The study of middle east politics, 1946-1996: a stocktaking
1996; Middle East Institute; Volume: 50; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1940-3461
Autores Tópico(s)Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies
ResumoThis essay postulates that scientists in United States have made little progress in past 50 years in understanding and explaining Middle East systems. Hampered by complexity of subject matter, limited interdisciplinary collaboration, inadequate research skills, counterproductive intellectual rivalry, small number of outstanding senior scholars, tendency for single country expertise, and stifling proliferation of instant experts, US scientists have largely failed to grasp complexities of Middle East politics. Despite this undistinguished record, future seems brighter, partly because of increasing recognition of problems of past. All is not well in field of Middle East studies in United States. A review of history of Middle East scholarship suggests that we have learned disturbingly little after 50 years of heavy exertion. Middle Eastern systems remain as resistant to Western comprehension today as they did a half century ago. The waves of American scholars, businessmen, and diplomats that washed across shores of Middle East have carried away little of sediment of understanding necessary to successful explanation and prediction of region's processes. American analysts continue to explore their empty quarter in search of oases of knowledge necessary to explain in Middle East. Eventually, these analysts all seem to end up at same old watering holes, believing they have discovered new oases and giving them different names each time. In 1950s and 1960s, signs at oases read liberal democracy and Westernization; in 1960s and 1970s, search focused on political and participation; in 1970s and 1980s, jargon was legitimacy and the state and society dichotomy; today, words on weather-beaten old signs are civil society and We have come full circle. In fact, Middle East scholars have used many different terms to describe their quest for same phenomenon, an understanding of Middle Eastern power and authority relations as they form, reform, and transform themselves in face of a rapidly-changing world. Today's scholars of civil society are to a large extent redigging old trenches already excavated by scholars of political participation. Those who seek evidence of democratization tread same paths already traversed four decades ago by those who defined political development in terms of liberal democracy. The confusing and redundant conceptual scaffolding that has been erected about investigation of Middle East politics has obstructed rather than enhanced our understanding. In end, one can only conclude that we have learned little, in past 50 years, about processes of power and authority that define core of Middle Eastern systems. I have been among those who have filled their canteens at these comfortable old caravanserais inhabited by those who ceaselessly intone development, legitimation, liberalization, and democratization. Where were analysts, however, when Iranian revolution exploded in 1978, or when Soviets attacked Afghanistan in 1979? What waters in what oases were we sampling when Iraq started a war with Iran in 1980, when Saddam Husayn of Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, when Lebanon and Algeria came apart at seams, and when Islamic populism burst forth? What were we sipping from our canteens when Israel invaded its Arab neighbors in 1956 and 1967, when Egypt drove across Suez Canal in 1973, and when Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat was assassinated in 1981? Where were we during peace negotiations in Madrid and Oslo? THE OBSTACLES TO POLITICAL UNDERSTANDING This essay seeks to explain why we have made only limited progress in understanding processes in Middle East and predicting their outcomes. …
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