What Makes the Arab League Arab?

How can Morocco, Sudan, Oman, Algeria and Tunisia all be a part of the same organisation called the Arab League? Don't these states differ dramatically in ethnic composition, history, colonial experience and even the role Arabic plays in their everyday life? Why is it that the League's very name assumes they belong to one community? Who is the Arab in the Arab League, or really, who gets to be one?

The League was founded in Cairo in 1945 by seven states. Its initial aim was to strengthen political cooperation while safeguarding independence and coordinating the affairs of what its founders understood as the Arab countries. In terms of its historical context, it emerged in an era shaped by anti-colonial movements and the growing appeal of pan-Arab nationalism, thus it expressed a wider belief that Arabic-speaking societies also shared a political destiny.

That vision, however, was never as simple as the League's name proposes. Over the decades, membership expanded beyond the original seven to include a total of twenty-two states stretching from the Atlantic coast of North Africa to the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Today, countries such as Somalia, Djibouti, Mauritania and Comoros sit alongside Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia despite possessing distinct historical experiences. Even the demographic overview of the League shows that the region includes numerous non-Arab societies and multiple officially recognised languages exceeding Arabic.

So, does the Arab League represent an already existing Arab world, or has it helped construct the way that world is imagined?

An Imagined Community

The 20th century political scientist and historian Benedict Anderson famously argued that nations are imagined communities. This is not to say that they are fictional or fake at all, but there exists the very fact that their members will never know most of one another, while still perceiving themselves as somehow related to each other. Anderson initially developed this idea to explain nation-building, though it is crucial for the question of whether institutions could also reinforce shared identities.

A Paradox of Unity

The Arab League seems to do precisely that. It holds annual summits, has shared institutions such as the Arab Monetary Fund and the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation (ALESCO). It persistently presents its members as part of one regional community. This goal is apparent in its approach to Palestine, economic cooperation, joint political declarations and managing diplomatic positions overall — the League speaks in the language of representing all Arab interests rather than simply the interests of twenty-two separate governments. Nevertheless, according to political scientist Michael Barnett, the League has embodied a paradox for a long time: Arab governments embraced the rhetoric of unity, while simultaneously guarding their sovereignty, implying a limitation of how far that unity could truly extend.

The Arab League, however, is not so unique in this regard. Other regional organisations have similarly sought to institutionalise shared identities beyond the borders of individual states. The Organisation of Turkic States elevates a sense of togetherness through an understanding of the Turkic world. Similarly, the European Union promotes a particular mental image of what it means to be European. Perhaps this is not only an Arab phenomenon.

Of course, this does not mean that every citizen of every member state understands their identity in the same way. Amazigh movements in North Africa, Somali nationalism in the Horn of Africa and the diverse identities within Sudan all exemplify that belonging cannot be diminished to a single label. Still, the League's continued existence indicates that political organisations do more than merely facilitate negotiation.

Possibly that is what makes the Arab League truly "Arab" — the enduring political project of presenting remarkable diversity as a unity. Its name is therefore more of a statement about how the region sees itself, or rather, how it hopes to be seen in the international arena.

Sources

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised ed. London: Verso, 2006.

Barnett, Michael. Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional Order. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Barnett, Michael, and Etel Solingen. "Designed to Fail or Failure of Design? The Origins and Legacy of the Arab League." In Crafting Cooperation: Regional International Institutions in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Dawisha, Adeed. Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Hourani, Albert. A History of the Arab Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.

League of Arab States. Charter of the League of Arab States. Cairo, 1945.

Lynch, Marc. The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East. New York: PublicAffairs, 2012.

Wendt, Alexander. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.