What are the causes and consequences of political participation in the Middle East? More specifically, why do individuals participate in elections, anti-regime resistance, religious debates, and territorial conquest? To what extent does gender play a role, and does the impact of gender change as the public sphere shifts from the cyber world to the real world? When there is participation, why do the various movements these individuals join succeed or fail? What is impact of radical flank groups that utilize and pursue more extreme means and ends, respectively? This panel will provide compelling new answers to these questions, which are at the foundation of scholarship on contentious politics and social movements.
To address these questions, the panelists make extensive use of a variety of powerful research methods, including a) a large-scale, randomized survey of participants and non-participants in the first Palestinian intifada and its antecedents, as well as interviews conducted in the Palestinian context, b) data from three waves of the Arab Barometer Survey and elite interviews with female activists from the Middle East and North Africa, c) a rich data set of 21,157 writings from 173 male and 41 female preachers on a Salafi-oriented website, and d) an original dataset on "price-tag" violence and settlements in the West Bank, coupled with interviews of relevant participants.
These tools allow for the analysis of fresh arguments. One panelist contends that civil society institutions continue to promote political participation even in non-democratic regimes that rely primarily on coercion over cooptation. To the extent the movements these individuals join have radical flanks, a second panelist demonstrates that it is their relative power that dictates whether these extreme groups will help or hurt their broader collective. Two panelists analyze the role of women, with the first finding that female preachers have circumscribed religious authority--they write primarily on a limited set of topics relating to family law, culture, and educating youth. Nonetheless, these writings are promoted by supposedly male-dominated Salafi organizations on the Internet, engagement with which increases political participation, according to another panelist.
This panel offers synergies across topics as well as across regions, as two panelists analyze contentious politics in Palestine and Israel, while two others analyze the causes and effects of participation in the cyber world. Ultimately, this panel will provide rich analysis of exciting topics in the study of political participation in the Middle East.
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Yael Zeira
Does integration into civil society institutions make individuals more likely to participate in predominantly nonviolent, anti-regime resistance? The foundational literature on civil society institutions argues that they lead to greater civic engagement among their members (Putnam 1993). Others have challenged the extent to which these arguments apply to non-democratic regimes, which can use patronage to coopt civil society institutions (Jamal 2007). Yet, what impact do these institutions have in non-democratic regimes that rely primarily on coercion over cooptation? That is, do civil society institutions facilitate civic engagement and opposition even in the shadow of repression?
This manuscript investigates these questions using data from an original, randomized survey of participants and non-participants in the first Palestinian intifada and its antecedents, as well as interviews with civil society activists, members and non-members. I find that formal membership in civil society institutions is associated with a greater likelihood of participation in anti-regime resistance, although the data are not sufficiently fine-grained as to rule out reverse causality. However, informal civil society networks – knowing a member of a civil society institution – are strongly associated with future participation in anti-regime resistance. These informal civil society networks are not based on strong, antecedent communities but, rather, emerge as individuals access the social services and activities provided by civil society institutions. Thus, integration into civil society institutions, via their services and activities, joins previously unconnected individuals together in new social networks that facilitate collective action. Finally, I show that the impact of civil society networks is not static but is strongest in the early stages of a protest movement, when demonstrations are small in size and individuals are unlikely to join based on aggregate turnout rates. These findings have important implications for the literatures on protest, civil society, Palestinian politics, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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Prof. Nadya Hajj
Are women more likely to increase their political participation through Internet usage in the Middle East? Are women’s levels of political participation greater through new media usage compared to men? Using data from three waves of the Arab Barometer Survey, detailed historical research, and elite interviews with activists from the Middle East and North Africa during the “Women and Public Service Institute” in the summer of 2012; this paper contributes to the growing body of literature on information ecology and contentious politics in the Middle East by assessing the transformative effects of Internet usage on the political participation of Arab women. We hypothesized that the Internet increases political participation for all individuals but differentially enhances women’s involvement in the Middle East. We used a comprehensive measurement of formal political participation that included voting, signing of a petition, attending protests, and campaigning for a candidate. We suspected that the Internet offered a gender-neutral space where low costs of producing and consuming information resulted in greater political participation of women compared to men. Statistical and interview evidence suggests four major findings: 1) women that do not use the Internet are less politically active than men that do not use the Internet; i.e. there exists a gender gap in political participation without Internet; 2) Internet usage increases political participation of all citizens (regardless of gender); and 3) Internet usage does not differentially increase political participation among women in all types of political activity compared to men, and (4) the Internet is a useful tool (among many) for improving participation but not a panacea. These results hold even after controlling for a range of individual background variables like formal education levels. Finally, our study problematizes the notion that the Internet is generally believed to be a low cost and safe space for women’s political participation. It is not a de facto safe space for women in the Middle East. In fact, disincentives in the form of high visibility in unregulated spaces and easy targeting for state violence prevent women for harnessing the full potential of the Internet for whole scale political activism.
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Richard Nielsen
Islamist movements, including many variants of the Salafi movement, are widely understood as male-dominated spheres of action and influence. This study identifies female preachers whose writings are disseminated via a Salafi-oriented website (saaid.net) alongside the writing of their male counterparts. By comparing the writing, biographies, and profiles of male and female religious authorities, I answer several questions: (1) How is the authority of female preachers constructed, either by themselves or others, and does it differ from the construction of male authority? (2) On which topics can women be authoritative? (3) Why does a Salafi website promote female preachers when Salafi ideology appears uncomfortable with female religious authority? I answer these questions by collecting all of the writings for every preacher, male and female, on the Salafi-oriented website saaid.net, resulting in a rich data set of 21,157 texts, containing 128,000,000 words by 173 men and 41 women. Additionally, I collect professional biographies and CVs for each of these preachers, when available. Examining these data, I find that female preachers have circumscribed religious authority --- they write primarily on a limited set of topics relating to family law, culture, and educating youth, while men write on all subjects related to Islamic law. Male Salafi preachers derive authority overwhelmingly from manipulation of authoritative textual sources, primarily the Quran and Hadith. Fully 3 percent of text by men is devoted to the word "Allah,'' used primarily when invoking Quranic passages or the sayings of the prophet. In contrast, women rely on these sources much less heavily (to a degree that is statistically significant) and instead derive authority from their identities as women. The specific issues where women speak authoritatively include decrying abortion and opposing the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). This suggests that the Salafi movement permits these female preachers circumscribed authority because as women, they are able to deliver ideologically useful messages that male preachers cannot.
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Dr. Peter Krause
When and why do “radical flank” groups employing extreme means—such as Hamas, the Industrial Workers of the World, and New York Radical Women—help or hurt the success of their broader political and social movements? We argue that weak flanks are more likely to make their movement’s center seem more moderate by comparison and generate effective good cop/bad cop dynamics, while strong flanks are more likely to hurt the credibility of the movement and muddle its messaging. Weak flanks are more likely to quietly shift the status quo from one of compellence to deterrence, while strong flanks are more likely to inspire a backlash while denying the center plausible deniability. Movements with weak flanks are therefore more likely to succeed, while those with strong flanks are more likely to fail.
In order to analyze the behavior and effectiveness of flanks, we will focus on the efforts of two radical flanks—Gush Emunim and the Hilltop Youth—within the Israeli settlement movement to expand into the West Bank in three periods: 1967-1983, 1990-1996, and 1997-present. This longitudinal analysis allows for tight comparisons and analysis of causal mechanisms with key actors and ideologies held constant. We conducted our analysis using our original dataset on “price-tag” incidents—attacks that burn Palestinian mosques and destroy property, accompanied by threatening graffiti that references Israeli settlers, outposts, and anti-Arab slogans —and another dataset on settlements and outposts we revised, coupled with an analysis of the secondary source literature and interviews we conducted with relevant participants and observers. We find that the weak flanks during 1967-1983 and 1997-present helped expand Israeli control of territory in the West Bank, whereas the strong flank during 1990-1996 hurt the reputation, election prospects, and geographical spread of the settlers.
This empirical analysis provides not only a plausibility probe of the theory, but also a systematic new explanation of mechanisms and variation in Israeli settlements over time, which have previously been described using ideological and religious explanations. We conclude by presenting implications for scholarship and policy, with a focus on how the strength and dynamics of flank and center are essential to understanding the effectiveness of social movements.
