Beyond Coercion

The Durability of the Arab State

Adeed Dawisha, I. William Zartman, Adeed Dawisha, I. William Zartman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317410287
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume, first published in 1988, analyses the process of stabilisation amongst the Arab states, a process that has contradicted all predictions of impending disintegration and impending collapse. Although there were some cases of disintegration, there are evidently mechanisms at work that helped consolidate the majority of Arab states and the Arab state system. Revolutions, as in Iran or the Sudan, or political collapse and disintegration, as in Lebanon, have been highly visible but nevertheless exceptions. This collection, Volume Three in the Nation, State and Integration in the Arab World research project carried out by the Istituto Affari Internazionali, focuses on the problem of explaining the stability and persistence of the state in the Arab world.

1 Arab Bureaucracies: Expanding Size, Changing Roles

Nazih Ayubi

DOI: 10.4324/9781315684819-1

Few can fail to notice the process of bureaucratisation that has swept the Arab world since the 1950s. ‘Bureaucratisation’ means two things: (a) bureaucratic growth, i.e. expansion in public bodies of the sort that can be measured by increases in the numbers of administrative units and personnel as well as the rise in public expenditure, including in particular, wages and salaries; and (b) an orientation whereby the administrative and technical dominate over the social. Generally it is a tendency that goes very much in the direction of centralisation, hierarchy and control.

Both aspects of bureaucratisation have grown substantially in the Arab world in the last 30 years. The remarkable thing is that this has happened in all states. For the purposes of this study, the Arab states are classified along three scales: ‘old’ vs ‘new’, large vs small, rich vs poor. A fourth scale — ‘radical’ vs ‘conservative’ — should not be forgotten, although it is of less significance at present to the issue at hand.

It is possible to argue that the expansion and role of the public bureaucracy are affected by the position of any particular Arab state along these three scales. Given that we could not cover all Arab states in detail, the study has concentrated (without excluding others) on Egypt on the one hand, and three Gulf states (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates)¹ on the other. These were chosen to represent ‘extreme types’ on the three scales: Egypt is old, large and poor, while the Gulf states are on the whole new, small and rich. The choice is also useful in that in the 1960s Egypt was usually characterised as ‘radical’ and Saudi Arabia as ‘conservative’. Two ‘intermediate’ cases — those of Jordan and Syria — are also touched upon briefly in order to provide the chapter with more of a comparative nature.

Expanding Size

It is remarkable how extensively and rapidly the bureaucracy has expanded in practically all Arab countries, even though the relative weight of the various causes of this expansion has differed from one type of country to another. Four criteria are used to measure bureaucratic growth: increase in the number of administrative units, increase in the number of public employees, increase in current government expenditure and, within that, increase in the wages and salaries of the employees. In considering the extent of bureaucratic growth, these four criteria should be taken together in the sense that a relatively limited or slow increase in one category at any particular stage should not distract the analyst from observing the phenomenon of bureaucratic growth in its totality; i.e. as represented by a combination of all four factors together.

Expansion Described

The dynamics of bureaucratic growth in a number of Arab countries will be described before we investigate possible reasons for expansion.

Bureaucratic growth in Egypt

The disproportionate group of Egypt’s public ‘establishment’ is not a new phenomenon. However, with the 1952 revolution, the public bureaucracy grew more rapidly and extensively under the impact of the regime’s policies to expand industrial activities, welfare services and free education (Ayubi 1980, Chapter 3). This growth was particularly striking after the ‘socialist measures’ of the early 1960s, which involved widescale nationalisation of industry, trade and finance, worker participation in management and profits, and an extensive programme for social services and insurance. Thus from 1962–3 to 1970, Egypt’s national income increased by 68 per cent, resting on an increase in the labour force of no more than 20 per cent. Yet at the same time, posts in the public bureaucracy increased by 70 per cent and salaries by 123 per cent (Ayubi 1980, pp. 218–32). Thus far, the rate of bureaucratic growth had substantially exceeded the rate of growth in population, employment and production.

The main irony, however, is that in the 1970s, and indeed following the adoption of the economic open door policy in 1974, the impetus of institutional growth continued under its own momentum even though the role of the government and the scope of the public sector were starting to diminish in importance. For example, the 1975 budget indicated that current expenditure accounted for 66.2 per cent of the total financial outlay of the budget, while wages and salaries accounted for 10.5 per cent (Ministry of Finance, The State Budget, 1975). Indeed, considering governmental outlays in the period from 1973 to 1978 as a whole, one finds that salaries more than doubled while current expenditure trebled during this time.

In terms of manpower, in 1978 the public bureaucracy — i.e. the civil service and the public sector excluding enterprise workers — employed over 1,900,000 persons. If state companies are added, the public ‘establishment’ at the beginning of 1978 was employing about 3,200,000 officials and workers (CAOA and Ministry of Finance, 1978 and 1979). At the beginning of the 1980s, the still-expanding Egyptian bureaucracy looked even bigger. It employed 2,876,000 individuals in central and local government as well as in the public sector.

One of the main problems about bureaucratic inflation that has occurred since the adoption of infitah is that it has happened at a time when the public economy as a whole and state industry in particular are not — given the reorientation of policy and the changing role of the government — expanding fast enough to make these increases in personnel and expenditure a rewarding exercise. It is therefore probable that bureaucratic inflation will increasingly represent a strain on national resources. One of the unhealthy aspects that accompanied this inflation in public expenditure was the decline in the percentage of such expenditure on economic activities from 35 per cent in 1962 to only 22 per cent of the total outlay in 1976. Other problems to emanate from bureaucratic growth include excessively slow action, very low remuneration and as a result, extremely poor performance.

Bureaucratic growth in the Gulf

Compared to Egypt, the origin of whose bureaucracy goes back thousands of years and whose formation in modern form dates back over a century, the bureaucracies of the Gulf have been created from scratch. Their main expansion has been an outcome of oil wealth, which moved the states towards large-scale social welfare programmes and ambitious economic development plans.

Saudi Arabia

The Saudi bureaucracy was initiated in the 1950s and its growth has been remarkable in the three decades it has existed so far. The number of ministries has grown from four to 20, and over 40 public authorities and corporations have been established since 1950.

Civil service employees, who numbered no more than a few hundred in 1950, increased to about 37,000 in 1962–3, to 85,000 in 1970–1 and to over 245,000 in 1979–80. The ratio of public employees to the total population in the early 1980s was approximately 3.5 to 4 per cent, which is admittedly not excessive, but government civil servants represented 10 per cent of the total labour force and 13 per cent if one counts non-career personnel.

The oil boom manifested itself in a massive increase in revenues which jumped from $2.7 billion in 1972 to $22.6 billion in 1974. This was immediately followed by large increases in expenditure. Between 1973 and 1982, salaries and benefits, as well as current expenditure, grew thirteen-fold (The Statistical yearbook, 1981–2). Without doubt, the expansion in public expenditure in Saudi Arabia has been most impressive.

Kuwait

The handful of administrations and directorates that existed in the early 1950s developed into ten departments in 1959. These were turned into ministries in 1962, when three more were added, making a total of 13 ministries. By 1976, the number of operating ministries had reached 16 in addition to two ministers of state (Marouf, 1982, pp. 32–9). Furthermore, a number of higher councils have been created (for Petroleum Affairs, for Housing Affairs etc.) and over 25 public authorities and corporations.

The numbers of government employees grew rapidly: from 22,073 in 1966, to 113,274 in 1976, to 145,451 in 1980. According to official figures, government employees represented 12.5 per cent of the population and about 34 per cent of the total labour force of Kuwait in 1975.² In 1979 the Amir of Kuwait expressed the view that some 65,000 civil servants in Kuwait were unnecessary and a World Bank report on Kuwaiti public administration suggested a total freeze on all new appointments.

Government expenditure also soared. Between 1973 and 1979, domestic expenditure increased by 388 per cent and salaries and wages by 242 per cent (Central Bank of Kuwait, Economic Report, 1978). It is estimated that nearly 39 per cent of government expenditure can be classified as organisational: this includes the substantial incomes provided to the head of state and the Amiri Diwan as well as more standard expenses such as the Employees Bureau and supplementary allocations.

United Arab Emirates (UAE)

The first federal government was formed immediately after the Union was declared in 1971, with Abu Dhabi as the main sponsor. In 1968 Abu Dhabi had some 20 government directorates, which increased to 25 by 1970. The first council of ministers of Abu Dhabi, which was formed in 1971, included 15 ministers, but this was abolished in 1973, and replaced by a federal cabinet with 28 ministers. Abu Dhabi also established an executive council to run its own affairs. Public authorities and corporations were set up, including the Abu Dhabi Steel Works, the General Industry Corporation and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

In 1968 the Abu Dhabi administration employed 2,000 officials. By 1970, their number had doubled and by 1974 it reached 5,352, of which 37 per cent were UAE citizens, 42 per cent were other Arabs and 21 per cent were foreign nationals (Rashid, 1975). Eight years later, the number of public employees in Abu Dhabi had jumped to 24,078 (AIPK, 1983, p. 358).

Public employment on the federal level quadrupled between 1972 and 1982, from 10,500 to over 40,000 (Arabian Government, 1983, p. 213). The explosion in numbers of public employees is the most dramatic among the three Gulf countries studied, given the country’s minute population base, its recent independence and the fact that the oil boom more or less immediately followed its formation. The UAE is representative, but in an extreme way, of what happened in other desert states where the local human base could not support the required expansion, leading therefore to heavy reliance upon expatriate labour. In the Abu Dhabi bureaucracy (which is the largest and most established within the UAE), a ludicrous 83.6 per cent of all officials are foreign nationals.

There are several indications that the state bureaucracy may have stretched itself beyond its capabilities. In 1983, this country, which ranks among the highest in the world in terms of per capita income, ran up a budgetary deficit which forced it to defer payment of salaries to public employees for a number of months. As the budgetary deficit was expected to increase in 1984, the Ministry of Finance and Industry forbad the creation of new public posts for non-citizens in the following financial year (al-Watan, 7 May 1984).

There has been a vast expansion in public finances in the UAE since the oil boom. The federal budget, which is mainly financed by Abu Dhabi, quadrupled between 1971 and 1974.³ Between 1973 and 1974, for example, Abu Dhabi’s budget more than doubled. Payment for national and federal ministries accounted for nearly 40 per cent of the total (Aziz, 1979, pp. 55–70). In the Abu Dhabi budget for 1976, expenditure on both Emirate and the federation continued to grow; expenditure in 1977 was 74.8 per cent of the total, rising to 84.3 in 1982.

Bureaucratic growth outside the Gulf

Bureaucratic inflation followed the same pattern outside the Gulf. Where there were fewer than ten ministries at the time of independence, there were more than 20 by the 1980s (22 in Jordan, 24 in Syria). Public sector organisations proliferated: in Syria in the early 1980s there were 60 public organisations (mu’assasat) and 25 public corporations; in Jordan, there were about 38 public organisations of various descriptions.

In 1982, Syria had 440,000 public officials in the civil service and public sector (excluding the armed forces, police and security). Compared to a total population for the same year of 10,788,000, the ratio is one in 25, or 4 per cent (Syria Minister of State, 1984). Related to a total labour force of 2,174,000 in 1979, this means that civilian public employment represented 20 per cent of total employment (Syria, Central Statistical Office, 1981).

Jordan’s 1979 census records a population of 2,152,000, of which the labour force constituted 18 per cent. In 1982, 59,000 people worked for the government (excluding casual workers) (Public Statistics Department, 1982; al-Khidma al-Madaniyya, June 1983). Thus government officials represented 2.75 per cent of the population and 14.9 per cent of the labour force.

Current expenditure came to over half of the total outlay in Jordan’s 1981 budget; of that, 21 per cent went on salaries and wages (State Budget Department, 1981). In Syria, current expenditure amounted to 57 per cent of total outgoings. Of that, about 18 per cent went on salaries and wages (Statistical Yearbook, 1984).

Why the Expansion?

Reasons for bureaucratic expansion are multiple. Some is due purely to demographic growth and to the need to supply services for increasing populations. But as the percentage of public officials within the population in general and the labour force in particular tends to be higher than in many other societies, one has to examine other causes. The following seem to be of particular importance: traditional prestige of public office (for long associated with powerful foreign rulers); strong belief in the developmental role of the bureaucracy; the relationship of public office to creating the contacts vital for private business; and possibly the impact of the Egyptian model, both as an example and through the role of the large number of Egyptian officials working in many other Arab countries.⁴

Some of the reasons for bureaucratic growth are entrenched in the social and political conditions of the society. Most important is the expansion in formal higher education that is in no way related to the economic needs and manpower requirements of the society. Under pressure from people aspiring to higher social prestige, and the belief that qualifications lead to economic development, the Middle East has witnessed a strong case of what one expert has called ‘diploma disease’.

This tendency, which reached alarming proportions in Egypt, has caught up with even the small city states of the Gulf, where everybody is racing to build yet another new university, regardless not only of whether the market needs graduates but even of the availability of students. In Egypt, where there are three times the number of engineers that are required by the country’s industrial base, and where only 20 per cent of agronomists work in agriculture, where can the remaining graduates go but into the public bureaucracy, where they do very little but drain the public purse. The share of wages and salaries in Egypt’s total expenditure has risen steadily over the past 20 years.

Proportionately, too much attention has been given to formal higher education in comparison with technical education and vocational training in all Arab countries. In most countries of the world, educational expansion has in fact followed, not preceded, industrial development (the only possible ex...