Power Sharing, Elite Dynamics, and Authoritarianism in the Middle East

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The papers in the proposed panel examine the role of elites and power sharing arrangements in authoritarian contexts in the Middle East. The papers highlight how power sharing in the region reflects authoritarian regime maintenance through the cooptation or expropriation of elites, elite cohesion, and micro-foundations of ethnic fragmentation. The panel also illustrates our varying understandings of power sharing arrangements in authoritarian contexts with a focus on security, sectarianism, and the political economy of alliance politics. Using methodological and thematic diversity, and looking at both historical and contemporary dynamics, the papers look at the cases of Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. The panel will be chaired by Dr. Samer Abboud (Villanova University), and Dr. Andrew Leber (Tulane University) will serve as discussant.
From the fall of the Ottoman empire to post-Arab Uprisings, the Middle East has had a checkered history in authoritarian consolidation and democratization efforts. As our understanding of regime types becomes less dichotomized into pure democracies and dictatorships, scholars continue to investigate the prevalence of power sharing arrangements and institutions in non-democratic contexts. These studies reveal the importance of elite cohesion and capture and how they affect regime stability or the viability of democratization on a micro-foundational level. With the steady increase of economic and political instability throughout the region, there is a critical need to investigate the historical and contemporary dynamics of elites and the role of power sharing in authoritarian regimes. In this context, understanding these patterns of state-society relations has emerged as a key component to illustrating authoritarian politics in the Arab world.
Together panelists explore the causes and dynamics behind authoritarian consolidation in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, but the results of this panel are applicable to elite politics and power sharing in non-democracies in other areas such as south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. The panelists seek to identify the connections between power sharing arrangements, concessions to elite ruling coalitions, ethnic fragmentation, and popular support for consociationalism. The panel builds upon the emerging literature on power sharing in non-democracies to test the general explanations of authoritarian regime maintenance.

Sub Unit

• Division 57: Middle East and North African Politics

Individual Presentations

• The Dictator’s Foreign Friends: Foreign Support and Authoritarian Power Sharing - Sumaya Malas, University of Pennsylvania

• Business Elites, Private Security Companies, and Conflict Management in Syria - Samer Abboud, Villanova University

• Microfoundations of Power-Sharing: Citizen Opinion on Sectarianism in Lebanon - Aytuğ Şaşmaz, Bryn Mawr College; Uma Ilavarasan, Harvard University; Melani Cammett, Harvard University

Chair

• Samer Abboud Villanova University

Discussant

• Andrew Leber Tulane University