TOCQUEVILLE IN ARABIA
by Joshua Mitchell
Over the course of the last three hundred years, in broad swaths of the globe where Anglo-American and European thought has prevailed, history has been understood as the story of the advancement of human freedom. When there was debate, it was about what freedom meant and how freedom could be achieved. In the Anglo-American world, the larger concern was coercive power, and freedom was thought to be achievable through limited government and market commerce; elsewhere, the larger concern was scarcity and want, and freedom was thought to be achievable through greater state control of the economy and, sometimes, by harsh restrains on political liberty.
The end of the Cold War signaled the victory of the Anglo-American model.
Costly wars abroad, however, and the numerous financial shocks, have reduced economic growth to a crawl, and increased the gap between rich and the poor. For the moment, doubts have been raised about the model’s efficacy; they have not, however, altered the belief that history is the march of human freedom.
In the Middle East, milder versions of these competing visions of freedom have circulated for several centuries, but they nowhere captivated the imagination of entire nations. Liberals there sought to limit the reach of the state through the rule of law and institutional checks and balances, and to develop market commerce and the individualistic entrepreneurial spirit that animates it. They failed no less completely than did socialists who sought to gather together the economic resources of their nation in the hope of overturning the feudal system of land ownership and family privilege that had impoverished their peoples for centuries.
These Middle Eastern attempts at freedom failed, in part, because family linkages and tribal loyalties were much stronger there than they had been in Anglo-America and in Europe. This remains true today: in the Anglo-American world and in Europe, the person one is largely trumps the role one has; in the Middle East, on the other hand, the role one has in the family or tribe still largely trumps the person one is, independent of those allegiances. Democratic freedom entails that such allegiances be loosened if not broken altogether. That has not yet happened in the Middle East.
The end of the Cold War signaled the victory of the Anglo-American model.
Costly wars abroad, however, and the numerous financial shocks, have reduced economic growth to a crawl, and increased the gap between rich and the poor. For the moment, doubts have been raised about the model’s efficacy; they have not, however, altered the belief that history is the march of human freedom.
In the Middle East, milder versions of these competing visions of freedom have circulated for several centuries, but they nowhere captivated the imagination of entire nations. Liberals there sought to limit the reach of the state through the rule of law and institutional checks and balances, and to develop market commerce and the individualistic entrepreneurial spirit that animates it. They failed no less completely than did socialists who sought to gather together the economic resources of their nation in the hope of overturning the feudal system of land ownership and family privilege that had impoverished their peoples for centuries.
These Middle Eastern attempts at freedom failed, in part, because family linkages and tribal loyalties were much stronger there than they had been in Anglo-America and in Europe. This remains true today: in the Anglo-American world and in Europe, the person one is largely trumps the role one has; in the Middle East, on the other hand, the role one has in the family or tribe still largely trumps the person one is, independent of those allegiances. Democratic freedom entails that such allegiances be loosened if not broken altogether. That has not yet happened in the Middle East.
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