For the sake of time, I have parsed out all instances of the terms ‘Arab Gulf,’ ‘Arabian Gulf,’ ‘Persian Gulf,’ and ‘the Gulf.’ The terms were searched in a case sensitive manner, relying on the understanding of the transcriber as a means to avoid picking up general use of the term ‘gulf.’ One other caveat is that this doesn’t distinguish between reporters’ questions and official statements, however, I think the former is infrequent. Lastly, the quantity is based on occurrences rather than speeches. The original dataset is available in Google Docs. [2]

There is a clear and consistent trend to use the term ‘the Gulf,’ while the tendency to use ‘Persian Gulf’ has lessened across time. April 2003 and February 2000-February  2001 represent the periods where ‘Arabian Gulf’ found its greatest use.

[1] http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/
[2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Amq69Ncu9Fp_dEVUTnMyLTFwb0pCTWFGNkpXVUpSaUE

In the pursuit of the origin of Syria’s censorship structure, the site SyrianTenders.com came up as a potential source of foreign solicitations for hardware and software. While the story that unfolded describes a more secretive process, SyrianTenders is by all means a mature business that has been in operation for at least two years, servicing a range of clients from Al Assad University Hospital to the Syrian Military’s Housing Authority. As of this posting, the site lists 870 tenders, the vast majority of which appear to still be open for bidding. ST even has a browser toolbar available to alert when the news tenders are posted based off its RSS feed. In some respects, what is particularly striking is how banal and low-quantity the needs are for all their stated urgency.

Anathema to my general line of research, there are very few requests for technology, instead requesting packaging for produce, mass transit buses, pipes and agricultural support. However, SyrianTenders does contain the types of hydroelectric components, oil production equipment and building materials that are exactly what foreign governments want to restrict in order to stifle domestic growth.

Tenders by Sector

Furthermore, some of the solicitations seem to openly reflect the unstable political situation of the country.

إعلان طلب عروض أسعار لتقديم وتركيب أجهزة إنارة مضادة للانفجار في مشروع مشفى المخرم – للمرة الثالثة – بالسرعة الكلية

(Declaration request bids for installation of lighting and anti-explosion in the hospital project openwork – for the third time – URGENT)

For the past month, it has been my deep desire to attempt to quantify the rate of posting of tenders as a test of the hypothesis that it correlates with sanctions-related scarcity. The problem is the site does not denote when a tender was posted or automatically delete old listings. Looking at cached copies shows times where the more tenders were available, but with higher rates of expiration. Regrettably then, no approach to this problem seems able without direct access to the database.

Following CitizenLab’s research, it is interesting to document the delivery of services for SyrianTenders. Sure enough, the associated address ‘207.32.185.22′ is owned by Nexcess, a Michigan-based hosting company specializing in e-Commerce. A recent addition, premium subscriptions for potential bidders (100 USD per 6 months), accepts payment by major credit card through Paypal. Taking it further with a whois on the syriantenders.com domain returns:

Administrative Contact:
ghashim, moe moe@kzresults.com
Walnut Bend Ln
Houston, Texas 77042
US
713 706 4380

On its contact page, Syrian Tenders lists.

Syrian Tenders
Aleppo – Syria – Cordoba Street
Phone : +963 95 6337522
Fax: +963212683456

Walnut Bend Ln

According to a lookup on the aggregator CorporationWiki, the specific Walnut Bend address is host to a number of business entities.

Companies at this address:
Mnc Group International, Inc.
Ghashim Capital Ventures Corporation
Sports Zone
Ghashim Group, Inc.

The domains associated with the server’s IP address support this as well, hosting:

7arake.com, fr-wear.com, golfshirtspro.com, jacketspro.com, labcoatsusa.com, mohanadghashim.com, signfurniture.com, sorrymenak.com, syriantenders.com, workshirtsusa.com, workuniform.com, zizac.com.

Among the domains is the link, ‘7arake.com,’ an ecommerce vendor with listed addresses for Aleppo, Syria (Cordoba St.) and Houston, TX (Walnut Bend Ln.). There 7arake describes its involvements with SyrianTenders.com as such:

SyrianTenders is the first website of its kind in Syria which electronically aggregates and categorizes all tenders advertised in the Syrian Arab Republic according to your company’s needs. 7arake is managing this site in partnership with Close2Edge.

(Close2Edge announced its merger with 7arake on September 17th, 2011 in a blog post that noted their close collaboration on SyrianTenders.)

It’s difficult to know what to make of SyrianTenders at this point. Its relationships and shell companies clearly violate Department of Commerce and Department of Treasury sanctions on doing business with Syria. On the other hand, is proves that there are markets in everything, and gives a fascinating overview of the situation on the ground in the country. It is deeply unfortunate that the historical data appears lost to the outside.

Mr. Steve Schick,

The device attached to 77.44.210.15 is not a BlueCoat SG-400 Appliance. Not a chance. None at all. And if it were, it would definitely not be an address owned by the Syrian Computer Society.

On October 5, the technology collective Telecomix released a set of logs that documents the web traffic of users of Syrian Telecommunications Establishment (Syria Telecom). The logs had been deposited on a poorly secured filesystem by a set of network monitoring appliances built by the American company BlueCoat and, compressed, total about 54 GB. Leila Nachawati, of Global Voices, has expounded on the immediate censorship ramifications, however, there is much more to be documented in this rich data source.

As a point of reference, the logs follow the format:

date time time-taken c-ip cs-username cs-auth-group x-exception-id sc-filter-result cs-categories cs(Referer) sc-status s-action cs-method rs(Content-Type) cs-uri-scheme cs-host cs-uri-port cs-uri-path cs-uri-query cs-uri-extension cs(User-Agent) s-ip sc-bytes cs-bytes x-virus-id

2011-08-05 16:28:01 1 0.0.0.0 – - – OBSERVED “unavailable” –  200 TCP_HIT GET text/html http sp.cwfservice.net 80 /1/N/K962ZF9Z39/K9-00006/0/GET/HTTP/bluecoat.com/80// – - “ClientLibs Session” 82.137.200.42 275 151 -

Amongst a deluge of attempts to reach Facebook and pornography, a multitude of angles for research on the infrastructure of Syrian censorship and behavior of Internet users stands out. Considering the origin of the logs and pressing issues, one potential avenue would be the documentation of bluecoat-related accesses. Here one finds hundreds of iterations of the following line:

2011-08-05 16:28:01 1 0.0.0.0 – - – OBSERVED “unavailable” –  200 TCP_HIT GET text/html http sp.cwfservice.net 80 /1/N/K962ZF9Z39/K9-00006/0/GET/HTTP/bluecoat.com/80// - – “ClientLibs Session” 82.137.200.42 275 151 -

Blue Coat WebFilter includes as a standard feature – our Dynamic Real-Time Rating (DRTR™) service; when users encounter a new Web page, DRTR can use extremely accurate artificial intelligence to confidently rate the page (typically in about 200 milliseconds) so that appropriate use and security policy can be enforced the first time the Webpage is encountered. DRTR is particularly accurate at rating potentially objectionable sites (rating up to 98% automatically).

Furthermore, it calls by device services such ‘PacketShaper’ indicates that the DRTR service is not the only mechanism that contacts the BlueCoat controlled ’sp.cwfservice.net.’

It would appear that all of Syria’s BlueCoat hardware calls home to update its ability to filter and monitor new objects that it has not encountered. Equally importantly, the Syrian logs are filled with queries related to BlueCoat systems, such as ‘bluecoat data collector,’ something that a general home user would have little interest in.

From personal experience with Iran, hardware will eventually find its way into sanctioned countries — restrictions increase price, not necessarily decreases availability. No company can reasonably be held accountable for second-hand sales, and many have increased their control of distributors as a result of leakages to embargoed countries. Furthermore, Telecomix’s exploration has found evidence for hardware from other manufacturers, namely Cisco and Barracuda, the former of which I have more faith to abide US trade restriction.

As we have seen elsewhere, the common interpretation of OFAC sanctions to embargoed countries is the denial of electronic services to known, national IP address ranges. It would appear that at least after August 14, these same level of restrictions apply to Syria as well. Unfortunately this date range of logs were not available to Telecomix. However, many technology providers appear to have interpreted sanctions to apply far before the Arab Spring-related pressures.

Syria has by all means built for itself the foundations of mature system of monitoring and censoring Internet traffic, and at its foundation is at least a two dozen accounted for BlueCoat ProxySG Appliances. By current count, there are more than a thousand queries to BlueCoat’s client services documented in a few days of traffic logs. Considering the extent of this traffic and the peculiarity of its origin, that BlueCoat was not aware of the existence of these devices appears implausible. Syria Telecom’s relationships with the Assad regime expose the company to the legal restrictions on services imposed by American embargoes on doing business to with the country. Regardless of who sold Syria these devices, BlueCoat has both the moral and legal responsibilities to end these services now.

Clarification (11.3.2011): It’s been noted that the specific entry cited may have been generated by Blue Coat’s free ‘K9′ desktop software. However, this was solely a matter of poor luck in my choice of examples to include. More functions appear to reach cwfservice.net, most of which are less likely to be a client application.

2011-08-03 09:01:05 277 0.0.0.0 – - – OBSERVED “none” –  200 TCP_MISS GET text/html http sp.cwfservice.net 80 /2/N/0477d7b851ad026ebf20ea158cf5164f/BLUSHPR1/0/GET/https/updates.bluecoat.com/443/ – - “PacketShaper” 82.137.200.48 270 305 -

This weekend, over a thousand protesters marched on Wall Street, with a couple hundred continuing into the night occupying Liberty Plaza in lower Manhattan. Echoed with enthusiastic, revolutionary glee was the impression that the event, planned over a few short weeks, was an extension of popular movements in Tunisia, Egypt, Greece and Spain, and a change in American discourse. Unfortunately, the event has come to represent, in execution, an extension of the same insular leftism with no broad appeal to the public.

Passive revolution.

Walking to cull through my photos from the day, I ran into a group holding a candle light vigil on the sidewalk. Knowing my neighborhood, I assumed the townhouse was an embassy and went to spy which. Northwest Dupont Circle is a hotbed of consulates for former and current pariah regimes, housing Belarus, Iraq, Zimbabwe within a few square blocks. As I ducked in to look and then walk away, I was flagged down by an older individual who wanted to explain that they were expatriate Eritrean,s protesting government oppression of democratic activists.

The difference in attitude was striking. For a group of eight, it was worthwhile to track me down and make the case for their cause; yet, the previous afternoon, little effort was made by the hundreds of protesters to engage the public.

Instead, the media model was clear. A sufficient number of protesters occupying a space for long enough would hypothetically attract the Television attention necessary to bring out the public and inconvenience the daytime residents of the neighborhood. The call to action was ‘bring your friends, stay the night and if you can’t stay — come back tomorrow.’

Lectures given and agreements were made that the police were working class comrades, deceived by the elites; however, few attempts were made to convert those lining the perimeter of the square. Those interlocutors that wandered in on their own will, were less at risk of being lectured on wealth inequality than they were on truths about the events that took place two blocks away and ten years ago, or imminent execution of a Georgian man.

Pluralism is Strength

The differences between ‘Occupy Wall Street’ and Egypt’s Tahrir Square couldn’t be more stark. Nowhere close to enough has been written about the internal process leading up to the early days of February, but one gleans the image of organizers moving into the coffeeshops to recruit the unemployed and dispossessed. On top of this legwork, preexisting civil society existed that the protesters could connect on a common cause. The lead up to Tahrir was not young students camping out, writing on Twitter, appealing to the media and waiting for the public to join. Instead, it was the process of

First:

…the Kifaya movement, a political formation that brought together Islamists, Muslim Brothers, communists, liberals, and secular-leftists, joined on the basis of a common demand for an end to the Mubarak regime…[1]

Second:

The organizational skills of the ultras, fanatical Cairo soccer fans, are emerging as opponents and supporters of embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak determine the fate of the 82-year old Egyptian leader’s 30-year rule.[2]

At times it would seem that the Tea Party, a coalition of groups with extremely different social positions united by a few common goals, has more in common than Egypt’s revolutionaries.

Nothing of the sort of networking necessary for a movement happened that day on Wall Street. No attempt was made to bring in the public; and groups introspectively defined themselves to discuss the ambitions of the strike. More time was spent on the discussion of parliamentary systems and planning of events, than communications and outreach. As tourists wandered, unassailed, down the busy corridor of Broadway that constituted the border of the encampment, opportunities were lost.

Rhetoric Matters

The classic pattern occurred of working groups, self-indoctrination and sectarian debate. Instead, the protests seemed more bent of defining their unwillingness to participate in economic systems, than offering solutions to the public. By conflating wealth inequality with class warfare, the protesters closed off access to the majority of the public. Peripheral issues further this disengagement — confronting the narrative of September 11th, everyone is lost.

Lower Manhattan is not pre-revolution Egypt or Tunisia, and environmental comparisons fail in merit. The bombastic comments heard frequently about ‘not being afraid to go to jail or die,’ must certainly be based on the understanding that the latter is improbable and the former insignificant. The New York Police Department’s book, hold, release and drop policies are incomparable to the horrors of Evin Prison, and attempts to draw parallels insult real suffering. For that matter, such poor execution of civil disobedience is more liable to put off potential supporters than create social change.

Avoiding Alienation

To be sure, many in Liberty Plaza have been genuinely affected by the economics of the United States, and compelling stories exist in the crowd. One comment overheard embodied this.

To pay my way through a Bachelors in Biology, I worked in a hotel. When I graduated I couldn’t find a job in what I studied for, and the only reason I could find anything at all, was because of that previous hospitality experience, doing the same thing I was doing back then. It’s sad; that terrible job was worth more than my college diploma.

These are the stories that concern the general public and resonate more deeply than the idealist whose goal is to never work a nine-to-five job in their life while they seek to overthrow the status quo. No suburban parent will see themselves or their children in that individual.

What’s clear is that a compelling narrative exists to be seized by idealistic youth. The social politics of America is defined by a generation with a bleaker future than their predecessors — underemployed and lacking credibility — and the parents, concerned about their children’s future and their own. This is a nightmare that cuts across all sections of the public, from the cosmopolitan coasts to the rural Midwest. If the United States has its own Tahrir moment, it will begin with that simple fact.

–

[1] http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2011/02/09/the-road-to-tahrir/

[2] http://mideastsoccer.blogspot.com/2011/02/egyptian-ultra-tactics-evident-in.html

همانطور که در سایت های خبری نوشته شد، ، از آغاز هفته پیش تعدادی از سرویس های ارائه کننده اینترنت در ایران از گواهینامه های امنیتی به سرقت رفته از شرکت هلندی “دیجی نوتار” برای  حمله به سایت هایی نظیر گوگل استفاده کرده اند. این حمله برای نخستین بار در شهر مشهد شناسایی شده است، با این حال این حمله بسیاری از کاربران اینترنت در سراسر کشور را در بر می گیرد. براساس تحقیقات انجام شده، بسیاری از کاربران پارس آلاین، پیشگام، داتک و شاتل هدف این حمله بوده اند. حدس و گمانها بر این است که علاوه بر گوگل، سایت های دیگری نیز هدف حمله بوده اند که هنوز نام و مشخصات آنها گزارش نشده است. مقاله زیر در تلاش است تا راههای ساده ایی را برای پیشگیری و مقابله با این نوع حملات در اختیار خوانندگان قرار دهد.

راههای ساده برای مقابله با این مشکل:

1. از یکی از دو مرورگر گوگل کروم و یا فایرفاکس استفاده کنید. اگر در حال حاضر از این دو استفاده می کنید، مرورگرخود را بروز کنید.

کاربران فایرفاکس تنها لازم است که آخرین نسخه ایی که در روز سه شنبه 30 آگوست  منتشر شده را دانلود کنند. برای اطلاعات بیشتر می توانید به تارنمای زیر مراجعه کنید:

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/deleting-diginotar-ca-cert

1. در تنظیمات کامپیوتر خود، نام کمپانی تولید کننده این گواهینامه جعلی را وارد کنید:

برای کاربران سیستم عامل مک:

به بخش Applications بروید. بر روی فولدر Utilities  کلیک کنید و برنامه Keychain Access  را باز کنید:

سپس مراحل زیر را انجام دهید:

در برنامه “Keychain Access” بر روی “System Roots”  کلیک کنید و از میان گزینه ها، بر روی گزینه “ DigiNotar Root Ca” کلیک سمت راست کنید و گزینه “Get info”  را انتخاب کنید:

سپس گزینه “Never Trust” را با توجه به تصویر بالا انتخاب کنید.

برای کاربران سیستم عامل ویندوز:

نام این شرکت از لیست شرکت های قابل اعتماد در اینترنت اکسپلورر حذف شده است. با این وجود توجه داشته باشید که  مرورگر اینترنت اکسپلورر از سایر جهات امنیتی قابل اعتماد نیست و توصیه اکید این است که ازمرورگر فایرفاکس و یا گوگل کروم استفاده کنید.

میزان خسارت را به حداقل برسانید:

1. حتما رمز عبور خود را عوض کنید. استفاده  از ترکیب عبارتها و ارقام طولانی و یا جملات طولانی  که فقط برای شما معنی می دهد استفاده کنید. رمز عبور خود را در جای دیگری به جز برای ایمیل استفاده نکنید.

1. زمانی که مرورگر اینترنت به شما این هشدار را می دهد که سایتی که میخواهید وارد شوید قابل اعتماد نیست، این اخطار را نادیده نگیرید. این نوع اخطارها طبیعی نیست. این هشدارها به این معناست که چیز مهمی در سیستم امنیتی شما بهم ریخته و افراد دیگری احتمالا به سیستم شما رخنه کرده اند. تا زمانی که این اخطار را دریافت می کنید از ورود به سایت خودداری کنید.

جلوگیری از این نوع مشکلات در آینده:

در حال حاضر راهی برای مقابله مستقیم با این نوع حملات وجود ندارد. بهترین راه پیشگیری، حفظ امنیت و مشاهده دقیق تغییرات جزئی در سیستم است. با این حال برای محدود کردن این نوع حملات راهکارهای زیر را پیشنهاد می کنیم:

1. برای دور زدن سانسور از ابزارهای مانند “Tor”  و یا وی پی ان استفاده کنید. استفاده از وی پی ان به معنی این نیست که سیستم شما کاملا در امان است. پیش از استفاده از وی پی ان، مطمئن شوید که منبع آن قابل اعتماد است.

2. به دارندگان گوشیهای هوشمند توصیه می کنیم تا از گزینه دو مرحله ایی احراز هویت در گوگل برای دسترسی به ایمیل خود استفاده کنند. با این روش برای دسترسی به حساب کاربری خود توسط یک کامپیوتر جدید، باید در ابتدا ارقامی که توسط گوگل به تلفن شما فرستاده می شود را وارد کنید تا بتوانید به حساب کاربری خود دسترسی داشته باشید. با این روش، اگر فردی به غیر از شما بخواهد به این ایمیل دسترسی داشته باشد باید تلفن شما را هم در اختیار داشته باشد.

برای اطلاعات بیشتر می توانید به تارنمای زیر مراجعه کنید:

http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/static.py?page=guide.cs&guide=1056283&topic=1056284

برای اطلاعات بیشتر در این زمینه می توانید با نویسنده این مقاله از طریق آدرس ایمیل زیر در ارتباط باشید:

Collin Anderson, collin@averysmallbird.com

PDF: PreventingSpyingfromFakedSecurityCertificatesPersian

Mousavi, Karoubi, Leader (Khamenei), Khomeini, Ahmadinejad

If Google’s search can reasonably predict elections in the US, to what extent does it indicate the current attitudes of the Iranian public?

A few words of advice for embassies and foreign organizations attempting to create the notion of public support for the current regime; collected from the anecdotes and experiences gathered over the Arab Spring-White House protests.

1. When providing students with flags, vary the size and quality. While it’s unlikely that most college students and emigrants pack a flag in their suitcase, it’s even less plausible that they all tow the same version attached to new, identical Home Depot dowels. It’s understandable that you want picturesque scenes of nationalism for state-run media, so make a few changes. For one, desperation breeds creativity, and many people have resorted to craftwork — when your opposition has flags constructed of sheets of colored A4 paper mounted on cardboard, you risk revealing your rouse by upstaging them.
2. Don’t put your threats to cut off funds for visiting students in writing. Implicit warnings work just as well, and don’t get forwarded to the opposition movement.
3. Create a front organization — something progressive sounding, like ‘Students for Modern Governance.’ This has a twofold effect of countering the opposition’s battle for legitimacy through appearance of public support and creates a PR firewall. When an opposition protester steals a flag, they will be less likely to carelessly shout that its ‘property of the embassy.’
4. Keep minders with the pro-government protesters to ensure the efficacy of your threats or bribes. Without the motivation of personal conviction, history shows supporters generally show up for ten minutes, take pictures and flee the eire of the numerously-larger and more-impassioned diaspora.

Lastly, as a suggestion and not a rule, encourage your stalwarts to tone down gross display of excess wealth. Armani jackets and Gucci sunglasses run the risk of alienating people that don’t understand your society is built on ethnic-class politics.

Americans love the scrappy Jacobin.

]]> http://b.averysmallbird.com/entries/advice-for-embassies-astroturfing-diaspora-support/feed 0 http://b.averysmallbird.com/entries/values-in-the-conflict-between-crowdsourced-reporting-and-action http://b.averysmallbird.com/entries/values-in-the-conflict-between-crowdsourced-reporting-and-action#comments Fri, 07 Jan 2011 18:07:29 +0000 collin http://b.averysmallbird.com/?p=788 This happened last weekend:

On Sunday night, Allen Haywood was randomly and viciously attacked by two kids on the platform of the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station. Dozens of people witnessed it. Several people filmed it. Nobody helped.

But, surely, they were helping by being brave iReporters! After all, Heisenberg told us that observation is participation! Now, we have video that can provoke the public’s hearts and minds! And evidence!

Recalling a similar situation that I was in, it concerns me that the idea of new media and ‘crowdsourced reporting’ has facilitated a very strong impulse to step back and passively document events, rather than interfere. Moreover, the media culture has rewarded this position. We step back and congratulate ourselves for having created some intangible good of awareness or social capital, and herald the new ways this was produced. Videographers seem to be more frequently interviewed than their subjects.

What people are taught is that this behavior isn’t passive — pulling out your iPhone and taking high definition video is as much of an engagement as intervening, without losing fame. Perhaps moreso, one will increase their fame! ‘The horror that I was forced to watch, safely, from a hundred feet away!’ To think, had I chosen the other option — to video innocent people being beaten randomly – how many more hits this poor, lonely blog would have gotten!

There are larger morals that should be derived from this incident. In the only article Malcom Gladwell has ever written that I enjoyed, he writes about the fallacies of digital activism being evident in the strength of network connections. He misses, likely constrained by space, another component: the unmerited sense of participation.

People who tweet at home, while the revolution is going on outside, are cowards. Those who record assaults, instead of trying to stop them, are selfish and socially negligent.

The following is a segment on state capacity that edited out of a in-work paper. I post it as a starting point for those interested in a topic that isn’t necessarily accessible to non-political scientists. Take from it what you can…

State Capacity and Challenges

As a variable measuring societal penetration, the capacity of a government can range wildly between the polar examples of Somalia’s interim, international-backed government and the omnipresent, prebendalist regime of North Korea. To exist as a monopolistic organization jealous of its own autonomy, capable of dictating the behavior of inhabitants and the mobilization of the resources of its territory, there are fundamental characteristics that the state must develop (Snyder, pg. 313). The Western norm of high extractive capacity and political domination in a territory presupposes a strong state that can redirect resources to implement political decisions. Outside of Europe, a host of issues created idiosyncrasies in the state-building process that established a different dialectic, creating unpredictable tribulations and malformed political structures (Leftwich, pg. 60). Colonial development and natural resources were leveled incongruently across countries, while many were burdened with substantive issues of nationalism and governance that impeded the formation of capable regimes.

Within the context of civil-society relations, regime-type may affect the strategies a state can pursue to deal with groups, such as Islamists, however it has not historically privileged one form of government above all others in the overall capacity to confront such actors. Although democracy, consociational or majoritarian, is favored by Western governments and their transnational institutions, one can readily find examples of democratic states being significantly minimized or usurped by the efforts of domestic spoilers. Alternatively, some authoritarian states have had significant success is quelling Islamist insurgencies, even in their periphery. Instead, the important characteristics of the regime in confronting non-state actors are dictated in its legitimacy, functionality and penetration. Underdevelopment in these areas create a host of issues for governments and often lead to bureaucratic inefficiencies and policy failures. Such tenets are qualitative guidelines over the manner in which most governments are able to keep control and survive against competing actors, domestic or exogenous, expecting that states that display some competence in these functions should have more success in their efforts to minimize or incorporate non-state Islamist groups (Migdal, pg. 19).

Monopoly of Coercion

The state should hold a monopoly over the principle means of legitimate violence for the purpose of mass coercion and sociopolitical domination. Traditionally this relies on the establishment and maintenance of standing armies and internal security forces while routing non-state sanctioned militia and foreign armies. Advanced governments generally develop police forces different from the military which act as functionaries of the judicial-legal system.

Policy Autonomy

Significant independence from unincorporated domestic and foreign influences in the policy-making process allows for home rule in judgments made by leaders or the bureaucracy. Decision-makers should exist in a culture that promotes the common good of the public and refrains from self-serving corruption. The state must be able to circumvent the influence of strong social actors, including avoiding a situation where the government is compelled to bribe or defer to the consent of the independent elite.

Binding Rules

The ability of leaders to make and implement binding rules for all individuals within the state’s territory is fundamental to the efficacy of government. For most post-colonial states, the challenge after independence is the political incorporation of rural areas whose development was spared in favor of the industrialized, administrative center. The implementation of a uniform system of laws and the extension of a system of courts in place of fragmented customary or feudal law is essential to inducing inhabitants to behave within the policies of the government and diminishing the role of non-state actors in society. Legal institutions and police forces give the state the option of the coercive sanctions which increase the cost of challenging policies. In well-adjusted societies, there is a public expectation that those in power are equally accountable to the law, reducing the prevalence of corruption and rent-seeking.

Coherency of Government

A developed notion of the division of labor in the functionaries of the state and its bureaucracy, including differentiation of its components and fields of influence allows for specialized, complex operations with coherency, coordination and professionalism between the branches of government and with the citizen. Consistent rules increase the usefulness of institutions for the public and bolster legitimacy in terms of participation. In fragile, consociational democracies with ministries divided based on identity groups, there is often a tendency for intra-governmental competition and overlap to arise out of group-serving attempts to increase influence by expanding sections of the bureaucracy at the expense of others.

The state has traditionally been tailored as a means to ensure the security of the status quo and serve the interests of the political-connected class as well as provide a means to resolve disputes among citizens and with the state. To these ends, four persistent types of activities are prevalent among stable states: maintenance of internal order and protection of the social structure and property rights; military defense or aggression; maintenance of communication and trade infrastructure; economic redistribution (Mann, pg. 120; Rotberg, pg. 3). None of these operations account for the initial formative events which create the state or a sense of common nationality.

The concept of the state has often been labelled as being a Eurocentric model of organization propagated by colonial ventures. Traditionally, a state is composed of nations which are the subjective internalizations of common experiences amplified by the elites (Nettl, pg. 655; Snyder). Post-colonial countries were generally not the product of the development of societal institutions based on the delineation of national identities. Few African or Middle Eastern states have benefited from the slow organization and self-division that was afforded to Europe. Territory lines were often drawn arbitrarily without interest in the ethnic character of the region by distant power. International and intra-regional institutions, such as the United Nations and the African Union, have cemented these lines, dooming some states to poor governance and a state of arrested development. Certainly, this disposition doesn’t preclude such factors from having a substantial impact on the state, but it does reduce their likelihood and potency (Migdal, pg. 271).

World Timing and Historical Events

In some respects, all nations have been measurably affected by geopolitics. This is true not only for countries formerly colonized by Western Europe but others like Turkey under the Ottoman empire. To be beneficial, international politics must facilitate the consolidation of social and territorial control under one central government capable of maintaining internal order. The common example of this case is the consolidation of the international Jewish community in the Palestinian territories as a result of the population flight and British mandate instigated by the events of World War II. Further examples include the disintegration of Yugoslavia into ethnically defined nation-states or the reintegration of Germany after the collapse of the Soviet Union hegemony in eastern Europe.

Exogenous Violence Threat

In a manner similar to Franz Fanon’s narration of the flattening of sociopolitical boundaries in the face of the hardships of external occupation, the threat of violence by a foreign actor has the potential of minimizing political boundaries between risk-minimizing social actors concerned about survival (Fanon, pg. 51). Without these impediments, actors should be more likely to change economic and political priorities from self-serving to community and state-serving for the sake of self-preservation at least for the length of the incursion.

Competent, Independent Bureaucracy

The Weberian, ideal standard of government defines a strong, professional group of individuals divorced from the existing bases of control who objectively identify the needs of the state as the interest of the government organization in interpreting the law. By operating outside existing social organizations, the bureaucracy is able to more closely execute the will of the government and codified laws in a clear and consistent manner impartial to overbearing social actors. In bureaucratic-military states such as those of South America, much of the real power of the government was in the state apparatuses and not the military heads of government. The bureaucracy was responsible for the minutiae of government operations and interpretation of the law, unlike the executives, who were concerned with broad policy direction. (’There’s rarely an authoritarian way to take out the trash.’)

Skilled Leadership

The artful abilities of strong and sophisticated leaders can be sufficient to state-building by successfully mobilizing the population and its resources in articulating an inclusive national philosophy, even in a dynamic and uncertain environment. A skillful and popular leader has the potential of competing with or co-opting existing social bases and creating a new one favorable to the functions of a strong state. The strong leader is able to impose and legitimize a vision of the state that can last beyond their tenure. Few states still embody the principles of their founder as much as Turkey does of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Decades after his death, the military still serves as a check against the democratically-elected government when it appears to drift away from the Kemalist ideals of secularism and Westernization.

These qualities are causally significant in their role as legitimacy-building conditions promoting the importance and potential of the state to the public. Post-revolutionary shift in social relations are not necessarily permanent as times of crisis do not change the original conditions that created the political environment and war can reduce the available wealth of the country, causing more infighting. The ethnic cartography created by colonialism created conditions where extra-state appeals to shared kinship are common and persuasive. Despite initial, revolutionary cohesion, many multi-ethnic African states, such as Kenya and Nigeria, suffer from frequent intrastate conflict as a result of pervasive suspicion between communities. Furthermore, an intelligent interloper is likely to exploit these conditions and ally with disenfranchised elites by promising favors. The ethnic cartography created by colonialism created conditions where appeals to shared kinship are common and persuasive.Both Iran and Iraq encouraged the violence committed by separatist Kurds in each other’s countries, during their conflict in the early 80s, with promises of autonomy.

Legitimacy is a measure of the social capital and hegemonic role of the state with the individual in society, especially in relation to other actors (Migdal, pg. 32). One supposition is that the state that has a widespread compliance by the population should be a difficult environment for actors who are attempting to operate as political spoilers. If the state can gain participation on the part of the individual, there should be a vested interest in the maintenance of the status quo. Contrarily, states which are plagued by issues of representation or efficacy are susceptible to challenges by political spoilers and non-state actors which assert a more relevant connection to the public through identity politics or stronger social services.

Compliance

The state seeks and gains a rudimentary conformance to its demands by the population, often through the sanction of force or court system to pressure adherence. The state may also use its control over the dispersal of resources as a method of gaining social compliance and mobilization. Under such conditions, these monopolies are likely the only reason the government is able to gain the consent of the public and the state is extremely susceptible to a non-state actor that can present alternative institutions and protection.

Participation

The strength of the state is not only in the compliance of the population to government goals and policy but by the mobilization of the population for specialized tasks and the repeated, voluntary use by the public of state institutions. The state is not necessarily accepted as infallible by the population, but as a viable or necessary means of carrying out a livelihood in competition with old social organizations. For the individual, governmental institutions gain credibility because they present viable strategies for maintaining a livelihood without significant costs or unreasonable demands. At this stage, the state’s appeal is mainly economic with the court systems and security forces present to maintain internal order and not necessarily for massive coercion.

Legitimization

The accumulation of social capital by the state’s leads to approbation on the part of the public to the law and the acceptance of the government as the only legitimate means of administrative and social organization. The level of penetration is such that participation in the state is not out of a cost-benefit calculation of the rewards from the system but the conviction of the inherent truth of the new social order. Trust is paramount to this system.

The iconic, iron-fisted ruler can only dictate the lifestyles of the citizens by the use of coercion to a limited and ephemeral extent. In such cases, the acceptance of the leaders need only be a public exhortation of the ruler’s legitimacy with no solid influence on the mindset of the individual. The measure of a regime’s penetration and staying power should be contingent on the public’s use of official institutions connected with the state as opposed to non-sanctioned, private organizations that have the potential to interfere with the government’s operation. The goal of any developing country should be the fostering of these dependencies, whether by coercion or competition, in order to instill a long-term sense of popular or philosophical legitimacy. The entities with the power to change the culture of a population, such as the school system, should be jealously controlled by the government (Nettl, pg. 389). Failing states, in reducing the size of welfare budgets, often privatize essential services such as the educational and medical systems thereby creating opportunities for social actors to usurp the functionality of its traditional domain. In the Middle East, these competing groups have been either the landed elite or a new breed of post-state Islamists.

References

Fanon, F. and R. Philcox (2004).
The Wretched of the Earth.
New York: Grove P.

Leftwich, A. (1994).
States of underdevelopment: The third world state in theoretical
perspective.
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Mann, M. (1984).
The autonomous power of the state: Its origins, mechanisms and
results.
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Migdal, J. S. (1988).
Strong societies and weak states: state-society relations and
state capabilities in the Third World.
Princeton UP.

Nettl, J. (1968).
The state as a conceptual variable.
World Politics 20 (4), 559-592.

Rotberg, R. I. (2003).
State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror.
Brookings Institution Press.

Snider, L. W. (1987).
Identifying the elements of state power.
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Snyder, J. (2000).
From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist
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