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Urbanization and Political Change: The Impact of Foreign RuleAuthor(s): Joel S. MigdalSource: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Jul., 1977), pp. 328-349Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/177995 .

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Urbanizationand Political Change:TheImpact of Foreign RuleJOEL S. MIGDALHarvard University and Tel-Aviv University

With the continuingrapid growthof cities in Asia, Africa, and LatinAmerica, social scientistshaveexpecteda clearshift of politicalpowerfrom ruralto urban-basedgroups.2The usual assumptionis that thisshift would stem from the process of urban economic growth whichwould lead to political centralization3and political integration,4bothThis s a muchexpandedandrevisedversionofapaperpresentedat the RoundTableonPoliticalIntegration, PSA, Jerusalem,September,1974.I would ike to thankmy manycolleaguesat Tel-AvivUniversitywhocommented n thepaperandR. MarciaMigdal,Y.Porath, Mark Heller, Ariela Gottlieb,and ZipporahKleinbaum or their useful sug-gestions. Also, I wouldlike to thankthe Tel Aviv UniversitySocial Science Research

Fundfor the grantwhichenabledme to undertake his research.I Note thegrowthrates npercentages f citiesover 100,000nhabitantsn 1960-1970nthe followingareas:City Total growth rateNorthern Africa 4.0 2.6WesternAfrica 7.3 3.1TropicalSouth America 6.0 2.8Southeast Asia 5.0 2.7Southwest Asia (including heMiddleEast) 6.3 2.5

See Kingsley Davis, World Urbanization 1950-1970, Volume I (Berkeley: Institute ofInternational tudies,Universityof California,1969),pp. 141-160. In thispaper,urban-ization s takento meannotonlythemovement romruralareas o cities, butalsoachangein behaviorpatterns particularly,workpatterns) onforming o those which are charac-teristic of city groups. See Paul Meadows and EphraimMizruchi(eds.), Urbanism,Urbanization,and Change (Reading,Mass.: Addison-Wesley,1969),p. 2.2 See, for example, Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (NewHaven: Yale UniversityPress, 1968),pp. 72-78, on what he calls the "urbanbreak-through."3 "Centralizationmeansthatmajor unctionsof legaldisputes,the collectionof reve-nue, thecontrol of currency,militaryrecruitment,he organization f the postal systemandothershave been removed rom thepoliticalstrugglen the sense thattheycannotbeparcelledout amongcompeting urisdictionsor appropriated n an hereditarybasis byprivileged status-groups."ReinhardBendix, "Centralization, he State, and PoliticalCleavage"in SeymourM. Lipsetand ReinhardBendix(eds.), Class, Statusand Power(2nded.: New York: The Free Press, 1966),p. 81.4 Politicalintegration s viewed in this paperas a process (ratherthan an either-orsituation)whereby ncreasingnumbersof individualsparticipaten organizations nd/orproceduresof authoritativebodies. Among ndividualst involves the cognitiveelementthat those bodies are or arebecoming heeffectivesourceof powerandauthorityntheirlives.

328


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URBANIZATION AND POLITICAL CHANGE 329centered n thecity. Suchassumptionsarefound mostexplicitly nmanyof thetheories of modernizationdeveloped nthe 1950sand1960s.5Suchtheories were often derivedfroma so-called "Western" or Europeanmodel.6The appearanceof a host of empiricalworks, particularly n Africa,which have contradicted ome of their mplicitandexplicit assumptions,has caused increasingcriticismto be levelled at these theories.7 Thestudy of comparativepolitics and politicalchange is now at a point atwhich there is a distinctly felt need for new theoretical frameworks.However, little has been achieved to date in creating a new set ofconceptual tools. The aim of this article is to take a first step in thatdirection and to suggesthow, at least in one area, the specific environ-mental conditionsthat were encountered as people beganto move tocities createdunexpectedpoliticalresults. These environmental ondi-tions affected the abilityof new urbangroupsto forma strong powerbase that could lay the foundationfor centralizationand the politicalintegrationof the continuingstreamof new migrants o the city.The particular ase I will analyzein order to develop these points isthat of the Palestinian Arabsduring he periodof the Britishmandate.Despite the impact they have had on currentworldevents, the Palesti-nians remain a relatively "understudied"group. Althoughthere havebeen some recent works on thefedayeen groups,8a neglected subject

5 See, for example, Talcott Parsons, Societies: Evolutionary and ComparativePerspectives(New Jersey:Prentice-Hall,1966).Fora goodcritique,see Dean C. Tipps,"ModernizationTheoryand the ComparativeStudyof Societies: A CriticalPerspec-tive," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 15 (March, 1973).6 It is unclearin manycases exactly what "Western"meant. Huntington,PoliticalOrdern ChangingSocieties, deals with thisproblemn chapter2, "Political Moderniza-tion: Americavs. Europe."EvenwithinEurope,however,there weregreatdifferences.In Centraland EasternEurope, orexample,thecitydid notdevelop nearlyas muchas alocus of poweras in WesternEurope.7 See Tipps,"ModernizationTheoryand the Comparative tudyof Societies;" C. S.Whitaker,Jr., "A DysrhythmicProcess of PoliticalChange,"WorldPolitics, 19(Janu-ary, 1967);Joseph R. Gusfield,"Traditionand Modernity:MisplacedPolarities n theStudyof SocialChange,"American ournalofSociology, 72(November,1966);ReinhardBendix, "Tradition and Modernity Reconsidered," Comparative Studies in Society andHistory, 3 (April, 1967);Joel S. Migdal, "Why Change?Towardsa New TheoryofChangeAmongIndividualsnthe Processof Modernization,"WorldPolitics,26(January1974).These articles were written after the appearanceof a largenumberof empiricalworks which couldnot be explainedaccording o the Western-basedmodelsof change.See, for example, SamirKhalaf, "PrimordialTies and Politics in Lebanon,"MiddleEastern Studies, 4 (April 1968); J. Clyde Mitchell, The Kalela Dance, Aspects of SocialRelationships among Urban Africans in Northern Rhodesia, Rhodes-Livingstone PaperNo. 27 (Manchester:ManchesterUniversityPress, 1956);Benjamin . Schwartz,"TheLimits of 'Traditionversus Modernity'as Categoriesof Explanation:The Case of theChineseIntellectual,"Daedalus,(Spring,1972).OnAfricasee anumber f thearticles nImmanuel Wallerstein (ed.), Social Change: The Colonial Situation (New York: JohnWiley, 1966).8 See, for example, William B. Quandt, et al., The Politics of Palestinian Nationalism,(Berkeley: Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1973);EhudYa'ari,Fatah (Tel-Aviv:Levin-Epstein,1970);GeraldChaliand,"The PalestinianResistanceMovement inearly1969)"


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330 JOEL S. MIGDALhasbeen Palestinian ociety itself, its interactionwiththeregimesunderwhich the Palestinianshave lived, and the impactof social change ontheir politics. This paper stems from a largerresearchproject whosecore was a series of long, in-depth nterviewswith Palestinianvillagerson the West Bankof the JordanRiver. In additionto the Palestinians'own accountsof life under our differentregimesduring hiscentury,theproject employs a wide variety of primaryand secondary historicalmaterials.THE BEGINNINGS OF CHANGE: PHYSICAL SECURITY ANDECONOMIC WOE

For the Arabs who had been living in the Syrian Provinces of theOttomanEmpire,theagreementbythe victoriouspowersof WorldWarI to establishmandatory ule in the areamarkeda clearturningpointintheirhistory. Not only did theirrulerschange,butalso Palestinebeganto be governedby a differentpowerfromthatrulingSyria(Palestinehadbeen often thoughtof as a partof southernSyria). For the first time,someof itspopulation howedsignsofthinkingof Palestineasa separatepoliticalunit.9Also, as we shallsee, the rates of social anddemographicchange beganto accelerategreatlyunder the British.The processes of social and demographicchange had alreadybeenunderway ormore than halfa centurybefore the advent of Britishrule.At the beginningof the nineteenthcentury, the OttomanEmpirehadreached its low point.10 Administrativeweakness of the Ottomansmeant insecurity for the villager-he found himself at the mercy ofBedouins and highwaymenwho robbed him and autonomous localstrong men who exploited him. Those peasants who remained n thecountry(therewere only about200,000peoplewest of theJordanRiverin 1800) ived mostly highin the mountains norder o maintainas much

security as possible."IBy the 1860s, in the wake of the brief rule byEgyptian orces during he periodof MuhammedAliandthe finaleffortat rejuvenation n the OttomanEmpire(the TanzimatReforms),therewas a clear administrativepenetrationby the centralgovernment.Aslaw andorderbeganto prevailandas local strongmenwere brought oheel,12 there began a movement westwardfrom the secure but rocky(Beirut: Fifth of June Society); Yehoshafat Harkabi, Fedayeen Action and Arab Strategy(Adelphi Papers, No. 53, December 1968).9 Y. Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement 1918-1929(London: Frank Cass, 1974), ch. 2.10H. A. R. Gibb and Harold Bowen, Islamic Society and the West (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1950), p. 270.11 Henry Rosenfeld, They Were Peasants (Israel: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1964), p. 16;and Abner Cohen, Arab Border-Villages in Israel (Manchester: Manchester UniversityPress, 1965), p. 10.12 See, for example, the account of Moshe Ma'oz, Ottoman Reform in Syria andPalestine 1840-1861 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1968),pp. 118-23. He describes in his


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URBANIZATION AND POLITICAL CHANGE 331mountainvillagesto the morefertilecoastalplains.Arenewedgrowthofpopulationbeganto reversetheproblemof laborshortage n the villagesandgave further mpetusto farmuncultivated ands. At the sametime,the restorationof order n the streetsbroughtabouta limitedrepopula-tion of the maintowns.Besides the new security in the country, the administrative eformsalso resultedin new landregistration aws, highertaxes, and demandsfor interest payments in money rather than kind.13These types ofreformsduringthe latterhalf of the nineteenthcenturywere certainlynot uniqueto the SyrianProvinces. In numerouspartsof Asia, LatinAmerica,and Africa, new extractive tax laws and other "liberal" re-forms were beingenactedby colonialpowersandby independentgov-ernments.14 Theresulthere(also, as in otherpartsof theglobe, particu-larlythe easternpartof Asia)was that numerousArabfarmersbecametenants to a group of large landholders.These powerfulfigures whooften lived in the cities of Beirut, Damascus,andJaffal1had been ableeitherto takeadvantageof thehighdebts anddispossessthe smallowneror to acquire he fertilecoastal andvalleylandatexceedinglygoodtermsfrom the Ottomanauthorities.Certainly,the peasants had not been prosperouseven priorto thereforms. The visit of the tax-farmerfrom the city had always beendreaded. The exploitationhad broughtmany to ruinand was a majorcause of the depopulationof the country, drivingpeasants across theJordanRiver where they joined Bedouin tribes. A number of sheikhsliving within the ruralareas had also builtpositions of strengthon thebacks of the peasants. Yet, the villagehadafforded he individual omelimitedkind of insularityas, for example, in its periodicredivisionofland or in the collective payment of taxes. 16The new reforms, however,were buildingan altogethernew social structure.Through enancyanddebt, the powerful figuresfrom the town tied themselves much moreintimately nto thepeasants' ives. Localadministrationwasbeingtakenout of the handsof the village, and the resultwas thatthe peasantwasmuch moredirectly exposed to the rule of the empire'sofficials and ofthe lords whose landhe worked. More andmore,he foundthat his statusbook on the Tanzimat Reforms the long, drawn-out efforts of the Ottoman regime to bringthe Hebron leader, Abd al-Rahman, under central control.13See A. Granott, The Land System in Palestine (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode,1952), p. 60.14 Land tenure changes took place in numerous other countries in the latter half of thenineteenth century including Mexico, Colombia, and Bolivia. For similar efforts of ad-ministrative reforms in Vietnam, see John M. McAlister, Jr. and Paul Mus, The Viet-namese and Their Revolution, Harper Torchbooks (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).15See Hubert Auhagen, Beitrige zur Kenntnis der Landesnatur und der Land-wirtschaft Syriens (Berlin: Deutsche Landwirtschaft, 1907).16 See Cohen, Arab Border-Villages, p. 6.


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332 JOEL S. MIGDALwas not defined in relation to others in the local peasant community butin relation to powerful outsiders.

The problems of interest on loans and of money taxes that peasantfamilies were forced to confront continued well into the mandate pe-riod.17 In fact, after the beginning of British rule in the 1920s, many ofthe peasants' problems intensified. Not only did continuing high debtplague them, but the security and public health conditions created by theBritish resulted in a tremendous spurt in the rate of population growth.18While it had taken about 75 years for the Arab population to double to500,000 (between 1830and 1905), it needed only half that time to doubleonce again to one million in 1940. Especially in the refuges of the rockyhill country, village agriculture was increasingly becoming an insuffi-cient basis for support. 19In short, from 1860through the 1920s and evenafter, the Palestinian peasant found himself rudely thrust into a newworld-a world ruled by ever more powerful outsiders and a worldwhich initially pushed him into severe economic crisis.20OUTLETS AND CHANGE: THE URBAN EXPERIENCEOther changes were also occurring in Palestine. Whereas the Turks hadgenerally kept only a small contingent of officials in the area and hademployed very few local people, the British began creating many moreeconomic opportunities outside the village. Even with their indirectmandatory rule, the British were building an administration and werehousing a military force that reached their peaks during World War IIand that generated numerous jobs for Palestinian Arabs. Anothersource of jobs was among some of the new Jewish enterprises that grew

17See the Johnson-Crosbie Report: Government of Palestine, Report of a Committeeon the Economic Conditions of Agriculturists in Palestine (Jerusalem, 1930). As in theperiod before World War I, the debt of the peasants in interest equalled their entire yearlyincome. Interest ranged from 30 percent a year to as much as 50 percent for three months.Half the tenant's net income went for rent.

18 There are continuing debates about the veracity of the British censuses, but naturalincrease seemed to average over 2.5 percent for the Arabs during the mandate, one of thehighest rates in the world.19John H. Simpson, Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development(Palestine: October, 1930), p. 14. The West Bank continues to be an area which is noteasily developed. Samuel Pohoryles, Agriculture in Israel: A Model of Economic Plan-ning (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1972), estimates that only five percent of itscultivable land is irrigated now. Also see The Middle East, a Political and EconomicalSurvey (2nd ed.: New York: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1954), p. 363. Therewas some switching to cash cropping but this did not solve the problem. See Robert R.Nathan, et al., Palestine, Problem and Promise: An Economic Study (Washington: PublicAffairs Press, 1946), p. 8.20 Such peasant economic crises were occurring in much the same fashion in other partsof the world as well. See, for example, McAlister and Mus, The Vietnamese and TheirRevolution; Joel S. Migdal, Peasants, Politics, and Revolution (Princeton, N.J.: Prince-ton University Press, 1974), Ch. 5; William Hinton, Fanshen (New York: MonthlyReview Press, 1966); Andrew Pearse, "Peasants and Revolution: The Case of Bolivia,Part I," Economics and Society, 1 (August, 1972).


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URBANIZATION AND POLITICAL CHANGE 333in numberas immigration ncreased. Jewish settlement and Zionismawakened a near-universalArab attitude of resistance, but simulta-neously many Arabsdid find in the Jewish agricultural ettlementsanimportantsource of additional ncome.21Thus, increasingnumbersofdebt-ridden easantsbeganto devoteonlypartoftheirtimeto the land nthe villageandto travelforadditionalwork to the coastalcities, to armycamps, or to agricultural ettlementson a dailyor weekly basis. Manyothersmovedpermanently o the cities or to villageslocated around hecities in their search for relief fromtheir economic crises.Movement of both commutersand more permanentmigrantscon-tinued the migratorypatternalreadyestablished n the Ottomanperiod:westward romthe mountainous egionstowards he coastalplains.Thetowns in the easternportionof the country, such as Hebron,remainedlargely agriculturalradingcenters22andgrewat a rateless thanthat ofthe Arabs'natural ncrease, while those on the coast, such as JaffaandHaifa, mushroomed with in-migrants.23Although conditions werecrowded andsome people resorted to livingin petrol-tinhuts in shantytowns which sprang up along the coast,24 to some extent the vastproblemsof livingspaceandservicesthat havecharacterized uchcitiesas CalcuttaandLima nrecentdecadesweremitigatedn Palestine. Thecompactnessof the countryallowed manyto commutefromvillagetocity, especially once the Britishroadbuildingplans were underway.25

21 The intensive seasonalagriculturalwork on Jewish settlementsand the buildingnthesecommunitieswas donemostly by ArabsbeforeWorldWarI. Betweenthewars,therelative number of Arabs in these jobs fell, but the absolute numbersstayed fairlyconstant. The Settlement Economy Bookfor 1947 (Tel-Aviv: Ha'va'ad Ha'leumi, 1947),p. 503 (Hebrew).22 Nablus had hadsomeindustry or severalcenturies.See Ma'oz,OttomanReform nSyriaand Palestine. However,it didnotgrowas a center. One reasonwasthatEgyptianimporttaxes were imposedon the famous Nablus soap, undermining majorexportmarket. G. Mansur, The Arab Worker under the Palestine Mandate, compiled frommaterialsubmittedby ArabLabourOrganizationsJerusalem,1936),p. 22.23 The overall rate of increaseof population or the Arabswas 28.4 percentbetween1922and 1931. Jaffagrew by 62 percent(andthe villagesaround t by more than 100percent),andHaifagrewby87percent.Comparehistotheratesof increasebetween1922and 1931 n the fourlargestcities in the mountainous egion:Hebron 7.6%Nablus 7.8%Jenin 11.9%Bethlehem 2.2%

F. Y. Jacoby (ed.), The Anglo Palestine Year Book 1947-1948 (London, 1948). Thesefiguresareallsomewhatsuspect,although he relativerates areprobablynearlycorrect.24 Mansur, The Arab Worker under the Palestine Mandate, p. 14.25 Rosenfeld,TheyWerePeasants, p. 179,states that42percentof themen none Arabcommunity oundworkoutside the village.Theprocessof movement o thecity was notonethat wouldshowupas a smoothcurve.Althoughalreadyevident n the 1920s,amajorspurtseems to have occurred n the early 1930s.Thepoliticaldisturbance rom 1936-39causeda withdrawal ackto village ivingandoccupations.Anothermajor purtoccurredduring he years of WorldWarII.


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334 JOEL S. MIGDALFor our purposes of understanding the specific circumstances in-volved in urbanization, what is crucial is the nature of the forces thatdrew people from the village and the new structural relationships, ortypes of integration, that ensued. In large part, poor Arab villagers andin-migrants were looking outside the village borders for a solution totheir economic crises because of the economic activity generated by theBritish, by other foreigners who had established enterprises in thecountry, and by the Jews. The British were the principal employers

engaging people in the bureaucracy, public works projects, police orwatchman duties, service jobs for army installations,26 and a limitednumber of industries.27 During World War II, particularly, large num-bers of Arab workers were employed to build army camps, airfields, androads. One source estimates that about one-quarter of the Arab workforce earned its living in British government and army installations andin service for British officials and officers in the war period preceding1948.28Already it was obvious that a sudden British withdrawal wouldhave disastrous economic consequences on the Palestinian Arabs. Aswas true in a number of former colonies, much of the British economicinfluence was limited to the duration of British rule, and withdrawal waslikely to deal a severe blow to the new economic activities in which theArabs were involved.29 In some ways many Palestinians had provided acushion for such an eventuality by maintaining their ties in the village orby commuting to the city while still working on the land part-time.Nevertheless, a collapse of the new opportunities would have thrustnumerous Palestinian families back into the severe crises of the earlydecades of the century.30For the moment, however, the peasants and city migrants were ex-periencing their most prosperous times ever. Due in large part to thedirect and indirect opportunities created by the mandatory power, byforeign companies, and by Jewish settlement, there actually developed

26 Thus, not all urbanization was taking place directly in a movement from villages tocities. See footnote 1.27 See Cohen, Arab Border-Villages in Israel, p. 14. Henry Rosenfeld, "The ArabVillage Proletariat" in Revadim Be'Israel, ed. by S. N. Eisenstadt, et al. (Jerusalem:Akadmon, 1968). David Horowitz and Rita Hinden, Economic Survey of Palestine, WithSpecial Reference to the Years 1936 and 1937 (Tel-Aviv: Economic Research Institute ofthe Jewish Agency for Palestine, 1938), pp. 36 and 207.28 James Baster, "The Economic Problems of Jordan," International Affairs, 31 (Janu-ary, 1955), 29.29 Even without the 1948war between Jews and Arabs, withdrawal of the British causedthousands of Palestinians to lose their jobs. Aharon Cohen, Israel and the Arab World(New York, Funk and Wagnalls, 1970), p. 457.30 In fact, reality turned out to be worse than even the pessimists had projected. Notonly did British withdrawal force a movement back to the village (a reversal of thelong-term migratory pattern of movement westward), it was accompanied by the 1948Arab-Israeli war. This, of course, resulted in the added burden of refugees in the WestBank which became incorporated into the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan. The war wasthen followed by a severe depression in the West Bank.


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URBANIZATION AND POLITICAL CHANGE 335an agriculturalaborshortageduringWorldWarII in this stillbasicallyruralcountry.31Arab workers were advancingboth absolutely (realincome rose about 60 percentbetween 1936and 1942)and relativetothose in other Arab countries. Manylocal Arabswere finallywindingtheir way out of perennialdebt and economic crises.32THE COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENTButthat environmentwhichbroughtsuch a clear risein the standardofliving of the Palestinian Arabworkers and peasants was, at the sametime, havinga muchmorecomplexeffect on the developmentof soundArab-runenterprises. Arabindustrywas in only the earliest stages ofdevelopmentat the beginningof the mandatoryperiod, limitedalmostentirely to small handicraftworkshops.33Duringthe 1920s and early1930s, however, there was a significantgrowthof Arab-owned ndus-tries as workshopsexpandedandnew industriesopened.34Thisgrowthwas acceleratedduringWorld War II. After 1939,the Britishpumpedcapitalinto some of the majorArabprojects, such as the ArabCementCompany. Also, they placed a number of militaryorders with Arabindustrieson a cost-plusbasis. The Arabtextile industrygrew rapidly,and some of the big enterprises were employing from 50 to 100 workersand more.35Therewas, however, also a countereffectdue to the presenceof theBritish and the Jews on the developmentof Arab-run nterprises.Thewage structure that non-Arab, particularlyBritish, economic enter-prises and administrative nstitutionsintroduced nto the country andthe demand for laborthey created put Arabindustriesinto a difficultposition. Arabentrepreneurshadto be competitivein order to attract

31 A Survey of Palestine, prepared for the Information of the Anglo-American Commit-tee of Inquiry Palestine:GovernmentPrinter,1946),VolumeII, p. 727.32 Inindustry,aborers' bothArabs'andJews')earnings osebetween 124percentand277 percent (withonly one industry allingbelow 168percent)between 1939and 1945,while nthe sameperiod hecost of livingrose 154percent.Ibid., VolumeIII, p. 1337.Inagriculture, he laborshortageand the highworldprices resulted in some agriculturallaborearning300-400percentmore.Itwas a time whenthe smallpeasant andholderwasable to reduceconsiderablyor eliminatehis debt.33 Himadehcounted1,236"industries"whichwere inexistencebeforeWorldWarI inPalestineandwhich lastedat least until 1927.Seventy-fivepercentof these were Arab.They were principallyolive oil presses (339), straw mat workshops(124), shoe andbootmakingcrafts (114), and metal works (101), such as smiths. Sa'id B. Himadeh,"Industry" in Economic Organization of Palestine, ed. by Himadeh (Beirut: American

University, 1938),pp. 216-21.34 Z. Abramovitz and Y. Gelfat, The Arab Holding in Palestine and the Countries ofthe MiddleEast (Palestine:HakibbutzHameuchad,1944),pp. 61 and78 (Hebrew).Theyestimate hatfrom1920-40, he numberof workers n Arab ndustryandcrafts ripled, heoutputwasup by afactorof 3 1/2,andtheinvestedcapitalup by a factorof four.Also, seeHimadeh, "Industry," p. 223; and Great Britain and Palestine 1915-1945, InformationPaperNo. 20 (New York:Royal Instituteof InternationalAffairs, 1946),p. 71.35 The Settlement Economy Book for 1947, pp. 513-14.


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336 JOEL S. MIGDALworkers, and this put severe restraints on those trying to nurture fledg-ling workshops or factories. Although the statistics are by no means clearor agreed upon, it can be said fairly safely that even by the end of WorldWar II, the percentage of Arabs employed in Arab industry (including alarge proportion in small handicraft workshops) was still less than 13percent of the Arab work force (and some say a lot less).36 In effect, thesocial process that was occurring was one that involved a stream ofArabs from villages into the coastal regions who then fed into avariety ofinstitutional settings.Thus, instead of providing the sole economic framework into whichworkers were integrated, these Arab employers were confronted with ahighly competitive environment. In a period of dwindling labor surplus,they were bidding for workers in the towns against the mandatory powerwith its relatively high wages and in an environment marked by the morecapital-intensive economic institutions of other foreign powers and ofthe Jews.37 In short, the city thus reflected an asymmetry in the level oforganizational development between Arab firms and the institutions ofother forces. Not only in Palestinian Arab society but in numerousinstances in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as well, indigenous enter-prises faced with the growing organizational and economic pains charac-teristic of new, fledgling concerns had great difficulty recruiting man-power and surviving in environments where the wage structures weredominated by foreign powers.38Every worker was thus faced with a very difficult choice. On the onehand, the great majority opposed British rule and Zionism. On the otherhand, in terms of wages and in terms of the number ofjobs available, thenon-Arab enterprises often offered the best conditions. This was not at

36 See, for example, Abramovitz and Gelfat, The Arab Holding, p. 59. They estimatethat by 1940, there were about 18,000 salaried workers in Arab industry and about 10,000wage laborers. Including small handicrafts, they estimate, there were more than 40,000employed in Arab industries by the end of World War II out of a total Arab work force ofmore than 300,000. The industrial censuses of 1940and 1943indicate somewhat differentfigures, but they exclude certain industries and many handicraft establishments. Thus, the1940 census shows 4,117 workers and 754 proprietors in non-Jewish industry while the1942 census shows 8,804 workers and 2,741 proprietors. Government of Palestine, De-partment of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Palestine 1944-5 (Jerusalem: 1946). "TheArab trades which are most developed are: milling, tobacco manufacturing and somebranches of the textile and metal trades." A Survey of Palestine, Vol. I, p. 508.37 Jewish enterprises were principally manned by Jews who offered (in addition tocapital) a more highly trained labor force. The result was that even with the economicboom the Palestinian Arabs experienced duringWorld War II, the economic gap betweenArabs and Jews continued to grow. In 1939, Jewish earnings were 120 percent more thanthose of the Arabs, while by 1945they were 160percent more. A Survey of Palestine, Vol.III, p. 1337.38 Even in cases where there were two separate pay scales for native labor and immi-grant workers, the pay scale of the immigrants or foreign workers certainly did affect thedemands and the gains of the native workers in colonial enterprises. See, for example,Shimshon Zelniker, Labor Politics and Development: TheAfrican Mineworkers of Zam-bia (The NOK Press, forthcoming).


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URBANIZATION AND POLITICAL CHANGE 337all an easy choice, andin the periodof the 1936Arab Revolt(whichwewill return o below) manychose to forego the foreign wages. At othertimes, however, supportof one's familywas theuppermost houghtandgreat numbersof Arabworkers chose the best availablewages. Arabindustrieswerethusfaced not only with a limitedpool of workersand apowerfulupwardpressureon wages, but a situation n whichthey werelosing their most skilled and young, trainablepeople to the non-Arabenterprises.SOCIAL AND POLITICAL EFFECTSWithin Arabsociety, the dominantsocial andpoliticalelite was a city-basedgroupwhose mainsource of powerwas the ownershipof landinthe ruralareas. Composedof a numberof wealthyfamilieseachowningtens of thousandsof acres, this elite hadgaineda considerabledegreeofsocial power by using its vast family connections in exercising directcontrol over the country'speasants. The landownersused their socialcontrol over their tenantsandthe wealththey drew fromthe peasantryas a basis for their lives of high consumption n the towns and for theirgainingpowerful religiousand politicalposts.Thiselite, then,used the city as a base of operationsbut saw in it notits potentialfor economic investment(for example, the ports had de-terioratedbadly by the middle of the nineteenthcentury)butrather tsconcentrationof administrativeandpoliticaloffices. Unlike the medi-eval city of much of feudalEurope, the Middle Easterncity hadneverbeen able to groweven partially ndependentof the major ocio-politicalforces rulingthe countryside.39The Orientalcity, unlike the city inmuchof WesternEurope,didnot start witha groupof relativelyhomo-geneous burgherswho built a positionof strengthand of independencefrom the crown and from the landed aristocracy. Rather, the city'sstatusinthe MiddleEast differed romthatofthe villageonlyin itsbeingthe locus of the majorpoliticalandadministrative nstitutions.40Com-mercial ife was usuallydominatedby the diverseminoritieswho madeup a largeshare of the population.It was with thisbackground hat themajor anded amiliesassumedthepolitical eadershipof the PalestinianArabs after World War I.Arab politics in British-mandatedPalestine began in 1920 with acongress dominatedby the majorlandowningfamilies and with theelection by the congressof the ArabExecutive to represent he Palesti-

39 See G. E. von Grunebaum, Islam (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955), pp.141-58.40 Ibid. Also see Vatro Murvar, "Some Tentative Modifications of Weber's Typology:Occidental versus Oriental City" in Meadows and Mizruchi (eds.), Urbanism, Urbaniza-tion, and Change, pp. 51-63.


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338 JOEL S. MIGDALnian Arab case to the British.The ArabExecutive was led by membersof the powerful Husseini family. A memberof the same family, theyoung Haj Aminal-Husseini, latersucceeded to the posts of MuftiofJerusalemand head of the SupremeMoslem Council. These positionswereextremelycrucial or severalreasons. Forone, theygaveaccess tothe vastreligiousendowments,theWacffunds,whichweretraditionallya great source of power in the Muslimworld.41Second, the statusof the Muslimshadchanged na crucialwayundertheBritish.In Turkish imes, Muslimswerenotonlythe vastmajorityofthe Empirebut were also the rulers n Constantinople.Therehadbeenno need for them to seek specialstatus as a community nthe pluralisticempire, as there had been for Christiansand Jews throughthe Milletsystem. Now, British(Christian)rule and the more or less arbitraryborders drawnby the victorious Europeanpowers in dividingup theMiddleEastchanged hestatusof the Muslims o that of onecommunityamongseveral. Not only did communal eadershipbecome more inte-gralto Muslims,theirseparation romother Muslimgroupselevatedtherole of Mufti to religiousleaderof all of the new territorialunit, Pales-tine. The religious legitimation gained through these offices thusstrengthened he economic hold (landowning),enablingthe Muftiandhis Husseini clan to take the politicalleadershipamongthe PalestinianArabs.Thispatternof the landowners'dominationof politicsdidnot changegreatlybefore 1948.By 1936,the ArabExecutivewas dissolved andinits place was the ArabHigherCommittee ed by the Mufti.Six partiescrystallized nthe 1930s,butthese were littlemore than narrow actionsreflectingthe dominationof the landowningelite andthe majorrivalrybetween the Husseini and Nashashibi families. The Nashashibis con-trolled the National Defense Party;the Husseinis, the Palestine ArabParty.And so it went;familiesowningfrom7,000to 15,000acresof landremained at the head of Palestinianpolitics in those stormy years.Through he complex, three-sidedstruggle rom 1920to 1948,the Arabpoliticalarena was dominatedby those city-based,landowning amilieswith little interferencefrom any new merchantor industrialelite.The questionthatconcerns us hereis whythese familieswere abletomaintainsuch a tightgripon the leadershipandpoliticalinstitutionsofthe Palestinian Arabs. The simple demographicand social changes inthe countrywould indicate a distinctweakening n theireconomic and

41 Waqf funds were a percentage of the total tithe revenues of the country. The funds ofthe Supreme Moslem Council and the Waqf Committee amounted to about 260,000Sterling Pounds annually. Great Britain and Palestine 1915-1945, pp. 26-29, 113. Also,on the ensuing discussion of the changed status of the Muslims, see Porath, The Emer-gence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement.


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URBANIZATION AND POLITICAL CHANGE 339social power. At a time when the focus of economic activity was clearlyswitching from the rural to the urbanareas,42the economic dependenceof the Arab lower classes was passing, in large measure, from thelandowning elite. As mentioned above, the landowning elite had con-trolled political and administrative posts in the city, but they found theirsocial control slipping as economic opportunities in the city lay mostlyoutside their domain, controlled instead by the British, the Jews and (thesketchy evidence seems to indicate) a new group of Arabs outside theold clans. Arab migration to the city meant a diminished base of powerfor those whose power stemmed in great part from landownership. Inthe ruralareas, Jewish landbuying and settlement and the increase in thenumbers of small Arab landholders were also eroding the large land-owners' bases of power and prestige.43All this is not to underestimate the continuing dependence of manypoor Arabs on the rich landowners for crucial loans, for land to work,even for connections to find jobs in the city. The landowners' use ofdebt, tenancy rights, and general peasant weakness had been their basisof social control for three-quarters of a century and more, and this didnot totally disappear in a few short years. The elite remained very mucha patron to many. Yet, there were strong forces eroding both the sourcesof their patronage and the number of their clients just as a new Arabelement began to crystallize in the city. This was composed of Arabemployers (many not from the powerful families) who were takingadvantage of the prosperous era to expand their workshops into smallfactories. Despite the declining social power of the landholding familiesand the emergence of this new urban-oriented elite, there was not a shiftof political power from the old groups to the new.THE ELEMENT OF SPACEPart of the answer to the question of why any new Arab merchant andindustrial groups did not exploit the landowners' slipping social controlin order to vie for political leadership can be found in the nature of theurbanization process. The circumstances of this process and the natureof the environmental conditions these new urban groups faced can bestbe understood within the frameworks of the concepts of space and time.Differences in the spatial element are not usually referred to inanalyses of comparative urbanization and its relation to struggles forpolitical leadership, but such differences are, in fact, a crucial factor in

42 See Rosenfeld "The Arab Proletariat," pp. 478-479; also Nathan, et al., Palestine,pp. 8 and 198.43Palestine, A Study of Jewish, Arab and British Policies, Vol. I (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1947). Published for the Esco Foundation for Palestine, pp. 465-466.Also, Great Britain and Palestine 1915-1945, p. 30.


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340 JOEL S. MIGDALanalyzing change. In those Europeancities where the burgherswereable to consolidate(andthen much later to expand) power, partof thereasonthey were able to succeed was the spatialfreedomthey had hadwithinthe medieval owns. Spacehererefers o a localeinwhichthere sthe exercise of power, autonomous from that of other majorpoliticalinstitutions nthe society. Thespecialstatusof the town, particularlynnorthwesternEurope,and its development ndependentof the reigningfeudal institutionsgave the burghersa uniqueopportunity o developunity-a unity aterusedagainst hose outside the cities' boundaries, helandedaristocracy.OutsideEurope,such spatialfreedom did not existin cities, and, as a result, no autonomoussources of power arose inurbanareas. Those merchantsand artisanswho residedin the Muslimtowns were there usually at the behest of the ruler and were dividedalongethnic, tribal,andreligious ines.44In Palestine,particularly, hepresence of the ruling amiliesresiding n thetown, with theirextensivecontrolof thehinterland,meantthatthe town never served as anenclavewhichcouldbe usedto develop unityamong he merchantsandartisans.SinceWeber,veryfew theories of modernization aveexplicitlydealtwith these kinds of spatialand structuraldistinctionsbetween WesternEuropeand other partsof the world.45In part, this may be due to animplicitassumption nthese theoriesthatalthough uch differencesmayaccount for WesternEurope's beingthefirst to modernize,these differ-ences are neutralizedby subsequentcircumstances. Specifically, theassumption s that the roleof Western mpactoutsideEurope s that of ageneratorof the processof change,46 nd thatonce it starts,thisprocessof change is basically the same as that which occurred in WesternEurope. Bert F. Hoselitz, for example, states that ". . . in the next fewdecades systems of stratification n different Asian and African coun-tries should become increasingly similar.'47 And it is clear from hisanalysisthat the systems of whichhe is speakingwillbe similar o thosethat developed in the West.As we have seen above, however, in Palestine,even afterthe Britishbeganto rule, the spatialelementcontinued to be quite different romthatinthe modelof WesternEuropeanchange.Inorder o builda strongurbanbase of power, Arabmerchantsandindustrialistswouldhave had

44 von Grunebaum, Islam; Murvar, "Some Tentative Modifications of Weber's Typol-ogy," pp. 55-56.45 Max Weber, The City (New York: The Free Press, 1958). Stein Rokkan has donesome of the most interesting recent work.46 Perhaps the most influential work in modernization was that of Daniel Lerner, ThePassing of Traditional Society (New York: The Free Press, 1958). Lerner saw the role ofthe West as that of introducing an impetus to change.47 Bert F. Hoselitz, "Interaction between Industrial and Pre-Industrial StratificationSystems" in NeilJ. Smelser and Seymour M. Lipset (eds.), Social Structure and Mobilityin Economic Development (Chicago: Aldine, 1966), p. 193.


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URBANIZATION AND POLITICAL CHANGE 341to exploit the demographic change in Arab society, i.e., to have builtstrong and unified institutions by integrating the vast human resourcescoming from the villages and from the agriculturalsector. But the spatialelement, characterized by the presence of the landowning elite in thecity and by the competitive environment or asymmetry (in organiza-tional development between Arab institutions and those of the Britishand the Jews) in the city, restrained the growth in Palestinian Arabsociety of an autonomous urban economic elite. The very opportunities(i.e., those stemming from non-Arab forces) that had led to the newmerchants' and industrialists' initial gains and to the wresting ofmonopolistic control of the city from the landowning elite also ultimatelyblunted the process of political growth of these new groups.The new competitive urban environment resulted in a situation inwhich the majority of Arab workers were not moving into economicframeworks dominated by other Arabs. Most Arab workers movingfrom the countryside to the city did not pass from social frameworksdominated by one group of Arabs (landowners) to those dominated byanother group of Arabs (merchants and industrialists) but rather into anumber of settings. With their ability to attract the new urban workerslimited because of the competitive environment, the merchants andindustrialists simply lacked the basis for a significant degree of socialcontrol of the in-migrants. Their economic enterprises were too limitedto serve as a basis of power against the landowning elite. Compoundingsuch structural weakness was the fact that a significant proportion ofmerchants (but probably not industrialists) were Christian and could notplay a dominant political role in a largely Muslim society.In a recent article, Norman H. Keehn has talked of the problems innon-Western states of building authority. Closely allied with the conceptof authority, he states, are the concepts of compliance and support:Since authority is based upon consent, reciprocal exchange helps create the consent thatfacilitates governing. The capacity to confer benefits, especially economic welfare ben-efits is plainly an important source of legitimacy .... So long as resources are limited, thepotential for exercising control is concomitantly limited. Power is an essential element ofauthority.48

Keehn is referring to already independent states, but the Palestiniancase is instructive in showing the crucial role of economic resources inbuilding an indigenous power-base even in colonial times or times offoreign occupation. When a group was able to monopolize economicservices and resources for wide areas, as the Chinese Communist Partydid, there was a strong power-base that could later be used for building48 "Building Authority: A Return to Fundamentals," WorldPolitics, 26 (April, 1974),337-38.


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342 JOEL S. MIGDALauthority n the state. In other cases, however, the competitiveenvi-ronment prevented the development of a situation where economicrewardsand sanctionsover in-migrantso the cities couldbe used as thebasis for the developmentof strongpolitical nstitutions.49Like profes-sionalsand ntellectuals, heurbanmerchantand ndustrial roupscouldappealto the sentimentof the population,butthey all startedwithoutalarge,unifiedconstituencyover whichthey had considerable nfluence.Such sentimentcould be a basis forpoliticalmobilization or aperiod,but it was nota foundation orbuildingauthority.InAfrica, orexample,those political partiesthat led the struggle orindependencehave been,in recent years, in almost universaldecay. Cities in Palestineofferedgeographicconcentrationand a rise in the standardof living for thein-migrants;but they denied politicalcentralizationand political inte-grationbecause power could not be generated. The Araburbanmer-chants and industrialistsremainedtoo narrowlybased, and their con-nection to the mass of workers was too tenuous for them to serve as afocalpointto challengethepoliticaldominationof the landowning litesand to build a basis for futureauthority.The competitiveurbanenvironmentnot only presented mpedimentsto Arab industrialistsand merchants in providingan economic andpolitical frameworkto in-migrants, t also shaped the natureof Arabsocial mobility. In the non-Arabenterprises,there were clear bound-ariesan in-migrant ncountered;he could move up only so faruntilhispathsof mobilitywere blocked. Thus, during hose crucialyearsbeforethe Britishwithdrawal, he Arabs were not developinga coherent occu-pationalstructure hat could formthe basisof an autonomousandstrongeconomy. Managerialopenings for Arabs in foreign firms remainedlimited,and BritishadministrationmployedArabsmostlyat the lowestlevels. The Arabs' urban social structure was marked by cruciallacunae,whichmeantthat the chains of socialcommunicationwherebyintegratedandcohesive politicalstructurescould be built were missinglinks.No singlecountrycan be saidto be "typical"of the ThirdWorldandits development. Palestine,particularly,had severaluniqueaspects inits process of change. Mandatory ule,whichwas much less direct thancolonialrule,existedonly in a limitednumberof places. And,of course,thepresenceof theJewswho weretrying o buildanindependent ociety

49LikeKeehn,Peter M. Blau alsosees the basis of power n socialexchange."A manwithresourcesat hisdisposal hatenablehim to meet other men's needscan attainpowerover them ..." Thereare a numberof conditionsthat need to apply to make thisstatement rue,claims Blau. Oneof these is thatmen cannotobtainthe benefitsfromanalternativesource. This was the pointthat preventedthe attainmentof power and thebuildingof a constituency."Social Exchange,"intheInternationalEncyclopediaof theSocialSciences, Volume7, ed. by DavidL. Siles(Macmillan& TheFreePress,1968),pp.455-56.


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URBANIZATION AND POLITICAL CHANGE 343and economy in the same country was unique to the history of thePalestinianArabs. Yet, the case of the Palestiniansmayhelpindicate anew set of conceptual lenses for understanding ome of the specificcircumstances of change in certainother partsof the Third World.The implicationof the analysishere is thatwhathappened n certainparts of Europe(often generalizedas the "West") is not an adequatemodelforexplainingchangeingeneral.Infact, the specialsets of rights,the independence, and the unity that developed in Europe's medievalcities were quite unique. Though the autonomy of these cities waseventually quashed, state bureaucracies ater utilized these attributesthat had developed and fed upon the social differentiationwhich grewout of the urbanizationprocess in orderto centralizepower. WesternEurope's gradual change to urban-focusedeconomies and its initialexperiencewithsignificant tate centralization ookplaceinthe relativeabsence of highly powerfulnon-indigenous orces.In Asia, Africa, and Latin America,in contrast, a model of changemust start with circumstances involving continuingexogenous pres-sures.501) The society changestowardsincreasinggeographicconcen-tration of the populationas the percentageof urbanitesgrows rapidly.For example, Latin America'surbanpopulationhas been growingre-cently by five to eight percent per year comparedto an overall rate ofnatural ncreaseof about threepercent. Populationgrowthrates in theThirdWorldhave tended to be morethantwice as highas they were atthe height of Europe's population explosion. 2) Integrationof in-migrants nto the city economy occurs in a heterogeneousand asym-metrical environment. Even where labor surpluses exist, the mostsought after workers-the skilled and the young-are disproportion-ately recruitedinto foreign enterprises. The asymmetry s often com-pounded by ethnic heterogeneity, leading to a number of fairly au-tonomous indigenouseconomic institutionalsettings in the city.513)Withoutthe developmentof a coherent economic institutionalsetting,politics in the society becomes highlyfactionalized. The basis of ruralpoliticsis underminedwithcontinuingurbanization,but there is no clearchange to politicaldominationby new, unified urbangroups.A commonresultof such a modelhas beenlimitedpolitical ntegrationof those who have undergonesocial mobilizationand little significant

50 A numberof workson Africa,particularly, avewoven the colonialexperience ntoanalysesof social andpoliticalchange,but too oftenthe analysis s more n terms of the"colonial egacy"thandynamic actorsthathave had a continuouseffect on class forma-tion and politicalchange. For one of the best accounts on the complexrelationamongforeignpowers,oldelites, and newelites, see MartinKilson,PoliticalChange n a WestAfricanState (New York:Atheneum,1969).51 Onsubsequent ffectsof the splitbetween MuslimSunnisand Christian ects on thedevelopmentof a Palestinian eadership,see Quandt,et al., The Politics of PalestinianNationalism, pp. 79-80.


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344 JOEL S. MIGDALincrease of power in the society.52Urbanization n many parts of theThirdWorldhas beenof littleuse to populations ngeneratingabasis forgreatlyexpandingand centralizing ndigenouspolitical power. Ratherthan the urbanexperience unitingthe diffuse elements coming fromformerlyautarchicruralareas, it has often been one of continuedfrag-mentationof the society.53In some of the states in Asia, Africa,and LatinAmerica, leadershippositionshave tended to become dominatedby intellectuals.Althoughthey have littlepowerbased in the economic realities of the society, theintellectuals akeadvantageof the factionalizationof powerandthe lackof political integration in order to play a prominent role in politics.54Theirplaces are then often supersededby the military,the groupthathas at least a semblanceof organizationandforce, if not an actualbasefor social and politicalpower, at its disposal.THE ELEMENT OF TIMEA second element in the failure of the urban merchant and industrialgroups among the Palestinians to challenge the continuing politicaldominationof the landowningelite is that of time. Certainly,an un-answeredquestionis whether,giventhe time thatEuropehadhad, thenew urban groups in Palestine would have been able to develop asufficientlybroadpowerbasewithwhich to challengetheoldelite. Thatquestion,however, misses the pointof the distinguishing haracteristicof experienceinmuchof the ThirdWorld: oreignrulecompressedtimeand in so doingled to very differentpoliticalpatterns n Palestineand inmany countries that were undercolonial rule. In Palestine, the mer-chants andindustrialists oundthatoutsideforces notonly competedinthe economic area, but that these same outside forces changed thenature of the political struggle.ss Time to develop as an independent

52 Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, pp. 144-47.53 . . Bolivian politics-like Argentine, Brazilian, and Chilean politics-came to becharacterized by political stalemate: no one political or social sector was able to attain ahegemonic position or impose its direction on public policy." Keehn, "Building Author-ity," p. 340.54 Shils' works on intellectuals in the new states remains the most important work in thisarea. He implies that political organization at the grass roots level, or a political machine, issomething in which intellectuals are very little involved. In fact, it is the absence of suchmachines that gives intellectuals fertile ground for political leadership. Edward Shils,"The Intellectuals in the Political Development of the New States," WorldPolitics, 12(April, 1960).55 Part of the reason the political struggle differed was because much of the opposition tothe landowners was deflected to the struggle against imperialism and Zionism. Neverthe-less, it is interesting to note that foreign rule also nurtured the emergence of new Arabforces. The power of instituting and maintaining restraints was no longer under thelandowners' control. The autonomy the landowners had enjoyed under Ottoman rule, aswell as their ability to suppress nascent urban groups, diminished as the city became anadministrative center of the British and an economic center of the Jews.


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URBANIZATION AND POLITICAL CHANGE 345force was deniedto the merchantsandindustrialistsbecause of exoge-nous rule. Unity of the new urbangroupsdid not develop as a resultofcommonoppositionto an elite based on landowning hatwas blockingconditions favorable to urbaneconomic expansion. Instead, the com-mon enemy to all sectors of Palestinian Arabsociety was mandatoryrule and its principleof establishinga Jewish national home.Once the landowningelite was able to take a militantand firmstandagainstBritishruleand its positionvis-a-visZionism,it was difficult orother groups to threaten Arabunity and challengethe old leadership.Nationalism, hen,wasco-opted by thelandowning amilies rather hanbeingused against hem),andoppositionto them meantmakingoneselfvulnerable o the chargeof workingagainstthe Arabnationalcause. InPalestine, the old elite was not compromisedby foreignrule since thefactor of Jewish immigration aused an earlyandfirmshowing againstthe Britishbythe major andowningamiliesandespeciallybythe Mufti,Haj Amin al-Husseini.56There was thus a "pressurecooker" effect in Palestine:whileoutsideinfluences werepartof thecause for thegrowthof neweconomicgroupsin the city, these sameinfluencessimultaneously nabledthe city-basedlandowners o effect widespreadpoliticalmobilizationunitedunder hisold elite's leadership.Theywere inthisway able to forestall he internalArab ssue revolvingaround heircontinuing eadershiprole inpolitics.And, inso doing,they denied thenew urbangroupsaccess to leadershiprolesatthe crucial imethatformerly nward-looking easantswere nowbecoming socially and politically mobilized. The old elite's ability toachieve political mobilizationand unity within the Arab communityreached a peak in the 1936 Revolt. Followingseveral years of record-breakingJewish immigrationandthe failure of the last of a numberofArab delegations to London, inter-communalviolence broke out inApril, centered in Tel-Aviv and Jaffa.Almostimmediately,"nationalstrikecommittees" were set upinthecities. The committees had varyingdemands, but all focused on theissues of Jewish immigration, land sales to Jews, and Arab self-government.57 Coordination of their efforts came through the leadershipof the familiesthat hadlongdominatedArabpoliticsin the region. TheArabHigher Committeewas formedin 1936as an outgrowthof thesecoordinationefforts,and it reflectedthe traditionalamilysplitbetween

56 See, for example, Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Move-ment; David Waines, "The Failure of the Nationalist Resistance" in Ibrahim Abu-Lughod (ed.), The Transformation of Palestine (Evanston: Northwestern UniversityPress, 1971), pp. 207-235; and Robert John and Sami Hadawi, ThePalestine Diary, Vol.1, 1914-1945 (New York: New World Press, 1970).57 Barbara Kalkas, "The Revolt of 1936: A Chronicle of Events" in Abu-Lughod (ed.),The Transformation of Palestine, p. 242.


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346 JOEL S. MIGDALthe Husseinis and Nashashibis. Its head was the Mufti, Haj Aminal-Husseini. Crisis simply reinforced the existing pattern of elite domi-nation.The strike lasted half a year and had widespread support, especially inthe initial phase, among Palestinian Arabs. Where and when supportdwindled, the leaders used their clan connections, religious endow-ments, and, at times, outright terror58 to enforce their political willamong the Arabs.59Even after the strike ended, disturbances continuedin the country until 1939. Splits in the leadership occurred in 1937,60followed by the exile and arrest of leaders by the British and finally thedisbanding of the entire Arab Higher Committee. Even duringthe splits,the exiles, and the arrests, however, new urban economic groups foundthemselves unable and/or unwilling to seize the opportunities to displacethe old leadership. There were some small signs of developing newpolitical foci during World War II. After the War, however, the ArabHigher Committee was reconstituted under the old leadership and wasagain plagued by numerous splits.CONCLUSIONS AND SOME COMPARATIVE QUESTIONSIn the last few years, there has been a growing effort to come to gripswith the idea that exogenous factors are an aspect of the "crucialenvironment" of many Third World societies.61 Recent research hasreacted against older theories of modernization that noted the initialimpetus of the West in fostering change but then looked solely to theinternal dynamics of the society in order to understand the nature of thatchange.62 Most of the new literature emphasizing the continuing and

58 A Survey of Palestine, Vol. II, p. 599.59 The use of terror might be another indication of the landowning families' falling socialcontrol and power in the country and their need to resort to internal violence to maintainpolitical conformity.60 Raghib Nashashibi left the Arab Higher Committee.61 Theda R. Skocpol states that what is needed is a gestalt switch from intra-societaltheories-specifically, those dealing with modernization-to intersocietal ones. The latterwould recognize ".. . that large-scale social change within societies is always in large partcaused by forces operating among them, through their economic and political interac-tion." "A Critical Review of Barrington Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship andDemocracy," Politics and Society, 4 (Fall, 1973), pp. 29-30. Also, see Robert B. Stauffer,"Great-Power Constraints on Political Development" in Deane E. Neubauer (ed.),Readings in Modern Political Analysis (2nd ed.; Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,1974), pp. 197-230.62 Among those in the dependencia school, see, for example, Andre Gunder Frank,"The Development of Underdevelopment" in Robert I. Rhodes (ed.), Imperialism andUnderdevelopment, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970), pp. 4-17; and TheotonisDos Santos, "The Structure of Dependence," American Economic Review, 60 (May,1970), pp. 231-236. For a different approach, see Theodore H. Moran, "Foreign Expan-sion as an 'Institutional Necessity' for U.S. Corporate Capitalism," WorldPolitics, 25(April, 1973), pp. 370-86. Probably the most important work, to date, is ImmanuelWallerstein, The Modern World-System (New York: Academic Press, 1974).


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URBANIZATION AND POLITICAL CHANGE 347structural role of outside influence, to date, has focused on purelyeconomic variables, such as capital outflows, and has assumed politicalresults rather than analyzed them.In this article, I have tried to point to the influence of some of theseexternal variables and their interaction with Palestinian society andpolitics. The competitive environment of the city affected both theability of new urban groups to build a strong power base and the natureof the political struggle that developed. The foreign administrative andeconomic presence contributed to an environment that led to continuedweakening of the social control of the old elite but simultaneouslyforestalled the building of a strong social base by a new elite.

Certainly, the recent criticism of modernization theory makes onecautious about grand generalizations in regard to other societies of Asiaand of Latin America and Africa. Nevertheless, I believe the Palesti-nian experience is suggestive that the environment of change must belooked at much more carefully, particularly the interaction betweeninternal and external structures and forces. Colonial ruleand other typesof foreign presence have created asymmetry and heterogeneity in theurban environments of a number of countries. Analyses starting fromthis premise may be much better suited to explain some of the recentempirical findings in the Third World. To cite several examples, thesephenomena include enduring divisions within the rapidly growing citiesbased on tribal affiliation or past residence and the presence ofcaciquismo and patron-client relationships transferred from rural tourban settings. Similarly, political passivity of in-migrants in a numberof societies despite the wretched conditions found in many urban slumsmay be explained partly by the absence of urbanframeworks, capable ofintegrating and organizing these migrants for political action.63 Foreignpenetration provided the aspiringelites of a number of countries with thetarget around which they could galvanize national sentiment but deniedthem the opportunity to take advantage of it. The links to in-migrantshave remained weak, and the hopes of building new urban patterns ofdomination in order to establish a power base have gone unfulfilled inmany parts of the Third World. With the end of formal colonialism, therehas not been the expected centralization by new urban elites but rather aprocess of fractionalization of power.The nature of the process of change in each country, of course,depends on the specific circumstances it faced. Any attempt to gaugehow different circumstances produced different results must still remain

63 See, for example, Joan Nelson, "The Urban Poor: Disruption or Political Integrationin Third World Cities?" WorldPolitics, 22 (April, 1970); and Wayne A. Cornelius, Jr.,"Urbanization as an Agent in Latin American Political Instability: The Case of Mexico,"American Political Science Review, 63 (September, 1969).


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348 JOEL S. MIGDALat acrude andpreliminaryevel. Atthispoint,however, some of thekeyissues can be pinpointed o be used in any theorythatwill drawon thegrowingnumber of empiricalworks on urbanizationand on politicalchange. 1) Is urbanization process occurring n a numberof scatteredcities (as in Palestine)or is the process concentrated n one majorcity(often the capital)?2) Are there intermediary ities or towns to whichpeople migratebeforemigratingo the majorcities? Whatroledo theselocales play in indigenouseconomic institutionalization?What differ-ences are there from the majorcities in the relationshipto foreigninstitutions?64 )Does migration o the city involvea breakwithvillageand kin relations?In Palestine, the very compactnessof the countrymeant that many could work in the city and still remainliving in thevillage.Local institutions nsuchcases tend to be particularlytrongandresilient. 4) To what degree historically was the city controlled bylandowningelites or to whatdegreewere thereindependentguildsandmerchants, argely ree fromthelandowning lite's control?5)Whatwasthe politicalrole of foreignpowers?Was the countrya colony or diditremain even nominallyindependent?When did oppositionto foreignpresence crystallize?Whichgroupswere compromisedby foreignruleand which took the lead in opposingthe foreigners?6) Whatwas thenature of the external economic penetration?How extensive was it?Was it based, as in Palestine, on opportunities imited to politicalcon-trol?Wasit based onextractionof rawmaterials?Onindustry?Towhatextent did it allow for indigenoussocial mobility?For PalestinianArabs, the end of foreigninterventionbroughtnewconvulsionsin the form of the 1948Jewish-ArabWar,of the last effortsof self-rule,and of the creationof largenumbersof refugees. Two finalpoints stemming romthe above analysiscanbe madeaboutthe eventsthatfollowedthe BritishwithdrawalromPalestine.First,whenthe warbroke out in 1948,the low level of political integrationof PalestinianArabsociety meantthat it was totallyunsuitedfor the type of mobiliza-tion needed to buildan organizedandeffective fighting orce. Second,there was a disintegrationof Palestinian-Arabpolitics in the yearsfollowingthe 1948war. Fora shorttime, the Husseinifamilycontinuedto operateon the politicalscene with the establishment f the so-calledGaza Government.But withthe very basis of theirlingering nfluencegone-they no longer controlledhuge tracts of land nor other crucialsources of patronage-the old city-basedlandowningelite fadedfromthe politicalscene by the mid-1950sor becameabsorbed ntotheJorda-nianpoliticalprocess. As we have already seen, no strong,new urban

64 On such towns, see Shahid Javed Burki, "Development of Towns: The PakistanExperience," Asian Survey, 14 (August, 1974), pp. 751-62.


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URBANIZATION AND POLITICAL CHANGE 349elitehademergedwithpowerbasedin thegrowingcity populationof themandatoryperiod. The new leadershipcame insteadfrom young uni-versity studentsandgraduates-the intellectualsamongthe Palestinianpeople-who in the 1960sbeganto developthefedayeen organizations.And this, of course, opened a new chapterin theirhistory.

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Urban Migdal