Modernization and the peace process

[Jorge]

"The big story of global politics is modernization- a process that begins with economic development and brings in its wake democracy and a kind of cultural convergence. It's replaced the cold war as the basic structure of world politics. There are those societies that participate in it, those who would like to participate in it and can't and others that reject it powerfully."

The above lines are quoted from an interview that Francis Fukuyama gave to Time Magazine on June 17. Mr. Fukuyama is the chap that caused quite an stir about 10 years ago with an essay called The End of History and is still arising controversies.

On reading his statements, it occurred to me that they could be particularly relevant to the general background of the Israeli Arab conflict and that it would be worthwhile to start a New Thread where we could discuss its implications to the peace process that concerns this Forum.

In our case we have two societies placed in a conflicting situation: the israeli society which is well ahead in the process of modernization and the palestinian
society, which is placed at its starting point . Israeli society may be characterized as well advanced in the road to economic development and democracy and with a culture that converges rapidly with the American-European one. Palestinian society
on the other hand, has not started any significant economic development, is far from being a democratic society and its culture, while differing widely from the western one, is converging with it at a very slow rate.

From the point of view of modernization as defined by Fukuyama, we have thus
two societies at different points in History, with a wide time-gap between them. Plenty of examples of this around today's world but, in this particular case, these two societies happen to have claims to the same land. In order to bridge the conflicting claims, those peoples have to find a way of talking over the time gap and that's not an easy matter.

A further complicating factor is that Palestinian society is torn between two fractions that, following Fukuyama, may be described as a fraction that would like to participate in the modernization process and another that strongly rejects it. The latter is made up of radical Muslims that reject the key aspects of Western culture and consider the modernization process as a danger to their religious way of life. They are not fighting Israel only as a colonizer but as a beach head of an infidel (western) culture that
could literally pollute their way of life. The former fraction, may be loosely identified politically with the PLO which, being essentially secular in outlook, is willing to go along and promote modernization.

The existence of two societies at a different point in History living in the same land is not, of course, the source of the israeli-palestinian conflict but is significantly relevant to the peace process. Although negotiations are conducted by the nation's leaderships, they need the backing of their respective societies. In this context, it is important for both peoples, not so much to love each other, but to develop some degree of mutual understanding. To reckon with this time-gap and to look for ways to bridge it, is in my view, an essential step in the rapprochement process.

Several questions arise within the above context . One of them is, whether the present stand of both the Israeli and US government, namely, pressing for reforms leading to democracy while ignoring the economic development aspect, is the right policy to be pursued. Democracy cannot be created overnight and more so when there is no previous political structure, no tradition of civil service and not even an State. Israel is probably one of the few examples in History whether this sudden jump was carried out successfully; the conditions ,however, were unique and it's more an exception than the rule among emerging states.

Another question relevant to the peace process is whether Israel shouldn't do efforts to support and strengthen the PLO rather than actively trying to undermine it. The secular elements within palestinian society are the only ones that may support and carry out a modernization process and also the ones closer to an understanding that economic cooperation in an atmosphere of peaceful coexistence are vital in that process. The policies of Mr. Sharon's government so far have conducted to a clear strengthening of those fundamentalist Muslim fractions which fervently support terrorism and oppose modernization because of all that it implies.

If we accept the idea that the first step in the modernization process is economic development, perhaps the most important question that arises is how Israel and other countries interested in the conflict can help in starting this development.

[dafka]

A book that sheds a lot of light on this issue is Samuel Huntington's "Political Order in Changing Societies. " Huntington (author of the more recent "The Clash of Civilizations") wrote this book in the 1960's, but it's still very relevant today.

His basic thesis is that modernizing societies are subject to enormous strains and political instability. That is because of a number of factors. Two of the main factors are: a) industrialization brings terrible social dislocation (think of the unrest in Europe during the Industrial Revolution) and b) traditional elites cling to power while Western ideas of democracy undermine their legitimacy.

Huntington notes that the biggest cleavages and civil wars tend to be between traditionalists based mainly in the countryside and urbanized elites. When you think about it, many recent civil wars fit this pattern. In the former Yugoslavia, the Muslims were mainly urbanized and the Serbs were mainly rural traditionalists. We can see the triumph of the religious traditionalists in Iran in the same light. And how about the Palestinians and Israelis? We could see it as a traditional society battling a modern urbanized society.

[Vic]

Have you seen this thread http://www.israelforum.com/board/sho...4772#post14772 , Jorge?

[Mediocrates]

dafka

I appreciate Huntington's analysis but I think he falls into the same traps as Fukyama and D'Souza. The American revolution was fought over ideas. Colonists were in little physical danger but what they objected to was being treated the way they were, while at the same time being British Subjects. The British army would have never treated the colonists the same way had the colonists lived in Birmingham or Sheffield. The arc of civil wars and revolutions since then has followed more or less the same logic.

It's with the failure to thrive of all of the post-colonial societies that we witnessed a new thrust for civil wars and revolution. In many cases pseudo countries made up of synthetic accretions of smaller communities beagan to tear apart precisely because one group physically threatened another and not just through quasi legal force such as one tribe or religion rising to the top ranks of government. All over Africa, 'The Brush Wars of Nationalism' were about persecution, famine, slaughter, extinction - literally.

Each group has managed at one time or another to frame this 'nationalism' "Biafra for the Ibo". Ok, but they broke away because they were probably going to be invaded and slaughtered by their own country shorty after the President of Nigeria was assassinated. Similarly in Congo, Sudan , Angola, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda.....

Now Islamic Fundamentalism introduces a new factor - extreme conservatism and 'virtue' cloaking a naked grab for totalitarian power. The Algerian war is not about industrialization or the failure of industrialization to deliver on its promises and its not about Fundamentalism becoming the answer to capitalism either. It's fascism in different garb. So in the Algerian case the two basic forces are a somewhat 'moderate' political state by Arab standards, such as they and the other force is a not a return to anyting so much as moving foward to religiously justified brute force. There is nothing revolutionary about it. There is nothing to conclude that a Fundamentalist Algeria would be any less 'modern' , 'industrial' or 'technocratic' than a non fundamentalist Algeria - such is the case of Iran already.

[Jorge]

To Vic:

Yes, I have read the thread you mention. Actually, I think that most of the commens posted there are quite good and above the general level of other threads.

The reason why I started a new thread, instead of continuing the one about democracy, is because I'm inclined to think that the process of democratization is just one aspect of a more inclusive one, namely, modernization. Let's say something like a plattform sustained by three legs: economic development, democratization and cultural convergence. If we isolate the political structures from the economic and cultural ones we may get a somewhat inclomplete picture of the situation.

[Mediocrates]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...1/404jmnev.asp


This piece lays out a plan that focuses on economic development not political processes. The justification for this is that economic development, at a low level was working before Oslo and so should be tried again. Read it before you comment.


<snip>

Most Arabs were reluctant to join in Arafat's war. Most, after the occupation of the disputed territories in 1967, constituted a silent majority who preferred accommodation with Israel. Even now, when Arabs feel great anger about Israeli military incursions, few express their fury in violent actions. In Jerusalem, Arabs have remained moderate in the face of numerous PLO provocations because they benefit greatly from the commerce generated by tourism, which depends on peace. And in Gaza, the hotbed of radicalism, Palestinian workers last Thursday showed their priorities when tens of thousands mounted an unprecedented "Hunger March" against the Palestinian Authority, demanding that it stop violence against Israel so they could go back to work there and earn money to support their families.

</snip>

[Jorge]

To dafka:

Thanks for bringing Huntington's piece to my attention. His basic thesis, that is:

modernizing societies are subject to enormous strains and political instability.
appears quite applicable to the palestinian society now and, may be, for years to come. Political instability would obviously be extremely damaging to the palestinians and to the peace process. There is however a way to avoid paying the penalty of political instability and that is by conducting the process under an authoritarian government instead of a democratic one. This is after all the model followed by Turkey with some success and by Egypt with some reservations. I admit this is quite a thorny issue that has troubled social philosophers for a long time without yet leading to a clear-cut answer.

However, although I agree with the relevance of Huntington's basic thesis, his two main factors are not, in my opinion, applicable to the present conjecture of palestinian society.

a) industrialization brings terrible social dislocation (think of the unrest in Europe during the Industrial Revolution) and b) traditional elites cling to power while Western ideas of democracy undermine their legitimacy.

In the present post industrial period the role of industry in economic development is much less predominant than it used to be, whilst the service sector (including trade, communications, tourism, etc) acquires an equal or larger importance. It appears that work in the service sector may be less alienating than factory work so that social dislocations may be less severe. Workers in the services sector require
usually a higher educational standard than industrial ones and hence considerable investments in the educational infrastructure are required to jump over the industrialization period. It remains to be seen whether palestinian leaderships would measure up to the challenge.

Regarding point b) about traditional elites clinging to power: It is hard to discern weighty traditional elites in the Palestinian society so that this factor may not be so relevant. Powerful hamullas have lost much of their influence and the only
elite might be a political one, the so called Tunisian leadership, but this is hardly a traditional one.

Huntington notes that the biggest cleavages and civil wars tend to be between traditionalists based mainly in the countryside and urbanized elites.

I wouldn't say that the main cleavage line in the Palestinian case is between traditionalists and urbanized elites but rather between secular sectors and radical fundamentalists one. The power basis of the former appear to be concentrated in
large towns and of the latter in refugee camps.

I wouldn't go as far as Mediocrates when he claims that Huntington fell into some sort of trap together with Fukyyama and others. Huntington's views reveal considerable insight in social transformations. The two main factors quoted above have been key factors in the modernization processes of South American countries and some in Central Asia. That his descriptions and theories have not universal applications do not decrease his merits as a social scholar. After all it took the genius of a Karl Marx to propose a theory of social processes which could be applied to every country in the world and even his showed a number of shortcomings, because of factors he could not have foreseen.

The fact is that the palestinian situation as a modernizing society is unique in a number of ways so that social theories which attempt generality should be considered
with extreme caution. This uniqueness stems partly from the large proportion of refugees, the political role of religion, the lack of tradition as a nation and the presence of an occupying power in its mist. This very uniqueness may require
that the modernization process may be followed along rather unorthodox lines and the least favorable aapproach is for the interested powers to be dogmatic about it,
as Israel and US governmental current positions appear to be.

[dafka]

Thank you Mediocrates for the reference to the Daniel Doron article. I think the following passage is particularly relevant to our discussion.

Employment in and trade with Israel were major reasons for the dramatic improvement in the Palestinian standard of living. But they also had unintended consequences, some painful. They brought Arab traditionalists into intimate contact with a modern society and acquainted them with the workings of a boisterous democracy. This forced adjustments in Palestinian family and clan structure and authoritarian political frameworks. So did the violent struggle against Israel, which offered lower-class youths adventure and an avenue for rapid upward mobility through accomplishments in terrorist exploits.

The prosperity enjoyed by tradesmen stirred resentment among the Arab bureaucratic and intellectual elites. They had earned up to four times as much as workers under Jordanian rule, but now saw unskilled laborers in Israel earning far more than they could. Contact between the Arabs' almost medieval ethos of loyalty to location and clan and the Israelis' super-modern, sometimes brazenly liberal ethos exacerbated the religious and national conflict. Confronting modernity caused deep anxiety--notably among students whose parents could now send them to Israeli universities, where they were indoctrinated by radical leftist Israeli academics promoting Palestinian statehood with greater fervor than most Arabs. Soon, the newly established colleges and universities in the disputed territories were hotbeds of radicalism, first Marxist, then Islamic fundamentalist.

Here we see examples of the social discontent and dislocation caused by modernization that Huntington was describing. Young people go to school and learn strange new ideas, and begin to doubt the wisdom of their elders. Meanwhile, new sources of wealth appear (in this case, employment in Israel) that allow new groups to challenge the traditional elites.

Huntington's book is of course much more complex than I could convey in a few sentences in my earlier post. An additional point he makes is that democracy is rarely, if ever, a suitable political system for a modernizing society. That's because these societies lack the institutions, such as political parties, that allow groups to participate in the political process without using violence. Without such institutions, modernizing societies often descend into chaos, which is then followed by military coups.

Thus, the democratic reforms that the Americans are demanding are unlikely to be the magic ticket for Palestinian society.

[Mediocrates]

In my own simplistic way I call that the emergence of a middle class. And as Edmund Burke indicated, all successful revolutions arise from there.

I tend to believe this - that and that the only lasting hope for Palistinian stability is economic development regardless of the political terrain. In fact they are more likely to achieve economic stability under the politics of a Singapore than a democracy. Anyway gotta go now -

[Jorge]

To Mediocrates:

Thanks for pointing out to us Mr. Doron's article on the weekly Standard. The article left me with rather mixed feelings about its contents. On the one hand I felt that his stress on economic development as a key factor is quite sound. I strongly concur with his summing up:
Quote:

Prolonged national conflicts are not susceptible to quick fixes. It took Europe centuries to overcome intractable national and religious conflicts. Economic cooperation and growth were essential to resolving them. New interests and benefits created by economic integration helped people transcend the old barriers and made some of them irrelevant. This can happen in the Middle East.
Recent world history has indeed repeatedly shown that traditional barriers may be overcome through through economic integration. There's no real reason why the same path couldn't work in the Middle East, as Mr. Doron also hopes. Israel and Palestine are natural trading partners because of their geographical configuration and economic cooperation, followed by integration are geopolitical imperatives for the social and economic development of both.
But, as I said, I had mixed feelings about the article: although the conclusions are sound, his approach to the underlying economic and political events is, in my opinion, inadequate.
Mediocrates, I know from your comments in other threads that the mere mention of post-colonialism steps up your metabolism to discomfiture levels. I tend to agree that the concept has been much abused, but Mr. Doron's piece is a good example of what the proponents of the concept are talking about. His account of late 20th century history goes essentially like this: natives going happily around, pursuing their daily life, most doing manual work at our farms and industries for low salaries (although high by their standards), others in colorful markets selling
fruits and vegs. ( but mostly spare parts and other goods of dubious provenance). As the story goes, everyone was prospering, we, of course,
getting a larger share than the natives, until one day instigators managed to convince the populace that they should fight for independence. Nevertheless, the status quo could have been preserved, but the Oslo agreements, "by concentrating primarily in politics" disrupted the whole pastoral existence . The natives unreasonably expected that we would follow the letter of the agreements, became impatient and from there
on debacle ensued in place of the law and order we had imposed previously. End of story in the meantime.

Anyway, as Mr. Bush once said: "enough is enough" so, let'
s turn the page. In your second note you write, (quote

In my own simplistic way I call that the emergence of a middle class. And as Edmund Burke indicated, all successful revolutions arise from there.

I recollect that we started to discuss you ideas about the middle class in another thread and for some reason the discussion was discontinued
(probably we disgressed into the pros and cons of Arafat). I think that is an interesting idea worth developing in further detail in the particular context of the palestinian society. I'd like to entice you to do so because I think that the general idea is sound but I fail to see the procedure to put it in practice in the present conjecture.

[Mediocrates]

I scratched out some ideas based on my knowledge of the French, American and 1848 Revolutions and came to the somewhat cursory conclusion that sometimes the middle class is a successful impetus and sometimes it is not.

We could start backwards. In every case the 1848 Revolutions lead by the liberal middle classes failed and conservative sometimes monarchical power was restored. The history tells us this was cause by middle class distrust of the working classes and a failure to cooperate at the most critical times. In France's case the peasantry already owned some land and so did not share the mercantile goals of the middle class.

Here is a summary of that.

http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/westn/revolution1848.html
http://www.sparknotes.com/history/eu.../section1.html

If we look futher back at the American revolution we can point to Edmund Burke again who lobbied unsucessfully for the position that England had more to gain from a free America than from exploiting them as colonies. The Colonies had become at least potentially economically self sufficient and the English, could at least guess that they had little to fear from any economic relationships between America and France.

a gloss is provided here:

http://sophies-world.com/SophieText/enlightenment.htm

We can take that conservative 'social order' thesis of Burke's and apply it to the Palistinians. Who better has the tools to deal with the mechanics of a modern state? Not the dictators. Not the 'refugees', the poor, the illiterate, the hungry. Who better has a reason to engender stability? The poor want bread. The middle class wants a stable mercantile economy.

So in this scenario the drivers become: an educated, entrepeneurial technocratic middle class and the impetus for revolution, for turning out the scoundrels is one not that much different from the reason the middle classes turned out the States-General in France or why the colonists rose up against the Intolerable Acts. Middle class values and security and wealth. I think that if I had to capture it in two sentences I'd say that successful revolutions exploit the force of middle class conservatism. Unsuccessful revolutions exploit the force of unbridled radicalism.

I haven't spent any time thinking about how this works in practice because I can't decide which is more critical; politics or economics. But I'll dwell on that some more.

[Mediocrates]

I'll throw this in a side issue which is, 'are there or what are the' socio economic forces behind antisemitism?

Here is great short essay by a man named Theo Pavlidis who gets it as right as anyone:

http://home.att.net/~t.pavlidis/antiSemitismV01.htm

"...George Orwell wrote that revolutions are not the actions of the poor against the rich but of the middle class against the rich. Both of these two groups try to obtain the alliance of the multitude of the poor. If the middle class succeeds in obtaining the alliance of the poor, a successful revolution occurs. On the contrary, the rich can forestall revolutions by turning the poor against the middle class. This is where Orwell's discussion ends. However a consequence of Orwell's observation is that it would be helpful for a ruling class if the people of the middle class were (entirely or mostly) members of a minority population. Such a composition can be assured by discouraging members of the majority population from acquiring an education or engaging in certain activities. This was certainly the case in the Middle Ages in Europe.

Because Jews are a distinct group ........."

[Jorge]

To Mediocrates:

Some interesting variations on the historical themes you describe are provided by reform movements in South America
in the 20th century:

In the 1960's and early 70's a number of groups in South America undertook the task of promoting radical changes in the socio-economical structure of their respective countries. Issues like agrarian reform, nationalization of foreign industries and banking systems, together with educational reforms were expected to induce a redistribution of wealth and transfer power to the working classes. In the forefront of these movements were
the socialist and comunist parties with the backing of industrial
workers and peasants. In the end all these movements were
defeated without acomplishing their goals; they were defeated by an alliance of the higher class, the army and the US government. Military dictatorships ensued (the bloodiest of them in Chile and Argentine) that wiped out not only the said leftist
parties but any traces of worker's unions and organizations.

A number of historians of the period concur on the idea that
the main reason why those movements were defeated lies in the role played by the middle classes of those countries. In all of them leftist parties managed to alienate the middle class instead of forging an alliance between it and the working class.
Instead of drawing the line between salaried workers and owners of the means of production, the line was drawn between manual workers and petite and grand bourgeosie. This was largely due to a dogmatic and short sighted application of marxist ideology. The richer classes managed to ally themselves with the middle class which didn't oppose and even approve of the take-
over by the military dictatorships.

In South America, the middle classes, which carried there significant weight, were at the forefront of the process of
modernization we are discussing. At the crucial moment, regrettably, they failed to help to conduct the process to its
culmination: real democracy and social justice.

[pierom]

To Mediocrates:

I take the opportunity created by your side issue to dive back into this ng from which I have been absent for some time.

I agree with Theo Pavlidis' comments on the issue and would like to add the following considerations:

- all minorities tend to be treated as scapegoats when times get rough. I've read an interesting history of the Waldensians [a protestant religious group] in the Piedmont/Savoy region. They suffered almost identical persecutions as the Jews at recurring times - mainly when the economy was in a downturn or when the kings needed to woe the Pope's support. On the other hand, unlike the Jews, they were geographically more concentrated in certain valleys and could move and often escape in larger groups

- the Jews suffered from being the dark shadow of Christianity, the embarassing mother, that Christianity had to grow free of. The unique condition that makes the Jewish status so different from that of other minorities lies in the embarassing closeness of the two religions. Almost all of the evil that the Jews have suffered from throughout modern history was at the hands of Christians. There would be no Jews, as a people apart, had there been no Christians. The Jews would have simply disappeared as did ancient peoples like the Egyptians or Persians.

- also the particular case of Jewish intellectual achievements is, in my humble opinion, due to the unique stimuli that Jews "enjoyed" from in the Diaspora from being a minority, which caused them to have to struggle harder for reaching social improvement.
I would wager that if Israel became a "normal" country, in a couple of generations we would see a decline in the number of its Nobel Prize winners

[elke]

Quoted from the article:

Also assimilation cannot be protection against persecution. Such protection can be provided only by eliminating social stratification as much as possible and encouraging social mobility in real terms .
emphasis added

This may explain the relative peace Jews have enjoyed in the US.