1 On the theoretical weaknesses of Middle East studies, see Brynen, Rex, “The State of the Art in Middle Eastern Studies: A Research Note on Enquiry and the American Empire,” Arab Studies Quarterly 8 (1986), 404–419Google Scholar; Said, Edward, “Orientalism Revisited,” Middle East Report 150 (1988), 32–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Korany, Bahgat and Dessouki, Ali E. Hillal, eds. The Foreign Policies of Arab States (Boulder: Westview Press, 1984), 5–18Google Scholar.

2 Beblawi, Hazem and Luciani, Giacomo, eds., The Rentier State (London: Croom Helm, 1987)Google Scholar; Salamé, Ghassan, ed., The Foundations of the Arab State (London: Croom Helm, 1987)Google Scholar; Luciani, Giacomo and Salamé, Ghassan, eds., The Politics of Arab Integration (London: Croom Helm, 1987)Google Scholar; and Dawisha, Adeed and Zartman, I. William, eds., Beyond Coercion: The Durability of the Arab State (London: Croom Helm, 1988)Google Scholar.

3 For an overview, see Anderson, Lisa, “The State in the Middle East and North Africa,” Comparative Politics 20 (1987), 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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6 Anderson, “The State in the Middle East and North Africa,” 2. The quotation is from Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: Free Press, 1947), 154Google Scholar.

7 Evans, Peter B., Rueschemeyer, Dietrich and Skocpol, Theda, “On the Road towards a More Adequate Understanding of the State,” in Evans, , Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol, , eds., Bringing the State Back In, 351–353Google Scholar; Migdal, Joel, Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 3–9Google Scholar; and Salamé, , “ ‘Strong’ and ‘Weak’ States, a Qualified Return to the Muqaddimah,” in Salamé, , ed., The Foudations of the Arab State, 205–240Google Scholar.

8 Anderson, “The State in the Middle East and North Africa,” 12–13. The “strength” and “hardness” of the state are, of course, interrelated insofar as state permeability constrains both the autonomy of the state and its ability to exert social control. See Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States, 21–23.

9 For these first two views, see Harik, Ilya, “The Origins of the Arab State System,” in Salamé, , ed., The Foundations of the Arab State, 19–40Google Scholar, and Brown, L. Carl, International Politics in the Middle East: Old Rules, Dangerous Games (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

10 Noble, Paul C., “The Arab State System: Opportunities, Constraints, and Pressures,” in Korany, and Dessouki, , eds., The Foreign Policies of Arab States, 41–77Google Scholar.

11 Hudson, Michael C., Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977)Google Scholar. Hudson reiterated this approach in the context of increased attention to Middle East state-building processes in his 1987 presidential address to the Middle East Studies Association; see MESA Bulletin 22 (1988), 157–171Google Scholar.

12 Hudson, Arab Politics, 118.

13 Noble, “The Arab State System,” 42–43.

14 Dawisha, Adeed, “Legitimacy and Foreign Policy,” in Dawisha, and Zartman, , eds., Beyond Coercion, 274–275Google Scholar.

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18 Ben-Dor, Gabriel, State and Conflict in the Middle East: The Emergence of the Postcolonial State (New York: Praeger, 1983), 242–243Google Scholar.

19 Farah, Tawfic E., Pan-Arabism and Arab Nationalism: the Continuing Debate (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987), xi–xivGoogle Scholar.

20 See, for example, Faisal al-Salam, “The Issue of Identity in Selected Arab Gulf States,” Ahmad J. Dhaher, “Culture and Politics in the Gulf State” and “Gulf Youth: Self Image and Role,” and Suleiman, Michael W., “Socialization to Politics in Morocco,” in Farah, Tawfic and Kuroda, Yasumasa, eds., Political Socialization in the Arab States (Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 1987)Google Scholar, and Hinnebusch, Raymond A., Egyptian Politics Under Sadat: The Post-Populist Development of an Authoritarian-Modernizing State (updated edition; Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1988), 228–243Google Scholar.

21 al-Din Ibrahim, Sa'ad, Ittijahat al-ra'i al-'am al-'arabi nahwa mas'alat al-wahda [Trends of Arab Public Opinion toward the Question of Unity] (Beirut: Center for Arab Unity Studies, 1980Google Scholar). See Farah, Tawfic, “Attitudes to the Nation and State in Arab Public Opinion Polls,” in Luciani, and Salamé, , eds., The Politics of Arab Integration, 94–108Google Scholar, for an overview of Arab survey research on this and related questions.

22 Salamé, Ghassan, “Inter-Arab Politics: The Return of Geography,” in Quandt, William B., ed., The Middle East: Ten Years After Camp David (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1988), 345Google Scholar. Although there can be little doubt of the importance of the Islamic activism in contemporary Arab politics, or of the transnationality of Islamic political thought, it is perhaps equally significant the extent to which the Islamic revival has taken place within the constraints of Arab territorial state. In the 1950s and 1960s, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasir, broadcasting on Egypt's Sawt al-'Arab radio, could attract the attentions of millions throughout the region; barring perhaps the influence of Iran over Hizbullah in Lebanon, no contemporary Islamic leader commands approximate transnational influence or recognition.

23 Gresh, Alain, The PLO: The Struggle Within (London: Zed Books, 1985), 34–52Google Scholar.

24 Korany, Bahgat, “Alien and Beseiged Yet Here to Stay: The Contradictions of the Arab Territorial State,” in Salamé, , ed., The Foundations of the Arab State, 47–74Google Scholar.

25 In rentier states, the predominance of external sources of state income (that is, oil revenues) lessens the representational pressures that would otherwise be caused by direct taxation, whilst simultaneously enhancing the ability of the state to legitimize the political system through high level of state expenditure. For a discussion, see Beblawi, and Luciani, , eds., The Rentier StateGoogle Scholar.

26 Korany, “Alien and Beseiged Yet Here to Stay,” 66–71. Indeed, in the Arab world the determination of “haves” and “have nots” has largely been a function of where state territorial boundaries are drawn, a fact dramatically evident in the Arabian peninsula where per capita GNPs in 1987 ranged from $420 (South Yemen) to $15,830 (the United Arab Emirates) (World Bank, World Development Report 1989 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1989]Google Scholar).

27 Makdisi, Samir, “Interdependence and National Sovereignty,” in Luciani, and , Salamé, eds., The Politics of Arab Integration, 111–140Google Scholar.

28 Zureik, Elia, “Theoretical Considerations for a Sociological Study of the Arab State,” Arab Studies Quarterly 3 (1981), 255Google Scholar; Farah, Nadia Ramsis, “The Social Formations Approach and Arab Social System,” Arab Studies Quarterly 10(1988), 281Google Scholar; Farsoun, Samih K., “Class Structure and Social Change in the Arab World: 1995,” in Sharabi, Hisham, ed., The Next Arab Decade: Alternative Futures (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988), 231–232Google Scholar; and Hinnebusch, Raymond A., Authoritarian Power and State Formation in Ba' thist Syria: Army, Party, and Peasant (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990), 15, 319–20Google Scholar. As Alan Richards and John Waterbury observe, however, in the longer term the emerging middle class may increasingly constrain state autonomy (A Political Economy of the Middle East: State, Class, and Economic Development [Boulder: Westview, 1990] 408–422, 28Google Scholar).

29 Aruri, Naseer, “Disaster Area: Human Rights in the Arab World,” Middle East Report 149 (1987), 13–15Google Scholar; I. William Zartman, “Introduction,” and Dawisha, Adeed, “Conclusion: Reasons for Resilience,” in Dawisha, and Zartman, , eds., Beyond CoercionGoogle Scholar.

30 Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States, 238–58.

31 Kazziha, Walid, “The Impact of Palestine on Arab Politics,” in Luciani, and Salamé, , eds., The Politics of Arab Integration, 213–231Google Scholar.

32 Current Syrian and Jordanian defence expenditures represent about 12 per cent and 16 per cent of GDP. Sivard, Ruth, World Military and Social Expenditures 1987–88 (Washington: World Priorities, 1987), 43–44Google Scholar; World Bank, World Development Report 1989, 184; and International Institute for Strategic Studies, Military Balance 1990 (London: IISS, 1989), 209Google Scholar; see also Table 1.

33 Tilly, Charles, “War-Making and State-Making as Organized Crime,” in Evans, , Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol, , eds., Bringing the State Back In, 184–186Google Scholar; Herbst, Jeffrey, “War and the State in Africa,” International Security 14 (1990), 117–139CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Picard, Compare Elizabeth, “State and Society in the Arab World: Towards a New Role for the Security Forces,” in Korany, Bahgat, Noble, Paul and Brynen, Rex, eds., The Many Faces of National Security in the Arab World (London: Macmillan, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

34 Gurr, Ted Robert, “War, Revolution, and the Growth of the Coercive State,” Comparative Political Studies 21 (1988), 56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Kazziha, “The Impact of Palestine on Arab Politics,” 215.

35 Picard, Elizabeth, “Arab Military Politics from Revolutionary Plot to Authoritarian State,” in Dawisha, and Zartman, , eds., Beyond Coercion, 116–146Google Scholar.

36 Conversely, the loss of this rationale may render this process of military state-building more problematic. The Egyptian armed forces' search for a national security role in the aftermath of the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli treaty—a quest that has taken it into the business of chicken farming (“food security”), among others—and its sensitivity to any questioning of its continuing demands on societal resources represents perhaps the clearest case. See Springborg, Robert, “The President and the Field Marshall: Civil-Military Relations in Egypt Today,” Middle East Report 147 (1987), 5–16Google Scholar, and Abdalla, Ahmed, “The Armed Forces and the Democratic Process in Egypt,” Third World Quarterly 10 (1988), 1452–1456CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Yorke, Valerie, Domestic Politics and Regional Security: Jordan, Syria and Israel (Aldershot: Gower, 1988), 137–139Google Scholar; Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Report: Jordan 1 (1982), 14Google Scholar; and Country Report: Egypt 1 (1990), 206Google Scholar.

38 Hinnebusch, Egyptian Politics Under Sadat, 229, and Kazziha, Walid, Palestine in the Arab Dilemma (London: Croom Helm, 1979Google Scholar).

39 Dajani, Maha Ahmed, The Institutionalization of Palestinian Identity in Egypt, Cairo Papers in Social Science (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1986), 95–96Google Scholar. According to one 1980 survey, Egyptians felt farther removed from Palestinians than from any other Arab group other than Libyans. Similarly, a 1987 survey of Egyptian university students found a closer affinity to West Europeans and to most other Arabs than to Palestinians. See Yahia, Karem, “Images of the Palestinians in Egypt, 1982–85,” Journal of Palestine Studies 16 (1987), 45–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Sell, Ralph R., “International Affinities in Modern Egypt: Results from a Social Distance Survey of Elite Students,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 22 (1990), 59–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 MERIP, “Repercussions in the Middle East,” Middle East Report 152 (1988), 45–46Google Scholar, and Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Report: Egypt 1 (1988), 6Google Scholar.

41 El-Sayed, Mustapha K., “Egyptian Popular Attitudes toward the Palestinians since 1977,” Journal of Palestine Studies 18 (1989), 49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 al-Farnawi, Taha, quoted in al-Sha'b (Cairo), 06 21, 1988Google Scholar in Foreign Broadcast Information Service: Near East and South Asia (hereafter FBIS).

43 Korany, Bahgat, “Egypt,” in Brynen, Rex, ed., Echoes of the Intifada: Regional Repercussions of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

44 For example, Anis Mansur (editor of the pro-government journal Mayu) proclaimed that “192 Palestinian millionaires residing in Egypt are of Israeli origin” and accused Palestinians of deliberately selling their lands (AFP [Paris], July 21, 1990 [FBIS].

45 As Raymond Hinnebusch notes, “The 1976 Lebanon intervention against Palestinians and Muslims in defense of Christian rightists greatly damaged regime legitimacy among its own supporters and Sunni opinion generally,” setting the stage for the rise of Islamic opposition forces in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Hinnebusch, Authoritarian Power and State Formation in Ba'thist Syria, 293).

46 Hinnebusch, Raymond, “Revisionist Dreams, Realist Strategies: The Foreign Policy of Syria,” in Korany, and Dessouki, , eds., The Foreign Policies of Arab States, 302–303Google Scholar.

47 Typical of this effort is a short film recurrently played between programmes on Syrian television since the uprising, which intersperses heroic portraits of the Syrian armed forces with footage of the intifada and other Palestinian symbols. See also MERIP, “Repercussions in the Middle East,” 47–48.

48 Although noting that “we are in a state of war, which, for scores of years, has forced us and is forcing on us the application of the emergency law,” President al-Asad also went on to call for legal reforms—thus implicitly confirming the extent to which the “hardening” of the Arab state system has rendered the Palestine issue an increasingly less effective means of legitimizing authoritarian state policies (Damascus Television Service, March 8, 1990 [FBIS]).

49 For a similar argument regarding the primacy of security consideration in Syrian policy, see Lawson, Fred, “Syria,” in Brynen, , ed., Echoes of the IntifadaGoogle Scholar.

50 The demographic balance between Palestinians and Tranjordanians on the East Bank is an issue of considerable political dispute and sensitivity in contemporary Jordan. In a frequently cited study, Valerie York has suggested that Palestinians constitute only 40 per cent of the population (Yorke, Domestic Politics and Regional Security, 33). Most other analyists would put the figure at 50 to 60 per cent, however.

51 According to one 1986 survey, more than 93 per cent of Palestinians in the occupied territories viewed the PLO as their sole legitimate representative; less than 1 per cent looked to King Husayn (Shadid, Mohammed and Seltzer, Rick, “Political Attitudes of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” Middle East Journal 42 [1987], 16–31Google Scholar; see also Sahliyeh, Emile, In Search of Leadership: West Bank Politics since 1967 [Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1988]Google Scholar).

52 According to Jordan's Public Security Directorate, some 117 pro-intifada demonstrations took place between December 1987 and August 1988, each involving anywhere from 100 to 2,500 persons.

53 King Husayn's speech announcing disengagement (text in Journal of Palestine Studies 18 [1988], 279–283Google Scholar). Husayn later asserted that Palestinians comprised only 40 per cent of the Kingdom's population (Amman Television Service, August 7, 1988 [FBIS]).

54 For an overview of these measures, see Andoni, Lamis, “Jordan,” in Brynen, , ed., Echoes of the IntifadaGoogle Scholar.

55 Among other things, the PLO has encouraged Palestinians to support the value of the Jordanian dinar, refrained from interfering in the 1989 elections and discouraged Palestinians from engaging in illegal protests (Jordan Times [Amman], August 22, 1989, 16; Andoni, “Jordan”).

56 This was particularly evident in Husayn's position at the May 1990 Arab League summit in Baghdad, where he warned that Israeli pressures had “drained all our financial resources” and that “our national commitment [to the Palestine issue] should not be a source of punishment to my country.” He went on to appeal for renewed pledges of Arab aid (New York Times, May 30, 1990, A13).

57 The continued permeability of Jordan, and the radicalizing effect there of the intifada played at least a partial role in the electoral victories of the Muslim Brotherhood in the November 1989 parliamentary elections. Similarly, periodic violent protests have continued to erupt in the Kingdom, notably in December 1989 (on the second anniversary of the uprising), May 14, 1990 (on the anniversary of Israel's establishment) and again on May 22 (following shootings in Israel and the occupied territories). Twodemonstrators were killed by Jordanian security forces during the latter.

58 Speech by King Husayn to the Summit, Algiers, Amman Domestic Service, 06 8, 1988 (FBIS)Google Scholar.