What went wrong? Why Middle Eastern countries failed to build a democratic modern Nation State.

Research Proposal for a Master Degree







Sardar Aziz
Graduate of the Department of Government 2006-2007, University College Cork
My supervisor
Dr. Andrew Cottey. Department of Government.

The Title
What went wrong? Why Middle Eastern countries failed to build a democratic modern Nation State.







Fifteen years ago a struggle for power between the new forces of political Islam and the military establishment took place in Algeria paralleling, to an alarming degree, what is happening in Turkey. Turkey, a country that embraced secularism and modernism in the early decades of the last century, is now on the brink of retreating to the old age of the Ottoman Empire i.e. the age of the pre-nation state.

Iran is another example. Despite a long imperial history the country failed to bring about a modern democratic nation state. During the Shah regime there were great efforts to modernise and to westernise but the result was the famous 1979 revolution. As a result a theocratic state was established. For the past three decades, this theocratic government denies every right which belong to modernity. After all, a theocratic state is a pre nation state style of government.
In the Arab part of the Middle East, which forms the largest part of the region, the situations, is not better and may even be worse. Lebanon is the only Arab country that tried to develop a democratic state with modern institutions. Today sectarianism has reached a level previously experienced during the country’s 15-year civil war. While a discourse of national unity has emerged in the post-war period, Lebanon is again paralyzed by feuding among the elite and the neglect of ordinary citizens, nearly a third of who are living in poverty. Does this occur because Lebanon as a unified state is just a result of colonial myth-making as Henri Lammens, in his La Syrie: precis historique imagined?
Iraq is another example. Despite all its economic, strategic and multiethnic potentialities failed miserably to become a modern democratic nation state. Today the country is on the brink of balkanisation.
The pattern is similar in the rest of the Middle East. All the countries, despite their characteristic differences, have many distinctive similarities. They all failed to establish a modern style of the state in Weberian context. They are all run by elites, whether it is the military elite as in Turkey, or the theocratic elites as in Iran, or the tribal elites as in the rest of the Arab states.
The research part of my master degree project will focus on the cause and the root of this failure. Initially I will attempt to diagnose the failure, elaborate its distinctive character, and put it in a comparative framework with the emergence of nation state in Europe. Modernity was introduced into the Middle East as the result of the number of developments, both internal and external. The internal factors consisted of an awareness by Ottoman officials of the relative decline of their empire in comparison to the European powers. But the idea of the nation state has to wait until the fall of the empire at the hands of the European colonials.
In Europe the tale of the modern state starts with the Peace of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years’ War in 1648. The Thirty Years’ War was a series of wars that began in 1618 because of conflicts between Protestants and Catholics and political struggles involving the Holy Roman Empire. Comparativley I will ask: will the conflict between She’a and Sunni in the Middle East lead to the emergance of the European style of the nation state? If not, why not?
For a more comprehensive and a detailed analysis I will select Iraq as a case study. Iraq is a laboratory manufactured state - a state seeking a nation. In other words it was a state without a nation. Also, recently Iraq went through another attempt at nation building and state creation by the neoconservatives and American government. The country has a geo-strategic location and a mosaic of cultures and if the idea of the nation state works in Iraq it will work in the rest of the region. In addition to the case study and comparative analysis between the Europeans and Middle Eastern style of the nation state, I will be also conducting both qualitative and quantitative research. I have access to the newspapers, journals and the media of the region, and have the requisite language skills.
The title of the project might come across as a common knowledge and there has been a huge amount of literature dedicated to the subject. But the issue of failure to bring about a modern democratic style of the nation state in the Middle East still requires more academic research.

First of all the region is highly significant for the rest of the world in various ways. Oil and gas being essential for the economy the region provides 50% of global energy consumption. The Middle East is located in a highly strategic place linking the West to the East, Islam to Christianity. In term of global security the region, nowadays, is the battlefield for the clash of civilisations or the first war in the twenty first century - the war on terror from the American side and Jihad from the political Islam side.

The novelty of this particular project is that, contrary to most previous studies, it does not come from outsiders with their Orientalist ivory tower view. As a native of the region I have access to the culture, politics, history, tradition and languages. I have Kurdish as my mother tongue, Arabic as a first foreign language and I have a good grasp of the Iranian language, Farsi. Over the last number of years I have actively contributed to the intellectual debate in the region and published around 100 newspaper articles in various newspapers and journals in both Iraq, Iran and on the web as well as English language contributions in Ireland and abroad.
Since this project will be conducted by someone who has a link between both eastern and western civilisations it offers first hand knowledge and access to the rare sources related to the topic in term of literature review.
The concept of nation state could contribute hugely to understanding the many problems of the Middle East. The process of state and nation building is at the heart of the American mission to the region? Why did that fail miserably? The occupations of Iraq, the nuclear threat by Iran, the emergence of political Islam are some among many other problems, which may have serious global consequences.

The project will not touch the Arab (Palestinian) Israeli conflicts, because of its limitation.