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.