Civil Society in Yemen: The Political Economy of Activism in Modern Arabia

272 Pages·1998·5.15 MB·English

by  Sheila Carapico

Sheila Carapico's book on civic participation in modern Yemen makes
an authoritative, pathbreaking contribution to the study of political
culture in the Arabian Peninsula. Relying on in-depth documentary
and field research, the author traces the political dynamics of the last
fifty years that culminated in Yemeni unification, focusing on efforts to
develop the political, economic, and social structures of a modern,
democratic government. Her wide-ranging analysis of the legal,
institutional, and financial aspects of state building and of popular
dimensions of political liberalization, protest, and participation chal-
lenge the stereotypical view of conservative Arab Muslim society. The
political economy approach to the study of a surprising degree of
"activism in Arabia" helps to interpret the nature of civil society from a
broader theoretical perspective. This is an important book which
promises to become the definitive statement on twentieth-century
Yemen.

Cambridge Middle East Studies
Civil society in Yemen
Cambridge Middle East Studies 9
Editorial Board
Charles Tripp (general editor)
Shaul Bakhash Michael C. Hudson Noah Lucas
Denize Kandiyoti Rashid Khalidi Basim Musallam
Roger Owen
Cambridge Middle East Studies has been established to publish
books on the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Middle East and
North Africa. The aim of the series is to provide new and original
interpretations of aspects of Middle Eastern societies and their
histories. To achieve disciplinary diversity, books will be solicited from
authors writing in a wide range of fields including history, sociology,
anthropology, political science and political economy. The emphasis
will be on producing books offering an original approach along
theoretical and empirical lines. The series is intended for students and
academics, but the more accessible and wide-ranging studies will also
appeal to the interested general reader.
1 Parvid Paidar, Women and the political process in
twentieth-century Iran
2 Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, Redefining the Egyptian
nation, 1930-1945
3 Annelies Moors, Women, property and Islam: Palestinian experiences,
1920-1990
4 Paul Kingston, Britain and the politics of modernization in the
Middle East, 1945-1958
5 Daniel Brown, Rethinking tradition in modern Islamic thought
6 Nathan J. Brown, The rule of law in the Arab world: courts in Egypt
and the Gulf
7 Richard Tapper, Frontier nomads of Iran: the political and social
history of the Shahsevan
8 Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha's men: MehmedAH, his army and the
making of modern Egypt
Civil society in Yemen
The political economy of activism
in modern Arabia
Sheila Carapico
University of Richmond
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521590983
© Sheila Carapico 1998
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1998
This digitally printed first paperback version 2006
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Carapico, Sheila.
Civil society in Yemen: the political economy of activism in
modern Arabia / Sheila Carapico
p. cm. - (Cambridge Middle East studies: 9)
Includes bibliographical references (p. 236) and index.
ISBN 0-521-59098-1 (hardcover)
1. Civil society — Yemen. 2. Political participation — Yemen.
3. Yemen - Politics and government. I. Title. II. Series.
JQ1842.A91C37 1998 97-23259 CIP
306.2-dc21
ISBN-13 978-0-521-59098-3 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-59098-1 hardback
ISBN-13 978-0-521-03482-1 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-03482-5 paperback
Contents
List of tables viii
Preface and acknowledgments ix
Note on transliteration and terminology xii
List of abbreviations xiii
Map xv
1 Civil society in comparative perspective i
2 Twentieth-century states and economies 19
3 Islam, tribes, and social services 60
4 Colonialism, activism, and resistance 84
5 Self-help, social capital, and state power 107
6 Unity, pluralism, and political participation 135
7 Civic responses to political crisis 170
8 Political movements, cultural trends, and civic potential 201
Endnotes 212
Glossary 234
Bibliography 236
Index 254
Vll
Tables
I.I A snapshot of three political openings in Yemen 16
2.1 States and economic conditions, three historical periods 20
2.2 Regime changes in the YAR and PDRY 37
2.3 Basic economic indicators, YAR and PDRY, 1987 40
2.4 Central government expenditures, YAR and PDRY, 1977 42
2.5 Proportional value of production by ownership and sector,
PDRY, 1982 45
2.6 Investments by ownership and sector, YAR, 1974-1986 47
5.1 Government and independent roads, schools, and water
projects, North Yemen, 1961-1986 in
5.2 Project funds from citizens, LDAs, and government, YAR,
1973-1981 128
5.3 Sources of LDA revenues, 1976-1981 128
6.1 Major parties and party newspapers, 1990-1994 141
6.2 Results of parliamentary elections, 1993 and 1997 149
6.3 Percentage votes by party and governorate, 1993 elections 150
7.1 Major cabinet changes, Republic of Yemen, 1990-1997 190
Preface and acknowledgments
I hope my colleagues find this work worthy, for it is the product of many
years' research, and a great many people provided information and
insights. My interest in Yemen began with my first visit to Sana'a,
Hodeida, Taiz, and Aden in 1972, as part of a larger tour of the region
made possible by my undergraduate year at the American University in
Cairo in 1971-72; it has continued ever since.
Research on which this book was based has been supported, directly
or indirectly, from a range of sources. I returned to Sana'a in January
1977, with a grant for PhD dissertation research from the State
University of New York at Binghamton. During the next four years of
continuous residence in North Yemen, I worked as a "freelance" social
scientist, conducting baseline surveys for several international develop-
ment agencies and contractors, including the US Agency for Inter-
national Development and the World Bank. These included an urban
planning survey of workplaces in the five cities of the YAR; a short study
of women's economic activities in three rural locations; "rural economic
recognizance" in Hajja and Hodeida governorates; a comparative study
of agricultural production in Ibb and ' Amran, conducted in conjunction
with the American Institute for Yemeni Studies; and a nationwide
survey conducted in twenty-two communities for the national rural
electrification project. Between expeditions for these studies, I worked
from my home in Sana'a with what was then called the Confederation of
Yemeni Development Associations, preparing a dissertation on the
"cooperative movement."
During the 1980s and 1990s, I returned to North Yemen on several
occasions: in 1982 on behalf of Cornell University's rural development
research project; in 1986 with a research grant from the University of
Richmond; in 1987 as a consultant for the International Fund for
Agricultural Development; in 1989 and 1990 in my capacity as then
president of the American Institute for Yemeni Studies (AIYS); and in
1991 as a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme
on management development problems after unification. In 1993, while
x Preface
on sabbatical from the University of Richmond, and after several
months in Egypt under a grant from the American Research Center in
Egypt, I went back to Yemen as a Fulbright fellow. The Fulbright
offered the luxury of full-time research, which in that period meant
reading newspapers, conducting interviews, and attendance at public
events such as seminars, conferences, and sessions of parliament. Again
I extended my stay past the grant period, supported by the Netherlands
embassy through the Women's Studies and Social Research program at
Sana'a University. I had packed my papers and books for a planned
departure in early May 1994. In the event, however, I evacuated on a
US military aircraft, only to return in July 1994 to help with a Human
Rights Watch report on the war. Finally, the University of Richmond
generously paid for a short trip in the summer of 1996 to update the
narrative in this book beyond the war.
During a total of about six years in the country, I have visited every
governorate except distant al-Mahra, taken notes on over 2,000 inter-
views, and collected shelves full of materials. This necessitates a certain
selectivity in content, citations, and acknowledgments in this book.
First, while striving to provide a clear historical perspective, I have
avoided recapitulating historical details already published in English.
Thus many important figures are not named, some political events and
policies are not explained, there is no military information, and foreign
policy is not addressed systematically.
Secondly, I have not cited interviews, which are far too numerous to
document, although this is the convention among political scientists.
Instead I have adopted an ethnographic voice in describing many of the
events and processes I observed firsthand, while citing published
sources for factual information and individual interpretations.
Thirdly, the list of persons who have helped me is too long to publish.
My interpretations are deeply influenced and informed by the work of
my friends the Yemen research community, including the "old-timers"
from the 1970s and the new generation in the 1990s, with whom I have
shared adventures, interviews, stories, notes, panels, and critiques and
from whom I have benefited immeasurably. Without the political
historians who explained regime changes, the ethnographers who
recorded village life, and the consultants who compiled statistics, this
work could not have been done. Among the foreigners, therefore, I
single out only two whose colleagueship I value still but who will not
read this, Ron Hart and Leigh Douglas.
Among Yemenis, moreover, the responsiveness, cooperation, and
hospitality toward a Western woman with no government or family
sponsors and an insatiable appetite for information has been incredible.