Chapter 10 - David Mednicoff
Contemporary Kingship in Muslim Arab Societies in Comparative Context
Ruling monarchies have nearly disappeared as forms of actual governance in most regions of the contemporary world, with one notable exception. Kings who hold real power remain in Bahrain, Brunei, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Without advancing a quasi-teleological, orientalist, or essentialist cultural argument about Islam or Arab politics, can we make sense of how significant countries with common points of social meaning retain ruling monarchies? This chapter argues that kingship in contemporary Arab Muslim-majority countries has helped address specific post-colonial tensions around the official role of religion, a popular interest in steering a political path distinct from the formal institutional makeup of former colonial powers, and dilemmas of political continuity and change.
The chapter is divided into three sections. First, I discuss the basic history and post-independence adaption of contemporary Arab monarchy. Second, I look at the institutions and methods of legitimation that have allowed permutation of an “old-fashioned” ruling dynastic monarchy to endure, while paying attention to variation among different contemporary Arab royal regimes. Third, I reflect on what the endurance of Arab monarchies suggests for monarchies and more seemingly modern forms of government. If Arab kingship has endured largely through a combination of its help in resolving particular regional challenges around post-colonial political legitimacy and luck, the global significance of neo-traditional, status-based leadership retains some vitality.
By David Mednicoff
David Mednicoff
David Mednicoff (University of Massachusetts-Amherst, USA) researches and teaches on the intersection of law, politics and policy in the contemporary Middle East. Recent publications discuss post-2011 comparative Arab constitutional politics, the thick meanings of the rule of law in Arab Gulf states, the legal politics of migration regulation in Qatar and the UAE, and the legal and political ideology of Arab monarchies.
Bibliography
Periodicals and media sources consulted
Al Jazira. Accessed online at https://www.aljazeera.com/.
Le Matin du Sahara et du Maghreb (later simply « Le Matin »). Accessed online at https://lematin.ma/.
Tel Quel (Moroccan independent online magazine;). Accessed online at https://telquel.ma/.
Books
Ajami, Fouad. The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought since 1967. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Basri, Driss, Michel Rousset and Georges Vedel, editors. Trente Années de Vie Constitutionnelle au Maroc (Thirty Years of Constitutional Life in Morocco). Paris: Librarie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1993.
Beblawi, Hazem and Giocomo Luciani,editors. The Rentier State. London: Croom Helm, 1987.
Black, Anthony. The History of Islamic Political Thought. 2nd edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011.
Cook, Steven A. False Dawn: Protest, Democracy, and Violence in the New Middle East. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Daadaoui, Mohammed. Moroccan Monarchy and the Islamist Challenge: Maintaining Makhzan Power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Dawisha, Adeed. Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Dreyfuss, Robert. Devil’s Game: How the US Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. New York: Metropolitan, Henry Holt, 2005.
Hallaq, Wael B. The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Hallaq, Wael B. Shari’a: Theory, Practice, Transformations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison and John Jay. The Federalist with Letters of “Brutus.” Edited by Terence Ball. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Herb, Michael. All in the Family. Albany: SUNY Press, 1999.
Hourani, Albert. A History of the Arab Peoples. New York: Warner, 1991.
Humphreys, R. Stephen. Between Memory and Desire: the Middle East in a Troubled Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
Huntington, Samuel. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968.
Kennedy, Hugh. Caliphate: the History of an Idea. New York: Basic Books, 2016.
Laurent, Eric. Hassan II: La Mémoire d’un Roi. (“Hassan II: A King’s Memory”). Paris: Plon, 1993.
Masri, Safwan M. Tunisia: An Arab Anomaly. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.
Mednicoff, David. “The Politics of Sacred Paralysis: Constitutionalism in North Africa in the aftermath of 2011.” In Constitution-Writing, Religion and Democracy, edited by Asli Bali and Hanna Lerner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Miller, Susan Gilson. A History of Modern Morocco. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Moaddel, Mansoor, editor. Values and Perceptions of the Islamic and Middle Eastern Publics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Roberts, Hugh. The Battlefield: Algeria 1988-2002: Studies in Broken Polity. London: Verso, 2003.
Rogan, Eugene. The Arabs: A History. New York: Basic Books, 2009.
Tessler, Mark. Public Opinion in the Middle East: Survey Research and the Political Orientations of Ordinary Citizens. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011.
Weber, Max. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Edited by Talcott Parsons. New York: Free Press, 1964.
Weber, Max. Weber's Rationalism and Modern Society. Edited and translated by Tony and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Wickham, Carrie Rosefsky. The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist Movement. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.
Worth, Robert F. A Rage for Order. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016.
Zahlan, Rosemary Said. The Making of the Modern Gulf States. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.
Related Chapters
Pascal Buresi: A Case-Study of Pre-Modern Islamic Monarchy: The Almohad Caliphate of the Maghreb and al-Andalus in the 12th–13th Centuries (See Chapter 9)
David Malitz: The Nation as a Ritual Community: Royal Nation-Building in Imperial Japan and Post-War Thailand (See Chapter 13)
Sarah Betts: What's in a name? Dynasty, Succession and England's Queens Regnant (1553-2016) (See Chapter 28)