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UC Irvine UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Autocratic Accountability and the Arab-Israeli Dispute Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8b34f193 Author Wolf, Albert Burton Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Autocratic Accountability and the Arab-Israeli Dispute DISSERTATION submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Political Science by Albert Burton Wolf Dissertation Committee: Professor Caesar D. Sereseres, Chair Professor Edwin Amenta Professor Russell J. Dalton 2014 Portion of Chapter 4 © 2014 Wiley-Blackwell All other materials © 2014 Albert Burton Wolf TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv CURRICULUM VITAE v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION vi CHAPTER 1: Introduction 1 CHAPTER 2: Authoritarian Institutions, the Arab Street, 18 and the Middle East Peace Process: Do Non-Democratic Institutions Constrain or Inform? CHAPTER 3: Autocratic Accountability in Wartime: 75 Popular Punishments for Defeats on the Battlefield in Non-Democracies CHAPTER 4: Peacemaking and Political Survival 122 in Sadat’s Egypt CHAPTER 5: Conclusion 147 WORKS CITED 151 ii LIST OF TABLES PAGE Table 1 Authoritarian Political Constraints and the Likelihood of Cooperation 25 Table 2 Overview of Hypotheses 35 Table 3 Hypotheses and Observable Implications 46 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation to the members of my dissertation committee for their help, guidance, and patience throughout the process of writing this dissertation. My greatest debt goes to my adviser and mentor, Prof. Caesar D. Sereseres. Caesar combines a background in International Relations theory with his deep knowledge and appreciation for policy relevant problems. Either trait is welcome in an academic; to see them combined in a single person is truly rare in the field of Political Science. Furthermore, Caesar’s dedication to mentoring graduate and undergraduate students couples a demand for theoretical rigor, analytical precision, and clarity of presentation. His blunt (but necessary) advice has been critical to bringing this dissertation to a close. An acknowledgements page does not do justice to how much I owe him. My other committee members have also been incredibly helpful. I have known Professors Russell Dalton and Edwin Amenta since my first days at the University of California, Irvine. Russ’s Micropolitics class was directly responsible for my forays into researching the audience costs argument, which in turn lead to my interest in domestic political signaling. Although he is a comparativist by training, I have found the training, comments, and advice that I have received from him to be without peer. Ed’s class on Political Sociology served as the intellectual breeding ground for my interest in protest movements in authoritarian settings. More than putting together a fascinating class, Ed has been a careful mentor, always ready with incisive but fair, thought-provoking critiques of my work. Finally, Prof. Randall Schweller has been a mentor and friend for nearly a decade. Randy was my advisor when I was at The Ohio State University. I have learned a tremendous amount from him both inside and outside of the classroom. His work has served as an example to aspire to, while his keen insights into the Byzantine workings of IR theory have marked him as one of the leading IR scholars of his generation. Randy has the ability to take an argument on its own terms and tear apart from top-to-bottom. I appreciate his willingness to serve as an outside member of my committee. My family has been continuously supportive through the stressful process of writing a dissertation and completing graduate school. My mother, Frances, has always been a source of sage advice and love. My brother, Andrew, has listened to me talk about my work with his usual good humor. Unfortunately, my father, Burton, did not live to see me receive my Bachelor’s degree. I only hope that he would be proud of this dissertation. iv CURRICULUM VITAE Albert Burton Wolf 2005 B.A. in Political Science, The Ohio State University Magna Cum Laude, With Distinction in Political Science 2006 M.A. in Political Science, The Ohio State University 2007-14 Graduate Teaching and Research Assistant, University of California, Irvine 2012-13 Adjunct Instructor, California State University, Fullerton 2014 Ph.D. in Political Science, University of California, Irvine FIELD OF STUDY Political Science PUBLICATIONS “Peacemaking and Political Survival in Sadat’s Egypt,” Middle East Policy, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Summer 2014) Forthcoming. v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Autocratic Accountability and the Arab-Israeli Dispute By Albert Burton Wolf Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science University of California, Irvine, 2014 Professor Caesar D. Sereseres, Chair How do mass publics affect authoritarian regimes’ foreign policy choices? Does the interaction between non-democratic regimes and their domestic challengers convey information to their international rivals? When do dictators face domestic political sanctions for battlefield defeats? Is the politics of peacemaking as perilous for autocrats as it is for democrats? I suggest that autocrats’ foreign policy decisions are carried out in the shadow of popular punishments from the general public- what I refer to as “mass audiences.” Using the Arab-Israeli rivalry as an empirical backdrop, I examine three puzzles that have been repeatedly examined in democratic contexts. First, I examine how the interaction between the incumbent government and the opposition sends costly signals to rival states during peace processes (in this case, Israel). Second, I examine the relationship between peacemaking and political survival in autocracies, with special attention to Anwar Sadat’s hold onto power. Third, I examine how losses on the battlefield affect dictators’ ability to retain office. I make three general findings. First, using evidence from the peace process with Jordan in the late 1940s and Egypt in the 1970s, I found that by repressing the nationalist vi opposition, dictators reassure their external rivals, giving them strong incentives to reciprocate cooperative gestures. Dictators who coopt the nationalist opposition tend to extend their lease on political life but tie their hands in the process, making them beholden to hawkish constituencies and weaken their ability to cut a deal with a rival state. Second, dictators who fight and lose a war are likely to suffer domestic political punishments from mass audiences. Major defeats, such as those suffered during the Israeli War for Independence and the Six Day War, weaken the dictatorship’s repressive apparatus, making it easier for the domestic opposition to punish an incumbent through mass protests. Third, peacemaking is “risky business” for dictators. Mass publics are likely to protest against leaders who offer concessions to the state’s longstanding rivals because mass publics fear the nation may be exploited by a longstanding rival. vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION A recent issue of The Economist has a shirtless Vladimir Putin photo-shopped riding on top of a tank under the headline, “The New World Order.”1 The steady erosion of unipolarity after the United States’ failed interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq has policymakers and international relations scholars moving away the heady optimism that characterized the end of the Cold War. Instead of seeing mature liberal democracy as history’s endpoint, many are convinced that an authoritarian revival is underway. Dictatorships from North Korea to Iran and Russia populate the ranks of countries characterized as rogue states, while fears grow over China’s development of a blue water navy and its increasing financial leverage over the U.S.2 A few years ago peer-reviewed journals were filled with articles on the democratic advantage in world politics. Today, instead of seeing democracies as “powerful pacifists”3 that make “selective, [but] effective threats”4 because of their transparency, there is a growing appreciation of the advantages autocracies possess because of their institutional constraints. 1 “The New World Order: Diplomacy and Security After Crimea,” The Economist, March 22, 2014, p. 5. 2 Daniel W. Drezner, “Bad Debts: Assessing China’s Financial Influence in Great Power Politics,” International Security, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Fall 2009), pp. 7-45. Drezner points out that contrary to popular hysteria, China’s financial power is more useful for deterring rather than compelling the U.S. 3 David A. Lake, “Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 86, No. 1 (March 1992), pp. 24-37. 4 Kenneth A. Schultz, Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), ch. 1. 1 Yet, despite the growing importance of autocracies in world politics, several puzzles remain. Building on literatures in comparative politics and international relations theory, this dissertation examines how the interaction between authoritarian regimes and the general public (or mass audiences) affect their foreign policies and individual dictators’ domestic political survival. Using the Arab-Israeli rivalry as the backdrop I examine two interrelated puzzles. First I examine why some non-democracies are able to ameliorate the security dilemma with their longstanding rivals while others remain locked in costly conflicts.