'Strong' vs 'Weak' States: What that Truly Means

By Hannah Feldman

The typical MENA state, in my view, appears to be strong militarily and coercively, but in actuality is rather weak. Throughout this week’s readings, it has been possible to pinpoint certain indicators for ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ states in the MENA region.

In Lisa Anderson’s article, she defines a ‘strong’ state as one that has modern administrative structures that are well established and stable. Furthermore, a ‘strong’ state can accommodate and respond to popular demand through political participation and civil society. On the other hand, in her view, a ‘weak’ state is one in which the administration is incapable of reaching a major part of the population (through extracting resources and providing services) or is characterized by patrimonial patterns of recruitment and operations. This could be seen through the use of patronage networks and the disproportionate reward to regime cronies or honored sects. Weak’ states tend to ignore or repress popular demand, which limits political participation.

Furthermore, throughout Chapter 3 in Richards and Waterbury, they discuss some key characteristics that make up a state. These include: administrative procedures such as legislation and regulation; rule of law; voice and participation; transparency; accountability; state capacity; and civil society. Most of the MENA states are also greatly dependent on foreign powers for aid and investment. In general, the RRLA countries such as Algeria, Syria, and Yemen rank relatively low compared to RRLP and RPLA countries. They only seem to come together regarding transparency, in which they are almost even with the RRLP countries, and the RPLA countries are ranked the least transparent of the three categories. Interestingly enough, rule of law indicators are higher in monarchies than authoritarian republics. If we are using Richards and Waterbury’s state indicators in a positive sense (such as good transparency, rule of law etc.) these would be considered strong states. Of course, this does not include economic strength, which they touch on regarding economic underperformance. In many of these regimes, economic underperformance leads to corruption in politics and everyday social transactions. This has suggested that privileged access to economic opportunities has disproportionately rewarded regime cronies, leading to corruption and the role of patronage. In the RRLA countries, mineral wealth provides incentives to rulers to gain power and hoard resources, angering deprived populations. For the RRLP countries such as Saudi Arabia, the oil rents provides the state revenues, so it does not have to tax the citizenry as much, making the state not as accountable to the citizenry. But patronage plays a large role in these countries.

In general, MENA states have not moved beyond the coercive and corporative stage to create a political system that enjoys the consensus of civil society and includes it as a basic component. This kind of political strength categorized as hegemony considering its attainment to be the defining attributes of a ‘strong’ state. According to Ayubi, MENA states rule on the basis of its monopoly of the coercive forces in society and violence that subjugate rather than complement society; thereby, it is better described as fierce than strong. Corporatism, or the domination of the institutions of the middle and working classes by the state in an attempt to create social and industrial harmony, has supplied the typical model of socio-political organization in the Arab world and applied to both monarchies and populist republics.

Labeling a state as ‘strong’ or ‘weak’ has some major implications. While I do believe I would label the average MENA state as ‘weak’ compared to, say, Europe or the U.S., I have to be mindful that is a very broad characteristics and not all MENA states are the same; this class has clearly demonstrated that. There are some definitely strong military states, but some also strong because they have a lot of control over their population and there isn’t too much internal revolt (i.e. Saudi Arabia). However, while empirically speaking, most MENA states could be noted as ‘weak’ in regards to their state capacity and political participation, it is not empirically sound to lump all MENA states into this box of ‘weakness’ when each has characteristics that make it ‘strong.’