Albert B. Wolf
Mr. Wolf is a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of California, Irvine. Starting in August 2014, he will be a post-doctoral Fellow with the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
What are the domestic political consequences of peacemaking for dictators? The conventional wisdom suggests that nations are better off reaching settlements that allow them to avoid the costs of war.1 The effectiveness of cooperation with autocracies is of interest to policy makers and international-relations theorists alike. Debates over issues such as the First Step Agreement with Iran or U.S.-China policy have focused on the effectiveness of engagement (defined as attempts to influence the behaviors of a target state through positive inducements).2 States sometimes cooperate with their rivals, expecting that engagement will bolster the political fortunes of moderates in the target regime.3
For others, the word dictatorship is synonymous with wanton aggression. Leaders from Adolf Hitler to Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein evoke images of the stereotypical autocrat: warlike and repressive provocateurs willing to engage in high-risk conflicts with a throw of the dice. New research indicates that dictators experience political benefits from conflict that extend their tenure in office.4 Peacemaking may prove to be politically costly for such leaders because it demonstrates their incompetence to key domestic audiences.
This paper advances a new argument to account for the relationship between international cooperation and authoritarian political survival. When dictators make peace with their states' enduring rivals or with states with whom they have fought at least six times in the preceding 20 years,5 they create a focal point for their critics in the general public to rally around. This makes it easier for members of the general public to reveal their true preferences and protest against the incumbent regime, allowing members of the opposition to portray themselves as genuine patriots.
This piece makes three contributions to the literature. First, it deepens our understanding of how cooperation affects autocrats' hold on political power by integrating insights from the comparative study of authoritarianism and international-relations theory. Second, it brings the mass public in autocracies into the study of domestic politics and international relations. Much of the literature on autocrats' domestic political survival focuses on the pressures they face from other elites, while downplaying or ignoring the threat posed by the average citizen. Third, this study helps provide insight into the dynamics of the Arab-Israeli rivalry.
I use the terms cooperation and peacemaking interchangeably. Cooperation refers to measures designed to improve relations between two states and ameliorate the security dilemma. Although traditionally cast as a series of coordinated moves, it may include unilateral, non-competitive policies designed to convey restraint to a state's rival.6 The terms "political sanctions" and "political punishments" are used interchangeably, referring to the punitive measures visited upon leaders who make peace. When autocrats leave office, they are likely to suffer post-exit sanctions or punishments that include incarceration, exile or execution.7
Anwar Sadat faced growing criticism and domestic challenges as a result of his role in the peace process with Israel. Sadat was roundly condemned for having abandoned the Palestinians, as well as the Arab nation, in pursuing a "separate peace." The ratification of the Egyptian-Israeli treaty of 1979 brought about a crescendo of criticism and anti-regime protests, with Sadat being held responsible for having facilitated Israel's intervention in Lebanon in 1978, as well as its strike against Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981. Even elements of the handpicked opposition turned their backs on the peace process. Sadat met domestic challenges by adopting increasingly repressive measures. However, the tit-for-tat that characterized his interactions with the critics of normalization with Israel culminated in the Autumn of Fury of 1981 and his assassination during a military parade commemorating the October 1973 war.
Peacemaking Costs
Nations often forgo opportunities to cooperate with their rivals because they fear being taken advantage of.8 They prefer selective engagement. Alastair Smith suggests that patterns of interstate cooperation can be attributed to states' attempts to manipulate the domestic balance of power within target regimes to their own liking. He posits that leadership turnovers in dictatorships are likely to lead to improvements in relations with rivals and "sour slightly if relations had previously been poor."9 In autocracies where an anti-Western/pro-Soviet group held power, the United States was more likely to forgo cooperation in favor of containment and isolation in hopes of undermining the incumbent's tenure. By contrast, America was more cooperative with a pro-U.S. regime in order to help the incumbent increase the benefits it could provide to its supporters and boost its hold on office.10
If fighting is inefficient, three explanations account for the recurrence of war over time: incomplete information, commitment problems and the indivisibility of issues.11 The treatment of cooperation as cheaper than war has gained law-like acceptance among most international-relations theorists. However, a growing literature suggests peace is sometimes inefficient. For example, when the anticipated long-term costs of deterrence are greater than the costs of war, states are likely to be tempted to fight now so they can enjoy the "peace dividend" sooner.12 The costs of debt repayment can also make peace counterproductive; states can only repay their debts by winning the conflict, making cooperation more expensive than war.13 Finally, long shadows of the future, once considered to be critical to fostering collaboration, provide states with incentives to fight rather than collaborate with their rival neighbors.14
If, like the costs of war, the costs of peace are borne by societies as a whole, why should the costs of cooperation be directly translated into political sanctions for leaders? Peace imposes a direct toll upon dictators in the form of an opportunity cost. War can have benefits that are not available to leaders during peacetime, such as allowing incumbents to eliminate the opposition, gamble for resurrection, and demonstrate their competence in military affairs.15
States' relationships with their enduring rivals are highly salient to mass and elite domestic audiences.16 Longstanding aims against external rivals are tied to a regime's legitimacy, making it harder to find adequate substitutes to resolve a conflict.17 The Arab-Israeli antagonism, for example, has persisted for such a long period of time that its resolution could present a challenge to the identity of some Arab regimes because the in-group's existence is contingent upon Israel as an enemy "other."18
Peacemaking with a rival state may provide a dictator's domestic critics with a focal point to coordinate opposition against the incumbent. Authoritarian politics often takes place in the shadow of violence.19 The true level of public disapproval does not appear; citizens as well as elites fear retribution, from losing sources of patronage to harassment from local and state authorities to imprisonment and execution. When critics publicly voice approval of the regime, this leads the public and the regime to underestimate the strength of the opposition. Only a small number of ideologically committed individuals will reveal themselves.20
Average citizens are likely to wait for an opportune moment to express disapproval and identify other like-minded critics. Peace settlements serve as a focal point for organizing to protest the regime. Autocrats who cooperate with longstanding rivals become vulnerable to "stab-in-the-back" accusations.21 This provides the opposition with an opportunity to challenge the regime's legitimacy by portraying themselves as the only true patriots.22 Mass protests can undermine a regime by creating schisms among key veto players, leading to a coup. They may also cascade into all-out revolution or civil war.
Many theories suggest autocrats are unaccountable for their foreign policies, as long as they provide their winning coalitions with private goods.23 Elites within the regime who are responsible for leadership turnovers are unconcerned with the leader's ability to provide for national security and other public goods.24 They operate according to a motto of "steal from the poor, give to the rich."25 David Lake's powerful-pacifists argument suggests we are unlikely to see challenges to autocrats because the public faces such high costs when it comes to controlling the state.26
Research Design and Methods
When searching for linkages between foreign policy and domestic political survival, methodological difficulties may arise because leaders place a premium on retaining office. Decision makers are unlikely to pursue policies that will jeopardize their hold on office, making it hard to determine if the hypothesized political repercussions exist.27 Some Arab leaders have refused to reach peace agreements with Israel for fear of being overthrown or assassinated. In 1954, Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett opened a secret channel through the CIA to negotiate with Nasser. Nasser told his American interlocutors he was likely to be assassinated by one of his own people if it became public knowledge that he was negotiating with the Israelis. He ended the talks once it was discovered the Israelis were operating a spy ring in Cairo.28 After the Six-Day War, Israel made a secret peace offer to Jordan and Egypt that included a land-for-peace deal. However, when he was a teenager, King Hussein was standing next to his grandfather, King Abdullah I, when a radical Palestinian assassinated him for attempting to make peace with Israel. King Hussein was afraid he would also be assassinated for accepting a deal with the Jewish state.29 These examples show that selection effects make it difficult to find evidence of domestic political sanctions in the real world. Direct tests are thus harder; they are biased against finding confirmatory evidence.30
Case studies are useful for determining the existence of hypothesized causal mechanisms linking political survival to foreign-policy decisions.31 I use the term "causal mechanism" to refer to "the pathway or process by which an effect is produced."32 This paper examines the impact Anwar Sadat's peacemaking with Israel had upon his domestic political survival. The logic of selection effects suggests that we should not see challenges to Sadat because of his political savvy. Many autocrats face ex post punishments upon leaving office, ranging from banishment to incarceration to capital punishment.33 One would expect dictators to be particularly careful about the policies they pursue in order to protect themselves. Sadat in particular had a strong understanding of the Egyptian political scene, given that he was one of the few remaining original Free Officers who had managed to weather several of the political storms that beset Nasser's regime.34 Upon becoming president, Sadat sought to restructure the Egyptian polity in order to ensure his political survival. He purged the Nasserist old guard and eventually broke up the ruling Arab Socialist Union (ASU). The ASU was split into three "platforms" that included regime-sponsored opposition parties designed to rally mass support behind the regime.35 The case-study method is advantageous because it can help to illuminate (1) whether the pursuit of a deal with Israel actually led to the outbreak of mass protests against the regime, and (2) if those protests were responsible for Sadat's assassination.
The Autumn of Fury
Rationalist theories of conflict conclude that war is costly while cooperation, reaching bargains that allow states to avoid the costs of war, is cheaper. While this may hold for states as unitary actors, it is unclear whether these incentives translate into political boons for individual leaders. This section tests this argument by examining the political costs to Anwar Sadat of cooperating with Israel. Sadat sought peace with Israel to make himself coup-proof. Upon entering office, he had been seen as little more than a placeholder who would not last beyond a year. In order to coup-proof his regime and improve the economy, Sadat attempted to reach out to the West through a series of reforms known as the infitah (opening). In order to get closer to the United States and recover the Sinai, it would be necessary to make peace with Israel.36
Sadat's most notable peacemaking accomplishments came after the October War of 1973. Many observers have argued that the October War was initiated by Egypt out of frustration that Israel had not responded to overtures made soon after Sadat became president. Although there is insufficient space to recount the history of the conflict, Sadat was also motivated by a desire to bring the United States to the table in order to help broker a land-for-peace agreement that would result in the return of the Sinai.37
The surprising military effectiveness of Egypt and Syria early in the conflict spurred American intervention to bring the war to an end and negotiate a series of ceasefires. After the war, Sadat accelerated the infitah's Open Door to the West and took part in Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy to reach two ceasefires with Jerusalem, Sinai I and Sinai II. The Sinai I agreement had been agreed to in December 1974. It was a 10-point memorandum in which Egypt agreed to reopen the Suez Canal and remove its forces from the west side of the canal, while the United States would provide aerial-reconnaissance photos to both sides instead of putting into place a UN monitoring force. Sinai II was agreed to in September 1975. It bound both sides to agree not to use military force to resolve disputes and returned the oil fields in the Sinai to Egypt. The United States was able to keep Israel at the negotiating table by promising not to talk with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as long as it refused to accept UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolutions 242 and 338.38 It also made side agreements with Israel with respect to arms shipments and oil supplies, as well as a commitment to Israel's security against attack from the Golan Heights if an agreement were reached with Syria.39
By 1977, the Egyptian economy had failed to take off, and the peace process was stalled. When the government attempted to cut the bread subsidy in response to IMF and World Bank pressure, riots broke out in several major cities, including Cairo, the worst the country had seen since the fall of King Farouk nearly 25 years earlier. Believing the only way to relieve Egypt's dire economic straits was through greater access to American markets, Sadat backed down on the cuts and redoubled his efforts to reach an agreement with Israel.40
Eleven months after the bread riots, Sadat made a groundbreaking trip to Jerusalem, where he addressed the Knesset. In September 1978, Egypt and Israel concluded the Camp David accords. The pact had two frameworks, the first of which included a vague call for an autonomous Palestinian entity; the second established the principles for a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. While the former framework went largely unfulfilled, the latter established the broad outlines of the Egypt-Israel treaty of 1979, including withdrawal of the Israeli military and civilian presence in the Sinai in exchange for returning the Sinai to Egypt, free Israeli passage through the Suez Canal and the Straits of Tiran, recognition of the Jewish state, and normalization of relations. The accords also included a pledge to both sides for billions of dollars in annual aid and military assistance from the United States. The Egypt-Israel treaty brought about the demilitarization of the Sinai and implemented the schedule for its return to Egypt and the normalization of relations.41 Although Sadat had bolstered his popularity with Egypt's effectiveness during the October War of 1973, pursuing peace with Israel was unpopular, contributing to the intense protests known as the Autumn of Fury. They culminated in his assassination in October 1981.
Strategy for Survival
The enduring rivalry between Egypt and Israel can best be described as a "highly salient relationship" that captured the attention and interest of elites and mass publics in both countries.42 Of the disputes that collectively comprise the Arab-Israeli dispute, the rivalry between Egypt and Israel had been the most intense, a zero-sum conflict for 30 years. Hope of reaching a war-avoiding agreement with Egypt had died in the summer of 1954, when an Israeli-run spy ring in Cairo was discovered.43
Nasser would use the Voice of the Arabs radio broadcasts to excoriate his rivals in the Arab world for abandoning the Palestinian cause and cooperating with Israel (regardless of whether it was true or not).44 The rivalry with Israel continued despite the brief thaw in U.S.-Egyptian relations in the late-1950s and early 1960s.45 The turnover in the Israeli leadership after Ben-Gurion's second departure from office did not affect the baseline tensions that characterized relations between the two states. Despite being stuck in a quagmire of his own in Yemen, increasing competition with states like Syria for the mantle of Arab leadership helped to push Nasser into the debacle that became the Six-Day War of June 1967.46
Sadat succeeded Nasser in office upon the latter's death from a heart attack in September 1970. No observers, whether inside or outside of Egypt, expected the new president to last long in office, predicting that he would be little more than a placeholder. Although he was one of the original Free Officers, Sadat's nickname was "Col. Yes-man"; he did not seem to have any original ideas or an independent power base. After Nasser's experiences with Abdel Hakim al-Amer, who sometimes acted as if he were a co-president, Sadat was a perfect candidate for the vice presidency after June 1967.47 Less than a year into Sadat's own presidency, he saw a challenge from his vice president, Ali Sabri, and the Nasserist old guard. In response, he ordered the arrest of Sabri and several senior holdovers from Nasser's term.48 Sadat was fearful that the coup attempt might have been instigated by the Soviet Union, motivating him to reach an accommodation with the United States.49
Sadat's strategy of political survival centered on two pillars: the infitah and restructuring the Egyptian polity. The infitah referred to a series of liberalizing policies that started with allowing Egyptians to own private property. These policies were designed to dig Egypt out of the poverty it found itself in after Nasser's presidency and move the country closer to the United States.50
A second component of Sadat's political survival rested upon restructuring the political sphere by creating a limited opening for the opposition. Arguing that his reforms would inaugurate a democratic opening for Egypt, Sadat held a public burning of the surveillance tapes that belonged to the feared Ministry of Interior and declared an end to arbitrary arrests. However, these "openings" were designed to secure his incumbency. The new constitution that was implemented expanded the powers of the presidency, allowing Sadat to declare states of emergency and rule by martial law.51
After having concluded the Sinai I and II agreements, Sadat divided the ruling ASU into three manbars (forums). Two would serve as loyal opposition parties, one on the left (the National Progressive Unionist Party, NPUP), and another on the right (the Ahrar, or Liberal Party). The third manbar would become the National Democratic Party (NDP), succeeding the ASU as the ruling party. Sadat hoped that allowing the opposition a limited voice would reduce their incentives to oppose the regime while mobilizing the support of the public, who were disappointed with the status quo.52
As part of Egypt's democratic opening, Sadat tolerated parties across the political spectrum, believing it would be nearly impossible for Islamists (starting with the Muslim Brotherhood) to cooperate with left-wing parties like the NPUP against his regime.53 Proclaiming himself to be the "pious president," Sadat gave political Islamists a limited role in the structure of contestation in order to counterbalance the left. He ordered the release of several political prisoners affiliated with the Brotherhood who had been jailed by Nasser.54 Egypt's performance in the October War of 1973 was attributed to the religious zealousness of its soldiers.55
Cooperation with Israel
After the conclusion of the Six-Day War, on June 19, 1967, Israel made a secret overture to Egypt and Jordan via the Johnson administration, offering a land-for-peace arrangement. A few days later, Dean Rusk, the American secretary of state, told the Israelis that the Egyptian and Jordanian governments had rejected the proposal "out of hand."56 Three months later, the Arab heads of government agreed to the "three nos" of the Khartoum Resolution: no recognition of Israel, no direct negotiations with Israel, and no peace treaty with Israel.57 Although some Arab leaders privately disagreed with both the tone and substance of Khartoum, they feared the political repercussions of publicly dissenting.58 Many Arab leaders felt that, after the Six-Day War, their domestic survival would be imperiled if they attempted to reach a deal with the Jewish state.59
Public criticism of the peacemaking with Israel accompanied much of Sadat's diplomacy throughout the 1970s. The opposition grew to a fever pitch after the signing of the formal treaty. Egypt had made a separate peace with the Arab nation's longstanding enemy without concern for the Palestinians and was, in their eyes, facilitating Israeli aggression. This was made evident by the Israeli intervention in Lebanon in 1978 and the attack on the Osirak reactor in the summer of 1981. A separate peace was more likely to undermine than enhance Egypt's security. The safety of Egypt could only be guaranteed if it negotiated a treaty with Israel in concert with the rest of the Arab nation.60
Sadat began a reversal of the domestic opening of 1976 by cracking down on the critics of the peace treaty. He had secured its passage by rigging the referendum and repressing Arab nationalists who opposed the peace process. Three hundred and twenty-nine MPs approved the treaty on April 11, 1979, while the plebiscite received 99.5 percent of the vote. Foreign journalists videotaped government employees stuffing ballot boxes. In the June parliamentary elections, the National Democratic Party won a resounding 86.4 percent of the vote, while another 8 percent went to opposition parties that largely supported the treaty. Of the 13 MPs who signed a letter to Sadat criticizing the treaty, two were re-elected (one of whom rallied his supporters to carry machine guns into polling places in order to ensure a fair count).61
In May 1980, Sadat attempted to enhance his popularity by lifting Nasser's "state of emergency" decree. However, this was an empty gesture, as arbitrary arrests and 24-hour surveillance of the treaty's critics continued.62 To stem the growing opposition to his regime, Sadat reached out to the Islamist opposition's supporters by holding a referendum that, if passed, would say Islam was the source of all laws. However, the referendum also included changes such as the elimination of term limits and codified the "Law of Shame." That law's stated goal was to protect public morals by banning what the regime termed false or misleading news. In fact, it made it possible to prevent the critics of the 1979 treaty from running for public office.63
The opposition parties' ideological differences did not prevent them from voicing their opposition to Sadat's policies.64 Instead, the peace treaty became a focal point for opposition parties to concentrate their efforts. Even one of the original components of the ASU that had been broken off to form part of the "loyal opposition," the NPUP, rejected the peace process. The party was led by a handful of former Free Officers; Nasserists and Arab nationalists were its core members.65 Its leaders argued that Sadat's foreign policy failed to bring Egypt the promised prosperity and had instead isolated Cairo from the rest of the Arab world.66
After the bread riots of 1977, Sadat initiated another purge of the leftist opposition, passing laws forbidding nonviolent protests.67 In 1978, Sadat created another loyal opposition party, the Socialist Labor Party (SLP). It was supposed to split the NPUP's constituency in half by attracting middle class liberals who opposed the Islamists.68 However, the SLP turned its back on Sadat as well. After initially endorsing the 1979 treaty, the SLP came to oppose normalization unless Israel returned to the June 4 line and a Palestinian state was created. This contributed to the SLP's popularity, leading it to spearhead a mass protest against the opening of the Israeli embassy in February 1980.69
Sadat adopted Islamist symbols,70 relying on political Islam to counter the nationalist left. The Muslim Brotherhood had initially been content with a limited political role, as long as its members did not have to suffer the harsh punishments imposed upon them during the Nasser era and were able to organize without harassment.71 However, Israel's intervention in Lebanon in 1978 motivated the Brotherhood and similar groups to criticize Sadat's foreign policy, arguing that Israel continued to occupy Muslim holy lands. Normalization would only pave the way for "Jewish cultural and economic penetration, ...put[ting] the Arab world in danger of being swallowed up [by Israel]."72
By May 1980, the peace process served as the opposition's focal point for action against the regime. The Lawyers' Syndicate joined the opposition and helped groups coordinate with one another. By summer 1981, these forces joined the other syndicates in the country to oppose the treaty with Israel.73 The opposition cited the Knesset's passage of a law making Jerusalem the indivisible capital of Israel and the Begin government's attacks on the PLO in Lebanon as evidence that Sadat had abandoned the Palestinians and was helping to promote Israeli aggression.74
The regime's continued support for normalizing relations with Israel contributed to the outbreak of the protests known as the Autumn of Fury. By September 1981, nearly 1,500 of Sadat's critics, including the Coptic pope, the supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the brother of the man who would murder Sadat, were arrested.75 Khalid al-Islambouli and three fellow Islamic fundamentalists assassinated Sadat on October 6, 1981, during a military parade commemorating the October War of 1973. Al-Islambouli later said that he was primarily motivated by the signing of the Camp David accords and the Egypt-Israel treaty of 1979.76
Implications and Counterarguments
Starting with Kant, some theorists have argued that non-democracies' domestic structures and normative commitments predispose dictators to ignore policies of accommodation.77 Others have hypothesized that the tendency of non-democracies to engage in rent seeking is what breeds an imperialist bias in their foreign policies.78 However, none of these theories spell out the actual mechanism linking peacemaking and political survival. Kant suggests that dictators are at war with their own subjects, hypothesizing that cooperation will occur when established republics replace non-democracies. His work has no place for peacemaking by dictators or its political consequences.79 Lake's powerful-pacifists argument suggests that we should see threats to autocrats from rent seekers at the elite level because the public bears the high costs of controlling the state.80 Sadat faced challenges from elites early in his presidency. He managed to consolidate power, only to face challenges from the public later on.
Other Cases
As previously mentioned, Nasser and King Hussein avoided cooperating with Israel for fear of the political consequences. However, there have been other cases of dictators suffering political punishments for risking peace. King Abdullah I was interested in making peace with Israel after the war of 1948. However, Jordan's territorial gains during the war forced the king to take into account the demands of a large number of Palestinians who were now part of the Hashemites' kingdom. The Palestinians refused to accept a nonaggression pact with Israel that would freeze a territorial status quo they viewed as unjust. The political deadlock in Jordan contributed to Israel's apprehension over the negotiations with Amman and paved the way for Abdullah's assassination by a radical Palestinian.81
There are some cases in which leaders did not suffer political setbacks for peacemaking. Mao Zedong was able to work with Nixon during the Cold War, and King Hussein was able to reach an agreement that established relations with Israel in 1994. The absence of political repercussions may have been due to the nature of the concessions required for peace. In the early 1970s, the United States distanced itself from Taiwan and did not require China to relinquish its claim to the island, while the agreement between Jordan and Israel only involved small territorial swaps.
This piece does not suggest that all forms of cooperation are hazardous to dictators' political health. I do not suggest that Tito's or Ceausescu's ability to work with the United States during the Cold War should have undermined their ability to retain office. Instead, autocrats are likely to be punished if they cooperate with states they have repeatedly fought in the recent past. As for cooperation between states that have poor relations but are not rivals, I use enduring rivalries as an admittedly high threshold for "bad" relationships between states. Some states may have a hostile relationship but do not engage in a sufficient number of militarized interstate disputes to constitute an enduring rivalry, such as the United States and Iran. However, the dynamics of this particular relationship are analogous to rivalries in terms of historical mistrust. At the time this is written, it is too early to determine whether the First-Step Agreement will undermine either Supreme Leader Khamanei's grip on power or President Rouhani's incumbency. However, shortly after Barack Obama was elected president, Iranian hard-liners expressed fears that a rapprochement with the United States could destroy the regime itself: "If we resolve it [issues between America and Iran], we will dissolve ourselves."82
Conclusion
This piece provides a first cut into the political consequences for non-democratic leaders pursuing cooperation with enduring rivals: they risk their political survival. Autocracies often use foreign antagonisms as a means to legitimate their rule. When longstanding conflicts are resolved, domestic challengers are provided with a focal point for organizing against the regime and presenting themselves as a patriotic alternative to the incumbent. Ensuing protests threaten to unseat the nominal leadership by unleashing a secondary bandwagon of opposition movements, or by promoting a coup or revolution. In Egypt, peacemaking with Israel led to the Autumn of Fury and the assassination of Anwar Sadat.
This piece indicates a few additional avenues for future research. To what extent are the paper's results generalizable beyond the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli dispute? Do the domestic pressures examined here give dictators a bargaining advantage with their rivals (as arguments on hands-tying suggest), or do they make dictators seem unreliable and untrustworthy, especially when bargaining over objects that affect the future balance of power. A third direction to investigate is whether these domestic pressures increase the credibility of secret diplomacy. Dictators who are likely to be punished for pursuing cooperation send a costly signal of their benign intent when they "go private" or pursue secret diplomacy with an enemy. When they talk to an adversary behind closed doors, dictators are putting their domestic political survival in the enemy's hands. If he chooses to make the content of the negotiations public, it could destroy the dictator's hold on power.83
1 See Robert Powell, "Bargaining Theory and International Conflict," Annual Review of Political Science 5 (June 2002): 1-30; and James D. Fearon, "Rationalist Explanations for War," International Organization 49, no. 3 (Summer 1995): 379-414.
2 Evan Resnick, "Defining Engagement," Journal of International Affairs 54, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 551.
3 See Alastair Smith, "Political Groups, Leader Change, and the Pattern of International Cooperation," Journal of Conflict Resolution 53, no. 6 (December 2009): 853-877.
4 Giacomo Chiozza and H.E. Goemans, "International Conflict and the Tenure of Leaders: Is War Still Ex Post Inefficient?" American Journal of Political Science 48, no. 3 (July 2004): 604-619.
5 Paul F. Diehl and Gary Goertz, War and Peace in International Rivalry (University of Michigan Press, 2000), 143.
6 Charles L. Glaser, Rational Theory of International Politics: The Logic of Competition and Cooperation (Princeton University Press, 2010), 51.
7 See H.E. Goemans, "Which Way Out? The Manner and Consequences of Losing Office," Journal of Conflict Resolution 52, no. 6 (December 2008): 771-794.
8 For an overview of this logic, see Kenneth A. Schultz, "The Politics of Risking Peace: Do Hawks or Doves Deliver the Olive Branch?" International Organization 59, no. 1 (Winter 2005): 1-38.
9 Smith, 856.
10 Ibid.
11 James D. Fearon, "Rationalist Explanations for War," International Organization 49, no. 3 (Summer 1995): 379-414.
12 Robert Powell, "War as a Commitment Problem," International Organization 60, no. 1 (Winter 2006): 169-203.
13 Branislav A. Slantchev, "Borrowed Power: Debt Finance and the Resort to Arms," American Political Science Review 106, no. 4 (November 2012): 787-809.
14 Michelle R. Garfinkel and Stergios Skaperdas, "Conflict without Misperceptions or Incomplete Information: How the Future Matters," Journal of Conflict Resolution 44, no. 6 (December 2000): 793-807.
15 Giacomo Chiozza and H.E. Goemans, "International Conflict and the Tenure of Leaders: Is War Still Ex Post Inefficient?" American Journal of Political Science 48, no. 3 (July 2004): 605-606; and Chiozza and Goemans, Leaders and International Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
16 Anne Sartori, "Leadership Incentives, International Rivalry, and War," paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA, August 31-September 3, 2006.
17 See Ron E. Hassner, "The Path to Intractability: Time and the Entrenchment of Territorial Disputes," International Security 31, no. 3 (Winter 2007): 107-138.
18 Michael Barnett, Dialogues in Arab Politics.
19 See Milan Svolik, The Politics of Authoritarian Rule (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 6.
20 Timur Kuran, "Now Out of Never: The Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989," World Politics 44, no. 1 (October 1991): 7-48
21 Fred Charles Ikle, Every War Must End (Columbia University Press, 1991), 59-61.
22 Jason M.K. Lyall, "Pocket Protests: Rhetorical Coercion and the Micropolitics of Collective Action in Semiauthoritarian Regimes," World Politics 58, no. 3 (April 2006): 378-412.
23 See Bruce Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival (The MIT Press, 2004).
24 Jessica L. Weeks, "Strongmen and Straw Men: Authoritarian Regimes and the Initiation of International Conflict," American Political Science Review 106, no. 2 (May 2012), 327.
25 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2011), 75.
26 David A. Lake, "Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War," American Political Science Review 86, no. 1 (March 1992): 24-37.
27 Kenneth A. Schultz, "Looking for Audience Costs," Journal of Conflict Resolution 45, no. 1 (February 2001): 32-60.
28 Patrick Tyler, Fortress Israel: The Inside Story of the Military Elite Who Run the Country — and Why They Can't Make Peace (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2012), 29.
29 Ian J. Bickerton and Clara Klausner, A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Prentice Hall, 2002), 161.
30 Schultz, "Looking for Audience Costs," 52.
31 On the use of case studies for determining the existence of causal mechanisms, see Evan S. Lieberman, "Nested Analysis as a Mixed-Method Strategy for Comparative Research," American Political Science Review 99, no. 3 (Aug., 2005): 435-452.
32 John Gerring, "Review Article: The Mechanismic Worldivew: Thinking Inside the Box," British Journal of Political Science 38, no. 1 (January 2008): 161.
33 Henry Bienen and Nicolas van de Walle, Of Time and Power: Leadership Duration in the Modern World (Stanford University Press, 1991), chapter 1.
34 See Joel Gordon, Nasser's Blessed Movement: Egypt's Free Officers and the July Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1992).
35 Raymond A. Hinnebusch, Jr., Egyptian Politics under Sadat: The Post-Populist Development of an Authoritarian-Modernizing State (Cambridge University Press, 1985), 158-167.
36 Shibley Telhami, Power and Leadership in International Bargaining: The Path to the Camp David Accords (Columbia University Press, 1992), chapter 1.
37 William Quandt, Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict since 1967 (Brookings Institution Press, 2005), 98-130.
38 UNSC 242 established the principle of "land for peace" and called for Israel to return to the June 4, 1967, borders in exchange for recognition. UNSC 338 was the ceasefire that ended the October War of 1973. The PLO accepted UNSC 242 in the early 1990s.
39 Kenneth W. Stein, Heroic Diplomacy: Sadat, Kissinger, Carter, Begin, and the Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace (Routledge, 1999), 179-183.
40 Ibrahim Karwan, "Foreign Policy Restructuring: Egypt's Disengagement from the Arab-Israeli Dispute Revisited," Cambridge Review of International Affairs 18, no. 3 (October 2005): 325-338.
41 Quandt, Peace Process, 200-204.
42 Anne E. Sartori, "Leadership Incentives, International Rivalry, and War," paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA, August 31-September 3, 2006, 7-9.
43 Zeev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel's Security and Foreign Policy (University of Michigan Press, 2009), 399-404.
44 See Benny Morris, Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War (Oxford University Press, 1997); and Keith Kyle, Suez: Britain's End of Empire in the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2011), 500-515.
45 Salim Yaqub, Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East (University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 237-269.
46 Malcolm H. Kerr, The Arab Cold War: Gamal Abd al-Nasir and His Rivals, 1958-1970 (Oxford University Press, 1971), 107-125.
47 Ferris, Nasser's Gamble, 296.
48 Fawaz A. Gerges, "The Transformation of Arab Politics: Disentangling Myth from Reality," in The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences, eds. Wm. Roger Louis and Avi Shlaim (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Kindle Electronic Edition: chapter 12, Location 8030.
49 Brownlee, Democracy Prevention, 18-19.
50 Hinnebusch, Egyptian Politics under Sadat, 113-114; Jason Brownlee, Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the U.S.-Egyptian Alliance (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 19.
51 Brownlee, Democracy Prevention, 19.
52 John Waterbury, The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat: The Political Economy of Two Regimes (Princeton University Press, 1983), 366-373.
53 Ibid., chapter 7; see also, Ellen Lust-Okar, Structuring Conflict in the Arab World: Incumbents, Opponents, and Institutions (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 112-125.
54 Gerges, "The Transformation of Arab Politics," lines 8047-8056.
55 Hinnebusch, Egyptian Politics under Sadat, 113-114.
56 Maoz, Defending the Holy Land, 407.
57 Barnett, Dialogues in Arab Politics, 165-174.
58 Ibid., 210.
59 Barnett, Dialogues in Arab Politics, 247.
60 Dawisha, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, 268.
61 Brownlee, Democracy Prevention, 37.
62 Lust-Okar, Structuring Conflict in the Arab World, 60-66.
63 Brownlee, 40-41.
64 Lust-Okar, Structuring Conflict in the Arab World, 112-125.
65 Hinnebusch, Egyptian Politics under Sadat, 187.
66 Ibid., 193-194.
67 Ibid., 181-182.
68 Ibid., 167.
69 Hinnebusch, Egyptian Politics under Sadat, 168-169.
70 Gerges, "The Transformation of Arab Politics," lines 8086-8095.
71 Carrie Rosesfky Wickham, Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism and Political Change in Egypt (Columbia University Press, 2002), 17.
72 Hinnebusch, 202.
73 Raymond William Baker, Sadat and After: Struggles for Egypt's Political Soul (I.B. Tauris, 1990), 68-80.
74 Hinnebusch, 202.
75 Brownlee, Democracy Prevention, 41.
76 Raphael Israeli, Man of Defiance: A Political Biography of Anwar Sadat (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985), 270-272.
77 See Randall L. Schweller, "Domestic Structures and Preventive War: Are Democracies More Pacific?" World Politics 44, no. 2 (Jan. 1992): 235-269.
78 On the rent-seeking tendencies of autocracies, see David A. Lake, "Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War," American Political Science Review 86, no. 1 (March 1992): 24-37.
79 Michael W. Doyle, "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs," Philosophy and Public Affairs 12, no. 3 (Summer, 1983), 229.
80 Lake, "Powerful Pacifists," 25-26.
81 Itamar Rabinovich, The Road Not Taken: Early Arab-Israeli Negotiations (Oxford University Press, 1991), 148-155.
82 Trita Parsi, A Single Throw of the Dice: Obama's Diplomacy with Iran (Yale University Press, 2012), 36.
83 See Keren Yarhi-Milo, "Tying Hands behind Closed Doors: The Logic and Practice of Secret Reassurance," Security Studies 22, no. 3 (August 2013): 405-435.
Middle East Policy is fully accessible through the Wiley Online Library
Click below to subscribe to the online or print edition of Middle East Policy and gain access to all journal content.