Rentiers and Autocrats, Monarchs and Democrats, State and Society: the Middle East Between Globalization, Human ‘Agency’, and Europe
作者:Gerd Nonneman
DOI:10.1111/1468-2346.00183
日期:2001.1
The key concerns in work on the politics of the Middle East in the past decade have been economic and political liberalization/democratization (or the absence thereof) and security, both domestic and international, along with a continued focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict. There has been an increasing recognition that these issues are strongly interrelated. Europe cannot avoid concerns over economic and political stability in the region affecting its own interests. Together with economic reasons for engagement with the region, this has brought about a desire to see economic and political reform take place. The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership Initiative (EMPI) is one result of this. The background against which these policies, concerns and hopes are evolving is ‘globalization’, both of the discourse of ‘democracy’ and in the growing hold of liberal market economics internationally. Recent research on the politics and political economy of the region, and on EMPI, however, shows that a combination of political-economic and related political-cultural factors, along with the Arab-Israeli conflict, continue to hamper political and economic reform in the Middle East, and that European policy as currently conceived is unlikely to affect this greatly. Yet such recent work also shows that aspects of globalization are changing the environment in which Middle Eastern regimes are having to function, while at the same time offering civil society new tools. Middle Eastern societies do, to varying extents, possess the necessary ‘spaces’ and traditions for human ‘agency’ to escape the constraints of domestic and international ‘structures’ and evolve new political cultures-including democratic ones. Existing judicial or legislative institutions may acquire volition of their own and reinforce this process. There is nothing in ‘Islam’ that necessarily obstructs such possibilities. And supposedly ’obsolete‘ monarchies might yet be among the most successful types of regime in coping with such change.
在过去十年中,中东政治研究的主要关注点是经济和政治的自由化/民主化(或缺乏民主化)以及安全问题,包括国内和国际安全,同时仍然持续关注阿以冲突。人们越来越认识到这些问题之间密切相关。欧洲无法回避中东地区经济和政治稳定对其自身利益的影响。随着与该地区接触的经济理由的增加,这引发了希望看到经济和政治改革发生的愿望。欧盟地中海伙伴关系倡议(EMPI)就是这种愿望的一个结果。这些政策、关注和希望发展的背景是“全球化”,包括“民主”话语的全球传播以及自由市场经济在国际上的日益普及。然而,最近对该地区政治和政治经济学的研究以及对EMPI的研究显示,政治经济和相关的政治文化因素,以及阿以冲突,继续阻碍中东的政治和经济改革,而目前构想的欧洲政策不太可能对这一状况产生重大影响。然而,这些新近研究也表明,全球化的某些方面正在改变中东政权运作的环境,同时为公民社会提供了新的工具。中东社会在不同程度上确实拥有必要的“空间”和传统,使人们能够超越国内和国际“结构”的限制,发展新的政治文化——包括民主文化。现有的司法或立法机构可能会获得自主性,并强化这一过程。在“伊斯兰”中并没有什么必然阻碍这种可能性的因素。而所谓的“过时”君主制可能仍然是应对这种变化的最成功政权类型之一。