades, etc., but cities were witnessing the same phenomena that Europe had known in the 18th<\/sup> Century: a proliferation of cafes, associations, theaters, scientific, literary and learned societies, salons, etc. In addition, independentist and autonomist secret societies were actively engaged in organizing the youth, calling for constitutionalism, decentralization or simply Syrian or Arab independence.<\/p>\n
\nThe two realms were not that antagonistic under the Mandates and the first independence regimes characterized by the parliamentary regimes of the merchant-landowner notables. However, the gap will widen in the post-1948 period as a reaction to the creation of the state of Israel and the Western military pacts with the rise of the new nationalist movements and the establishment of the ‘radical populist’ regimes.[9]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
\nIn the interest of expediency, we can disregard the debate on the ‘End of History’ and on the fate of capitalism and the market. But we should at least mention that many a critic of the notions of civil society and the public sphere has pointed out to the systemic incompatibility between capitalism and democracy. What is meant, of course, is that the former keeps the latter incomplete and partial. Michael Hardt, following Deleuze, anticipates the “Withering of Civil Society” as late capitalism moves from the disciplinary<\/strong> mode to the control<\/strong> mode in which power relations now fill all social space.[16]<\/a><\/sup> Slavoj Zizek’s critique elaborates on a more structural causality: the discrepancy and non-contemporaneity, he maintains, are to be seen as structural necessities of capitalism. The critique is leveled against Habermas’s notion of “modernity as an unfinished revolution”, based precisely on the same assumption of an existing contradiction between capitalism and democracy. The task of accomplishing that revolution -which is simultaneously that of democracy- is to bring its two facets together- ‘instrumental reason (i.e., the scientific-technological manipulation and domination of nature brought about by capitalism) on the one hand, and intersubjective communication free of constraints, on the other. Zizek maintains that bringing the project of modernity to completion by actualizing the potential of the second facet, as Habermas proposes, is an impossible mission because of the very nature of capitalism itself. He asks:<\/p>\n
\nThose movements come quite close to the civil disobedience that Habermas suggests as a last resort. Of course, they degenerated into more violent encounters due of the reaction of the existing regimes.
\nIt is worthwhile to compare those social movements with the short-lived public sphere during the Damascus Spring of 2000-2001 mainly represented by a proliferation of autonomous associations and cultural clubs all over the country and the intense activity of human rights organizations animated mainly by merchants and ex-Leftist intellectuals. That movement- which unfortunately has not yet been the subject of thorough academic research- was easily repressed and quickly recuperated by the regime because it was deprived of a popular dimension,.<\/p>\n
\n– Ayyubi, Nazih (1995) Overstating the Arab State<\/em>. Politics and Society in the Middle East<\/em>. London: Routledge.
\n– al-`Azmeh, Aziz (1992) Al-`Ilm\u00e2niya Min Manzour Mukhtalif<\/em>, Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wahdah al-`Arabiyyah.
\n———————— (1993) Islams and Modernities<\/em>, London: Verso.
\n– Batatu, Hanna (1978) The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movement in Iraq: A Study of Iraq\u2019s Old Landed and Commercial Classes and its Communists, Ba`thists and Free Officers<\/em>. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
\n——————–(1999) Syria’s Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and their Politics<\/em>. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
\n– Bishara, Azmi (1996) Musahamah fi Naqd al-Mujtama` al-Madani<\/em>. Ramallah (Palestine): Muwatin- The Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy.
\n– Edmund Burke III, \u201cThe Transformation of the Lebanese Agrarian Structures in Comparative Historical Perspective\u201d, in Lebanon, a History … ,<\/em> pp. 14-30.
\n– Calhoun, Craig ed. (1992) Habermas and the Public Sphere<\/em>. Cambridge: MIT Press.
\n—————————“Civil Society and the Public Sphere”, Public Culture<\/em>, vol.5, no. 2, Winter 1993, pp. 267-280.
\n– Corm, Georges (1983) Le Proche-Orient eclate. De Suez a l’invasion du Liban, 1956-1982<\/em>. Paris: Maspero.
\n———————-(19991) L’Europe et l’Orient. De la balkanisation a la libanisation-histoire d’une modernite inaccomplie.<\/em> Paris: Editions de la Decouverte.
\n– Davies, John (1987) Libyan Politics: Tribe and Revolution<\/em>. London: I.B. Tauris.
\n– William Doyle, The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction<\/em>. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
\n– Furet, Francois (1989) Marx and the French Revolution<\/em>. Chicago: University of chicago Press.
\n———————-(1990) Interpreting the French Revolution<\/em>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
\n———————–(1995) Revolutionary France, 1770-1880<\/em>. Oxford: Balckwell Publishers.
\n– Gramsci, Antonio (1971) Prison Notebooks<\/em>. London: Lawrence and Wishart
\nBetween Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy<\/em>. Cambridge: MIT Press.
\n– Habermas, Jurgen (1985) “A Philosophico-Political Profile”, The New Left Review<\/em> (interview by Perry Anderson and Peter Dews) no. 151, May-June 1985, pp. -75-105.
\n—————————-(1991) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society<\/em>. Cambridge: MIT Press.
\n—————————-(1996) Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Dsicourse Theory of Law and Democracy<\/em>. Cambridge: MIT Press.
\n—————————-(1997) A Berlin Republic: Writings on Germany<\/em>. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
\n– Harik, Iliya (1968), Politics and Change in a Traditional Society: Lebanon, 1711-1845. <\/em>Princeton: Princeton University Press.
\n– Hill, Christopher (1975) The World Turned Upside Down. Radical Ideas During the English Revolution<\/em>. Hardmondsworth: Penguin Books.
\n————————(1979) The English Revolution<\/em>. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
\n————————(1985) God’s Englishmen. Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution<\/em>. Hardmondsworth: Pelican.
\n– Hill, Mike and Warren Montag (2000) Masses, Classes and the Public Sphere<\/em>. London: Verso.
\n– Hinnebusch, Raymond (1990) Authoritarian Power and State Formation in Ba`thist Syria: Army, Party and Peasant<\/em>. Boulder: Westview Press.
\n– Hobsbawm, Eric (1998) The Age of Revolution<\/em>, 1789-1848<\/em>. London: Abacus.
\n– Jameson, Frederic “The Politics of Utopia”, The New Left Review<\/em>, no. 25, Jan.\/Feb. 2004, pp. 35-54.
\n– Kellner, Douglas “Habermas, the Public Sphere, and Democracy: A Critical Intervention”, http:\/\/www.gseis.ucla.edu\/faculty\/kellner\/kellner.html<\/a>
\n– Khalidy, Rashid et.al. eds. (1991) The Origins of Arab Nationalism<\/em>. New York: University of Columbia Press.
\n– Khalil, Samir (1989) The Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq<\/em>. London: Radius.
\nMigdal, Joel S. (1988) Weak States and Strong Societies: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
\n– Al-Naqib, Khaldun (1991) Al-Dawlah al-Tassalutiyyah<\/em>, Beirut: Center for Arab Unity Studies.
\n– Khoury, P. S. ed. (1991) Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East<\/em>, London: I.B. Taurus.
\n– Porath, Yehoshua, “The Peasant Revolt of 1858-1861 in Kisrawan”, Asian and African Studies<\/em>, vol. 2, 1966, pp. 77-157.
\n– Ghassan Salam\u00e9, ed. (1994): Democracy without Democrats<\/em>, London, I.B.Tauris.
\n– Sharara, Waddah (1985) Al-Madina al-Mawqufah<\/em>, Beirut: Dar al-Tali`ah.
\n– Skocpol, Theda (1986) States & Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China<\/em>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
\n– Sluglett, Peter and Marion Farouk-Sluglett (1987) Iraq since 1958: From Revolution to Dictatorship<\/em>. London: Kegan Paul International.
\n– Van Damn, Nikolaos (1979) The Struggle for Power in Syria- Sectarianism, Regionalism and Tribalism in Politics, 1961-1978<\/em>, London.
\n– Waterbury, John (1983) The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat: The Political Economy of Two Regimes<\/em>. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
\n– Zizek, Slavoj (2000) Revolution at the Gates. Selected Writings of Lenin form 1919<\/em>. London: Verso.<\/p>\n\n