The wave of contentious revolts that struck the Arab world during the winter of 2011 shared one thing in common: the largest anti-state protests occurred within republican states, while monarchies were able to contain their opposition. Yet monarchies like Jordan and Bahrain are no different than Tunisia, Egypt, or Algeria in having bulging youth populations, uncompetitive economic systems, and closed autocratic regimes. They are equally repressive. What, then, accounts for their effectiveness? This paper suggests that Middle Eastern monarchies enjoy an institutional advantage that simply makes life hard for viable opposition. They combine reservoirs of mythologized traditions with modern constitutional prerogatives, creating institutionalized buffers that immunize royal palaces from all but two rare threats: cross-class revolutionary movements and well-organized military coups. Thus, while the 1950s through 1970s saw the destruction of four MENA dynasties at the hands of army conspiracies and revolutionary vanguards—Egypt (1952), Iraq (1958), Libya (1969), and Iran (1979)—the lack of further royal deposals in the past three decades suggests that the remaining monarchies have converged upon a common strategy of adaptation. In Middle Eastern monarchical states today, ruling families sit atop the political system, occupying an institutional apex that lies beyond electoral and judicial contestation. Granted absolutist imperatives by Western imperialism, but carefully building instead mythologized narratives of historical legitimation, these royal houses can only be constrained through fundamental constitutional discussion. In closed monarchical dictatorships, namely Oman, Qatar, UAE, and Saudi Arabia, there are almost no legal means by which non-royal elites can advocate constitutional reforms. In the liberalized monarchies of Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain, and Kuwait, constitutional discourse remains institutionally separated from everyday opposition issues in the plural spaces linking state with society, from formal organizations like parliaments and councils to more informal venues like the press and civil society. When opposition elites do manage to broach this issue, royalists can exploit their symbolic power to deepen support among rural social forces and trigger new political conflicts. Alternatively, they may deploy juridical power to constrain (e.g., repress) or expand (e.g., liberalize) those institutional arenas, thereby again shifting debate from their prerogatives. In this ecology, only two kinds of opposition credibly threaten royal power: cross-class revolutionary movements from below, which are rare, and praetorian machinations from the army, which have not occurred since the 1960s.

The stunning transformations in Tunisia and Egypt during the winter of 2011 are inspiring analysts of Middle East politics to consider the mechanisms that enable rapid shifts in the balance of power between regimes and opposition forces. This paper takes a step back and considers slower and more subtle sources of change in the distribution of power among social actors, even as the structure of political systems remain intact. It does so through a focus on a phenomenon whose political consequences are often overlooked: international migration. Most research on migration focuses on its impact upon receiving rather than sending states. Among examinations of the latter, most consider outmigration’s effects on such desired outcomes as development, democracy, or social capital. This framing of the query highlights the question of whether emigration is beneficial for society in normative terms. Yet it fails to ask for whom emigration is beneficial in the sense of Realpolitik. Investigating the latter, I ask how emigration from a country affects changes in access to and struggles over power within that country. Under what conditions does it aid individuals and groups in their competition for influence or have the opposite effect? How is emigration thus a source of political change? I argue that, in many of countries of emigration, the essential determinants of political power are demography and money. Competing groups vie to maximize their share of both, yet hit upon a contradiction. On the one hand, emigration drains the number of resident constituents that a group rallies to vote, demonstrate, or maintain a presence on the ground. On the other, migration is often the best path to wealth for those who leave and those who receive remittances. The balance of which groups gain and lose from this trade-off evolves in accord with changes in who emigrates and to where they emigrate. Depending on the interaction between these factors, emigration and remittances contribute to generating, accentuating, or ameliorating disparities in power among groups in the country of origin. Over time, it can lead to major changes in who gains political and economic influence, and who does not. This paper explores these relationships in the case of Lebanon from the start of mass migration in the mid-1800s until the present.

The theme of this paper is no surprise. Are the Arab uprisings of 2011 opening acts in a return engagement for modernization theory? Already there are voices arguing “successful” Human Development indicators in Tunisia and Egypt support the claim that economic liberalization and growth wrought consequential social mobilization. Noting that events are far from over in Egypt, Tunisia or the wider region, this paper will offer an initial probe into the question of modernization and political change in the Arab World. The first section of the paper will briefly review the state of the art in political economy approaches to classic modernization theory. How are socio-economic factors expected to connect to political change? Second, taking all of the Arab states as cases, the paper will canvass the relevant quantitative socio-economic measures which are often deployed to support modernization claims. Where do the Arab states stand in terms of development thresholds? Finally, and most tentatively, the paper will explore how development patterns expressed in the data sets comport or not to dynamics in Egypt and Tunisia. And, assuming some Arab states will not succumb to the 2011 contagion, what then do these two cases suggest about those other Arab cases? This last effort will be based upon the secondary literature, and while neat conclusions are unlikely, new questions and research directions will be offered.