This past weekend, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accepted the resignation of Salam Fayyad, caretaker prime minister since June 2007. Abbas also asked Fayyad to stay on as caretaker -- until a new caretaker prime minister could be found.
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Why did all this make news? In a superficial sense, nothing had changed -- at most, Palestine might eventually get a new caretaker prime minister. And despite the praise "Fayyadism" received from enthusiastic foreign supporters, there may be no change in a deeper sense as well.
The attention given to Fayyad's departure obscures the fact that his state-building reform program had largely been in abeyance for two years. Even when it was in full swing -- between 2009 and 2011 -- Fayyad himself was expansive in tone, but his promises were carefully hedged when one read the fine print.
It was his foreign backers who were less restrained. The problem was that Fayyad's international boosters had built their expectations for the state-building program on contradictions that went well past the point of absurdity. Fayyadism was supposed to constitute Palestinian self-reliance, but it was sustained only because foreign countries bankrolled it. Unsurprisingly, then, it decayed as international attention began to wander.
Fayyadism was said to promise political reform, but it was based on the denial of democracy and the continuation of authoritarian rule. Fayyad was only appointed, after all, as an emergency measure when the constitutional order had collapsed. In the absence of elections or even a viable electoral framework, he ruled by decree.
Fayyadism was supposed to be based on building institutions, but it was completely dependent on a single, indispensable individual. After six years of Fayyad's premiership, some institutions on the West Bank -- especially those that donors cared about most, related to public finances and security -- function much better. Other institutions, generally in places where the international community did not care to look, function worse.
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