The end of the cold war coincided with the Gulf War, which was the first major event to take place in the Middle East that provided for new dynamics of power and the beginning of an inevitable clash between different ideas in the Middle East. The US started taking a new role in the politics of the Middle East, and political leaders in the Middle East initiated attempts to galvanize their respective (and other) societies around specific identities. Sadam Hussein, for example, decided to add Allahu-Akbar (God is Great) on the Iraqi flag, with his own handwriting, in an attempt to affect Arab societies’ perceptions of his actions against Kuwait, and to show himself as a “true” defender of Islam and Jerusalem, during the height of his campaign of launching Scud missiles against Israel and Saudi Arabia. Other leaders, an in attempt to maintain and potentially strengthen their hold on power, engaged in various attempts to shape particular identities in their own societies. This phenomenon is not a new one in the Arab Middle East. The most obvious example of this is how the term “Arab Nationalism” had been used in many different ways throughout the 20th century, to fit what various political elite envisioned it to be, in concert with their own plans to continue to govern, at the expense of how the term is defined (Wataniyyah vs. Qawmiyyah). Since 1990 onwards, however, these attempts of (re)formulating particular social and political identities, were a reactions to various global and regional forces. This paper explores state policies of shaping specific politically-salient identities in their own societies, and assesses the extent to which these policies were successful.

Can state leaders use nationalism to build a more business-minded, entrepreneurial citizen identity? State leaders are increasingly attempting to compete in the global economy by building more knowledge-based domestic economies, driven by science-based innovation and private sector entrepreneurship. Yet citizens may lack business initiative and the entrepreneur’s appetite for risk, especially in rentier states and other societies with strong traditions of citizen reliance on government employment. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), one approach to this dilemma has involved the strategic use of nationalism to reshape citizen identities along more market-friendly lines. Instead of expecting a job from the state, the new nationalist ideology argues, citizens should participate as leaders in the country’s growth by creating jobs for themselves as entrepreneurs and innovators. This paper investigates the market-oriented recalibration of state-sponsored nationalism in the UAE, with an emphasis on unintended consequences for citizen formation that have not been fully anticipated by existing theory. First, I document the ways in which UAE ruling elites together with their foreign advisors are projecting a new nationalist ideology that valorizes hard work, business initiative, and entrepreneurship “for the nation.” Second, I introduce a quasi-experimental case study of the effects of a public school reform embodying the new nationalism on Emirati youth attitudes. I use a difference-in-differences (DD) methodology to estimate the effects of the school reform on youth attitudes, comparing individual level survey data (n = 2001) that I collected in 2011 and 2012 within control and treatment school types across younger and older grade cohorts. Third, I present the results, supplemented with evidence from interviews and focus groups. The findings suggest that while ruling elites are succeeding in creating citizens with stronger nationalist sensibilities, they are failing to produce citizens with a greater interest in business and entrepreneurship. The data also point to a striking set of unintended consequences in the opposite direction from that desired by ruling elites: “treated” students reported dramatically greater support for the right to a government job, and significantly less inclination to start a business, compared to students who were not exposed to the school reform with its new business-centered nationalism. The last section concludes with a discussion of the hazards of using nationalism to motivate entrepreneurship, especially the idea of heightened citizen entitlement as yet another “genie in the bottle” associated with state-sponsored nationalism.

The research probes the ability of the state to impose a specific national identity, pursuing the following questions with qualitative fieldwork in Oman: Can a regime encourage the salience of specific elements of a national identity in order to shore up support and legitimacy? Are citizens susceptible to state efforts to mold them into obedient loyal citizens? If so, can an imposed identity have a lasting impact on citizens’ behavior? The paper argues that while a regime may try to cultivate a specific type of citizen, individuals will perceive the identity as extrinsic; although they may imitate the official narrative, will not in fact identify with it to an extent that modifies their behavior. The research draws on Darden’s investigation of the state’s ability to cultivate a unifying national narrative once a population achieves 50 percent literacy, as occurred in Oman in the early 1990s. The central question focuses on the official encouragement of a peaceful national identity, analyzing official statements in addition to educational materials. It then explores the effects of the initiative on citizens’ identity, finding that interviewees mimic the language of the regime in regards to a peaceful national identity. Results indicate however that interviewees exhibit awareness of the government’s motives—perceived as desire for legitimacy and citizen quiescence—and although citizens may present as obedient and loyal subjects, they do not in fact identify with the imposed narrative of peacefulness. Protests in 2011 represent a fracture in the cultivated image of Omani obedience, a further indication that the state’s desired narrative has failed to “stick”, although Darden’s connection between literacy and national unity appears confirmed. Therefore a state can unify a nation, but cannot necessarily dictate the identity citizens adopt. The implications of the Omani context contribute to our understanding of the citizen-state dynamic: the ability of powerful states to institute a national narrative, and citizens’ choice to reject elements of a narrative they perceive as imposed or inauthentic.

This paper describes the sources and causes of identity conflict between the Bedouin of South Sinai and the Egyptian state, arguing that narrow conceptions of Egyptian national identity have been rejected by the Bedouin, who have responded to attempts at nation-building in the Sinai by updating and articulating a particularistic “Bedouin” identity. Ethnographic research in Dahab over the course of 2008-2012, primarily through participant observation and extensive interviews, constitutes the basis for the study. Since the return of the Sinai Peninsula to Egyptian rule in the 1980s, the Egyptian state has invested great sums in the development and integration of the Sinai. This includes agricultural and industrial development, but it has also crucially focused on the “integration of remote areas into the mainstream of Egyptian civilization.” In South Sinai, a global tourist destination, this has entailed attempts to construct a specific narrative of Egyptian national identity geared towards a commercialized culture disseminated for foreign consumption, fusing the dissemination of identities with the growth of local economies in the territory of the Muzeina Bedouin. However, neither market expansion nor the dissemination of Egyptian identities have successfully integrated the Bedouin into the ideal Egyptian order. Instead, it has activated social tension and economic conflict between the Bedouin on the one hand and Egyptian migrants and state authorities on the other. The Bedouin have reacted by rejecting Egyptian identities and working to strengthen and update their own. This has been accomplished through the construction and reinforcement of an identity boundary and the adaptation of Bedouin identity drawing on an alternative pool of cultural symbols, namely those of the tourists. The marketization of culture has encouraged competition between “Egyptian” and “Bedouin” identities, but has largely precluded violence as a feasible strategy by either the state or the Bedouin. Economic pressures have encouraged the Bedouin to adopt a relatively progressive political outlook. Simultaneously, the Bedouin have come to reject the legitimacy of the Egyptian state and any identification with the Egyptian nation on an ethno-cultural basis. While to some extent a conscious decision, Egyptian national identity precludes the integration of the Bedouin in a way that would allow them to retain a connection to what they see as their idealized past. This has cast the Bedouin as an out-group in Egyptian national society, discouraging national loyalties, undermining integration attempts, and reinforcing sociopolitical instability.

Depending on the criteria, between 8 and 34 autonomous polities that existed in the Middle East after WWI disappeared, either by being absorbed into or conquered by states. Some of these polities are remembered in residents’ collective memories, such as the Republic of the Rif (1921-26). Others, such as the Republic of Hatay (1938-39), appear to have been largely forgotten. This paper begins by describing, mapping, and categorizing this set of “failed states” – states or autonomous regions that existed after 1918 but are not recognized states today. It then matches and compares a sample of these polities to extant states to identify factors that might account for why some autonomous polities survived (e.g., The Emirate of Transjordan, later the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan) and others (e.g., The Kingdom of the Hijaz, 1916-25) did not. I hypothesize that the interests of colonial powers is a key factor that accounts for why some polities survived while others did not but that such interests play little role in explaining why some failed states are remembered and others are not. The third part of the paper considers the extent to which “memories of state” remain in some of these places. This is an important question for the contemporary Middle East: for example, what is the likelihood and feasibility that one or more of the five separate states that existed in Syria under the French Mandate might (re-)emerge in the coming years? The paper concludes with an examination of the often-made claim that the borders and states of the Middle East are artificial and amenable colonial constructs.