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National Party of “Greater Syria”, and the Palestinian resistance movement, with its
numerous networked factions, in its early incarnation from the mid-1950s to the late
1960s. Lebanon, the one relatively non-authoritarian Arab state, featured legal parties
and regular elections; yet even here, perhaps owing to Lebanon’s highly plural society,
formal political parties were weak and more often than not were organized as informal
networks of notables and their clienteles, usually within a sectarian or regional
framework. The Lebanese (Maronite) Phalange Party emerged out of a quasi-fascist kind
of youth organization. The (Druze) Progressive Socialist Party derived its cohesion and
influence from dominant family networks (the Junblats and Arslans). When the state
collapsed into a long civil war (with significant transnational features) from 1975 to 1990
the Lebanon became a “republic” of networked militias.
In the Arabian peninsula, where family and tribal based patrimonial systems
framed the political agenda, political parties were illegal and elections almost nonexistent.
Yet a societal-based traditional pluralism did exist through the informal
political networks of the diwaniyya in Kuwait, the majlis in Saudi Arabia, and the mafraj
in Yemen. Arabian networks were functionally differentiated as well around
occupational (e.g. business), religious, educational, and social concerns. We learned to
our sorrow, after September 11, of the formidable social capital and network flows (in
Castells’ term) that seem to inhere in militant Islamist networks.
IV.
Explaining Network Success: The Particular Case of Islamist Networks
Islamist networks indeed seem to be particularly successful. There are four
research questions that might help explain why this is the case, questions, however, that
could be asked about network political organizations in general in the Arab east. First,
how potent and socially pervasive is the symbolic content of the value agenda that their
leaders frame Second, how do they recruit, retain, and deepen the commitment of
members of the network Third, to what extent can they build upon and benefit from
existing kinship, occupational, educational or financial networks And fourth, does the
Information Technology revolution allow political networks to extend their reach beyond
face-to-face relationships; or to put it another way, can social capital (and trust) travel
through cyberspace
This is not the place to try and answers these questions exhaustively. But a casual
survey of formal Islamist political networks like the Organization of the Islamic
Conference, and less formal or even clandestine movements such as the Egyptian
gama’at, the Shi’a networks of Lebanon, Iran and Iraq, the Palestinian Islamist groups,
similar organizations in North Africa, and even the notorious Al-Qa’ida suggests that on
all counts they can advance their agendas. First, with respect to the symbolic agenda, one
does not have to go so far as some authors and claim that the whole discourse of
contemporary Arab politics has become Islamicized to observe that the array of programs
and projects encapsulated by the slogan “Islam is the Solution” resonates deeply with
individuals mired in the tensions and contradictions of contemporary Arab societies.
Moreover, the pervasiveness of these symbols, especially when associated with
longstanding nationalist concerns extends throughout society and is not simply the