Arab Monarchism in Comparative-Historical Perspective

What have we learned about ruling monarchism in the Arab world since the 2011-12 Arab Uprisings? We have learned much about the eight royal autocracies that survive today—but little about the historical and cultural import of monarchism overall. Because the Arab Uprisings mostly imperiled autocratic republics like Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Syria, they instigated a cottage industry on the perceived resilience of Arab kingships. For instance, researchers have argued that the ruling houses of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Morocco, and others have endured by deploying parliamentary measures, regional cooperation, and rent-fueled co-optation or repression.

Such fixation on monarchical persistence engenders a methodological problem of survivorship bias: royal autocracies today are seen as representative of the wider universe of Middle East monarchies—including the more than half-dozen that fell to revolutions and coups from the 1950s to 1970s—despite that their survival turns on exceptional institutional strategies pioneered only in the last few decades, and which have little to do with monarchism itself. Missing is the corollary question of how the Arab world’s non-monarchical dictatorships have adapted from their royal counterparts, incorporating practices like hereditary succession and biological fetishizing into the fabric of their political life.

To that end, this paper delivers corrective insight. It compares the eight Arab ruling monarchies today with the nearly equal number of Middle Eastern royal autocracies that lost power after World War Two. It extrapolates what makes these dynastic regimes exceptional when juxtaposed against the universe of modern dynasticism—such as their reconstruction through imperialism and the weak nature of sacred legitimacy. It compares these regimes with republican autocracies, identifying how ruling parties and presidents in the Middle East have drawn upon royal practices and institutions. It finally draws conclusions on the difficulty of knowledge accumulation when considering monarchism as a political order.