the author “concedes that today's Arab politics and public opinion are ‘primarily’ about domestic matters rather than foreign economic, social, and political affairs,” Telhami nevertheless favors external over internal factors in his analysis.5 Pollock further argues that “other surveys taken in the two-and-a-half years since the beginning of the 2011 Arab uprisings strongly suggest that most Arabs are now very heavily focused on their own internal issue–and not on Americans, Israelis, Palestinians, or other Arabs.” The recent mutual recognitions between Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco appear to support Pollock’s claim.
Resolution of these conflicting claims over the root cause of the Arab dignity deficit is straightforward – both Telhami and Pollock are correct. The deficit is overdetermined. It results from the comparative weakness of Arab nation states in the face of challenges posed by today’s Great Powers–the U.S., Russia, Europe and China–as well as by the non-Arab regional states of Iran, Israel and Turkey. But the deficit is also the consequence of the many shortcomings of Arab governance, the net result of which is to render it difficult to the point of impossible for most Arabs to live rewarding, fulfilling lives that makes them feel they are “worthy of honor or respect.”
The external and internal causes are also interrelated. The perceived threats and depredations of Great Powers and non-Arab regional hegemons, manifested most dramatically by their recent engagement in numerous proxy wars in the Middle East, affect both Arab states and citizens. The former invest proportionately more in security as provided by militaries, police and security forces than states in any other global region, yet there is greater personal insecurity in the Arab world than anywhere else.
The knock-on effects of top-down securitization coupled with unsafe lives as indicated by world leading proportions and numbers of displaced persons, battle deaths, personnel employed in militaries and security forces, political prisoners, and other measures of insecurity, are profound. The gap between securitization on the one hand and widespread personal and social insecurity necessarily undermines governmental legitimacy. Overspending on security depletes resources and erodes capacities to deliver public services. Governments fearful of external and internal threats deny meaningful rights of citizenship to their populations. Controlling populations rather than enhancing their contributions to national political economies preoccupies Arab governments. Absence of meaningful citizenship prevents development of “public brainpower” generated by stakeholder participation in policy processes that enhances both quality and acceptance of public policies. Public resources are distributed less through impersonal, legal entitlements based on citizenship than through personalistic clientage networks which are designed in part to reduce demand for citizenship rights. The presence of actual or just pretended threats posed by external actors is used by Arab regimes to justify securitization and their own incumbency.
In sum, external and internal causes of the dignity deficit are intermixed, rendering the challenge of overcoming them complex and difficult. Even absent destabilizing external interventions, however, factors largely indigenous in nature make the achievement of dignity particularly challenging in the Arab world. Substantial portions of Arabs face profound obstacles to leading productive, fulfilling, dignified lives. Pre-schooling is less developed in Arab countries than predicted by their GDPs per capita. Arab educational systems are among the world’s worst, with the gap between actual and performance related years of schooling larger than in any other region. The material rewards of university education are less in the Arab world than any other region, while university graduates form the largest category of unemployed. The impact of inequality on student performance is more negative than in any region other than sub-Saharan Africa. Education is typically not a rewarding, interesting experience. Classes are large, teacher absenteeism rampant, rote
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