Expecting the Unexpected: Cultural Components of Arab Governance

• Author: Lawrence Rosen
• Published date: 01 January 2006
• Date: 01 January 2006
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0002716205282329
• Subject Matter: Articles

10.1177/0002716205282329THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYEXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED January603

The development of democracy in the Arab world does

not always pay sufficient attention to the cultural foun-

dations of Arab political and social life. Concepts of the

person, time, memory, and relationship need to be con-

sidered as vital elements of the political cultures of these

countries. Against that background, it may be possible to

suggest elements of constitutional and legal organization

that are more in keeping with Arab cultural orientations,

rather than supposing that the imposition of Western

constitutional forms will necessarily suit local needs in

the Middle East.

Keywords: democracy; Arabs; Middle East;

constitutionalism

Discussions about governance in the Arab

world tend to revolve around the prospects

for democracy. One of several models tends to

dominate these discussions. Either it is assumed

that an electoral model based on competing

political parties must cast up leaders whose

legitimacy stems from the process itself, or a

middle class must develop whose eagerness to

affect the distribution of power coincides with

those enlightened self-interests and unseen

market forces that conduce toward representa-

tive government. It is not that these models lack

merit but that they tend to exist in a partial cul-

tural vacuum. To understand the relation of

democratic forms and contemporary Arab polit-

ical life it may, therefore, be useful to explore

some aspects of Arab culture more broadly con-

ANNALS, AAPSS, 603, January 2006 163

Lawrence Rosen is William Nelson Cromwell Professor

of Anthropology at Princeton University and an adjunct

professor of law at Columbia Law School. As an anthro-

pologist, he has worked mainly in North Africa; as a law-

yer,he has concentrated on the rights of indigenous peo-

ples and American family law. Named to the first group

of MacArthur Award winners, he has held visiting

appointments at Oxford and Cambridge Universities

and been named a Carnegie Corporation Scholar and

fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for

Scholars. His books include Bargaining For Reality

(1984), The Anthropology of Justice (1989), The Justice

of Islam (2000), The Culture of Islam (2002), and Law as

Culture (in press).

DOI: 10.1177/0002716205282329

Expecting the

Unexpected:

Cultural

Components

of Arab

Governance

By

LAWRENCE ROSEN

ceived and to consider how they interact with the forms of governance that have

been developing.

I come at these issues as both an anthropologist and a lawyer. While some schol-

ars seek to derive, by historic or contemporary comparison, the “foundations” of a

given political form like democracy, the approach of an anthropologist like myself,

while not overtly “antifoundational,” is more concerned with the ways in which

seemingly unconnected social and cultural factors may contribute to the develop-

ment and perpetuation of a particular political pattern. Thus, among the features I

want to consider are the ways in which concepts of person and time affect the idea

of power,the nature of reciprocity and ingratiation in the development of bonds of

obligation and institutionalized ways for leveling difference, and the relation

between Arab concepts of chaos and their views of the moral/religious underpin-

nings of human nature. As a legal scholar I am, in addition, interested in the ways in

which cultural assumptions inform the institutions through which power is distrib-

uted and differences addressed. I will, therefore, with full recognition that these

themes vary considerably in different parts of the Arab world, try to show how such

cultural concepts and institutional forms are vital to any understanding of Arab

governance and how they may be drawn upon in fashioning culturally responsive

constitutions.

Cultural Components of Arab Social Life

In the Arab world, it may be argued, a person is primarily identified in terms of

his or her network of obligations. Envisioning the world as a terrain for interper-

sonal negotiation—and supported by the Islamic view that central to human

nature and divine injunction is the need to govern one’s passions with reason—the

individual is largely defined by the ability to marshal dependencies and overcome

opponents on behalf of himself and those with whom interdependent ties have

been formed. Because the community of believers constitutes the broader unit

within which one operates and one’slocal community is its everyday manifestation,

to fabricate a network of associations is to connect one’s own actions with a world

whose universal vision of humankind and its proper organization appear both true

and natural. Successful construction of a network of dependents thus implies both

self-mastery and worldly effect. As elements of the cultural paradigm emerge in

distinctive contexts, the synergistic quality of each upon the whole reinforces the

sense of a universe that is both orderly and consonant with the structure estab-

lished by God. Consider some of the specific cultural correlates through which this

pattern is expressed.

By contrast to the West, where property is primarily seen as the relation of a per-

son to things, in the Arab world the emphasis is more clearly on ownership as a

focus of the relations between persons as they concern things. Moreover, it is vital

that a man be able to move freely, forming attachments wherever they prove most

advantageous. To be tied up is, both metaphorically and literally, to be unmanned,

indeed to be rendered less than fully human. Rituals may heighten this emphasis:

164 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY