The State Approach in the Arab World and the Methodological Issue: The Case of Mauritania as a Model

• By Ahmed Muhammad Alamin Andari

Professor and researcher in political science and international relations, Modern University of Nouakchott, Mauritania.

• Translated by Mohamed SAKHRI.

This study addresses the concept of the state in the Arab world in relation to the issue of methodology, based on a main hypothesis which posits that the methodologies of political science, despite the significant advancements they have achieved in the West, still fall short in analyzing the state in the Third World in general, and the state in the Arab world in particular.

This shortfall is attributed to a number of reasons, the most significant of which is that these methodologies, in all their historical and contemporary dimensions, are predominantly Western frameworks, born from Western experiences and developed in the West, later transferred to the Third World, including the Arab region, where they are expected to be applied as ready-made assumptions, addressing questions regarding a state that is fundamentally different from the Western state in essence, even if it resembles it in structure and form.

Consequently, while these methodologies have achieved considerable success and demonstrate a good ability to analyze the state in the West, understanding its nature and the essence of its various institutions, they face significant confusion and exhibit numerous shortcomings when applied to the state in the Arab world, or when used to attempt understanding the essence of the latter.

The reason for this is that the state in the Arab world did not emerge or develop in a natural context; it was not born from a normal socio-economic and political setting unique to its societies, but rather consists of external structures imported from the West and implanted in an environment that is completely alien to them, and fundamentally different from the environment that produced them. This contrasts with their counterparts in the West, which arose and developed in a regular way, emerging as a natural product of the evolution of those societies.

This leads to the necessary assertion that the current form of political science methodologies, when conceived, aimed to assist in the study and understanding of the state and its related issues in Europe and America, for which they seemingly proved suitable and capable. However, when these methods are transferred from there and employed to comprehend the state and its associated phenomena in the Arab world, they become ineffective and fail to fulfill that role. Even if we hypothetically accept their applicability, they will at best lead us to vague and fragmented conclusions, or result in projecting the state situation in the West onto the state in the Arab world while overlooking the significant differences between the two cases.

While it may generally be possible to apply the previous judgment when approaching the state in the Arab world, the selection of a specific model is not without its importance, as choosing such a model could transition us from a general theoretical stage to a specific practical one, serving as a bridge connecting theory and application, and providing an experimental field to test the previous assumptions, potentially either refuting or confirming them—a pursuit that any research aspiring to be scientific actively seeks.

Although this research could select any Arab country as its model, the choice of examining Mauritania carries particular significance, deriving from two main points: the first is that the state in Mauritania, like that in other Arab countries, did not emerge organically from within society as it did in Western contexts. Rather, it was an alien mechanism and an imported structure imposed by colonialism. However, what distinguishes Mauritania from many other Arab cases is that its state and institutions are entirely inherited from colonial rule, thus differing completely from other countries like Morocco and Oman, where colonial powers maintained pre-existing forms of governance (the monarchy in Morocco and the sultanic system in Oman), albeit with attempts at reshaping and modernizing them according to their own agendas.

The second point is that the issue of the state’s estrangement from society in Mauritania has been exacerbated by another crucial factor: the absence of any legacy of a centralized state in Mauritania, making it impossible to rely on such a legacy to adapt the imported state structures from the West to align with the specific realities of society. History attests to a near-total absence of any form of centralized state in Mauritania prior to 1960, the year of its independence.

This suggests that attempting to analyze the state in Mauritania based on Western political science methodologies could clearly demonstrate whether these methodologies represent universal frameworks applicable everywhere and at all times, or whether they are merely models with Western particularities generalized to other parts of the world, while their true applicability remains confined within the boundaries of the Western context that produced them.

Thus, this research aims to delve into the depths of the crisis of political science methodologies in the Arab world through one of its most significant manifestations: the inability of these methodologies to understand or grasp the essence and nature of the state in the Arab world, particularly in countries lacking previous experience with centralized states, such as Mauritania.

The study focuses on a primary issue: the inability of Western methodologies to analyze and comprehend the state in the Arab world in general, and in Mauritania specifically. In addressing this issue, the study touches on several sub-domains, such as the relationship between the incapacity of these methodologies to analyze the state in the Arab world and the absence of a definite and clear concept of the state within it. This absence leads the researcher to confront a situation where they are not dealing with a single, clearly defined concept of the state, as in the West, but rather with a large array of ambiguous, conflicting, and intertwined concepts.

The study also addresses whether it is possible to benefit from these Western methodologies in analyzing the state in Mauritania through adapting and recontextualizing them according to the social, political, and economic context of Mauritania, or if such attempts would merely result in superficial amalgamation that would ultimately be ineffective. Finally, the study questions why no specific methodological alternative has been developed to adequately analyze the state in the Arab world and what the crucial pathways toward such an alternative might be, if a viable option exists.

The study explores many issues concerning the analysis of the state in the Arab world through the specific model of Mauritania, aiming for a holistic perspective to identify the various deficiencies that Western political science methodologies suffer from in their attempts to analyze the state in the Arab world. It specifically targets shedding light on the various challenges facing researchers when dealing with those methodologies, posing several questions:

1. What are the factors that hinder the analysis of the state in Mauritania based on Western political science methodologies? What are the primary shortcomings of those methodologies in engaging with this state?
2. Is there a harmony between the concepts developed by those methodologies in addressing the state and the actual concept of that state in Mauritania? To what extent is the issue of concept a part of the broader issues related to methodologies? Or is there no connection between the two issues?
3. What is the fundamental problem that prevents the utilization of those Western methodologies in analyzing the state in Mauritania? What are the main challenges that arise when they are applied to the state in Mauritania? To what extent can alternative methodologies be sought in engaging with that state?

Is there a way to purify those methodologies from their deficiencies by subjecting them to review, scrutiny, and examination? Is the problem inherent in those methodologies themselves, or is it in the way researchers treat them as ready-made assumptions, applying them with undue laxity and simplification, and lacking the necessary rigor in their engagement?

The study will rely on a comparative methodology as its main approach, attempting to conceptualize the state in Mauritania in comparison with the Western conceptualizations of the state to identify the similarities and differences between the two perspectives. It will also engage with other methodologies as necessary, especially inductive and empirical approaches.

The subject will be addressed in three sections. The first section will define the central concepts of the study, while the second section will compare the concept of the state in the Western and Arab experiences. During this section, we will attempt to address the implications of the state in the Mauritanian experience and provide an idea or conceptualization of it. The third section will address the manifestations and reasons for the current shortcomings of Western political science methodologies in understanding the state in the Arab world in general, and in Mauritania specifically.

First: Concepts of the Study Saad Eddin Ibrahim asserts that every writer or researcher is obligated to provide their own definition of the concepts and contents they use, considering that this aids the reader in understanding the researcher’s ideas in the precise context intended. The definitions offered by the writer of the concepts and contents they employ create a contractual lexicon of sorts between them and the reader, whereby each time the term or definition is used, it refers to something specific. Accordingly, in alignment with this notion, we will briefly attempt to define the central concepts of this study as follows:

• The State: In this study, we refer to the post-colonial state that emerged in the Arab world, known in the Arab East as the nation-state and in the Maghreb as the national state. It constitutes an entity comprised of a population, authority, and specific territory, possessing its own sovereignty, legal personality, sovereign institutions, and regional and international legitimacy. This essentially represents a political system invented by Western Europe, which underwent many stages and transformations before asserting itself between the 13th and 19th centuries across Europe, and later extending into the Americas and then to African and Asian countries, which replicated this Western political model of the state. Although all these states arose in an Arab-Islamic society with roots going back over fourteen centuries, and some had prior manifestations or were locations of earlier states in ancient or medieval history, they are in general, as nation-states, modern or newly created phenomena, emerging in some Arab countries in the interwar period, and in others during the post-World War II era.

It is important to disregard the objections of some researchers regarding the antiquity of state formation in certain Arab nations, arguing that the state in those regions is an exceedingly old phenomenon, tracing back hundreds or thousands of years, such as Egypt, which they claim could be considered a state with a history extending back 6,000 years if we relate our definition of the state to the presence of a central authority governing a territory and managing a significant portion of its affairs. If we consider sovereignty as a criterion, and the dismantling or subjection of the entity to intermediary organizations, with the adoption of citizenship rather than ethnic or religious identity, we could argue that the state’s history in Egypt goes back to the time of Muhammad Ali in the early 19th century.

The conditions of this objection apply exclusively to one country, Egypt, or perhaps to some extent Morocco, which are two out of a total of twenty-two Arab states. This means that, at best, it pertains to an exception that reinforces the rule rather than negating it, as is well known. Furthermore, it is difficult to consider that the state that emerged in Egypt at any point in its history is a nation-state in the contemporary sense of the term. Therefore, we maintain that the nation-state, in its modern conception, did not exist in the Arab world prior to the period following the end of World War I.

• The Arab World: This term in this study refers to the contemporary Arab countries, i.e., “the group of twenty-two countries that speak Arabic and are members of the Arab League.” These states are marked by cultural homogeneity and occupy a strategic position in the world, extending their territories from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Indian Ocean in the east, and from the Horn of Africa in the south to the Taurus Mountains in the north.
• Mauritania: This is an African Arab state located at the far western edge of the Arab world, in the northwestern part of the African continent. It spans twelve lines of longitude (from 5 to 17 degrees West) and twelve lines of latitude (from 15 to 27 degrees East), thus presenting a nearly irregular square shape. Its area is 1,030,700 square kilometers, and it possesses significant geopolitical importance as it represents a link between the northern and southern regions of the Sahara and overlooks the Atlantic Ocean, with the latter bordering it to the west with a coast stretching 740 kilometers from Nouadhibou to Saint Louis. To the northwest, it borders the disputed Western Sahara, largely under Moroccan control, while to the northeast it borders Algeria, to the east and southeast it shares a border with Mali, and to the southwest lies the Senegal River.

This positions Mauritania as a convergence point between Arabs and Africans and between the northern and southern regions of the African continent, complemented by its location on the eastern part of the Atlantic Ocean, which grants it special significance both strategically and economically.

Moreover, Mauritania has a significant desert dimension, as these deserts extend throughout its territory, making it a desert country with crucial access to the expanses of the Sahara stretching towards Niger.

The Methodological Problem

The term “method” refers, in a general sense, to “a manner of conducting thought or action.” In its specific technical meaning, it has been defined in various ways, including that it is “the path leading to the discovery of truth in the sciences through a set of general rules that govern the course of reasoning and determine its processes until arriving at a known conclusion.” It is also described as “a way to approach a phenomenon; the course we follow to reach the goal we previously set.” This study will adopt a Cartesian definition of the method, considering it a rational journey aimed at reaching truth or knowledge or proving a truth. This is a purposeful rational journey characterized by logical sequencing, where it begins its presentation of issues, topics, problems, or studied phenomena from the general to the specific, and from the simpler to the more complex.

In relation to the methodological problem, we mean in this study that the approaches to studying the state—specifically the methodologies from political science—are predominantly Western, having originated and developed in the West and then imported to Arab countries. Consequently, applying these methodologies to the state in the Arab world raises numerous questions regarding their ability to address the various inquiries posed by this context and whether these methodologies are suitable for studying post-colonial states in the Arab world, which differ fundamentally from Western states due to the different socio-political contexts of each. It is particularly noteworthy that a method is, in the end, a product of its environment and is challenging to separate from it; it is influenced by the values of its creators, their cultural and social backgrounds, the political contexts in which it was born, and consequently, while these methodologies may demonstrate significant capacity to absorb, understand, and explain specific phenomena in certain countries, they may fail to understand the same phenomena in others.

The West and the Arab World: Two Different Concepts of State

The concept of the nation-state, whether referred to as “national,” “state,” or “nationalistic,” is an idea that originated in the West and was later replicated by countries in the Global South, including Arab and Islamic nations. Thus, it stands in contrast to the concept of the “nation-state” as known in Arab and Islamic societies over many centuries of their history, meaning it has no roots in Arab-Islamic history or the collective consciousness of the Arab nation.

This difference has ramifications at multiple levels, including the fact that the definitions provided for the state largely apply more accurately to the state in the West, but do not completely fulfill the definition of the state as it exists in the Arab world.

To demonstrate the veracity of this hypothesis, this study will attempt to present a series of definitions of the state offered by Western and Arab scholars, to determine the extent to which those definitions apply to the state in the Arab world, as follows:

• Harold Laswell defines the state as “one of the means of organizing collective life in a particular society, the manifestation in which the life of the entire community converges, holding the highest authority therein, and the body entitled to restrict various forms of human activity, subjecting it to its internal legislation.”
• Jacques Duhamel defines it as “a form of social organization that ensures security for itself and welfare for its subjects against external and internal dangers; to achieve this purpose, it monopolizes the right to possess armed force and to use coercion and repression within society, and it does not exist without a high degree of social cohesion and a structured organization that allows it to exert its authority and implement its decisions.”
• Miloud Amer Al-Haj defines the state as “a historical process and a sociological movement shaped by societies to ensure their existence and superiority among analogous entities.”
• Abdul Wahab Al-Kayyali defines the state as “the political entity and the broad organizational frame of societal unity, regulating collective life and the locus of sovereignty, such that the will of the state legally prevails over the will of individuals and other groups in society, through the authority to issue laws and monopolize the means of coercion and the right to use them, with the aim of applying the laws to control societal movement and ensure peace, order, and progress internally, while safeguarding against external aggression.”
• Saad Eddin Ibrahim sees the state as “a political-legal entity with recognized sovereign power over a defined geographical area, governing a specific human group.”
• Ghassan Salameh defines states as “those organized political entities, which have a defined territory as much as possible, a distinct population, a somewhat organized government, and a recognized existence internationally through an organization like the United Nations.” He also defines the state in another context as “the legal structure that gradually emerged over centuries from Western historical experience,” or as “an idea that emerged in early European modernity, gradually crystallizing through stages of advancement and setbacks until it settled into its current form in the sixteenth century, as a sui generis entity of human imagination, managing the relationships among its members and protecting them from the terror of a state of war of all against all.”
• Said Sadiki defines it as “a political system invented by Western Europe, which underwent various phases and transformations before asserting itself between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries across Europe, and later extending to the Americas and the African and Asian states that similarly replicated this Western political state model.”

Returning to these previous definitions, we find that most of them do not accurately express the reality of the state as it is in the Arab world. In the latter case, there has been little concern regarding issues such as ensuring security for itself and welfare for its people against internal and external dangers, and the notion that the state in the Arab world exhibits a high degree of social cohesion is an exaggeration. Additionally, the will of the state does not always supersede that of individuals. In the presence of a patriarchal form of state in the Arab world, characterized by the known traits of personalism in governance, the absence of any separation between public and private life for its leaders, the predominance of the perspective that views public roles as a means for financial gain, and the operational dependency of the political system on networks of leaders and followers, the will of individuals—especially of rulers and their entourages—often prevails over that of the state and over the laws at various levels in Arab countries. Moreover, this state is not a creation of Arab societies; rather, it is imported from abroad, specifically from the West.

The last two definitions among these are noteworthy, as their authors perceive the state as a political system that originated in Europe before being imported by other countries. This definition may be the most representative of the reality of the state in the Arab world among the previously mentioned definitions, aligning more closely with the implications of this study and its objectives.

However, it is also worth noting that alongside the general use of the concept of the state, which typically refers to the political body of society, there exists a more specific term that confines the meaning to the institutions of governance or the ruling authority of the state, or merely refers to a mechanism in the hands of ruling elites, who themselves do not possess solid legitimacy and thus attempt to compensate for that lack through arbitrary, tyrannical, and oppressive use of this mechanism. Both of these concepts of the state apply significantly to the understanding of the state in contemporary Arab experience in general and the Mauritanian case in particular.

Regarding the concept of the state in the Arab experience, it has not included any discussion of it as the overarching political entity that encompasses land, population, and political authority; this is the historic concept of the state as embodied in other nations, such as the Chinese, Persians, and Romans. Rather, the use of the concept of the state in the historical Arab experience has remained connected to referring either to the political authority itself or the process of its transference.

In this context, Saad Eddin Ibrahim observed that Arab Islamic thought has primarily focused on issues such as “authority,” “sovereignty,” “governance,” and “government,” and not the state as a broader concept and entity that encompasses them all but is not limited to them.

In examining the Mauritanian case, we find that the concept of the state remains closer to the Arab Islamic connotation of the term than to the Western definition—this is justifiable, notably because, in the existence of a paternalistic type of state in Mauritania, similar to many other third-world countries, the distinctions between the state and the ruling power are almost non-existent. Furthermore, this earlier mentioned fact—which is a realistic one—is reinforced by another equally tangible fact: the ruling elite in Mauritania, with few exceptions, has come to regard itself as the state. Moreover, large sectors of Mauritanian society still cannot view the state independently from its ruling individuals.

This may be attributed to the fact that the entry of French colonialism prevented the Mauritanian community from developing its own political institutions and also ensured that the state would not emerge from its historical legacy or social evolution. Consequently, this led to a relative rupture between the state in contemporary Mauritanian political practice—with its political institutions largely inherited from colonial rule—and the society, as significant segments of which perceive that state as failing to reflect the political history and social traditions of the country. This has resulted in widespread sections of society viewing the state merely as a tool in the hands of colonial forces during one period and of the rulers in another, and thus that society is fundamentally disinterested in it.

The ruling authority during that time in Mauritania, despite efforts aimed at “mythologizing” the history of this “new” state, failed to overcome the rupture between society and the state or to effect any significant change in the overall perception of Mauritanians toward that state, which continued to be viewed as a clearly condemned colonial prototype.

What lends considerable credence to this view is that the state in Mauritania stands apart from its counterparts in other third-world and Arab countries, as it has been completely inherited from colonialism. The latter established the foundations and structures of that state from scratch, differing from other countries where the states have their roots in a historical legacy of central governance, subsequently attempting to reconcile those legacies with the Western state model. For instance, Morocco’s territorial state has emerged from trying to balance the necessity of responding to the dictates of the externally imposed colonial model while maintaining the traditional heritage defined by civilizational standards, including Arab-Islamic identity, and addressing the particularity of the Moroccan state, characterized by its historical density and the nature of its governance linked to the traditional makhzan state.

Additionally, colonialism imported the concept of the nation-state into Mauritania, making the Mauritanian experience distinct from many other third-world countries where ruling elites in the post-colonial phase imported the state in a bid to summon a Western modernization model that had proven somewhat effective in the West, thus facilitating its adoption by most countries around the world.

The imported nature of the state in the Arab world overall, and in Mauritania in particular, and the divergence of its concept from that in Western heritage have implications at various levels, including the methods and approaches used in addressing the latter.

The Approach to the State in Mauritania and the Issue of Methodological Inadequacy: An Analysis of Causes and Manifestations

Despite more than a century having passed since political science solidified as a distinct discipline in the West, and nearly seventy years since interest in that discipline began in the Arab world, its state in Arab countries remains far from the desired level. In terms of quantity, the number of researchers engaged in political science and the number of specialized institutions—universities and research centers—remains small compared to other regions of the world. In terms of substance, the interests of these sciences still heavily align with those of their counterparts in the West.

This reality is evident from tracking the interests of political science in the Arab world. For instance, in the Maghreb region, the interests in political science remain confined to the classical concerns of political science in France, primarily focusing on international law, constitutional law, administrative law, international organization, and international organizations. Meanwhile, political science in the Mashreq (Eastern Arab countries) also demonstrates dependence on political science in Anglophone countries, especially the United States, thus restricting its focus to classical political science issues concentrated on two fundamental areas: the social dimension of political science, represented by political sociology, political psychology, and political anthropology, and the other dimension relates to international relations, concentrating on its theoretical aspects and constructing its analytical methodologies.

Yet, despite the considerable weaknesses that afflict these sciences in terms of content—evident in the lack of a distinct approach to political sciences in the Arab world, which remains subordinate to its original centers in the West—the greater flaw appears at the methodological level. Political science subjects in the Arab world are still exclusively approached through Western methodologies, an approach that seems likely to continue for at least the coming years.

Given the dominance of Western methodologies and their monopolization of the study of Arab political phenomena, especially the state, the approaches that are presented to the latter tend to be characterized by misapplications and incorrect generalizations. Researchers—whether Western or Arab—who have engaged with these phenomena produce similar conclusions and findings, most of which are repetitive and fragmented, as they continue to view these phenomena through the lens of Western political science methodologies.

The phenomenon of the state in Mauritania serves as a significant model in this context, illustrating the inadequacy of various approaches. This inadequacy can be observed and analyzed at multiple levels, as follows:

1. State Structure

The structure of the state in Mauritania seems incomprehensible when approached from Western political science methodologies. For instance, if we employ the institutional approach—a methodology that has proven highly effective in studying Western states—to analyze the state in Mauritania, we find that this approach focuses on what it deems to be the political realities of the state. According to proponents of this approach, these political realities consist of executive, legislative, and judicial institutions. It also emphasizes the powers, administration, functions of the president, electoral systems, political parties, and bureaucracies.

This approach examines everything related to these institutions, including their formation processes, purposes of existence, stages of development, means of sustaining their existence, methods of appointing or selecting members, their internal organization and external structure, relationships with other institutions and society as a whole, the time span during which they can operate, their functional competencies, and their importance.

However, a comprehensive study of these institutions, as proposed by the pioneers of the institutional approach in Mauritania, may not lead the researcher to any significant insights regarding the state, either in terms of its structure or its essence, power centers, or the nature of its political system. Mauritania is an underdeveloped state, and its institutional framework remains incomplete. Even the existing institutions are largely formal and, consequently, have very limited influence compared to real centers of power.

Historically, Mauritania experienced a civil governance system after its independence that was characterized by a centralized authoritarian system under a personalized presidential rule. Mauritania exited this system after eighteen years, giving way to a singular military regime that directly exercised power in the complete absence of any type of institutions until 1991. It then engaged in a formal democracy, under which it has been governed since 1992.

Consequently, due to the personalized nature of the ruling system in Mauritania—where a single individual or a group monopolizes power across all political, economic, and social dimensions—the institutional approach appears incapable of understanding or adequately analyzing the state in Mauritania.

2. Party Phenomenon

Regarding the party phenomenon, it is observed that Western political science methodologies have long simplified the reality of plurality and diversity that characterizes political practices in African countries, including Mauritania, which experienced fifteen years of party pluralism: fourteen years preceding independence and one year following it. This simplification has often relied on pre-defined frameworks and general styles, such as authoritarian systems, patriarchal systems, and personalized governance models. Different studies examining the Western phenomenon have overwhelmingly been founded on a singular ideological perspective grounded in liberal democratic principles. Consequently, they reached preconceived conclusions that one-party systems and military oligarchies are inherently authoritarian and undemocratic.

However, the nature of this political practice should not be divorced from the context in which it occurs. The establishment of civil governance based on a single-party system and presidential rule in Mauritania should be understood in light of the historical and political circumstances surrounding those decisions, which cannot firmly be concluded as conducive to the practice of party pluralism.

At the time of Mauritania’s recent independence, it was subject to territorial claims from Morocco and coercive pressures from France aimed at integrating it into a regional organization of Saharan states, in addition to ongoing pressures from the Malian Federation to join it, which at the time included both of its neighboring countries, Mali and Senegal. Moreover, the political parties that existed then had their loyalties divided between these external actors.

3. Foreign Policy

Foreign policy appears to be another area for testing the capacity of political science methodologies to analyze the state in Mauritania. Taking, for example, the offensive realism approach, which has had significant success in explaining international relations overall and particularly the foreign policies of Western states, we find that this methodology is based on a set of assumptions regarded as fixed truths in the international political arena.

These assumptions include:

A. The international system is anarchic due to the absence of a higher centralized authority over states that enforces international law and ensures the protection of both large and small states.

B. Each state inherently possesses a degree of offensive military strength that enables it to inflict harm or destruction upon others.

C. Each state cannot ascertain the intentions of other states or be certain that they will not use their military power to attack.

D. Survival is the ultimate goal of the state, and different states strive to maintain the integrity of their territories and the independence of their internal political systems.

E. The state is a rational actor aware of its external environment and strategically plans for survival within it.

Despite the validity of the arguments presented by this methodology, and its current status as one of the most successful approaches in international relations—capable of predicting the foreign policy behaviors of major states, particularly Western states—it cannot confidently achieve the same success when applied to the foreign policy of third-world countries in general, and Arab countries in particular, including Mauritania. This limitation arises from the fact that some of the assumptions underlying this approach, though regarded as unquestionable when applied to Western states, become subject to scrutiny concerning Arab countries.

Among those assumptions is the idea that all states aim for survival. This assumption holds truer for Western states, where democracy and institutional governance prevail. In contrast, in Arab states where personalized regimes exist, this goal is often distorted, replaced by the primary goal of the regime’s survival. The Arab Spring is a significant case in this regard, as various Arab countries faced imminent threats of division and civil war due to the stubbornness of their ruling regimes and their insistence on remaining in power at all costs. This reality applies equally to various Arab states, including Mauritania.

4. Electoral Practice

Electoral practices in the Arab world, particularly in Mauritania, represent another manifestation of the shortcomings of political science methodologies in approaching the state in the Arab world and especially in Mauritania. Although elections held in Mauritania or other Arab countries do not differ significantly in form from those conducted in France or other European countries, they yield vastly different results in practice—even when subjected to the same conditions and criteria as the latter. Thus, methodologies that appear capable of analyzing electoral phenomena in the West seem inadequate when it comes to understanding the electoral process in Mauritania. Consequently, a Western researcher armed with the most advanced methodologies in political science often struggles to comprehend or engage with electoral practices in Mauritania.

Conclusion

In summary, the methodologies for approaching the state in its various dimensions—whether concerning the prevailing methodologies in political science, political sociology, or even sociology in general—are predominantly Western frameworks that originated in the West and have been imposed on the colonial state model in the Global South, including Africa, Arab countries, and other third-world nations.

Despite the abundance of methodologies attempting to analyze the state—varying significantly and exploring the state from various angles, from those focusing on systems and structures to others addressing the functions and internal and external dimensions of the state—these methodologies have not achieved significant success in analyzing the state in the Arab world.

This study aimed to demonstrate how, despite their abundance and diversity, these methodologies remain incapable of adequately addressing the state in fragile third-world contexts like Mauritania. This inadequacy can be attributed to several reasons, chiefly:

• When these methodologies were developed, their purpose was to analyze the state in the West, and they were entirely formulated for this task. Applying them to the state in the Arab world not only exceeds their capacity and potential but also lies beyond their original scope and function.
• By the time most of these methodologies emerged, the existing states were mostly limited to Europe and America, and the concept of the nation-state had not yet reached its final form to dominate continents globally. Consequently, the emergence of such a large number of states should have been accompanied by efforts from scholars to develop existing methodologies to understand the uniqueness of these new states.
• State analysis methodologies, whether examining institutions or politics themselves, are incapable of explaining political phenomena in the Arab world—be they general, comprehensive, and centralized political phenomena like the state and political system, or secondary phenomena such as elections, parties, or parliament. Hence, there is an urgent need to cultivate and create new methodologies that are more capable of analyzing various political phenomena in the Arab world.
• These alternative methodologies, in order to be better equipped to engage with the state in the Arab world and penetrate its essence, must consider the civilizational and cultural specificity of our Arab societies and arise from their economic, political, and social contexts. This means they should be rooted internally rather than imported from outside.
• The development or creation of new methodologies cannot occur without the collaborative efforts of all stakeholders, including political science professors at Arab universities, Arab researchers from various social science disciplines, and policymakers. It is meaningless to devise political science methodologies separate from the advancements in social and human sciences in recent years, and the establishment of new political science methodologies must meet the challenges currently facing the field globally. This is an ambitious project that requires the united efforts of all Arab academic elites.
• One of the significant factors rendering political science methodologies inadequate in analyzing the state in Mauritania is the prevailing personalistic character of the state and its lack of institutionalization. Thus, it differs markedly from Western states, which are predominantly characterized by institutional and systematic frameworks.
• The contemporary concept of the nation-state originated in the West and was later replicated by most third-world countries, including Arab and Islamic nations. Therefore, it differs from the concept of the state-nation that Arab and Islamic societies have known for centuries, indicating that it lacks roots in Arab Islamic history and the collective perceptions of the Arab nation.
• The prevailing Western political science methodologies emerged largely from the Western epistemological model, dominating political science in the post-World War II era, characterized by a focus on development and modernization in studying non-Western regions through the promotion of grand theory and comparative analysis.
• There is an awareness among Arab political scientists regarding the inadequacy of current dominant political science methodologies, which are largely Western, in analyzing the state in the Arab world. However, this awareness has not been accompanied by organized, ongoing efforts to develop alternative methodologies. Aside from some isolated individual efforts by scholars, there can be no claim of substantial progress in developing these urgently needed alternative methodologies, especially in light of the recent movements in the Arab region—movements that call for a scientific framing and extraction of lessons learned through alternative methodologies that are original and arise from within Arab societies, rather than being imported from elsewhere.

References

Here is the translation of your listed sources:

[1] Bertrand Badie defines this import process as “the transfer of a political, economic, or social model into a specific society, while this model belongs to a fundamentally different social system and was created and conceived within a foreign historical context to the importing society.” See: Bertrand Badie, L’État Importé: La Westernization of the Political System, translated to Arabic by Latif Faraj (Cairo: Madarat for Research and Publishing, 2017), p. 180.

[2] Saad Eddin Ibrahim [et al.], Society and the State in the Arab World, Project on the Future of the Arab World (Beirut: Center for Arab Unity Studies, 1988), p. 26.

[3] Saeed Siddiqi, The State in a Changing World: The Nation-State and New Global Challenges (Abu Dhabi: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 2008), p. 2.

[4] Ibrahim [et al.], ibid., p. 24.

[5] For a part of this discussion on the antiquity of the state in Egypt, see: Nazih Nassif Ayubi, The Central State in Egypt, Project on the Future of the Arab World, “Society and State” theme (Beirut: Center for Arab Unity Studies, 1989), p. 12.

[6] Al-Din Hilal and Bahjat Korni, eds., Foreign Policies of Arab States, translated by Jaber Said Awad, 2nd ed. (Cairo: Cairo University, Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Center for Political Research and Studies, 2002), p. 6.

[7] Mohamed Mokhtar Ould Sidi Mohamed, The Journey to the State: Society and the State in Mauritania from 1961 – 1978 (Nouakchott: National Library, 2012), p. 14.

[8] ibid., p. 14.

[9] Roshdy Fekkar, Glimpses of Dialogue Methodology and the Miraculous Challenge of Islam in this Era (Cairo: Wahba Library, 1982), p. 7.

[10] Abd al-Rahman Badawi, Research Methodologies, 3rd ed. (Kuwait: Publications Agency, 1977), p. 5.

[11] This definition is from Hamed Rabie in his book Theory of Political Analysis, cited in: Mohamed Shalabi, Methodology in Political Analysis: Concepts, Approaches, Methods, and Tools (Algiers: [n.d.], 1997), p. 12.

[12] Fekkar, Glimpses of Dialogue Methodology and the Miraculous Challenge of Islam in this Era, p. 8.

[13] ibid., p. 9.

[14] Shalabi, ibid., p. 8.

[15] See: Harold Laski, The State: Theoretically and Practically, translated by Saeed Shehata, 2nd ed. (Cairo: General Authority for Cultural Palaces, 2012), p. 19.

[16] Jacques de Favre, The State, translated by Ahmed Hassib Abbas; reviewed by Diaa El-Din Saleh (Cairo: General Authority for Cultural Palaces, [n.d.]), pp. 2–3.

[17] See: Miloud Amer Haj, State Building and Its Impact on the Reality of the Arab Nation-State, Strategic Studies Series; 195 (Abu Dhabi: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 2014), p. 13.

[18] Abdul Wahab Al-Kayyali [et al.], Encyclopedia of Politics, 7 vols. (Beirut: The Arab Foundation for Studies and Publishing, 1979), vol. 2, p. 702.

[19] Ibrahim [et al.], Society and the State in the Arab World, p. 41.

[20] Ghassan Salameh, Society and the State in the Arab East, Project on the Future of the Arab World, “Society and State” theme, 2nd ed. (Beirut: Center for Arab Unity Studies, 1999), p. 11.

[21] Ghassan Salameh, The Thirst for the State and Distrust of It (Beirut: Arab Council for Social Sciences, 2019), p. 5.

[22] ibid., p. 5.

[23] See Saeed Siddiqi, The State in a Changing World: The Nation-State and New Global Challenges (Abu Dhabi: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 2008), p. 2.

[24] Hamdi Abdel Rahman [et al.], Democratic Transition and Armies in Africa: Obstacles to Democratic Transition (Doha: Arab and International Relations Forum, 2015), p. 7.

[25] Al-Kayyali [et al.], Encyclopedia of Politics, vol. 2, p. 702.

[26] Ibrahim [et al.], Society and the State in the Arab World, p. 30.

[27] See: Fakhr al-Din Mihoubi, The Problem of State-Building in the Maghreb: A Study of the Evolution of the Post-Colonial State (Alexandria: Library of Legal Loyalty, 2014), pp. 25–26.

[28] Ibrahim [et al.], ibid., p. 24.

[29] In this context, Bertrand Badie observed that the decolonization process, which was supposed to provide Third World societies with an organization aligned with their traditions, did not offer them such a possibility. On the contrary, it fueled and heightened the political and cultural dominance of the West over these societies. See: Badie, The Imported State: The Westernization of the Political System, p. 113.

[30] Ghassan Salameh points to a very important issue in this regard, which is that there is a direct relationship between the extent of a society’s loyalty to its new political entity and the degree to which that entity aligns with the aspirations of that society, or at least with the aspirations of politically influential segments within it concerning the form and boundaries of the proposed entity. See: Salameh, Society and the State in the Arab East, p. 27.

[31] Wajih Kawtharani argues that the emergence and formation of the “nation-state” in the Arab world as an ideological destination and institutional structure was accompanied by efforts in historical writing aimed at constructing a virtual history that supports the new phenomenon, “the modern state,” with a historical ideology of the national entity selected from a historical stage suitable to the nature of the state, its role, and the interests of the dominant social forces within it. See: Wajih Kawtharani, The Problem of State, Sect, and Method in Lebanese Historical Writings: From Lebanon the Refuge to “Spider Houses” (Beirut: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, 2014), p. 13.

[32] Mihoubi, The Problem of State-Building in the Maghreb: A Study of the Evolution of the Post-Colonial State, p. 14.

[33] ibid., p. 15.

[34] For example, according to some statistics, the number of individuals working in the field of teaching political science in Arab universities currently stands at around 700 faculty members. See: Walid Abdel Hay, “Political Science in Arab Universities: ‘Proposing a Model’,” Omran for Social and Human Sciences, no. 2 (Autumn 2012), p. 154.

[35] ibid., p. 158.

[36] Nasr Mohamed Aref, Epistemology of Comparative Politics: Cognitive Model – Theory – Methodology (Beirut: University Institution for Studies, Publishing, and Distribution, 2002), p. 205.

[37] ibid., p. 205.

[38] Sidi Ibrahim Ould Mohamed Ahmed, “The One-Party System and Political Life Development in Mauritania,” (Thesis for the Diploma of Higher Studies in Political Science, Mohamed V University, Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences, 1989–1990), p. 24.

[39] Hamdi Abdel Rahman Hassan, Modern Trends in Political System Studies: The African Systems Model (Amman: Scientific Center for Political Studies, 2008), p. 9.

[40] Ould Mohamed Ahmed, ibid., pp. 66–90.

[41] John Mearsheimer, The Institutionalization of Great Power Politics, translated by Mustafa Mahmoud Qassem (Riyadh: King Saud University Press, 2012), p. 4.

[42] Hassan, Modern Trends in Political System Studies: The African Systems Model, p. 8.