Most of the academic literature on republican political systems in the Arab world assumes that such systems are similar rather than different. Reviewing studies on Egypt and Syria reveal a case in point. As a general rule, scholars researching Syria cite Egypt as a harbinger for Syria's current trajectory. And they are not alone. During field research, Syrian political observers referred repeatedly to the Egyptian experience in order to explain developments in Syria while Egyptian analysts felt Syrian politics were following Egypt's lead. This paper, however, emphasizes the differences between them. In order to add to the comparative research agenda on Arab states, I examine the differing levels of institutional politicization and non-elite co-optation in Egypt and Syria. The degree to which institutions are politicized or depoliticized influences the way a regime co-opts non-elites into the system's services. For this study's purpose, non-elites are defined as educated and productive social actors that do not belong to the political elite. Non-elites also include independent political activists. The key factor is that these agents must be unaffiliated with the state's institutional structures. This paper documents non-elite co-optation as the process whereby such people are voluntarily tied to state institutions. Such structures can include ruling party committees or a national council for a particular issue. This paper's argument is that Egypt's depoliticized state institutions allow for more flexible non-elite co-optation. Because Egypt's governing institutions are centralized, the Egyptian government more easily co-opts potential rivals because there is less institutional competition. Hence, a central institution, in this case the ruling party, is where non-elite co-optation largely occurs. Conversely, the Syrian political arena contains several politicized institutions--particularly the presidency, the security services, and the B`ath party. As a result, the character of co-optation is less concentrated because politicized institutions compete for influence in bringing in outside non-elites. The paper contributes to the literature on comparative authoritarianism by comparing two political systems' structures and practices in the Arab world. To aid in the endeavor, I will make use of extensive interviews and field research conducted in Egypt and Syria between 2003-2006 as well as of primary documents. This paper also contributes to wider debates on contemporary Egyptian and Syrian politics as well as to non-elite politics and authoritarianism generally. The paper adds to the work by a larger group of scholars currently researching comparative authoritarianism.

I argue that patron-client networks linking local autocrats to foreign patrons can help explain the varying durability of autocratic regimes in the Middle East by way of exposing the origins of their ruling coalitions--critical social bases that profoundly influenced the direction of state-building efforts in the post-colonial era. Comparing six cases (Kuwait, Tunisia, Jordan, Bahrain, Iran, and Iraq), this paper scrutinizes the choices made by authoritarian incumbents during the early stages of regime consolidation. I posit a systematic argument: the more foreign patrons intervened to augment the capacity of dictators to crush political challengers early on, the greater the incentive these leaders faced in consolidating power through exclusionary means--that is, by building narrower coalitions that refused to trade power for loyalty while neglecting to construct institutional arrangements to foreclose future contestation. Conversely, autocrats that did not experience pervasive exogenous impositions during early struggles tended to anchor their authority in broader coalitions defined by costly bargained side-payments linking popular sectors to the regime's authoritarian perpetuity. Cross-regional comparisons may reveal that while geopolitical constraints cast long shadows over post-colonial state-building, they shape the coalitional lineaments of autocratic rule in very different ways.

From iron-clad security apparatuses to painstakingly engineered elections, regimes in the Middle East have successfully employed an array of tools to secure their own power and cripple political opposition. Social science research on the topic has grown in the recent decade, from single case studies, to theoretical explorations, to cross-national and cross-regional comparisons. The bulk of this important research examines the strategies used by incumbent elites to manage dissent by manipulating legal, bureaucratic and coercive institutions. Less work, however, exists on the semiotic dimension of power, in both its domestic and international manifestations. Drawing on primary field research conducted in two of the region's most robust authoritarian states - Syria and Tunisia - we propose an explanation rooted in the political economy of image-building. Specifically, we examine the methods employed by regimes to craft images of themselves for international and domestic audiences. Although Syria and Tunisia rank similarly on many quantitative indicators of political and civil rights, the Tunisian regime appears to be more successful in marketing its narrative of a liberalizing autocracy to international audiences. To shed light on this inconsistency, we employ a comparative case study technique that focuses on the following questions: What types of symbols and rhetoric do these regimes use to craft their imagesi How are these different for different audiencesi How are international advertising and public relations firms involved in constructing these image-campaignsp What is the relationship between image-building and foreign investments How are oppositional and alternative voices mirrored in regime-level PR portfoliosf Our answers to these questions will contribute to our understanding of the role played by semiotics in regime endurance. In addition to an examination of the secondary literature, we will draw upon primary source material collected during field research and information from public relations firms involved in shaping regime campaigns.

Much of the scholarship on economic reform in the Middle East has focused on the free trade zones, the effects of privatization and market liberalization, and shifting sites and practices of patronage. In this paper I argue that these changes in the economic and cultural spaces in the urban spaces of Cairo and Amman have created not only well-documented exclusions, but also new sites of engagement. New sites of leisure allow some middle- and lower middle-class citizens to insert themselves into (relatively) new cosmopolitan leisure economy in ways that entail self-conscious negotiations with sites of cultural production and cultural capital. At the same time, these citizens are being directed away from politics and toward a consumptive orientation supportive of neoliberal economic reforms (and the authoritarian political regimes that support them). While much of the literature on the cultural effects of neoliberal economic reforms has emphasized exclusions and disenfranchisement; my focus here is on the ways in which lines of exclusion are being crossed, creating opportunities (as well as new forms of exclusions) for those who might seem to initially find themselves on the losing side of neoliberal economic reforms. Thus a goal of this paper is not to explain authoritarianism per se, but to examine the specific practices, at the micro level, that unwittingly support authoritarian regimes. Through a comparative study of Cairo and Amman--two metropolitan areas of considerably different scope--I aim to reveal the micro-effects of authoritarian practices, using ethnographic methods focused on the spaces that allow citizens to "cross" spaces that are differently affected by legal codes as well as police surveillance.

Few regions of the world have been subject to deeper US political, military, and economic penetration than the Middle East and Latin America. Accordingly, scholars of both regions identify US intervention as a central cause of authoritarian durability, arguing that authoritarian clients propagated pro-American foreign policies and suppressed domestic opposition in exchange for US interventions that supported their own longevity. In both regions, the US supported robust coercive apparatuses, provided large-scale economic aid and public goods, and even assumed control over specific government functions. Despite these similarities, few comparisons exist between the contemporary Middle East and historical antecedents in Latin America. This paper supports the belief that a cross-regional comparison is useful for revisiting the intervention/authoritarianism hypothesis, as well as for understanding the relative durability of Middle Eastern authoritarianism. Thirty-five years after the beginning of the "Third Wave," it is evident that American intervention was not a sufficient condition for authoritarian durability in Latin America, which experienced both significant fluctuation in authoritarian rulers and region-wide democratization amidst an environment of sustained US political, economic, and military interference. This realization leads us to question the causal impact of American intervention in the Middle East, and to seek out other factors that might explain the degree of authoritarian durability across both regions. Drawing upon a series of mini-case studies, including Nicaragua, Chile, Brazil, Iran, Jordan, and Egypt, this paper explains the relative durability of authoritarianism in the Middle East relative to Latin America. It argues that the effect of US interventions on authoritarianism is strongly conditioned by several other factors, particularly (1) the availability of other sources of external rent, including oil revenues and alternative sources of foreign aid; and (2) the organization and composition of the labor force. With few exceptions, Latin American countries lacked access to large-scale external rents, which allowed for capitalist development and the formation of organized labor movements that became the most vocal opponents to American-backed authoritarian regimes. By contrast, Middle Eastern countries had access to a variety of external rents, which were funneled through the state apparatus to society. These rentier economies did not undergo capitalist development, were concentrated largely in services, and imported, corporatized, and/or excluded women from the labor force, rendering labor unmobilized, fragmented, and weak.