Is monarchy the best model for the Middle East?

Pangur Bán;13587136 said:
So, what do you mean by 'post-colonial' then?

Just refers to the environment after European control ended.
 
Minerals and water?!? I'm sorry, but I find it hard to believe that Jordan could even keep its population alive without regular water imports!



Well yes, however I think there is a mentality with very deep roots to view kingship as a paternal relationship to the tribe. Scottish clans might not have appreciated their kings but the Middle East has had sheer despotism for five thousand years (due to geography, really, more than anything). It's the only kind of state they really understand.
Yeah, you're absolutely right. Jordan considers water scarcity a national security issue. I'm not sure what TF was thinking there.
 
Pangur Bán;13587284 said:
What special 'post-colonial' features do you believe to have ended in the Arab Spring?

The specific geopolitical structures? Y'know, Iraq, Syria, Egypt under socialist/fascist regimes?
 
The specific geopolitical structures? Y'know, Iraq, Syria, Egypt under socialist/fascist regimes?

Nah, you've lost me. Iraq's govt was changed by the US, Egypt's pre-Spring government has been restored, Syria is still there in reduced form, while the dominant form of 'post-imperial' government, the US client monarchs, remains in place.
 
Pangur Bán;13588043 said:
Nah, you've lost me. Iraq's govt was changed by the US, Egypt's pre-Spring government has been restored, Syria is still there in reduced form, while the dominant form of 'post-imperial' government, the US client monarchs, remains in place.

Is the situation directly comparable to the 70's?
 
There's no USSR and Iran is no longer a US client monarchy. What's that got to do with the Arab Spring?
 
Pangur Bán;13588054 said:
There's no USSR and Iran is no longer a US client monarchy. What's that got to do with the Arab Spring?

Arab despots can no longer take their legitimacy for granted.
 
Arab despots can no longer take their legitimacy for granted.

They never have. They are colonial impositions whose raison d'etre is to support us, and rely on continued protection from us in the West as well as some feigned Islamic piety. They are mostly hated by their populations, a large and growing proportion of which are slaves from poorer Islamic countries. But if they keep us happy and Iran busy, no riff-raff rebels are a threat to them.
 
Minerals and water?!? I'm sorry, but I find it hard to believe that Jordan could even keep its population alive without regular water imports!
Maybe I'm getting mixed up with somewhere else? I was under the vague impression that Jordan had deep enough aquifers to give it a surplus of water, but it's possible I read this about something else and it all got jumbled up in my mind.

Well yes, however I think there is a mentality with very deep roots to view kingship as a paternal relationship to the tribe. Scottish clans might not have appreciated their kings but the Middle East has had sheer despotism for five thousand years (due to geography, really, more than anything). It's the only kind of state they really understand.
Again, this isn't explanation. You're just offering the same flattened cliché as Kaiserguard. There's no how or why, just the repeated assertion of a suspiciously uncomplicated is. Even the attempt to link paternal kingship to clannishness is just, at this stage, a vague analogy.
 
Again, this isn't explanation. You're just offering the same flattened cliché as Kaiserguard. There's no how or why, just the repeated assertion of a suspiciously uncomplicated is. Even the attempt to link paternal kingship to clannishness is just, at this stage, a vague analogy.

I'm not really sure what you're demanding of me.
 
I'm not really sure what you're demanding of me.
Explanation, basically. You and Kaiserguard claim that clannishness lends legitimacy to monarchical government, and I'm asking the mechanisms behind that to be explained. Kaiserguard hasn't really offered anything but an appeal to antiquity, that they're both old so they must be mutually-supportive, which is nonsense. You've offered an analogy between kinship and kingship, which is maybe the start of an explanation (paternal kingship is definitely A Thing), but you haven't elaborated on it, and ultimately you seem to be falling back onto Kaiserguard's appeal to antiquity.

I mean, neither of you have actually bothered to define "clan" or "king" in a Middle Eastern context, or even considered that these definitions might vary with time and place. You both just seem to be heaping on Orientalist tropes and hoping they stick.
 
Kaiserguard hasn't really offered anything but an appeal to antiquity, that they're both old so they must be mutually-supportive, which is nonsense. You've offered an analogy between kinship and kingship, which is maybe the start of an explanation (paternal kingship is definitely A Thing), but you haven't elaborated on it, and ultimately you seem to be falling back onto Kaiserguard's appeal to antiquity.

No, I am not appealing to antiquity. Implicitly I argued that clan identity and monarchy are elements of the pre-individualist world order. Since you misidentified it as simple appeal to antiquity, I will now restate it explicitly: While such institutions can and do occasionally clash with each other (just as churches and monarchs do), they are also fundamentally incompatible with modern democracy. Both institutions nourish a cultural identity fundamentally different from modern democracy. In that respect, the two work together against hyperindividualism.
 
No, I am not appealing to antiquity. Implicitly I argued that clan identity and monarchy are elements of the pre-individualist world order. Since you misidentified it as simple appeal to antiquity, I will now restate it explicitly: While such institutions can and do occasionally clash with each other (just as churches and monarchs do), they are also fundamentally incompatible with modern democracy. Both institutions nourish a cultural identity fundamentally different from modern democracy. In that respect, the two work together against hyperindividualism.
How exactly are the existing European monarchs clashing with democracy? And how does the Corsican and Sardinian clan structure clash with it?
 
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