The Implications of Leadership Change in the Arab World

Abstract

The politics of the Middle East may be more dependent on the am bitions and whims of individual leaders than in any other region of the world. Middle Eastern leaders are often unconstrained by domestic political institu tions or popular sentiment: their ambitions and preferences, as well as their weaknesses and foibles, can make the difference between war and peace, revo lution and stability. Leadership change in the Middle East, however, is infre quent and seldom routinized. The region often seems frozen in time, with cer tain leaders?Muammar-el-Qaddafi of Libya, Yasir Arafat in the Palestinian Authority, and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, among others?ruling for decades. As Glenn Robinson remarks, If anything, the contemporary Arab world has been marked by too much political stability at the top, not too little.1 Table 1 suggests that a thaw is occurring. Although many Arab leaders came to power in the 1970s or 1980s, the last several years have seen remark able change. In 1997, President Mohammad Khatami won the Iranian election, campaigning to reform the revolutionary system. In 1999, new leaders came to power in Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan, and Morocco, and in 2000, one of the most enduring leaders in the world, Syria's Hafez al-Assad, passed away. In 2004, Yasir Arafat passed away after over three decades at the helm of Palestinian politics.