Voices of the New Arab Public

Perspectives on Politics: Kellner Review

Perspectives on Politics, the leading journal in political science, has just published a second review of Voices of the New Arab Public.  This is rather unusual, and I'm not at all sure why I had the honor of two reviews of the book in the same journal.  This one is by the leading critical media scholar Douglas Kellner of UCLA. Excerpts follow:

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Marc Lynch provides a comprehensive overview of the historical rise of new Arab media and public spheres, in which Arabs attempt to break stereotypes and represent themselves, giving voice to views and ideas that are usually absent in both their state-controlled media and Western media. Building on Jürgen Habermas's (1992) The Structural Transformation of the Bourgeois Public Sphere, which traces the rise of the bourgeois public sphere in eighteenth-century Europe, Lynch examines whether Arab countries are developing liberal public spheres of information, debate, and consensus. Using Habermas, Lynch identifies progressive features of the new Arab public spheres, but also indicates limitations.

According to Lynch, the emergence of satellite television channels like al-Jazeera and of the Internet are creating a new Arab public sphere outside of the previous monopoly over the flow of information sought by Arab states. This public sphere recognizes the value of debate and differences, and allows disagreement. It has forced politicians to justify their policies and has created a new level of accountability. Yet such a public sphere is “rife with paradoxes. It is fueled by a determination to bring publicity to the closed, repressive Arab political world, shattering every taboo and crossing every red line with abandon. At the same time, its politics of identity could all too easily slide into a tyranny from below, excommunicating those who disagree and demonizing outsiders to enforce internal unity” (pp. 3–4)

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Lynch concludes that there has emerged “A Real Public Sphere” which is “characterized by self-conscious, open, and contentious political argument before a vast but discrete audience” (pp. 247–48). It is not clear if it will become a “liberal public sphere,” full of diverse opinions and tolerant of opposing views, and free of state interference, because “the politics of the Arab public sphere tend toward populism, the politics of identity, of authenticity, and of resistance” (p. 26). While signaling possible limitations, Lynch's conclusion holds open whether the new Arab public sphere will become “a populist public or a liberal public” (p. 248).

The book is timely and has broader implications. The author's “Call for Dialogue” with emergent Arab public spheres (p. 249 ff) is surely relevant to current discussions of “democracy promotion” and U.S. foreign policy. In calling attention to the Bush administration's failed approach to the Arab public sphere—which has involved treating it either as “an enemy to be defeated (in a ‘war of ideas’) or as an object to be manipulated (via public relations)” (p. 250)—Lynch underscores the importance of “real dialogue” aimed at real mutual understanding.

One could argue that the author idealizes a too homogeneous “Arab public sphere” in the same way that Habermas's critics claim that he idealized the “bourgeois public sphere.” Rather, there is arguably a diversity of Arab public spheres, just as there were a “proletarian public sphere” (Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge in their 1993 book Public Sphere and Experience), women's public spheres, and those of diverse groups and movements in the West.

Voices of the New Arab Public does not refer to events after 2005, and since then there has been a dramatic expansion of Islamic media and voices that tend to be underplayed in his narrative. Yet clearly, the rise of Arab news media has created a new situation in which public opinion and political action can be shaped outside of traditional political elites in the Middle East, and there are new possibilities for Arab consciousness and union, as well as diversity and conflict within and new dialogues with the West without. While maintaining an open and critical position, Lynch looks for democratic potential in the new Arab media and public sphere, which he hopes will present a broad range of Arab voices, counter Arab and Islamic extremism, and give Western voices a fair chance to participate in a dialogue.

Middle East Policy Review

Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, Al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today, Reviewed by Joana Odencrantz.   Middle East Policy. Washington: Summer 2007. Vol. 14, Iss. 2.

Can an Arab public sphere meaningfully be said to exist? If so, how is this sphere relevant in the absence of institutional mechanisms to meaningfully translate its preferences into outcomes? Marc Lynch argues in Voices of the New Arab Public that not only does an Arab public sphere exist, it is changing Arab political culture. Lynch further argues that this public sphere has introduced a new level of official accountability into a region marked by an absence of the democratic institutions that transform public preferences into policy outcomes and render public officials answerable to the public that elected them.

Lynch draws upon an extensive database of some of the most important talk shows aired by Al-Jazeera as well as thousands of opinion essays in Arab newspapers to reveal how the Arab critical debate over Iraq initiated a meaningful discursive pluralism. Satellite TV and the Internet have shattered state control over information and challenged the official claim to enforce a public consensus. Lynch argues that the legitimacy of challenging official pronouncements and the expectation of disagreement have introduced pluralism into the Arab political sphere. This is vital to any kind of meaningful pluralist politics. Although democratic institutions are absent in the Arab world, the Arab public sphere has initiated a certain accountability into Arab politics. Arab states find it increasingly difficult to set themselves apart from regional political developments as the Arab public sphere sets events and issues side by side. Lynch demonstrates this limited accountability through Arab states' flouting of the Anglo-American-led sanctions regime on Iraq. The apparent Arab transnational public consensus against sanctions produced a cascade effect wherein Arab regimes quickly changed their behavior to support the perceived normative Arabist consensus.

Lynch's book has particular salience for American officials critical of the Arab media. While the Arab media posed a challenge to American efforts to control information, many American critics simply failed to understand war coverage contextualized by an Arab public sphere and informed by Arab rather than American perceptions. Lynch asserts that a significant gap developed between American and Arab journalists as a result of differential access to events. While admitting that Arab reporters sometimes indulged in emotionalism. Lynch points out that they investigated the impact of the war by moving through the Iraqi streets. American journalists were embedded with military units. The difference in American and Arab coverage is less a result of supposed Arab bias than the result of covering the war from two different perspectives - that of the invader and that of the invaded. The two different realities that were reported stimulated further official American criticism that the Arab press excessively stressed Iraqi civilian casualties without simultaneously addressing Saddam Hussein's tyranny and atrocities. As Lynch makes clear in his book, Iraq was for a decade a touchstone of Arab identity politics and political argument. The Arab public sphere did not perceive a need to replay ten years worth of intra-Arab debate for American consumption. While Iraqis later took the Arab public sphere to task for failing to emphasize Saddam's tyranny and brutality, American criticisms simply seem petulant and uninformed.

The new Arab public sphere could degenerate into an arena for identity-driven discourse under the incipient tyranny of the majority, or it could provide the underpinnings of a more liberal and pluralist politics. Lynch posits that this crossroads has been reached. In this context, Lynch weaves in his oft-repeated argument that, if the United States truly wants to see democracy in the Arab Middle East, it must engage with this public sphere and not try to sidestep it. It is critical and suspicious of American policy. Democracy will not lead to attitudes that are more pro-American, as neoconservatives seem to think, but will provide a forum for dialogue and interaction.

Marc Lynch's current book is a worthwhile read for academics and policy makers alike. It is particularly relevant to American officials, who seem to entirely misunderstand the liberalization potential of a contentious and highly critical Arab public sphere. For academics, Lynch provides an intriguing examination of how a public sphere can exist and demand accountability in the absence of participatory institutions. The question of how far a public sphere can take Arabs into the realm of pluralism, absent institutions, is an appropriate one - one that Lynch not only asks but perceives as essential to the future of Arab politics today.

Review: International Affairs

Robert Smith of Lancaster University (UK) reviews Voices in International Affairs 87 (3).   It's a nice review: 

"It is the relationship between the Iraqi people and Al-Jazeera that is central to Marc Lynch's fascinating review of the development in political debate in the Middle East and its relationship to the spread of new media in the region."

No further comment, just wanted to note the appearance of the review.

Review: European Journal of Communication

Ramez Maluf, of the Lebanese American University, included Voices in his review of several books on the Arab media for the European Journal of Communication  22 (2).  The review essay also includes comments on a volume on new media in the Middle East edited by Philip Seib which hasn't been published yet - I haven't even seen proofs of my chapter, so how did he review it? Weird.

It's the most disappointing review of the book I've seen - he gives a fair summary of the argument, but also makes a number of criticisms which just don't really hold up.  For instance, he complains about the book's primary focus on al-Jazeera since there are so many other stations.  Chapters one and two, especially, give a pretty detailed defense of the choice to focus on al-Jazeera as a primary site of the new Arab public;  I would have liked to see him engage those arguments.   And since the book argues precisely that we've passed from an age of al-Jazeera's supremacy in the news arena to an era of market fragmentation and competition - a point he tries to make in the review- I really can't say much more than "well, yeah, that's what I said." 

His primary criticism is this:  "Lynch has indeed shown that there was considerable debate on al-Jazeera, but has failed to show how the debate mattered."  I don't know... that's what four chapters of the book did.  He offers no evidence in support of his contention that the media debates didn't matter other than a reference to an article which tracked Arab newspapers to show Arab hostility to the American invasion of Iraq.  I can't quite understand how this study is meant to challenge my account, which covers the period from 1991-2004 in considerable detail and shows exactly why Arabs opposed the invasion.  The cited article actually supports my point about the difference between the political discourse on Arab TV as opposed to national newspapers, rather than challenges it.   

Choice Outstanding Academic Title

Choice named Voices of the New Arab Public an "Outstanding Academic Title" for 2006.  That's a real honor, putting Voices into wonderfully select company. 

Here's the review:

Lynch (Williams College) conducts a compelling study on the new Arab public and uses Iraq as a vehicle for showing the dramatic changes in the nature And quality of Arab public life. The study is lucidly written, and an excellent discussion of the true nature of the Arab media and opinion. Drawing on interviews conducted in the Middle East, it analyzes Arab satellite television programs, op-ed pages, and public opinion polls in order to examine the nature, evolution, and influences of the new Arab public sphere. Chapter 1 focuses on the new Arab public and a single vital issue in Arab politics-Iraq. Subsequent chapters delve into this new public sphere in depth, charting the period from the end of the first Gulf War through 1997, during which the Arabs grew increasingly mobilized over sanctions on Iraq but lacked outlets to express their frustrations. The author shows how the invasion of Iraq provided an opportunity for the emergence of al-Jazeera as a force in Arab politics. The final chapter reconsiders the prospects for the new Arab public and its implications for American power and democracy in the region. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.-S. Ayubi, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Camden

Review: Arab Studies Quarterly

The following unsigned review appears in Arab Studies Quarterly 28.3-4 (Summer-Fall 2006):

The main undertaking of Lynch's book "Voices of the New Arab Public" is to counter the hysterical claims that Al-Jazeera in specific and the Arab media in general are "jihad TV" or are collaborating with insurgents. The main thesis is that there appeared structural transformation in the Arab public sphere due to the constant public scrutiny of Arab governments and insistence on discussing reforms in the Arab world by the new media. Although the study focuses on questions of public opinion, it does not offer a full treatment of news coverage by Arab Media but the coverage done by the media on Iraq since 1991-1994. Lynch draws his analysis on a collection of debates on Al-Jazeera talk shows, in op-ed pages of pan-Arab daily newspapers, in Internet chat rooms with hot debates and actual interviews. He concludes that Arab media must be treated seriously by the west. It is not the enemy. The new media, Lynch contends, might push towards democracy and change in the region if understood properly by the west.

Lynch explains how the new Arab public sphere was a primary source of Arab identity for the past decade and a half. "What it means to be an Arab" was dependant on solidarity with the Iraqi people and their sufferings due to the imposed sanctions on them. Having some Arabic countries join the coalition in 1991 divided the Arabs. Following that, a dramatic change took place throughout the imposed sanctions years until the 1998 bombing of Iraq where there appeared a clear sympathy with the Iraqis. This support grew even more by the 2003 invasion. Sustained opposition of military action against Iraq was, by no means, accompanied by glorification of Saddam. In fact, the Arab public was often critical of the Saddam Regime. The Arab public in the post-Saddam era was struck by the formerly exiled opposition that came to dominate the new government in Iraq. The reason why once they came to power they criticized, closed media offices (Al-Jazeera), and treated the Arab media with suspicion, accusing them to be insurgency supporters.

The Arab media discourse was primarily inwardly directed and characterized by self criticism rather than addressing the West. Americans (government and public) have complained about the "lies" and "propaganda" generated by the Arab media describing them as an impediment in the success of Iraq. The new Arab public sphere, Lynch concludes, "... is a genuine public sphere, characterized by self-conscious, open, and contentious political argument before a vast but discrete audience" (248). But it is still a weak public sphere cut off from any viable means of influencing policies in the region. The United States approach in controlling the media by means of harsh attacks on Arabic language channels or by attempts to launch an alternative Arabic channel (Al-Hurra) have largely failed. This further contributed to skyrocketing anti-American sentiments. This book documents very well the debates on Iraq for almost a decade and a half and perfectly serves as an alternative to non-Arab speaking academics interested in the region. It successfully counters the continuous process of demonization of Arab media.

Review: Global Media and Communication

Voices of the New Arab Public is reviewed in the new issue of Global Media and Communication (vol 2, no 3, 2006)by Soek-Fank Sim of Macalester College, along with books by Mohammed Zayani and Hugh Miles.  I only have a PDF version, and don't have time to reproduce the  review here, so this just serves as a placeholder/notice.   The review does a very nice job of juxtaposing the three books, and says nice things about Voices. 

Discussion of MEJ Review

A second major academic review of Voices of the New Arab Public just came out.  This one is by Jon Anderson, in the Middle East Journal - which is one of the most important reviews for any Middle East studies scholar.  It's an honor to have my book paired with one by Ambassador Bill Rugh, the dean of American public diplomacy practitioners in the Arab world.   Full text of the review can be found here. 

Anderson is very generous in his praise:

Here, the study of Arab public opinion has matured to the standards of American political science.... Lynch has not only described voices of the new Arab public; he has provided the point of departure for all serious analysis of it in the future. Finally, we have a view of opinion that is not a redaction of it.

Along with description and praise, Anderson raises this absolutely fascinating critique:

there is a residue in Lynch's analysis, which he identifies with the absence of any institutional formation through which Arab public opinion can be expressed or through which the Arab Public Sphere can be conceived as more than a site of discourse and subjective reflexivity of differences of opinion. Why this should be a problem lies in part in modernist understandings of politics to include mobilization, thus rendering what Lynch observes as mere "identity" politics, which he struggles to depict as a precursor to more pluralistic politics. Here, Michel Foucault's concept of "governmentality" might be more useful than Jurgen Habermas' "communicative action" for retrieving what his model--which triangulates opinion, sites of expression, and reflexivity--can only treat as a residue. What this misses is the institutional apparatus and common culture that tied intelligentsia loosely to their putative publics and tightly to political elites... The crucial next step in thinking about this public sphere is how it can be detached, if it can be detached at all, from media, which Lynch has started by respecifying public opinion as what polling data measure.

This is the kind of thing you like to see in a review - a genuinely challenging critique drawing on an alternative theoretical framework which might open up productive new lines of inquiry.  Anderson is right about the problems created by my desire to link public sphere arguments to political mobilization. I devote a substantial part of chapter two trying to trace out the different pathways by which the new public sphere might affect political behavior - including by "changing the strategic calculations of rational politicians, by shaping worldviews, and by transforming identities" (p.69).  Were I writing the book today, I would probably add more explicitly here the ways in which the new Arab media empower contentious politics (which I discuss at greater length in the conclusion than in chapter two). Anderson hits on a key issue in any analysis of Arab public opinion here, and one which can and will stand much more thought and research.   

At the same time, I'm not entirely convinced that his Foucauldian alternative would be better.  While it likely would help capture some of the constraints shaping these Arab intellectuals and activists, a Foucauldian approach (or one drawing on Bourdieu, for that matter) might miss the real potential for disruptive change introduced by new media technologies and newly empowered voices.   For all the shortcomings of the Habermasian communicative action and public sphere tradition, it at least holds out more promise for agency, for the ability of these determined social actors to change the terms of politics through their public action.    They might well fail, but - as with my response to the Faksh review in Perspectives on Politics - I would prefer to keep these questions open.  I've no doubt that Anderson would agree, and that this could be a potentially fruitful theoretical dialogue.

That's two major, positive, and stimulating reviews of my book in one day - not bad.  Time to write another one, I suppose.   

(Cross-posted from Abu Aardvark)

A second major academic review of Voices of the New Arab Public just came out.  This one is by Jon Anderson, in the Middle East Journal - which is one of the most important reviews for any Middle East studies scholar.  It's an honor to have my book paired with one by Ambassador Bill Rugh, the dean of American public diplomacy practitioners in the Arab world.   Full text of the review can be found here. 

Anderson is very generous in his praise:

Here, the study of Arab public opinion has matured to the standards of American political science.... Lynch has not only described voices of the new Arab public; he has provided the point of departure for all serious analysis of it in the future. Finally, we have a view of opinion that is not a redaction of it.

Along with description and praise, Anderson raises this absolutely fascinating critique:

there is a residue in Lynch's analysis, which he identifies with the absence of any institutional formation through which Arab public opinion can be expressed or through which the Arab Public Sphere can be conceived as more than a site of discourse and subjective reflexivity of differences of opinion. Why this should be a problem lies in part in modernist understandings of politics to include mobilization, thus rendering what Lynch observes as mere "identity" politics, which he struggles to depict as a precursor to more pluralistic politics. Here, Michel Foucault's concept of "governmentality" might be more useful than Jurgen Habermas' "communicative action" for retrieving what his model--which triangulates opinion, sites of expression, and reflexivity--can only treat as a residue. What this misses is the institutional apparatus and common culture that tied intelligentsia loosely to their putative publics and tightly to political elites... The crucial next step in thinking about this public sphere is how it can be detached, if it can be detached at all, from media, which Lynch has started by respecifying public opinion as what polling data measure.

This is the kind of thing you like to see in a review - a genuinely challenging critique drawing on an alternative theoretical framework which might open up productive new lines of inquiry.  Anderson is right about the problems created by my desire to link public sphere arguments to political mobilization. I devote a substantial part of chapter two trying to trace out the different pathways by which the new public sphere might affect political behavior - including by "changing the strategic calculations of rational politicians, by shaping worldviews, and by transforming identities" (p.69).  Were I writing the book today, I would probably add more explicitly here the ways in which the new Arab media empower contentious politics (which I discuss at greater length in the conclusion than in chapter two). Anderson hits on a key issue in any analysis of Arab public opinion here, and one which can and will stand much more thought and research.   

At the same time, I'm not entirely convinced that his Foucauldian alternative would be better.  While it likely would help capture some of the constraints shaping these Arab intellectuals and activists, a Foucauldian approach (or one drawing on Bourdieu, for that matter) might miss the real potential for disruptive change introduced by new media technologies and newly empowered voices.   For all the shortcomings of the Habermasian communicative action and public sphere tradition, it at least holds out more promise for agency, for the ability of these determined social actors to change the terms of politics through their public action.    They might well fail, but - as with my response to the Faksh review in Perspectives on Politics - I would prefer to keep these questions open.  I've no doubt that Anderson would agree, and that this could be a potentially fruitful theoretical dialogue.

That's two major, positive, and stimulating reviews of my book in one day - not bad.  Time to write another one, I suppose.   

(Cross-posted from Abu Aardvark)

Review: Middle East Journal

A second academic review of Voices of the New Arab Public has just come out:  this one by Jon Anderson, in the Middle East Journal. It's an honor to be paired with the latest book by Bill Rugh, the dean of American public diplomacy practitioners in the Arab world.  Full text here, comments later.

American Encounters with Arabs: The "Soft Power" of U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Middle East.

Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, Al-Jazeera and Middle East Politics Today)

Jon W. Anderson.
The Middle East Journal 60.4 (Autumn 2006): p817(3).

American Encounters with Arabs: The "Soft Power" of U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Middle East, by William A. Rugh. Westport, CT and London, UK: Praeger Security International, 2005. xvii + 198 pages. Tables. Notes to p. 211. Sel. Bibl. to p. 214. Index to p. 220. $49.95.

Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, Al-Jazeera and Middle East Politics Today, by Marc Lynch. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. xiv + 251 pages. Tables. Notes to p. 273. Bibl. to p. 286. Index to p. 293. $24.50.

If Joseph Nye's conception of "soft power" has any effective referent, it would surely center on media, its practical home would be public diplomacy, and the practical imperative of every practitioner would be to understand how people frame their views. Classic International Relations is little help, since it reduces communication to the message. Closer to the ground where the action is, William Rugh offers a gentle defense of the practical strategy of influencing the influencers that evolved over the years only to be discarded by the current administration in favor of mass communications just as satellite television and the Internet made those anachronistic. The new Arab public sphere emerging through them is Marc Lynch's interest in a more (and the first truly) academic case study of Al-Jazeera. The base fact on which both studies latch is that communication is a two-way process not limited to message passing. Together, they have much to say about how soft power works in the Middle East because, instead of starting with some exogenous "if only" theory, these studies center on practitioners.

William Rugh, who has produced seminal works on mass media in the Arab Middle East, here turns the mirror to those who attempt to influence it through public diplomacy. Administration by administration, from World War II through the current "war on terror" Rugh describes policies and operations of public diplomacy, and how they shifted with political fads in Washington. What keeps this from being a litany of tinear failures is real respect for beleaguered practitioners in the field succeeding despite inadequate resources and no recognition, plus his conviction that, if jaw-jaw is better than war-war, then expanding the circle of discourse is worth doing for its own sake. And Rugh knows how: it is by returning from the current public relations model (derived from Madison Avenue and the "permanent campaign" of contemporary electioneering) to the classier communications that aimed at influencing the influencers, on the old VOA (Voice of America) model, which took its listeners seriously, rather than the new model public relations (PR), which conceives of them as a market to be "sold." This is all done with the light touch of an old hand sorting through what works and what doesn't.

Lynch picks up the story with a case study of Al-Jazeera that morphed into a focus on how Arab public opinion formed around the suffering of Iraqis under the sanctions regime following the 1991 Gulf War. At its heart are a puzzle and an innovation in the study of Arab public opinion. The puzzle is that supposed influencers were blind-sided by public opinion and struggled to keep up, while the wider Arab public was shocked to hear its opinion publicly rejected by opposition Iraqis. The innovation that makes this visible is the maturation of opinion polling in the region pioneered by the Zogby organization, Shibley Telhami (Anwar Sadat Professor of Peace and Development at the University of Maryland), The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, and others including the World Values Survey, so that public opinion can be read directly, in the usual practice of American political science, instead of intuited from "opinionators." In effect, what Lynch shows is that the Arab commentariat of journalists and academics were not, in fact, articulating a private transcript but a variant of the public transcript put out by political elites; and far from forming public opinion, they were by the end of the 1990s struggling to catch up with it. Lynch shows that this public opinion formed instead around the news, which graphically displayed Iraqi suffering, but was in turn itself challenged, even rejected, by Iraqis, not only in the US-sponsored opposition, after the 2003 Iraq War.

Here, the study of Arab public opinion has matured to the standards of American political science. Lynch has accomplished a methodological breakthrough in separating public opinion, as measured by increasingly regular polling, from what he calls "the Arab Public Sphere," which has become a site of high contestation (either missed or ignored by the US commentariat that retails administration critiques in ironic mimicry of what has been charged to Arab media). He has taken the notion of a mediated public sphere that Dale Eickelman and I identified with new voices and fragmenting authority (New Media in the Muslim World, 1999) and more precisely specified it in the context of Arab politics as "routine, ongoing, unscripted arguments before an audience about issues relevant to many" (p. 32) that cannot itself be reduced to public opinion. Lynch has not only described voices of the new Arab public; he has provided the point of departure for all serious analysis of it in the future. Finally, we have a view of opinion that is not a redaction of it.

Still, there is a residue in Lynch's analysis, which he identifies with the absence of any institutional formation through which Arab public opinion can be expressed or through which the Arab Public Sphere can be conceived as more than a site of discourse and subjective reflexivity of differences of opinion. Why this should be a problem lies in part in modernist understandings of politics to include mobilization, thus rendering what Lynch observes as mere "identity" politics, which he struggles to depict as a precursor to more pluralistic politics. Here, Michel Foucault's concept of "governmentality" might be more useful than Jurgen Habermas' "communicative action" for retrieving what his model--which triangulates opinion, sites of expression, and reflexivity--can only treat as a residue. What this misses is the institutional apparatus and common culture that tied intelligentsia loosely to their putative publics and tightly to political elites. It was such ties that Rugh's public affairs officers not only identified, intuitively it would seem, but also carefully studied and inserted themselves into. They may have been mistaken about how public the media really are, but Rugh makes it clear that they didn't miss how multidimensional public opinion is, and not just has become with the multiplication of media. The crucial next step in thinking about this public sphere is how it can be detached, if it can be detached at all, from media, which Lynch has started by respecifying public opinion as what polling data measure.

For those who do not like this sort of political science, he has accomplished something equally important in specifying the Arab public sphere as a site and reflexivity of contestation (where opinions clash). This is if not unknown in western media commentary on Arab media, then surely cast aside in sensationalist caricatures of it as propaganda and vulgarity. As I write this review, Israel's summer 2006 onslaught against Hizbullah includes a media offensive charging univocal coverage by the Arab press that, perhaps a decade hence, someone else will deconstruct as Lynch has similar charges against Al-Jazeera in the 2003 Iraq War.

Jon W. Anderson is chair and professor of Anthropology at the Catholic University of America, author of Arabizing the Internet (Emirates Center for Strategic Studies & Research, 1998) and co-editor of Reformatting Politics: Networked Communications and Global Civil Society (Routledge, 2006).

Voices: discussion of POP Review

Voices of the New Arab Public is reviewed in the new issue of Perspectives on Politics (vol. 4, no.4, December 2006), the flagship journal of the American Political Science Association (and therefore a key review for any political scientist).   I've posted the full text of the review over on the Voices blog, for those who are interested.

The reviewer, Mahmud Faksh, gives a fair summary of the book's main arguments about the impact of the new Arab public sphere and its significance for American public diplomacy, although for some reason barely touches at all on the empirical heart of the book (Arab arguments about Iraq).Overall, it is a very positive review, and I'm quite pleased.  The review concludes that

the study represents a significant contribution to the emerging field of the media and politics and the budding literature on the new electronic media and Arab politics. It is a highly scholarly study, extensively researched, well documented, and lucidly written, combining a wealth of data and keen analysis, which offer an excellent understanding of the nature, evolution, and impact of the Arab media and the rising Arab public sphere.

Aside from the summary and the praise (both of which I appreciate), I would like to take minor issue with the one major critical point raised by Faksh:

The author correctly assumes that this cataclysmic transformation of Arab political culture is “vital to any meaningful pluralist politics” (p. 2). But this raises the question: Is the new open Arab public sphere really paving the road to a liberal, pluralist politics, as the author seems to imply? The answer is simply no. Indeed, as the study shows, the emerging Arab public discourse, open and free though it may be, remains cloistered in an Arab narrative anchored in Arab-Islamic identity and culture, spewing populism, anti-Westernism driven by past and present grievances (colonialism, the plight of the Palestinians under occupation, the suffering of the Iraqi people under the weight of the U.S.-imposed sanctions, the subsequent U.S. occupation, and perceived or real Western double standards), and obscurantist Islamism—all the antithesis of a civic liberal culture that promotes tolerance, trust, compromise, and reason in the marketplace of ideas. It is doubtful that such a populist, identity-based public enclave can provide the foundation for liberal reforms in the Arab world.

While this critique is perfectly justifiable and legitimate, I am dissatisfied with it on two levels.

First, it doesn't get the book's argument quite right.  Voices certainly does lay out a strong argument for the potentially positive effects of the new Arab media:   shattering state monopolies on information and opinion, challenging taboos and red lines which have shackled Arab political debate, consistently highlighting democratic elections and political reform, and empowering contentious politics from below. The book argues that building a culture of pluralism and public debate is a necessary condition for achieving real democratic reforms.. but not a sufficient one.   The book is explicitly ambivalent about the liberalizing effects of the new media, as opposed to its contributions to pluralism and contentious politics. It argues that the new Arab public can not alone produce democracy, is constantly tempted by populist mobilization, and will not necessarily advance liberalism.   Ironically, the  book actually begins with precisely the question raised by Faksh:

Whether such a populist, identity-driven, enclave public could be the foundation for reform and liberalization - at a time when neither Arab states nor the most powerful popular movements such as Islamism offer such a foundation - represents one of the most urgent problems facing the Arab world today.    The centrality of identity politics to the new Arab public, with its avowed goal of giving voice to an oppressed and long-silenced Arab political society, is rife with paradoxes.  It is fueled by a determination to bring publicity to the closed, repressive Arab political world, shattering every taboo and crossing every red line with abandon.  At the same time, its politics of identity could all too easily slide into a tyranny from below, excommunicating those who disagree  and demonizing outsiders to enforce internal unity. (pp.3-4)

Later in the first chapter, I note with concern that "Even if the power of a new international public sphere is growing, it is not at all clear that it is a liberal public sphere... the politics of the new Arab public sphere tend towards populism, the politics of identity, of authenticity, and of resistance." (p.26).  And in the conclusion (pp.248-249), I return to "a populist public or a liberal public" as one of the crucial issues which will determine the future of the impact of the new Arab public on the region. In short, while the book may "imply" that the new Arab public is paving the way to liberalism, that simply isn't what the book says.
 

The second level on which I've been thinking about this review has to do with degrees of certainty. My unease is well captured by this juxtaposition:

Faksh:  "Is the new open Arab public sphere really paving the road to a liberal, pluralist politics, as the author seems to imply? The answer is simply no." (p.793)

Voices:  "Whether the Arab public sphere develops in a liberal direction or in a populist direction, consumed by questions of identity and authenticity, is one of the most pivotal questions shaping the Arab future." (p.27)

I understand (and to some extent share) the widespread skepticism about the new Arab public or about its democratizing potential, and Faksh offers interesting arguments in support of his skepticism.   But I am troubled by such a direct, confident answer to such complex and unpredictable questions.  Voices of the New Arab Public presents the rise of new media and public argument as a powerful set of forces reshaping the deep structure of Arab politics.  But such deep structural changes will necessarily have complex, unpredictable implications:  they will differentially empower a wide range of actors and movements;  they will generate a backlash from those powerful forces threatened by the changes; they will shape the political impact of all kinds of other events and actors (whether events in Iraq and Lebanon, or elections in the region, or al-Qaeda's campaigns).   The forces unleashed by the new Arab public have barely begun to be studied by political scientists.   Faksh would be better served posing his perspective as a question, a competing hypothesis, than as a confident empirical assertion of fact - as would we all. 

***

I don't want to suggest that the review was either hostile or poorly done.  As I said, it was very positive and quite thoughtful, and raised some important points, and I'm quite appreciative of getting such a good review in the POP so quickly after publication (by academic standards).  Hopefully nobody will take this blog discussion as an attack on the reviewer: it's more a way of trying to explore some of the issues it raises, respond to some of its critiques, and increase the overall value of the review.   Hey, here's a radical thought:  Wouldn't it be great if more academic book reviews could be done in a dialogic format, as in the discussion about Bob Vitalis's America's Kingdom or the Crooked Timber forum on Shari Berman's ...?  Let reviewers post their review, authors respond, have a week-long dialogue about it, then publish the results?   That seems like one area where academic and blogging are a natural match... could this be the future?

 

(Cross-posted at Abu Aardvark)