THE NEW ASSOCIATIONAL POLITICS

Although professional associations are not new in the Arab world, their role in domestic politics has changed in the past decades. As a prelude to case discussions, this section first argues for the relevance of new associational politics; second, it discusses what constitutes a professional association and how associations differ; and third, it addresses the issue of formal versus informal views of state–society relations.

One of the more influential claims in the literature on associational politics, governance, and regime transition holds that associations are generally more important for the type of democracy consolidated than the actual transition from authoritarianism.¹⁰

Evidence from the Arab world suggests that the new associational politics may be relevant to trajectories from authoritarianism insofar as associations have been relevant to changes under authoritarianism.¹¹ The association–state matrix is part and parcel of how states have responded to crisis instability, what the political–economic repercussions have been, and whether a “firewall” against political decentralization can be maintained. Although associations in the Latin American and Eastern European transitions took back seats to other elite actors, the patterns in the Arab world are not so neat. Two considerations attest to the growing importance of professional associations.

First, Arab regimes take their professional associations seriously and invest considerable resources toward their management and containment. The rank and file of associations comprises the professional and middle classes so crucial to regime coalitions and survival. The fiscal and economic crises of the 1980s and 1990s threatened previous decades' populist commitments designed to placate these groups (Table 2). According to the logic of these commitments, regimes provided a minimum of social-welfare services—education, health care, subsidies on primary food products—in exchange for political support and acquiescence from strategic sectors of the population.¹²

In the 1960s and 1970s, much of this investment derived from external revenue sources and commodity exports allowing countries to live far beyond what their domestic production profile would suggest. The danger, of course, is that such public commitments and welfare provisions made for “sticky” expectations among Arab societies, expectations that did not decline as the ability of Arab states to continue their largesse weakened in the 1980s. Thus, for Jordan, Kuwait, and Syria, the 1980s and 1990s were decades of increasing socioeconomic dislocation.

Second, state formation across the region entailed weakening, coopting, or simply outlawing political parties. Consequently, and in the absence of the kind of deeply rooted political systems that long cushioned authoritarianism in countries like Taiwan, Mexico, Zambia, Kenya, and Indonesia,¹³

many Arab regimes are now facing the challenge of gradually replacing or augmenting their former social contracts¹⁴ absent this crucial institutional component. Instead, professional associations have come to resemble political parties as venues of expression, mobilization, and engagement with state officials. This evolution occurred in tandem with chronic fiscal crisis and slow economic growth that has challenged the bureaucratic capacities of Arab states to respond. Creating reform policies, gathering information, and implementing changes have proven to be tasks not easily addressed by regimes nourished on a variety of exogenous rents. Distribution, not redistribution, has comprised the dominant skill sets of Arab states. Consequently, one of the first observable state reactions was to extend policy participation to professional business and trading associations to gain private-sector support and assistance in the difficult administrative and informational functions that comprise economic reform. Given that such reforms would directly affect the rank and file of other professional associations, it was understandable that exclusive state openings to business would be challenged. Such pressures over the past two decades have opened the way for greater associational participation in the bread-and-butter struggles of local politics.

As a category of institutions, professional associations in the Arab world and the developing world in general share similar functional characteristics—such as information gathering, member services, product or professional standardization, and engaging state officials regarding member concerns. A crucial distinction, however, regards professional syndicates (al-niqābāt al-mihaniyya) such as lawyers, engineers, and the like, versus peak business associations or chambers of commerce (ghuraf al-tijāra).¹⁵

These distinctions loom large within the case studies and require some discussion. To begin with, there are good general reasons, across ideological divides, why private-sector representatives would differ from other associational interests. Business enjoys political advantages from its investment decisions and from its self-organizational capacities.¹⁶ Individual firms can join multiple organizations, whereas laborers and professionals are generally circumscribed to one membership in their specific craft.¹⁷ Moreover, business associations differ because they provide “continuous representation,” especially in times of fiscal and economic crisis.¹⁸ In addition, there are specific regional and historical reasons why Arab business associations came to occupy peculiar positions vis-à-vis their nascent states.

Business associations were generally established before other associations and benefited politically and economically during the period of European domination. The region's first business association was founded in 1841 in Aleppo, Syria. However, the Damascus chamber and its Damascene merchant elites evolved as the peak representative and played the most overt political roles in national politics. The largest and historically most important business association in Jordan, the Amman Chamber of Commerce, was founded in 1923. Although Kuwait's peak business representative was not established until 1961 (the date of Kuwait's independence), its elite merchant leadership had experience in creating parliamentary and municipal organizations since the 1920s.

Owing in part to this early organization, Arab business associations played distinct roles during the European Mandate period through the early phases of postcolonial state formation. On the one hand, British influence in Kuwait and Mandate Transjordan offered the respective ruling families external resources that decreased reliance on domestic business elites who controlled these associations. On the other hand, British and French control of regional trade during World War II significantly enriched those same business elites through provision of monopoly trading rights.¹⁹

Price controls, import licensing, and contract adjudication were routed through each country's respective chamber of commerce.²⁰ In contrast to other associative interests, they maintained a greater degree of institutional independence from direct state control, yet their leaderships' wealth was increasingly tied to state distribution of rents. Finally, in the context of fiscal crisis and economic downturn, business associations present state authorities with (hoped-for) institutional capacities to address these dislocations. State efforts to “embed” business representation into public–private consultation councils have been partly driven by state needs to compensate for weak bureaucratic capacities. Of all professional associations, business associations have thus been the most likely candidates for coordinated relations with political authority.

Professional syndicates have been no less important, however, in ways that distinguish them from private-sector associations. In much of the Arab world, nonbusiness professional associations were formed after political independence. By virtue of their membership density, urban middle-class socioeconomic profiles, representation of diverse professions, and intra-electoral processes, the syndicates have emerged as the most politically salient social associations in the region. Given the weakness of political-party systems, it has been the syndicates who have played the role of proxy political parties in Jordan, Kuwait, and Syria.

These general historical experiences contrast with other parts of the developing and developed world where “the social classes that formed the historic base for parties have fragmented into specialized sectoral and professional clienteles that have sought new forms of collective expression.”²¹

Throughout the Arab world, it is clear that strong political parties were not institutional precursors; rather, weak or nonexistent party systems limped alongside the more politically vibrant and oppositional syndicates. The often competitive and keenly observed leadership elections of the associations attest to the political and social importance of these associations. Therefore, in contrast to business associations, syndicates can mobilize their members to action, a prominent feature of crisis politics. At times the associations have acted collectively, uniting against and resisting regime intimidation. In most Arab countries, leftist, nationalist, and Islamist political forces have vied for control of syndicates, granting these associations importance not lost on state leaders.²² Who controls and who dominates professional syndicates provides an important window into a given country's domestic political struggles. For example, the leadership of Jordan's professional associations mirrors dominant political trends in the country (Table 3).

Finally, as a critical response to this discussion, one should ask why we focus on formal associations when informal patron–client networks may prevail and be more important. Although the intent here is not to impose a model of formal state–society relations, one should be wary about dismissing formal associations and institutions. Indeed, there is a scholarly history to the epiphenomenal view of domestic associations. Modernization theorists of the 1950s and 1960s commonly concluded that Arabs lacked “the skill” to join professional associations or that such institutions were simply irrelevant.²³

The advent of rentier-state theory hardened these views. Rentier theorists can be credited with advancing a neat, influential framework built upon a rather modest commitment: the character of a state's finances conditions its basic politics.²⁴ Thus, among the oil- and commodity-dependent Middle Eastern states, easy external financing was expected to strengthen patrimonial rule. The top-down dynamic of rentier arguments tended to see politics during the high-rent, precrisis years as almost suspended, whereby fiscally autonomous states simply bought off all opposition.²⁵ Professional associations meant to support collective action were logically assumed away, because exclusive rent distribution trumped individual over collective engagement. This is a characterization that has come under critical scrutiny, in part because the logic breaks down with a decline in rents.

The precipitous drop in commodity prices and aid in the 1980s generated the scholarly response that a reversal of fortune, so to speak, should engender a reversal in politics. Although not explicitly addressed in these reactions, there was the palpable expectation that once-muted social associations would resuscitate themselves in ways that would challenge political authority and potentially bring about regime change. The diversity of association–state relations supports the larger observation that rentier-crisis outcomes have not been uniform. Consequently, one response to the (formal) associations versus (informal) patronage question acknowledges that forms of associational contestation may involve rent demands or that coordination may carry a patronage/cooptation price tag. However, professional associations in the Arab world are far more than rent-seeking venues.²⁶

Nevertheless, it stands to reason that as Arab populations have grown, as states have taken on more complex functions, and as reservoirs of patronage have dried up, old methods to absorb individuals into established patronage networks have weakened. Instead of a choice between informal patronage and formal association, or the idea that professional associations have replaced informal networks, the emphasis should be on why professional associations have evolved in these ways, and how they have performed in changing state–society relations under authoritarianism. By privileging the social bases of regimes and associations and resulting state action as the explanation of outcomes in Jordan, Kuwait, and Syria, professional associations can be seen as both agents and objects of political change.

The next three case studies examine the crisis decades and how associational contestation and/or coordination shaped state–society relations under authoritarianism.

JORDAN

The majority of Jordan's professional syndicates (doctors, dentists, journalists, engineers, pharmacists, and nurses) were founded during the kingdom's politically tumultuous decades, the 1950s and 1960s. The country's peak business representative, the Amman Chamber of Commerce, was founded first in 1923. Established by members of the social and educated elite, the objective of al-niqābāt was to organize professional practice, oversee standards, defend the rights of professionals in the public or private sectors, and provide services for needy members. Internal organization, funding, and regular leadership elections were generally free from state interference until the late 1990s. Although initially weak and low profile in the 1950s, professional syndicates ultimately filled the vacuum in Jordanian political life created by the banning of political parties in 1957, the loss of the West Bank in 1967, and the bloody clashes between the regime and the Palestinian organizations in 1970–71. They gradually emerged as “the real political parties in the country.”²⁷

Beginning in the late 1980s and intensifying in the 2000s, unpopular austerity measures combined with Jordan's involvement in the failed Oslo peace process spurred popular opposition. The professional syndicates were ideally placed to capitalize on this. For their part, state authorities launched a sustained campaign to mute that political voice and crush associational autonomy.

Jordan's crisis decades began with fiscal and economic problems and unfolded within a context of periodic regional crisis. By the early 1980s, the first tremors of fiscal crisis and economic downturn were being felt in Amman. In 1980, aid comprised 40 percent of state revenue; by 1984 it had declined to 16 percent. The stupendous annual 10 percent GDP growth of the 1970s had been cut in half by 1982, and in the late 1980s, per capita GDP actually declined. By November 1988, the Jordanian dinar had lost two-thirds of its value against the dollar in only a few months. The liberation of Kuwait in 1991 resulted in the return of several hundred thousand Jordanian-Palestinians, swelling the ranks of professional syndicates. Successive governments appointed in the 1980s failed to respond to the early stages of crisis much past rhetoric. The turn came in 1985 with the appointment of the government of Zayd al-Rifaʿi. This administration pursued a two-track policy that endured into the next century: economic reform with the (hoped-for) cooperation of business associations along with an attack on the political activities of other professional syndicates. What followed was a haphazard process of announced economic adjustment, followed by fitful implementation and calls for more private-sector investment.

The prime minister's office created a number of policy-consultation committees with business–association representation and selected one former president of the Amman Chamber of Commerce to a cabinet position. Actual policy coordination remained shallow as the large and unwieldy Amman Chamber lacked the leadership coherence and capacities to take advantage of the openings whereas the government desired only consultation and little policy input.²⁸

In contrast to these openings, state officials reportedly instigated press campaigns against other syndicates, charging them with deviating from their professional responsibilities. The professional syndicates responded by releasing a manifesto charging that the campaign was being orchestrated by the regime and that its aim was to liquidate them.²⁹ In fact, in that same year the al-Rifaʿi cabinet had started studying a new syndicates law.³⁰ As the fiscal and political crisis deepened in the late 1980s and early 1990s, tensions between the associations and the government increased.

In April 1989, after riots and protests against austerity measures, nine syndicates representing some 40,000 doctors, lawyers, and other professionals led protestors in demanding the resignation of then Prime Minister al-Rifaʿi. The Hashemite regime responded with a controlled process of political liberalization: ending marshal law, expanding the parameters of political participation, and easing press restrictions.³¹

The continued weakness of Jordan's political parties and the 1993 election of a docile parliament lacking any meaningful representation of the tapestry of the kingdom's political affiliations redirected the politics of contestation back to the syndicates.

By the early 1990s, Islamist groups began taking control of some of the syndicates through electoral victories to executive committees. This was most evident in the 1994 elections for the high-profile engineers' syndicate.³²

The syndicates did not craft backward linkages with parliamentary elements from these venues; rather, they pulled the parliamentary opposition along with it. Business representation was also undergoing change. The weakness of the Amman Chamber (still the largest association in the country) in engaging state authority benefited new rival organizations, such as the Amman Chamber of Industry and the private Jordanian Businessman's Association. In the midst of these dynamics, a number of rancorous issues, particularly the effort to craft Jordan's first national sales tax and the peace process, were emblematic of increasingly contested state–association relations.

Insulated business–state negotiations on the proposed sales tax took place in the aftermath of Kuwait's liberation in 1991. These talks resulted in little agreement, and all business associations came out of the talks in opposition to the draft law. Professional syndicates backed by Islamist parties orchestrated a coordinated campaign against the tax. A key demand from all associations was that any future tax be resubmitted to parliament for approval, an ingredient to decentralize political authority. Debate over the draft sales tax was unprecedented for an economic-policy issue. Gradually state extension of exemptions for certain business sectors weakened business opposition. The Amman Chamber was the first to defect and accept the draft law without provision for future parliamentary approval. The eventual sales tax required a number of revisions, and its success in generating greater domestic revenue has been uneven.³³

This pattern of associational-led contestation repeated into the new century.

Resistance to economic policies spilled over to political issues; specifically, Jordan's relations with the United States and Israel and the regime's role in “the war on terror” have galvanized association contestation. The easing of press restrictions and the end of martial law after 1989 emboldened association leaders to voice greater opposition to the monarchy's regional policies, particularly after the 1991 liberation of Kuwait. When the Israeli–Jordanian peace treaty was signed in October 1994, ten syndicates issued a statement condemning it. Following increased violence between Israelis and Palestinians in 1996, all professional associations (including business) banned together to resist normalization with Israel. The resulting Professional Syndicates Committee to Resist Normalization with Israel (PSCRN, Lajnat al-Niqabat al-Mihaniyya li-Muqawamat al-Tatbiʿ maʿ Israel) protested trade fairs with Israeli businesses, circulated lists of companies working with Israeli interests, and voted to ban any contact with associational counterparts in Israel. In the last years of his life, King Hussein moved aggressively to deny professional syndicates the right of political expression. Through speeches and interviews, Hussein personally raised the idea of professionalization of syndicates, signaling that syndicates should concern themselves with purely professional matters and steer away from political activity. Jailing of journalists supportive of association rights followed, as well as the arrest of the well-known president of the engineers' syndicate, Layth Shbeilat. In a clear message to both palace and parliament, the engineers' syndicate responded defiantly by reelecting Shbeilat for a second term while he was still incarcerated.³⁴

Upon taking the throne in 1999, King Abdullah delivered speeches suggesting change was coming; however, the campaign against the syndicates continued. The eruption of the al-Aqsa intifada in September 2000 was occasion for a renewed anti-American and antinormalization campaign. The syndicates spearheaded a drive to boycott American products and organized two Pan-Arab antinormalization conferences.³⁵

Security services ordered the arrest of three members of the PSCRN, charging them with publishing fresh antinormalization posters and participating in an illegal organization.³⁶ Although parliament was out of session until the elections in 2003, the prime minister's office issued a string of temporary laws to outlaw mobilized political activities by syndicates.³⁷ The royal court even launched a public relations campaign entitled “Jordan First,” which sought to portray associations' opposition policies as anti-Jordanian.³⁸ Given the Palestinian origin of the majority of the syndicates' rank and file, the hinted accusation of disloyalty was missed by few.

In 2004 and 2005, Interior Minister Samir Habashneh intensified the campaign by asking that syndicates “completely halt” all political activities. The governor of Amman followed by announcing that “any kind of event, gathering or meeting, save for weddings, should obtain prior approval.”³⁹

Then, in March 2005, the prime minister presented a controversial draft law to reorganize professional syndicates. Among the draft's provisions were rules allowing government oversight of syndicate elections, banning political activities, requiring preapproval from the interior ministry for any public gathering, and creating disciplinary committees to punish members. Syndicate members attempted to peacefully protest the proposals. On four occasions it was reported that security officials physically intimidated protestors, shut down sit-ins, and even tore down posters at the syndicates' headquarters in Amman.⁴⁰ The state's campaign on associational rights had reverberated throughout Jordanian society; opinion polling in 2005 found that a majority of Jordanians believed that the right to demonstrate and protest was not guaranteed.⁴¹

By 2000, it was clear that Jordan's experiment with liberalization had been decidedly reversed; however, the professional associations have not gone quietly. Sustained contestation has meant the Jordanian regime has little to show for nearly two decades of professed political and economic reform whereas the associations and their leaders have clearly become the enemy of an increasingly besieged Hashemite monarchy.⁴²

KUWAIT

Kuwait's economic dislocations and political crises have been among the most dramatic in the region, yet the Kuwaiti state was able to move ahead with economic-adjustment packages and achieve national unity in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion while limiting political openings beyond a reinstitution of elected parliament. Kuwait's history with elected parliaments parallels the Jordanian experience. In the midst of internal and external turbulence, the emir suspended parliament in 1986. Because of demands by opposition figures and association leaders, the emir promised to restore parliament after liberation from Iraq. However, political parties remained illegal and the legislative powers of parliament remained as limited as its 1960s precursors. Thus, although deeper liberalization has not occurred, change has been evident in the degree to which the Kuwaiti state and its professional associations coordinated at key points to address political and economic crises. In particular, Kuwait's abrupt and massive fiscal crisis in the early 1980s paved the way for institutionally intense coordination between the country's most powerful professional association, the Kuwait Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and state officials. The Iraqi invasion and aftermath provided the opportunity for Kuwait's other associations to coordinate with the al-Sabah monarchy to rebuild the country.⁴³

Although municipal and independent social associations had been in existence since the 1920s, Kuwait's formal professional associations came into being during the oil-financed expansion of the Kuwaiti state beginning in the 1950s. In contrast to the Jordanian experience, Kuwaiti associations formed independent from state license in this period and thus took the form of societies and clubs such as the Cultural Nationalist Club (al-Nadi al-Thaqafi al-Qawmi), the Guidance Society (Jamʿiyyat al-Irshad), and the Teacher's Club. Also in contrast to the Jordanian experience, many of these associations were headed by elites who shared social origins with the ruling al-Sabah family. Shared origins, however, did not dissuade these associations from championing the Arab nationalist sentiment of the day, leading to frequent critiques of the ruling family's association with British authorities and foreign oil interests. By the late 1950s, the emir had banned a number of these associations in response to their growing criticism. Merchant-dominated organizations (like the municipality) were likewise pushed aside, either through ruling-family appointments to their leadership or outright sequestration.

With Kuwait's independence in 1961, an assembly (al-Majlis al-Taءsisi) was formed by election and emir appointment to write the constitution. The eventual document guaranteed free association and ensured there would be no attempts to corporatize or make associational memberships obligatory. Clubs and societies that had been shut down in the 1950s were allowed to reform. The emir reserved the right to suspend associational activities, however (which he did following the suspension of parliament in 1976).⁴⁴

The merchant elite created their own association, the Kuwait Chamber of Commerce and Industry. These same elites had experience in creating municipal, educational, and parliamentary institutions since the 1920s. As a number of observers of Kuwaiti politics have noted, a history of social linkages between these elites and the ruling family fostered a sense of equality.⁴⁵

With their growing economic clout and associational base, Kuwait's merchant elite constituted a quasipolitical party of loyal opposition until the 1980s and 1990s. Both as association and as political movement, the merchant's role in the economic crises of the 1980s and 1990s dominated.

The 1982 crash of the informal stock market, the Suq al-Manakh, crippled Kuwait's financial system. Throughout the 1980s and much of the 1990s, debates about resolving debt and charting economic reform dominated Kuwait's domestic politics. As backdrop to these issues, the emir reinstated parliament in the early 1980s (subsequently suspended in 1985) and again in the wake of liberation from Iraq. These parliaments reflected the growing electoral power of the Islamists.⁴⁶

Although parties remained illegal, Islamist control of a number of associations and food cooperatives⁴⁷ allowed for backward linkages and support into the candidate lists that would compete for seats. These candidates and their associational backers converged on similar critiques of state policies; prominent among these was the handling of the debt crisis. From the start of the crisis in 1981, government officials turned to their Chamber of Commerce and Industry for assistance. The crisis directly threatened Kuwait's banking system, thereby joining together a number of business–state interests toward its quick resolution. The prime minister created a number of high-level policy boards, staffed only with chamber of commerce representatives, to hammer out resolution schemes. Gradually state and chamber officials came to favor a similar set of reforms to adjudicate the debts, bail out debtors, reform the financial sector, and chart deeper reform.⁴⁸

At every turn, Islamist deputies backed by associational mobilization resisted these policies as unfair to the lower classes (small debtors) and beneficial to the few. Although chamber officials could not marshal comparable political mobilization in their favor, they did wield advantages that privileged their interactions with state elites. The administrative weakness of the Kuwaiti state in gathering information on debts, assessing damage, and implementing reform meant that the chamber, with its developed administrative skill set, was crucial to any solution. The leadership elites of the chamber were no strangers to the ruling family, high-level government policymaking, or lobbying with parliamentary committees responsible for debt legislation. The president of the chamber, Abdul Aziz al-Sagr, commanded widespread respect as the first speaker of Kuwait's parliament in 1961, and his decades-long leadership of the chamber placed him as leader of the loyal opposition. Finally, the growing political power of Kuwait's Islamists helped forge a common front between business elites and state officials. Over and above the fiscal crisis, state strategies in the 1980s and 1990s overtly shifted toward backing nationalist and merchant elements to counteract Islamist opposition.⁴⁹

For the chamber leadership there was a natural quid pro quo. State–business coordination to curb the political power of the Islamist opposition complemented chamber desires to roll back its growing economic interests.

In the end, business–state proposals for economic reform prevailed, as well as a number of reforms to bring the Kuwait Finance House, Kuwait's leading Islamist bank, under control of the central bank and to increase state supervision over food cooperatives. By the late 1990s, Islamist control of parliament had weakened, and for the first time since the 1960s a prominent businessman was chosen as speaker of parliament.⁵⁰

It would be a mistake, however, to characterize associational politics as divided strictly between Islamist and merchant interests. After the 1985 suspension of parliament, the chamber leadership and Islamist-controlled associations worked in tandem to persuade the emir to reinstate parliament.⁵¹

This alliance proved crucial during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. Various reports have credited Kuwait's associations and cooperatives with assisting the Kuwaiti resistance and citizens under occupation. Ultimately the exiled ruling family met with association leaders in October 1990 to pledge national unity and agree to cooperate in reestablishing the Kuwaiti state and reconstructing the country after liberation. The subsequent association–state coordination provided for a smooth reinstitution of parliament in 1992 and rapid, successful postinvasion reconstruction.⁵² Overall, therefore, coordination has outweighed contestation to help the Kuwaiti state and monarchy weather the crisis without deeper liberalization.

SYRIA

Unlike other patronage-based authoritarian systems that succumbed to the destabilizing effects of economic and political reforms, the Syrian regime has managed to keep its “political enterprise” going.⁵³

An element in this endurance has been the resistance of associations to political centralization and yet their slow emasculation at the hands of state authorities. The Syrian regime fully clamped down on associations in two contestation phases prior to the fiscal-crisis period—shutting down association protests in 1964 and forcibly corporatizing them after 1980. Associational autonomy ultimately eroded, and Syria's wider political opposition has become deinstitutionalized.

As in Jordan and Kuwait, professional associations in Syria have a rich history, but they have been far less fortunate than their counterparts since the 1980s. Prior to the ascendancy of the Baʿth party, Syria's professional syndicates were decentralized and enjoyed a substantial degree of autonomy to administer their internal affairs. Separate syndicates representing the same profession were often formed in different provinces. In 1943, two separate doctors' syndicates were founded in Damascus and Aleppo, followed in 1952 by another two in Latakia and Homs. In 1951, three engineers' syndicates were formed in Damascus, Aleppo, and Latakia. In 1952, two dentists' syndicates were established in Damascus and Aleppo. The same year two pharmacists' syndicates were founded in Damascus and Aleppo, and in 1953, three lawyers' syndicates were established in Damascus, Aleppo, and Latakia. These syndicates represented the interests of the urban middle classes and were unsympathetic to the Baʿth populist agenda.

At the top of this social group of associations was the Damascene merchant elite, who, like their Kuwaiti counterparts, claim a long and storied history. Anchored in the Damascus Chamber of Commerce, the merchant elite had long involved their association in domestic and even regional issues before the rise of the Baʿth.⁵⁴

Unlike Kuwaiti merchants, however, the process of Baʿth regime consolidation gradually weakened business associations and alienated their elites from what would become a minority Alawi-dominated state.⁵⁵

Upon assuming power through a coup in 1963, the Baʿth regime proceeded to install a populist authoritarian system of rule based on the organization of state–society relations along strict corporatist channels, yet in parallel with already established associations. The ensemble of corporatist institutions organizing and controlling active sectors of the population ultimately stretched throughout society. Labor, peasants, students, youth, women, teachers, and a host of other social groups were organized into Baʿth-dominated, compulsory, noncompetitive, functionally differentiated corporatist institutions.⁵⁶

A prime example was the teachers' syndicate founded in late 1963, after the Baʿth seized power. It was formed with branches throughout the country and its leadership appointed by the regime.⁵⁷ It included the whole range of Syrian teachers, from those employed in elementary schools to university-level professors. Given its early beginnings in student–teacher circles and its desire to penetrate society thoroughly, the Baʿth Party valued the pivotal role played by teachers in politicization of the young.

The rise of the Baʿth and its post-1963 efforts to transform Syrian society and politics were immediately contested by the country's leading professional associations. After a tense summer and fall in 1963, the Damascus Chamber of Commerce directly challenged the regime's policies of centralizing economic decisionmaking. Nationwide protests and strikes were organized. Other associations (including the Baʿthists' own teachers' syndicate) quickly joined the protests, making it “the most substantial challenge yet faced by the Baʿthist regime.”⁵⁸

Facing insurrections in a number of cities, a presidential decree on 30 March 1964 dissolved the uncooperative councils of teachers' syndicates in Damascus and the provinces, charging them with instigating insurrections and interfering in the affairs of the Ministry of Education. In 1969, Legislative Decree 82 demoted the status of the teachers' syndicate from that of a professional syndicate to a popular organization.

Regime defeat of protests meant business associations met the same fate as Syria's other associations. Over the next decade reorganization of business representation entailed the creation of an umbrella Federation of Syrian Chambers, Baʿth party representation in all regional chamber leadership, and encompassing membership. Chambers still held elections for their executive board, but these were now closely monitored by the regime. Whereas Kuwaiti and Jordanian state officials failed to create a fully loyal state capitalist class, Syrian officials were more successful in encouraging a class of businessmen (the so-called infitāḥ bourgeoisie) wedded to state enterprises yet distinct from the traditional Damascene merchant base. These state capitalists gradually came to dominate associational leaderships.⁵⁹

Nevertheless, prior to 1980, Syria's professional associations remained the primary venues of open and vocal opposition to Baʿth rule. Although their loose, provincial organization and institutional autonomy clashed with Baʿth ideology, the regime respected their distance. Leadership elections were among the most heated and publicized domestic events, despite the dominance of the Baʿth party. Indeed, in most syndicates, professionals with dual membership in the Baʿth party were a minority (Table 4).

All of this changed after 1980. Despite escalating attacks against the regime throughout 1978 and into 1979, which culminated in the massacre of scores of Alawi officer cadets at the Aleppo Artillery School on 16 June 1979, associations continued to be outspoken. The lawyers' syndicate, for example, pressed its demands for lifting of the 1963 emergency law, independence of the judiciary, and disbanding of special courts.⁶⁰

By now Islamist sympathies had spread in some syndicates, especially the engineers'. When the regime's assault against the Muslim Brotherhood and other figures from the secular opposition intensified in 1980, Syria's major syndicates and their provincial branches organized extraordinary congresses and called for an end to censorship, torture, and executions; release of all political prisoners; suspension of martial law; and restoration of the rule of law. These protests culminated on 31 March 1980 in a nationwide strike called by the lawyers' syndicate and supported by the engineers', pharmacists', and doctors' syndicates.

The syndicates had crossed the line, however, and henceforth the regime smashed their organizational autonomy, denying them institutional opportunity for autonomous collective action and contestation. In contrast to the similar Jordanian effort exactly twenty-five years later, the Baʿthist effort was more successful and brutal. On 9 April 1980, the lawyers', doctors', pharmacists', and engineers' syndicates were dissolved by government decree and their leaders arrested; their executive committees and general congresses were also dismissed. The next day the government formed new syndicates and appointed new leaders and executive committees. Membership in syndicates was made compulsory, yet selective benefits were few. The security services hounded members of the recalcitrant syndicates. Some were incarcerated or executed; others succeeded in fleeing the country. By mid-April 1980, close to 100 doctors, 100 engineers, about fifty prominent lawyers, and ten pharmacists had been imprisoned.⁶¹

Henceforth the hitherto independent syndicates were corporatized under the direct supervision of the Baʿth Party's Professional Syndicates' Regional Bureau (Maktab al-Niqabat al-Mihaniyya al-Qutri).

Because associational autonomy was crushed prior to the fiscal crises of the 1980s and 1990s, Syria's experiences diverged sharply from the other cases. In addition, Syria's economic position in the 1980s stood in sharp contrast to other parts of the region. Even when the regime faced external payment obligations, it was able to access new external venues of revenue. For instance, repayment of Soviet debts was facilitated through a barter scheme whereby state officials paid selected exporters to ship to the USSR, thereby repaying some of the loans while tying state capitalists and chamber leaderships more tightly to the regime.⁶²

As in Kuwait and Jordan, Syrian officials reached out to business associations as part of a more gradual economic-reform program.⁶³ A new investment law, Legislative Decree 10 of 4 May 1991, further liberalized in April 2000, widened the scope of private investment, enabling Syrian, Arab, and foreign investors to launch private or mixed investments in nearly any field of the Syrian economy. A new taxation law, Legislative Decree 20 of 1991, reduced business taxes and removed provisions that penalized business profit. Prison sentences for individuals dealing in foreign currency were also reduced substantially. Finally, in April 2000 the role of the Economic Security Court in petty economic crimes was considerably reduced.⁶⁴

Together with these declarations, Damascus Chamber of Commerce involvement in policy formulation was expanded. Since 1980 its representatives have sat on the Committee for the Guidance of Import, Export, and Consumption. In 1990 state officials delegated licenses for industrial investment to the Chamber of Industry. In that same year, two executives from the Damascus chamber were elected to parliament.⁶⁵

As stark as these openings seem in contrast to Syria's other associational interests, the comparison with Kuwait and Jordan shows these moves to be rather limited. There have been no comparable moves to include prominent business interests in the government or sustained private–public deliberation on the direction and content of economic reform. The lack of public–private coordination has meant Syria's economic-reform progress has been among the slowest in the region. With confidence, the state thus continues to identify itself as the guarantor of a minimum level of social welfare, especially vis-à-vis the urban poor and the peasants.

Clampdown through managed associational engagement has not crushed all voice, however. During the short-lived “Damascus Spring” (June 2000–February 2001), dissidents and opponents of Baʿth rule managed to gather in so-called salons to voice their opposition; however, this was done outside any associational or institutional format.⁶⁶

Having already clamped down on associational autonomy, Syrian officials have found it easier to ban and jail leaders of these loosely organized groups.

STATE ACTION AND SOCIAL BASES

This section argues that the precrisis social bases of the regimes determined incentives for contestation/coordination, whereas precrisis patterns of state formation shaped the institutional and political capacities of professional associations to engage state authority. The argument blends a top-down perspective (state action over time) with a bottom-up approach (the social bases of associational agency). Postcolonial Arab regimes fashioned ruling coalitions on the foundations of particular social bases and ascriptive divisions.⁶⁷

State formation was the institutional expression of coalition building insofar as state interventions into associational life followed the contours of who was within the regime's social bases and who was not. Prior to the crisis decades, two factors are therefore key: (1) where association leadership and rank and file shared in the regime's social bases, coordinated relations were more likely; and (2) the greater the state intervention and organizational interruption, the less institutional autonomy and capacity associations had to engage state authorities.

Patterns of state formation and varieties of corporatism are well studied in Middle East politics. In his examination of corporatist arrangements of state–society relations in Egypt, Robert Bianchi argues that the heterogeneous systems of interest representation in the Middle East and Asia are neither the “state corporatism” of Latin America nor the “societal corporatism” of Western European political systems. Instead they are eclectic systems of interest organization, combining a mixture of corporatist, pluralist, and hybrid structures depending on specific contextual characteristics.⁶⁸

Despite this mix, this was a view of a relatively strong state shaping, at will, the state–society “game.” By contrast, in her study on the relationships of workers and trade unions to the state in Egypt, Marsha Posusney debunks the common statist thesis that “state corporatism provides an effective vehicle for a handful of regime elites to control masses of workers.”⁶⁹ Rather, she argues, workers will experiment with more participatory organizational alternatives, responding to state policies on an issue-by-issue basis. These positions can be reconciled insofar as state action over time to pluralize or corporatize associations immediately impacts institutional trajectory and associational capacities, key resources during crisis. Across the cases, state intervention in associational life has taken a variety of forms, including reorganization, leadership appointment, banishment, and intimidation. Likewise, associations have responded and rolled with the punches, but more often than not associational capacities over time have been affected as state intervention shifted.

Through this perspective Syria's professional associations were clearly the most adversely affected. They were once politically salient and able to mobilize members in the 1964 demonstrations, but the 1980 crackdown ushered in high levels of state control, crippling associational autonomy and opposition activity. Professional associations came to resemble other Baʿth-dominated government corporatist organs. Incentives for syndicate leaderships to invest in collective-action capacities, information gathering, or structural diversification were greatly weakened. In Jordan, less radical change followed the 1970 civil war. The regime introduced a number of changes to the existing syndicate laws, including cabinet power to dissolve professional syndicates and cabinet approval of further syndicate creation, all without an appeals process.⁷⁰

Hence, Jordan's associations were never fully corporatized; rather, they operated within a political environment in which clear, although contested, lines were drawn. In terms of state intervention, Kuwaiti associations, especially business, have faired better in all respects.

Kuwait's associations came into being as voluntary societies and clubs with independent budgets. In the case of business in particular, state officials from the outset devolved important functions (import–export licensing, public works bidding, and trade-dispute adjudication) to the chamber of commerce, making it unique among Kuwait's professional associations.⁷¹

These selective benefits ensured that the largest and most diverse business elites would actively maintain interests in the chamber and its dealings with political authority.

Beginning in the 1970s, however, a wide range of state licensing, financing, and organizational policies came to favor creation of Islamist associational interests to rival Kuwait's nationalist left and, particularly, the elite business tied to the chamber of commerce. Eventually state support resulted in the creation of three different Islamist controlled associations, the Social Reform Society (Jamʿiyyat al-Islah al-Ijtimaʿi), the Ancestral Islamic Group (Salaf), and the Heritage Society (Jamʿiyyat al-Turath). In addition, state investment and licensing inaugurated the Kuwait Finance House (an Islamist-run bank). These institutional foundations facilitated Islamists' ability to win elections to the executive board of other associations.⁷²

The institutional capacities and autonomy of Kuwaiti associations made them not only powerful actors that state authorities could not ignore (particularly during crisis) but useful partners in achieving reform and recovery. Across these case studies, one sees deeper and punctuated intervention by the Syrian state retarding associational development, a less dramatic intervention in Jordan leaving associations to evolve on their own, and a more hands-off intervention coupled with particular state support in Kuwait that encouraged the strongest association development.

To understand why states intervened in these differing ways necessitates switching to a bottom-up perspective; that is, ruling regimes and professional associations are embedded within their own social bases. The historical–institutionalist literature argues that formative regime choices and actions structure political opportunities and possibilities available for social groups, like professional associations, to emerge, develop, and successfully (or not) defend their autonomy.⁷³

These institutions are not a structural given. Rather, they are the “outcome (conscious or unintended) of deliberate political strategies, of political conflict, and of choice,” especially by ruling regimes bent on ensuring their survival in power.⁷⁴ Thus, regimes will organize state–society relations to meet a minimum guarantee of their survival and ensure, in the words of Adam Przeworski, the “absence of preferable alternatives” to their rule.⁷⁵ From this perspective, it is understandable that the intersection of professional associations and a regime's social base become important aspects of state–society relations.

On the one hand, there is the claim that shared ascriptive factors can help groups overcome problems of collective action and imperfect information that commonly plague any associational project.⁷⁶

On the other hand, it is quite apparent that social-group homogeneity can also weaken an association if the ruling regime's ascriptive base and origin is significantly different. The three case studies present interesting variations in these respects. Syrian associations evolved for the most part as urban, Sunni, elite-dominated institutions. The consolidation of Baʿth rule after 1963 and gradual consolidation of Alawi control in the military-security complex and public sector proved inimical to urban, Sunni sociopolitical interests.⁷⁷ However, on Hafiz al-Asad's ascension to power in 1970, these associations faced a new political–economic trade-off: in return for a series of economic liberalization measures implemented by the regime in the early 1970s, al-Asad requested the political acquiescence of the Sunni urban business elite. The regime drew a clear line between licit, hence controlled, and illicit, thus punishable, political activity. Following the 1980 crackdown, the crushing of the 1982 Hama⁷⁸ uprising was a stark reminder for all of the extent to which the regime was willing to go to maintain these lines. Yet, just like their Palestinian counterparts in Jordan in 1970, the Sunni business elite and the petty bourgeoisie continued to play by rules set by the regime.

In Jordan, the issue of social origins is most poignant. Waves of Palestinian refugees and returnees in 1948, 1967, and 1991 have refashioned the rank and file of professional associations at each stage. For instance, Jordan's 1923 Amman Chamber of Commerce was composed of elites from the major urban areas of Syria and Palestine. They forged close relations with the Hashemite monarchy. Gradually, however, successive generations of Palestinians came to dilute and ultimately diversify this traditional leadership. Jordan's professional syndicates likewise evolved into majority Palestinian institutions whereas the state remained largely staffed with Jordanians of East Bank tribal and urban backgrounds. The common quip was that only Palestinians went to work for the Arab Bank (Jordan's largest private bank) and only East Bankers went to work for the state. Therefore, the aftermath of the 1970 civil war meant associations could not overtly build political opposition on identity grounds nor would the legitimacy of the monarchy be questioned. Conversely, the early 1970s taught syndicate leaderships that collective action on political issues best shielded them from regime pressures. That such collective action was built upon a somewhat homogenous Palestinian rank and file has remained an enduring, although quiet, feature of Jordanian domestic politics.⁷⁹

In contrast to Jordan and Syria, Kuwait's associational elite, especially business, was cut from the same social fabric as the ruling al-Sabah family. Although the emir could shut down or curb the autonomy of the associations, this was comparatively rare. The nationalist leaderships of Kuwait's associations prior to the 1970s were not strangers to the monarchy's support base nor to the oil state's rapidly expanding government bureaucracies. Needless to say, Kuwait did not suffer from the political necessity to accommodate foreign labor or refugees. Even as Kuwaiti associations began to reflect Islamist trends after the 1970s, there was little alienation from the regime, given that Islamist institutions grew in part from state support.

To summarize, professional associations are artifacts of how regimes built their states and secured support from particular social bases. Yet, associations were also agents of change during decades when these regimes were under pressure.