The Nature and Determinants of Regime Preference and Political Values in Jordan, Kuwait, and Palestine: Implications for Arab Politics and for the Study of Governance and Democracy

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Two interrelated trends in comparative political research address issues that are pertinent to the Arab world but very much under-studied in that region. One is the resurgence of interest in culture in general and political culture in particular. The other concerns the attitudes and values of ordinary citizens in countries undergoing or seeking to initiate democratic transitions.Against this background, the proposed research will carry out public opinion research in three Arab countries in order to examine the nature and determinants of attitudes and values pertaining to governance, including democratic governance. The first goal of the investigation is to shed light on what has often been called the "missing dimension" in the study of Arab politics: how, why, and with what implications do ordinary citizens think about the way their societies are and should be governed. The second goal is to connect findings from the study of these Arab societies to efforts in Political Science to construct generalizable insights about governance, democratization, and political culture in developing countries.Information about political attitudes and values will be collected through public opinion research in Jordan, Palestine (West Bank and Gaza), and Kuwait. These countries have been selected for both practical and analytical reasons. Practical reasons include the availability of local scholars and institutions that will participate in the project, and also a political climate that permits the conduct of opinion research. Analytical considerations include system-level similarities and differences that make cross-national comparison instructive, and also the availability of data from prior research in each country, thereby permitting longitudinal as well as cross-sectional comparison.The project's explanatory contribution will be enhanced through the incorporation of both a cross-national and a longitudinal comparative dimension. The three countries will be examined at two different points in time. Similar findings across space and/or time will suggest relationships that are likely to be generalizable, at least to the Arab world and perhaps to non-democratic polities in other developing areas. Alternatively, different findings will permit informed speculation about the conditionalities associated with particular patterns and variable relationships.In addition, further extending the project's comparative dimension, findings from the Arab Middle East will be compared to findings from political attitude research in other developing countries. The goal in this connection is to reduce exclusion of the Arab experience from efforts in comparative politics to develop theoretical insights of broad applicability.