Legislating the Progressive Arab Society: State Authority and Social Rights in the 1964 Interim Constitutions of Egypt, Iraq, and Syria
Keywords:
constitutional, progressive, solidarity, reflected, socioeconomicAbstract
This article examines the 1964 interim constitutions of Egypt, Iraq, and Syria as markers of a two-decade-long shift in Arab constitutional design—moving from individual liberal rights toward a new regional social contract centered on social rights. The vision of a progressive society rested on two principles of collective welfare: solidarity—expressed through constitutional commitments to collective well-being—and social justice, which aimed to ensure equality and better living standards for all. Contrary to common interpretations, these documents were not simply authoritarian bargains or tools for consolidating power. Rather, the interim constitutions were social bargains that reflected legislative social engineering during decolonization and guided both citizens and the state in building a new society. Despite the intense regional rivalries, these constitutions reflected a shared commitment to socioeconomic transformation that transcended political divides. The analysis of these constitutions shows that the difficulties in their execution extended beyond future limitations of political will or economic resources. Rather, they contained inherent legal and ideological tensions about the structure and direction of the progressive society—particularly in their approach to fundamental questions of social organization. These tensions emerged in the complex relationship between family and individual rights, the delicate balance between private and collective ownership, and the role of state patriarchy in providing social welfare.
References
1
Elie Podeh, “To Unite or Not to Unite – That Is Not the Question: The 1963 Tripartite Unity Talks Reassessed,” Middle Eastern Studies 39, no. 1 (2003): 152–3, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00263200412331301627. See US evaluation of the talks Memorandum: “‘The Cairo Unity Talks’. Memoranda On Iraq And Syria, August 28, 1963,” FO 370/2720-0004, MS The Middle East Online: Iraq, 1914–1974, The National Archives (Kew, United Kingdom), link.gale.com/apps/doc/SC5107457806/GDSC?u=bengurion&sid=bookmark-GDSC&pg=1, accessed October 15, 2023. See a short video of participants: U.A.R.: Cairo: “Unity Talks between Egypt, Syria, and Iraq,” April 8, 1963, Record ID: 919143, Reuters, 1 min., https://reuters.screenocean.com/record/919143.
2
Since independence in 1946, Syria has prioritized Arab unity, actively pursuing union plans with Iraq and Egypt, culminating in the United Arab Republic (UAR) with Egypt in 1958. Although Egypt, led by Nasser, later embraced Arab nationalism, it was initially hesitant, only officially adopting Arab unity between 1954 and 1956. After Baʿathist coups in Iraq and Syria in 1963, new unification efforts emerged, but they were undermined by internal and regional tensions. Eberhard Kienle, “Arab Unity Schemes Revisited: Interest, Identity, and Policy in Syria and Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27, no. 1 (1995): 53–71, http://www.jstor.org/stable/176187; Podeh, “To Unite or Not to Unite.”
3
Malcolm H. Kerr, The Arab Cold War: Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasir and His Rivals, 1958–1970, 3rd ed. (London: published for the Royal Institute of International Affairs by Oxford University Press, 1971).
4
For two different evaluations of the failed attempts at democratization through the establishment of liberal-constitutional regimes, see Elie Kedourie’s Politics in the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) and Elizabeth F. Thompson’s How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs: The Syrian Arab Congress of 1920 and the Destruction of Its Historical Liberal-Islamic Alliance (New York: Grove/Atlantic, 2020). For discussions on constitutions as mechanisms to entrench authoritarian regimes, see Nathan J. Brown, Constitutions in a Nonconstitutional World: Arab Basic Laws and the Prospects for Accountable Government (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002). For a broader analysis of the role of constitutions in authoritarian regimes, see Tom Ginsburg, “Beyond Window Dressing: Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes,” in Modern Constitutions, ed. Rogers M. Smith and Richard R. Beeman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020), 133–53, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv16t6mq1.8.
5
Brown, Constitutions in a Nonconstitutional World, 10–3.
6
The analysis of horizontal and vertical social contracts is based on Markus Loewe, Tina Zintl, and Annabelle Houdret, “The Social Contract as a Tool of Analysis: Introduction to the Special Issue on ‘Framing the Evolution of New Social Contracts in Middle Eastern and North African Countries,’” World Development 145 (2021): 104982.
7
Among the vast literature on the authoritarian bargain, these are often cited: Steven Heydemann, “Social Pacts and the Persistence of Authoritarianism in the Middle East,” in Debating Arab Authoritarianism: Dynamics and Durability in Nondemocratic Regimes, ed. Oliver Schlumberger (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 21–38; and Mehran Kamrava, “The Rise and Fall of Ruling Bargains in the Middle East,” in Beyond the Arab Spring: The Evolving Ruling Bargain in the Middle East, ed. Mehran Kamrava (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 17–45. See also a recent intervention by Raymond Hinnebusch, “The Rise and Decline of the Populist Social Contract in the Arab World,” World Development 129 (2020): 104661. For a typology and analysis of various approaches to the authoritarian bargain, see Roel Meijer, “Citizenship, Social Pacts, Authoritarian Bargains, and the Arab Uprisings,” in The Crisis of Citizenship in the Arab World, ed. Roel Meijer and Nils Butenschøn (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 79–82.
8
Kamrava, The Rise and Fall of Ruling Bargains, 18.
9
Hinnebusch, The Rise and Decline of the Populist Social Contract, 3.
10
Heydemann, Social Pacts and the Persistence of Authoritarianism, 21.
11
Meijer, Citizenship, Social Pacts; and Roel Meijer, “Citizenship and the Transition from Colonial to Authoritarian Pacts,” in Routledge Handbook of Citizenship in the Middle East and North Africa, ed. Roel Meijer, James N. Sater and Zahra R. Babar (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2021), 85–99.
12
This account is based on “Chronology, March 16, 1964–June 15, 1964,” Middle East Journal 18, no. 3 (1964): 320–50.
13
Report by Amembassy Baghdad titled “Comparison of New Iraqi and UAR Constitutions,” May 7, 1964, folder 101127-009-1048, folder title POL 15-5 IRAQ, Government: Constitution, Record Group 59, US State Department Central Files, National Archives, College Park, Maryland; Michael Eppel, Iraq from Monarchy to Tyranny: From the Hashemites to the Rise of Saddam (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2004), 220.
14
Guy Bechor, The Sanhuri Code, and the Emergence of Modern Arab Civil Law (1932–1949) (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
15
Relli Shechter, The Egyptian Social Contract: A History of State-Middle Class Relations (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023), 70–81.
16
Steven Heydemann, Authoritarianism in Syria: Institutions and Social Conflict, 1946–1970 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 30–54.
17
See the constitution in Yusuf Q. Khuri, al-Dasatir fi al-ʿAlam al-ʿArabi: Nusus wa-Taʿdilat: 1839–1987 [Constitutions in the Arab World: Texts and Amendments, 1839–1987] (Beirut: Dar al-Hamraʾ, 1989), 259–71. For the English translation of the constitution, see Muhammad Khalil, The Arab States and the Arab League (Beirut: Khayats; London: Constable, 1962), 535–55.
18
In addition to the analysis of the 1950 constitution itself, observations on the constitution are based on contemporary studies of the constitution; see “The Syrian Constitution of September 5, 1950,” January 5, 1951, OIR Report No. 5374, Department of State Office of Intelligence Research, 8; Majid Khadduri, “Constitutional Development in Syria: With Emphasis on the Constitution of 1950,” Middle East Journal 5, no. 2 (1951): 137–60, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4322268; Karim Atassi, Syria, the Strength of an Idea: The Constitutional Architectures of Its Political Regimes (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 155–92, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316872017.
19
Al-Dustur al-Suri [The Syrian Constitution] (Syria: Matbaʿat al-Jumhuriyya al-Suriyya, 1953). For the English translation, see “Constitution of the Republic of Syria,” Middle East Journal 7, no. 4 (1953): 521–38, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4322546. For an analysis, see Mary Louise Manley, “The Syrian Constitution of 1953,” Middle East Journal 7, no. 4 (1953): 520–1, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4322545.
20
For the topic discussed in this seminar, see Halaqat al-Dirasat al-Ijtimaʿiyya lil-buldan al-ʿArabiyya fi al-Sharq al-Awsat [Social Studies Seminars for Arab Countries in the Middle East], v. 1 (Cairo: Matbaʿat Misr, 1950), 2.
