World Order from the People’s Perspective in the Middle East

This book clarifies two points. First, how the general public perceives the international order of the Middle East region, the second, where they aim to go beyond the borders of their homeland. For the first question, we approach it using the analytical concept of a political mental map. For the second question, we answer it by empirically analysing hypotheses derived from international migration theory.　The purpose of the book attempts to quantitatively elucidate the political consciouness and experiences of the general public in order to find the uniqueness and charm of the Middle Eastern area studies and to overcome the “Middle East Exceptionalism.”

The authors examine the political consciousness of the Syrian people through a quantitative analysis of public opinion surveys conducted in 2007. The study aims to understand how Syrians perceive political issues at that time and evaluate the contributions of various countries to regional stability. The “National Public Opinion Survey in the Syrian Arab Republic” served as the primary data source, with factor and regression analyses employed to map out the “political mental map” of the Syrian people. The findings reveal that Syrians view their country as a significant stabilizing force in the Middle East, despite their antagonistic relationship with the U.S. and its allies. The study highlights the alignment between the Syrian people’s political consciousness and the foreign policy of the Assad administration, suggesting a deep-rooted sense of national pride and strategic resistance. This alignment underpins Syria’s stability and political legitimacy amid regional turmoil.

This chapter compares the political mental maps of the Syrian and Egyptian peoples using public opinion surveys conducted in 2007 and 2008. It aims to understand how changes in US foreign policy under President Barack Obama and the multipolar competition in the Arab world influence public perceptions. The analysis uses data from the “National Public Opinion Survey in the Syrian Arab Republic” and “Social Research on the Orientation of Society Members” in Egypt. Findings reveal that both Syrian and Egyptian citizens highly value their own country’s contributions to regional stability while showing strong anti-Israel sentiment. However, the Syrian political mental map reflects pragmatic awareness of regional realities and alliances, contrasting with the Egyptian map’s emphasis on Arabism and ideological stances. This divergence highlights the complex interplay between ideology and political reality in shaping public opinion in authoritarian regimes.

The author examines the “political mental map” of the Lebanese people based on a national opinion survey conducted in 2010. The study investigates how recent political turmoil and external interventions have influenced Lebanese perceptions of foreign countries. The survey, conducted with the Beirut Center for Research and Information, reveals that Lebanese people view the Middle Eastern conflict through a bipolar lens: resistors/mediators like Syria, Iran, and Turkey versus Western and pro-US Arab countries. Lebanese rated their country’s contribution to regional stability modestly while showing high regard for mediators like Turkey and Qatar, and low regard for the US and Israel. The study underscores Lebanon’s complex political identity, caught between external interventions and internal aspirations for national reconciliation, reflecting both regional dynamics and local political realities.

What does the Arab Revolution, or the uprisings in Arab countries in the early part of 2011, mean for Palestinians? We provide an empirical answer to this research question by examining the fluctuating international system as a mental construction. This study aims to develop a new method with which to grasp the mental construction of the theoretical foundation of constructivism. Our research team developed a method to illustrate ordinary people’s perceptions of international relations in the Middle East. It is called the Political Mental Map, and it relies on survey data on subjects’ perceptions of the contributions that their own government, other Arab countries, and the major powers have made toward political stability in the Middle East. This study attempts to address the deterioration in how Palestinians regard the Middle Eastern regional system based on their responses to our questions. The analysis indicates that, for Palestinians, the Arab Revolution does not provide an opportunity to redress the imbalance between national identity and national territory. The Arab uprisings meant regional disorder and brought chaos to the Arab world from the viewpoint of Palestinians. The Political Mental Map of Palestinians suggests a sense of depression among them, in spite of the promise of reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas.

The question set forth in this chapter is “What has the 'Arab Spring' brought to international politics in the Middle East?” and attempts to answer it from an Israeli perspective. We conceptualized the Middle East regional system within the framework of the international system and prepared our analysis using a political mental map. A review of the descriptive statistics of the public opinion data used to create the Political Mental Map revealed that the 2011 Egyptian revolution was perceived by Jewish Israelis as an event contrary to their national interests. We then drew a political mental map of Israelis as of 2016 and compared it to that of 2011 to interpret the structure and processes of the Middle East regional system. The structure of the Middle East regional system from the perspective of Israelis is a bipolar structure with Iran as the leader of the “Axis of Resistance” and Saudi Arabia as the leader of the “Axis of Realism.”

This study investigates the transformation of the “political mental map” of Syrians before and after the Syrian Conflict by comparing two public opinion surveys conducted in 2007 and 2016. The 2007 survey, conducted in collaboration with the Orient Center for International Studies, reflects Syria’s status as a stable and influential regional power. The 2016 survey, following the Syrian Conflict, shows significant changes in Syrians’ perceptions due to foreign interventions. The analysis reveals that pro-Syrian countries like Iran, Russia, and China are perceived positively, while anti-Syrian countries like the US, UK, and Saudi Arabia are viewed negatively. Shifts in perceptions of countries like Turkey, Egypt, and Iraq underscore the dynamic nature of these views based on political developments. The findings highlight Syrians’ sensitive and accurate recognition of their political environment, influenced by both local and international dynamics.

The chapter examines the “hierarchical political mental maps” of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Syria, focusing on their evaluations of various countries’ contributions to their support. Based on a 2018 survey of 1,499 IDPs across six governorates, the research identifies two main camps: the human rights camp (Western countries, Arab Gulf states, Turkey) and the sovereignty camp (Russia, Iran, China). The study reveals IDPs’ preferences for support from countries in the sovereignty camp, but also shows unexpectedly high evaluations for countries like Japan, Germany, and Sweden. The analysis highlights significant regional differences in perceptions, influenced by factors such as the extent of conflict damage and international networks of support. The findings underscore the complexity of IDPs’ political views, shaped by both local circumstances and broader geopolitical dynamics, and provide a detailed look at the layered structure of their hierarchical political mental maps.

The chapter examines who the Syrians are who have experienced or aspire to live abroad, why they choose their travel or desired destinations, and what factors are related to the preference of their destination, as well as to interpret the general reality and desires of Syrians’ international migration. To achieve this purpose, this chapter will conduct a quantitative analysis based on the data from the national opinion survey “National Opinion Survey in the Syrian Arab Republic”, which was conducted at the end of 2007 as part of the “Middle East in Asia—Focusing on Economy and Law” project, a needs-responsive regional research promotion project targeted at the world by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2006. Relaying on the survey, this chapter let the characteristics of Syrians who have lived abroad and who wish to travel abroad clearer. The other hand, network-based experiences for migration to Iraq which is assumed in argument on infiltration of Mujahidun into Iraq via Syria was not verified.

Based on the results of public opinion polls conducted in Arab countries, this chapter analyzes the cross-border migration of Palestinians as part of a project to elucidate the choices and motivations of people in the Middle East region in choosing their destination by analyzing and comparing the actual conditions of awareness and experiences of international migration among the residents of the surveyed areas. We will seek to elucidate the actual situation of Palestinian cross-border migration by comparing the results with those of Syria and Egypt, which have conducted similar public opinion surveys. Specifically, we will present hypotheses and conduct a quantitative analysis after depicting the types of Palestinians who have experiences and hopes of cross-border migration. The analysis in this chapter reveals that Palestinians’ choice of destination and desired destination for cross-border migration is based on a combination of multiple factors, including income, skills development, cultural proximity, network, and gender. Palestinian studies based on qualitative field research tend to emphasize refugee attributes as factors that compel cross-border migration. However, this study, which takes a quantitative approach, emphasizes the diversity found in the relationship between choice of cross-border destination and motivation.

The chapter considers the experiences and the attitudes of the Lebanese toward cross-border migration and explains its effects on contemporary Lebanese politics and societies. To this end, we analyzed the results of “Middle East Opinion Poll (Lebanon 2010),” which was conducted by the Beirut Center for Research and Information (BCRI) in May and June 2010. There are some widespread stereotyped images about the Lebanese; for example, they are cosmopolitan, multilingual, and business oriented, and tend to be entrepreneurial. These images have led the Lebanese to be commonly known as the “New Phoenicians” or a typical case of “Trade Diasporas.” However, the credibility of these images has not necessarily been verified. In this paper, therefore, we attempted to verify the stereotyped image that all the Lebanese are cosmopolitan, by scientific methods and rethought conventional wisdom. The result suggests that all the Lebanese and Lebanese emigrants not necessarily embody the stereotyped images of “New Phoenicians” and “Trade Diasporas,” and there is room for further research on the patterns of cross-border movement of the Lebanese.

Did the sharp increase of Syrian refugees bring on Lebanese attitudinal changes toward Hezbollah, the strongest militia against Israel? Hezbollah is not only a military force but also a political party supported by Iran, an ally of the Asad administration. The answer to the question makes it clear a part of the correlation between domestic and international politics in a battlefield. We want to investigate a more general question, the mechanism to work foreign support escalates the outbreak of a conflict. The study regards the huge influx of Syrian immigrants as a natural experiment to measure the attitudinal changes to Hezbollah among the citizens by the difference in differences estimation. The empirical results indicate that the huge influx of refugees brought on increasing supporters toward Hezbollah because of the demand for the restoration of social order. The citizens are forced to expect power of the strongest militia under the perils of regional disorder.

In the time of writing this chapter (2012), several Islamic extremist group were active in Syrian conflict, and large number of foreign fighter began to rush into the battlefield in Syria. This chapter pointed out similar background of those fighters and Mujahidun who infiltrated into Iraq to fight American occupation. The chapter also pointed out incompatibility of those Islamic extremists with “Syrian Revolution”. Later, It became obvious that main Islamic extremist group Jabhat al-Nusra was the front organization for al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq, and their activities contributed to decline the revolution. The importance of the chapter lays in revealing nature of foreign fighters in Syria at early phase through close observation to Islamic extremist’s armed organizations.

Investigating whether Syrian refugees/immigrants want to return to their homeland or assimilate into the society of their immigration destination is extremely important in designing their future. This chapter provides a descriptive analysis of a survey conducted in 2017 to measure the views and attitudes of Syrian refugees/immigrants who have taken refuge in Turkey regarding returning to their homeland. In this survey, it specifically targets Syrian refugees/ immigrants who have taken refuge in Turkey, defined as “Syrians under Temporary Protection (SuTPs).” The chapter showed that SuTPs are not always to be inferior in comparison with Syrian migrants/refugees who successfully moved to EU countries. Rather, they seemed to be people who attaches importance to their religion, family, and local bonds. Therefore, it is necessary to any plan on their voluntary repatriation to Syria respecting SuTPs’ autonomy.