Jaime Allinson, The Struggle for the State in Jordan: The Social Origins of Alliances (New Texts Out Now)

Jaime Allinson, The Struggle for the State in Jordan: The Social Origins of Alliances (New Texts Out Now)

Jaime Allinson, The Struggle for the State in Jordan: The Social Origins of Alliances (New Texts Out Now)

By : Jaime Allinson

Jaime Allinson, The Struggle for the State in Jordan: The Social Origins of Alliances (London: IB Tauris, 2016).

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Jaime Allinson (JA): My motivation for writing the book came from two forms of dissatisfaction I had with existing scholarship on the state and its external relations in the Middle East: on the one hand, with the assumptions of much International Relations theory, which tends to divide explanations for phenomena into mutually exclusive categories of ‘domestic’ and ‘international’ and thereby renders processes of social change and conflict as merely ‘domestic’ and not part of the field; and on the other, the particular form this takes in the IR and political science literature on the Middle East wherein the state in the region is seen as an incomplete or defective version of the Western state that is therefore unable to police this boundary between domestic and international. A concentrated version of this idea is found in the concept of “omni-balancing” where regimes in the Global South, and especially the Middle East, are seen as entities independent of their societies, balancing between domestic and international opponents alike.

In my deployment of the concept, uneven and combined development refers to the interaction of different patterns of social relations in a given social formation under the impact of global capitalist expansion, such that the distinct character of the resultant ‘combined social formation’ feeds back into the system that produced it.

There is some empirical truth to this idea, but it always struck me as a very thin account of the IR of states in the Middle East. Were the rulers of states in the region – of the Global South in general – really so autonomous of, or insecure in, their societies? I turned to political economy and historical sociology in search of a more satisfying account, and began working with the concept of ‘uneven and combined development’, around which there was a lively debate in IR theory. Uneven and combined development, originally associated with the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, seeks to overcome what Justin Rosenberg calls ‘the classical lacuna’, or the separation of international and social forms of explanation. In my deployment of the concept, uneven and combined development refers to the interaction of different patterns of social relations in a given social formation under the impact of global capitalist expansion, such that the distinct character of the resultant ‘combined social formation’ feeds back into the system that produced it. In other words, international relations are social, and social relations are international.

My interest in Jordan reflected in part the place the country occupies in these debates: Jordan has formed the case study for the most rigorous and impressive scholarship based on the assumptions of “omni-balancing”, in particular the work of Laurie Brand and Curtis Ryan. Jordan presents a ‘hard case’ for my argument in that it is traditionally seen as a very weak state buffeted between contesting forces in the region, without much place for the role of social forces and political economy to explain the resulting external alignments. Jordan also had the advantage, for me, of having been a British mandate with the archive consequently easily available as well as surviving protagonists of the struggles I document, who were willing to be interviewed.

J:  What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

JA: I address the issues of uneven and combined development and the IR of the Middle Eastern state through a case study of a particular period in Jordanian history, the high point of Arab nationalism in the mid-1950s. Discussion of Jordan in this and later periods is often framed through a series of clichés and assumptions about inherently loyal, “Bedouin” Transjordanians (not everyone from East of the Jordan is a Bedouin, nor are Bedouin absent from historic Palestine, nor do political positions flow automatically from being part of either of these groups) defending the monarchy against rebellious Palestinians. As with all clichés, there is a grain of truth to this but I argue it lies not in any ascribed cultural traits of pastoral nomads but rather the way in which agrarian relations East of the Jordan river were transformed in the late Ottoman and British mandate periods: a process of ‘primitive accumulation’ separating the owners of labour-power from the means of production that created a distinct relationship of militarized subsidy to formerly pastoral nomads. Jordan’s external alignments, I argue, emerged from struggles around that subsidy, a form of uneven and combined social relation.

I see this book as sitting equally at the intersection of literatures on the state in the Middle East, historical sociology of International Relations, and the political economy of Jordan. In the first, I see the book as an attempt to build on and expand the work of such scholars as Fred Halliday and Ray Hinnebusch. In the second, I hope the book will form part of a burgeoning literature on uneven and combined development. In the third, I take as interlocutors the magisterial work of scholars such as Tariq Tell, Eugene Rogan, Martha Mundy and Michael Fischbach and hope to contribute to what might tentatively be called ‘critical Jordanian studies’ as embodied in works such as those of Joseph Massad.

J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

JA: The book emerged from my PhD thesis and the fieldwork I did for it in Jordan, as well as my reflections on that work while a research fellow at the British Institute in Amman in 2011-12. It really came out of the debates I encountered on uneven and combined development – having studied and visited the Arab world since my undergraduate degree in IR, the concept seemed to address a lot of dissatisfactions I had with the theoretical frameworks I encountered. I did some theoretical work on uneven and combined development with Alex Anievas, including some theoretical engagement with the Ottoman reform period of the 19th century, of which the book is in some ways an expansion and refinement.

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

JA: I hope that Jordanians will read it! It may have more of a historical and scholarly focus but I hope some people in Jordan today will find something useful in it, especially those working towards a more democratic and egalitarian polity, under a regime that is given a great deal of positive Western publicity partially for reasons documented in the book. I also hope that students and scholars of the IR of the Middle East will read it and engage with the critiques I make of omni-balancing and similar ideas, and with my argument for the utility of uneven and combined development as a theoretical framework.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

JA: I am working on two projects at the moment. The first is on the theory and practice of counterrevolution in the Middle East since 2011. The grim outcomes of most of the revolutionary uprisings that occurred in the region in 2011-12 have confounded two paradigms in social and political science: the comparative historical sociology of revolutions, and the ‘democratization’ agenda for studying the region, leading to the reinstatement of assumed regional specificities – Islamists or sectarianism – as the reason for the ensuing civil wars, state collapse and renewed authoritarianism. However, I wish to explore the possibility that what is missing in our understandings of the post-2011 Middle East is not insufficient knowledge of those supposedly specific regional factors, but rather of a general phenomenon: counterrevolutions.

The second, hazier, project also concerns the interaction of forms of social science with political practice in the Middle East, in particular with the growing discourse around the idea of the “Anthropocene”: the idea that we have entered a new geological epoch in which human impact on the world is simultaneously so great and its unforeseen consequences so severe that the distinction between natural and social worlds no longer holds. Despite the centrality of the Middle East both for the fossil fuel economy at the heart of the Anthropocene, and the dire predictions for the future of habitable environments in the region, there has been little work (with the exception of Timothy Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy) so far that looks at the politics of the Middle East through this lens – or indeed of the concept of the Anthropocene through a Middle Eastern lens.

 

Excerpt from Chapter 1, “Fragile Enmities: The International Relations of the Middle Eastern State Reconsidered”

The notion that the Middle Eastern state, or the Third World state more generally, is deficient in some quality that would render its behaviour comparable to its European or North American counterpart, is a widespread one. The states of the Arab world in particular seem to switch their allegiance from ally to enemy with violent alacrity, usually in concert with attempts by their ruling regimes to placate some domestic opposition or with the collapse that results from failure so to do. The contrast with the more enduring alignments of the Euro-Atlantic states is a marked one, and easily drawn.

Yet is there a deeper substance to this contrast? Why do the states of the Middle East make such geopolitical alignments? Do they do so on the same basis as the states of the Global North, or are they distinguished by the inapplicability of theoretical explanations derived from the Northern experience? Are the rulers of Middle Eastern states – of states in the Global South – really so autonomous of, or insecure within, their societies that they freely manoeuvre between external and internal allies, seeking only to maintain their hold on power?

This book answers these questions through the history of one particular state and one particular kind of phenomenon: the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and its geopolitical alignments. However, the implications of the argument contained within it extend beyond these limits. The claim made in this book – that Jordan’s geopolitical alignments in the 1950s derive from uneven and combined development (UCD) – addresses the distinction between the politics of colonising and post-colonial societies. I argue against the idea of a teleological standard of modernity against which postcolonial (in particular, Arab) states are found lacking. The argument of this book, however, differs from postcolonial arguments on the region in presenting uneven and combined development as a process of contradictory universalisation, wherein the universalising imperative is that of dissolving ‘the different forms, in which the labourer is an owner and the owner labours’. The outcome of such a process, as I demonstrate in the case of Jordan, is quite remote from any notion of a homogeneous capitalist modernity and provides the material underpinning to the hybrid form ascribed to the postcolonial state. Jordan, then, tells us something about the state in the wider Middle East: but is this something that we need to know?

 

Realism without sovereignty?

The question of the post-colonial Arab state – its ‘stateness’ or lack thereof, the supposedly deficient character of its sovereignty, the apparent ease with which its internal conflicts become matters of regional or global interference – refracts a series of assumptions about the politics of the Middle East and the Global South as a whole. These assumptions are those of unilinear development and the passage to an ideal type of sovereign state. The argument that follows from these assumptions is that the distinctive external politics of Arab states results from their failure to meet some standard, established by and embodied in the states of northwestern Europe and its offshoots, of integration, legitimacy and representation of the national interest. As I demonstrate below, this argument informs most work on the international relations of the Global South, and offers only a form of explanation by absence that cannot illuminate the actual trajectories of a given state. Not only this: the theoretical engagement of International Relations with the Southern state reveals what Justin Rosenberg calls ‘the classical lacuna’. This term refers to the separation of geopolitical and social modes of explanation, to the extent that the ruling regimes of Southern states are seen as acting according to the rules of sovereignty under anarchy even within their own societies.

The engagement of mainstream International Relations (IR) scholars with the Global South has sprung largely from the apparent inapplicability of the prevailing model of the state to much of the globe. That model in International Relations theory remains stubbornly derived from the precepts of neorealism. Critics still largely take its assumptions as their point of departure. In brief, these assumptions hold that states are all the same kind of thing (‘like units’), concerned first of all with maintaining their security and effectively distinguished only by the power resources that they can bring to bear in this endeavour. The ‘national interest’ can be defined, and it consists first and foremost of assuring the security of the state. Scholars from the constructivist tradition might disagree about how this is defined and the degree of its incompatibility with other states but would nonetheless accept the validity of the concept of a national interest distinct from the interests of the ruling personnel. Where Waltz found his model confounded was in the case of states whose regimes were insecurely embedded in societies that could not be assumed to operate as sealed boxes identical to the state. Although further research fleshing out the neorealist programme made use of evidence from the South, mainstream IR theory has continued to be subject to the criticism that its core concepts and models of interaction are restricted to a particular Northern experience, insufficiently able to explain, understand or evaluate the geopolitics of the South.

What is the nature of this lack of fit according to the critics of mainstream IR theory as applied to states outside of Western Europe and its offshoots, and what are the solutions to it? The arguments are varied but convergence is visible around the notion of the Southern state as fundamentally different from the Northern experience – indeed, in some sense deficient in qualities that would allow traditional IR theory to apply to it. The basis of such theory in the notion of an autonomous state capable of carrying through its plans, at least within domestic society, results in difficulties in its extension to Southern states where this assumption does not hold. According to this view, the Southern state falls low down on the continuum of ‘stateness’ and allowance must be made for this condition when analysing its international relations.

 

New Texts Out Now: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein, guest eds. "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis." Special Issue of Conflict, Security & Development

Conflict, Security and Development, Volume 15, No. 5 (December 2015) Special issue: "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis," Guest Editors: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you compile this volume?

Mandy Turner (MT): Both the peace process and the two-state solution are dead. Despite more than twenty years of negotiations, Israel’s occupation, colonization and repression continue–and the political and geographical fragmentation of the Palestinian people is proceeding apace.

This is not news, nor is it surprising to any keen observer of the situation. But what is surprising–and thus requires explanation – is the resilience of the Oslo framework and paradigm: both objectively and subjectively. It operates objectively as a straitjacket by trapping Palestinians in economic and security arrangements that are designed to ensure stabilization and will not to lead to sovereignty or a just and sustainable solution. And it operates subjectively as a straitjacket by shutting out discussion of alternative ways of understanding the situation and ways out of the impasse. The persistence of this framework that is focused on conflict management and stabilization, is good for Israel but bad for Palestinians.

The Oslo peace paradigm–of a track-one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution–is therefore in crisis. And yet it is entirely possible that the current situation could continue for a while longer–particularly given the endorsement and support it enjoys from the major Western donors and the “international community,” as well as the fact that there has been no attempt to develop an alternative. The immediate short-term future is therefore bleak.

Guided by these observations, this special issue sought to undertake two tasks. The first task was to analyze the perceptions underpinning the Oslo framework and paradigm as well as some of the transformations instituted by its implementation: why is it so resilient, what has it created? The second task, which follows on from the first, was then to ask: how can we reframe our understanding of what is happening, what are some potential alternatives, and who is arguing and mobilizing for them?

These questions and themes grew out of a number of conversations with early-career scholars – some based at the Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem, and some based in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere. These conversations led to two interlinked panels at the International Studies Association annual convention in Toronto, Canada, in March 2014. To have two panels accepted on “conflict transformation and resistance in Palestine” at such a conventional international relations conference with (at the time unknown) early-career scholars is no mean feat. The large and engaged audience we received at these panels – with some very established names coming along (one of whom contributed to this special issue) – convinced us that this new stream of scholars and scholarship should have an outlet.  

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures do the articles address?

MT: The first half of the special issue analyzes how certain problematic assumptions shaped the Oslo framework, and how the Oslo framework in turn shaped the political, economic and territorial landscape.

Virginia Tilley’s article focuses on the paradigm of conflict resolution upon which the Oslo Accords were based, and calls for a re-evaluation of what she argues are the two interlinked central principles underpinning its worldview: internationally accepted notions of Israeli sovereignty; and the internationally accepted idea that the “conflict” is essentially one between two peoples–the “Palestinian people” and the “Jewish people”. Through her critical interrogation of these two “common sense” principles, Tilley proposes that the “conflict” be reinterpreted as an example of settler colonialism, and, as a result of this, recommends an alternative conflict resolution model based on a paradigm shift away from an ethno-nationalist division of the polity towards a civic model of the nation.

Tariq Dana unpacks another central plank of the Oslo paradigm–that of promoting economic relations between Israel and the OPT. He analyses this through the prism of “economic peace” (particularly the recent revival of theories of “capitalist peace”), whose underlying assumptions are predicated on the perceived superiority of economic approaches over political approaches to resolving conflict. Dana argues that there is a symbiosis between Israeli strategies of “economic peace” and recent Palestinian “statebuilding strategies” (referred to as Fayyadism), and that both operate as a form of pacification and control because economic cooperation leaves the colonial relationship unchallenged.

The political landscape in the OPT has been transformed by the Oslo paradigm, particularly by the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Alaa Tartir therefore analyses the basis, agenda and trajectory of the PA, particularly its post-2007 state building strategy. By focusing on the issue of local legitimacy and accountability, and based on fieldwork in two sites in the occupied West Bank (Balata and Jenin refugee camps), Tartir concludes that the main impact of the creation of the PA on ordinary people’s lives has been the strengthening of authoritarian control and the hijacking of any meaningful visions of Palestinian liberation.

The origin of the administrative division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip is the focus of Tareq Baconi’s article. He charts how Hamas’s initial opposition to the Oslo Accords and the PA was transformed over time, leading to its participation (and success) in the 2006 legislative elections. Baconi argues that it was the perceived demise of the peace process following the collapse of the Camp David discussions that facilitated this change. But this set Hamas on a collision course with Israel and the international community, which ultimately led to the conflict between Hamas and Fateh, and the administrative division, which continues to exist.

The special issue thereafter focuses, in the second section, on alternatives and resistance to Oslo’s transformations.

Cherine Hussein’s article charts the re-emergence of the single-state idea in opposition to the processes of separation unleashed ideologically and practically that were codified in the Oslo Accords. Analysing it as both a movement of resistance and as a political alternative to Oslo, while recognizing that it is currently largely a movement of intellectuals (particularly of diaspora Palestinians and Israelis), Hussein takes seriously its claim to be a more just and liberating alternative to the two-state solution.

My article highlights the work of a small but dedicated group of anti-Zionist Jewish-Israeli activists involved in two groups: Zochrot and Boycott from Within. Both groups emerged in the post-Second Intifada period, which was marked by deep disillusionment with the Oslo paradigm. This article unpacks the alternative – albeit marginalized – analysis, solution and route to peace proposed by these groups through the application of three concepts: hegemony, counter-hegemony and praxis. The solution, argue the activists, lies in Israel-Palestine going through a process of de-Zionization and decolonization, and the process of achieving this lies in actions in solidarity with Palestinians.

This type of solidarity action is the focus of the final article by Suzanne Morrison, who analyses the “We Divest” campaign, which is the largest divestment campaign in the US and forms part of the wider Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Through attention to their activities and language, Morrison shows how “We Divest”, with its networked, decentralized, grassroots and horizontal structure, represents a new way of challenging Israel’s occupation and the suppression of Palestinian rights.

The two parts of the special issue are symbiotic: the critique and alternative perspectives analyzed in part two are responses to the issues and problems identified in part one.

J: How does this volume connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

MT: My work focuses on the political economy of donor intervention (which falls under the rubric of “peacebuilding”) in the OPT, particularly a critique of the Oslo peace paradigm and framework. This is a product of my broader conceptual and historical interest in the sociology of intervention as a method of capitalist expansion and imperial control (as explored in “The Politics of International Intervention: the Tyranny of Peace”, co-edited with Florian Kuhn, Routledge, 2016), and how post-conflict peacebuilding and development agendas are part of this (as explored in “Whose Peace: Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding”, co-edited with Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper (PalgraveMacmillan, 2008).  

My first book on Palestine (co-edited with Omar Shweiki), Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy: De-development and Beyond (PalgraveMacmillan, 2014), was a collection of essays by experts in their field, of the political-economic experience of different sections of the Palestinian community. The book, however, aimed to reunite these individual experiences into one historical political-economy narrative of a people experiencing a common theme of dispossession, disenfranchisement and disarticulation. It was guided by the desire to critically assess the utility of the concept of de-development to different sectors and issues–and had a foreword by Sara Roy, the scholar who coined the term, and who was involved in the workshop from which the book emerged.

This co-edited special issue (with Cherine Hussein, who, at the time of the issue construction, was the deputy director of the Kenyon Institute) was therefore the next logical step in my research on Palestine, although my article on Jewish-Israeli anti-Zionists did constitute a slight departure from my usual focus.

J: Who do you hope will read this volume, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

MT: I would imagine the main audience will be those whose research and political interests lie in Palestine Studies. It is difficult, given the structure of academic publishing – which has become ever more corporate and money grabbing – for research outputs such as this to be accessed by the general public. Only those with access to academic libraries are sure to be able to read it – and this is a travesty, in my opinion. To counteract this commodification of knowledge, we should all provide free access to our outputs through online open source websites such as academia.edu, etc. If academic research is going to have an impact beyond merely providing more material for teaching and background reading for yet more research (which is inaccessible to the general public) then this is essential. Websites such as Jadaliyya are therefore incredibly important.

Having said all that, I am under no illusions about the potential for ANY research on Israel-Palestine to contribute to changing the dynamics of the situation. However, as a collection of excellent analyses conducted by mostly early-career scholars in the field of Palestine studies, I am hopeful that their interesting and new perspectives will be read and digested. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MT: I am currently working on an edited volume provisionally entitled From the River to the Sea: Disintegration, Reintegration and Domination in Israel and Palestine. This book is the culmination of a two-year research project funded by the British Academy, which analyzed the impacts of the past twenty years of the Oslo peace framework and paradigm as processes of disintegration, reintegration and domination – and how they have created a new socio-economic and political landscape, which requires new agendas and frameworks. I am also working on a new research project with Tariq Dana at Birzeit University on capital and class in the occupied West Bank.

Excerpt from the Editor’s Note 

[Note: This issue was published in Dec. 2015]

Initially perceived to have inaugurated a new era of hope in the search for peace and justice in Palestine-Israel, the Oslo peace paradigm of a track one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution is in crisis today, if not completely at an end.

While the major Western donors and the ‘international community’ continue to publicly endorse the Oslo peace paradigm, Israeli and Palestinian political elites have both stepped away from it. The Israeli government has adopted what appears to be an outright rejection of the internationally-accepted end-goal of negotiations, i.e. the emergence of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. In March 2015, in the final days of his re-election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the Jewish settlement of Har Homa in Palestinian East Jerusalem, which is regarded as illegal under international law. Reminding its inhabitants that it was him and his Likud government that had established the settlement in 1997 as part of the Israeli state’s vision of a unified indivisible Jerusalem, he promised to expand the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem if re-elected. And in an interview with Israeli news site, NRG, Netanyahu vowed that the prospects of a Palestinian state were non-existent as long as he remained in office. Holding on to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), he argued, was necessary to ensure Israel’s security in the context of regional instability and Islamic extremism. It is widely acknowledged that Netanyahu’s emphasis on Israel’s security—against both external and internal enemies—gave him a surprise win in an election he was widely expected to lose.

Despite attempts to backtrack under recognition that the US and European states are critical of this turn in official Israeli state policy, Netanyahu’s promise to bury the two-state solution in favour of a policy of further annexation has become the Israeli government’s official intent, and has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading ministers and key advisers.

[…]

The Palestinian Authority (PA) based in the West Bank also appears to have rejected a key principle of the Oslo peace paradigm—that of bilateral negotiations under the supervision of the US. Despite a herculean effort by US Secretary of State, John Kerry, to bring the two parties to the negotiating table, in response to the lack of movement towards final status issues and continued settlement expansion (amongst other issues), the Palestinian political elite have withdrawn from negotiations and resumed attempts to ‘internationalise the struggle’ by seeking membership of international organisations such as the United Nations (UN), and signing international treaties such as the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. This change of direction is part of a rethink in the PA and PLO’s strategy rooted in wider discussions and debates. The publication of a document by the Palestine Strategy Study Group (PSSG) in August 2008, the production of which involved many members of the Palestinian political elite (and whose recommendations were studiously discussed at the highest levels of the PA and PLO), showed widespread discontent with the bilateral negotiations framework and suggested ways in which Palestinians could ‘regain the initiative’.

[…]

And yet despite these changes in official Palestinian and Israeli political strategies that signal a deepening of the crisis, donors and the ‘international community’ are reluctant to accept the failure of the Oslo peace paradigm. This political myopia has meant the persistence of a framework that is increasingly divorced from the possibility of a just and sustainable peace. It is also acting as an ideological straitjacket by shutting out alternative interpretations. This special issue seeks a way out of this political and intellectual dead end. In pursuit of this, our various contributions undertake what we regard to be two key tasks: first, to critically analyse the perceptions underpinning the Oslo paradigm and the transformations instituted by its implementation; and second, to assess some alternative ways of understanding the situation rooted in new strategies of resistance that have emerged in the context of these transformations in the post-Oslo landscape.

[…]

Taken as a whole, the articles in this special issue aim to ignite conversations on the conflict that are not based within abstracted debates that centre upon the peace process itself—but that begin from within the realities and geographies of both the continually transforming land of Palestine-Israel and the voices, struggles, worldviews and imaginings of the future of the people who presently inhabit it. For it is by highlighting these transformations, and from within these points of beginning, that we believe more hopeful pathways for alternative ways forward can be collectively imagined, articulated, debated and built.