The Arab uprisings that engulfed the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) produced domestic shocks to a regional state system known for its authoritarian durability and resistance to democracy. Beginning in Tunisia in late 2010 and quickly spreading to Egypt, Morocco, Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, the uprisings differed in degree and scope, resulting in divergent outcomes for the people and places of the region. As the uprisings grew, state responses varied significantly. Some regimes were overthrown following decades of rule while others acquiesced to citizen demands by engaging in various concession-making processes. Several states repressed the protest movements to sustain their hold on power, and Egypt’s authoritarianism reemerged following regime change. Only Tunisia embarked on a procedural and consensual democratic transition that won international accolades and a 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for four civil society organizations called the National Dialogue Quartet.

Why were some but not all the mass social protests of 2011 accompanied by relatively quick and nonviolent outcomes in the direction of regime change, democracy, and social transformation? Why did Tunisia succeed but Egypt did not? Why did the Bahraini monarchy call on outside military assistance to repress the protests, while the Moroccan monarchy quickly agreed to constitutional amendments? Why did Libya, Syria, and Yemen descend into internationalized civil conflicts? More broadly, what are the prospects for democratization in the region? These are the principal questions posed and addressed in this book.

A burgeoning literature on the Arab Spring has illuminated dynamics and processes of change, and much of that literature has been informed by the larger scholarship on revolutions, social protests, and democratic transitions. Many studies have drawn attention to economic factors as well as political discontent: persistent unemployment and growing youth unemployment, the rising cost of living, and the income and wealth disparities. They noted that the end of the “authoritarian bargain” – which during its heyday had enabled regimes to stay in power through the disbursement of social welfare – had now delegitimized those regimes, leading to calls for their downfall. Since 2012, over 200 books have been written on the subject, along with numerous scholarly articles. There has been much speculation and analysis of prospects for successful democratic transitions and consolidation; between 2011 and 2014, the Journal of Democracy devoted five issues and some forty-eight articles on the subject. Mobilization, an international quarterly that focuses on social protests and dynamics of social movements and revolutions, published a special issue in 2012 and many articles since then. Think tanks and research networks such as the Washington DC-based Brookings Institution and the Cairo-based Economic Forum for the Arab Countries, Iran and Turkey (ERF) have issued policy papers and other studies on political and economic causes and outcomes of the Arab Spring protests. The events of 2011 and since continue to attract scholarly attention and generate analyses that focus on one or another causal factor in the outbreak of the protests or the subsequent failed “revolutions.” Such analyses typically are differentiated by their grounding in the academic disciplines (economics, political science, sociology, history, etc.) and further grounding in diverse theoretical traditions (Marxism, development studies, realism, social movement studies, world-system analysis, feminist studies, world polity theory, etc.). Many studies prefer to focus on one or another of the Arab Spring country cases, with Tunisia and Egypt having generated arguably the lion’s share of studies. All have elucidated dynamics and processes and have contributed to a rich and still-growing literature on the Arab Spring. Our contribution engages with and builds on the plethora of scholarship that has emerged over the past decade, converging with but also diverging from existing explanations to add nuance to the puzzle of why the Arab Spring protests resulted in such varied outcomes and did not generate a region-wide democratic transition.

In this book, we approach the subject matter differently, given that only a few studies – notably, the 2015 study by Brownlee et al. – have offered a multilevel and cross-national analysis of divergent outcomes.Footnote ¹ Even so, our approach differs, as we account for internal and external factors and forces and bring gender relations and women’s mobilizations into the analysis. In our book, we develop an explanatory framework for the varied outcomes and compare two sets of cases. The first consists of Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco, which experienced regime change (Tunisia and Egypt) and/or constitutional change (Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco) accompanied by democratic procedures. The second group of countries consists of Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, wherein the 2011 protests failed to bring about reforms or were repressed or descended into civil wars.Footnote ² The first set of cases is subjected to a further analysis to account for Egypt’s more turbulent transition and authoritarian reversal. We isolate four variables as endogenous and exogenous factors and forces – state and political institutions, civil society, gender relations and women’s mobilizations, and international influences (both coercive and noncoercive) – to contextualize and explain the processes underpinning the protests and subsequent developments. Four chapters focus on those variables, preceded by a chapter on democracy to elucidate theoretical approaches, highlight the historical record on democratic transitions, help explain why – given our four explanatory variables – a democratic transition was elusive to all but Tunisia, and suggest lessons from the Arab Spring for studies of democracy.

In the next section, we begin with a review of the Arab Spring literature, followed by a presentation of our conceptual framework, methodology, and sources of data. This introductory chapter ends with a brief overview of each chapter.

Literature and Theory

The Arab Spring generated a flurry of analyses, by longstanding experts and newcomers alike, inspiring researchers to investigate a variety of historical, structural, and institutional explanatory factors. Early on, the “surprising” nature of the uprisings and the regime changes preoccupied some observers. Similar sentiments had been uttered about the 1989 uprisings in East-Central Europe.Footnote ³ Some scholars may have been surprised because of assumptions about the intractable role of culture or Islam or authoritarianism, as Çavdar and Yasar have noted.Footnote ⁴ And yet, MENA scholars had long examined protest movements and cycles in the region, focusing on labor, students, feminists, Islamists, and liberals. After all, countries located at the periphery or semi-periphery of the modern world-system, affected by the global political economy and the interstate system in various ways, have long engaged in diverse forms of contentious politics. (See Table 1.1 for a summary of key developments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.) As illustrated in Figures 1.1 and 1.2, citizens across the MENA region have a long and enduring history of social and political mobilization against well entrenched autocratic regimes, which should challenge assumptions about the uniqueness or surprising nature of the uprisings.Footnote ⁵ Nor should the contagion effect of the uprisings be surprising. Prior research has found that revolutions and prodemocracy movements and transitions often have occurred in regional clusters (see Table 1.1 and Chapter 2).

Figure 1.1 Protest and mobilization in MENA, 1990–2018.

Source: Mass Mobilization Project.

Figure 1.2 Total protest participants by country and decade.

Source: Mass Mobilization Project.

In addition to the anti-IMF protests of the 1980s, more recent protests and popular mobilizations included Egypt’s 2005 Kefaya movement, Iran’s 2009 Green Protests, waves of feminist mobilization since the 1980s, and the 2006–08 workers’ protests in Tunisia and Egypt. In a book completed just before the uprisings, Tunisian political economist Mahmoud Ben Romdhane took exception to studies on Tunisia’s presumed authoritarian robustness by examining two earlier periods of democratic opening and contestation. In another book appearing shortly before the uprisings, Joel Beinin wrote of the history of worker action in Egypt. A decade earlier, Larbi Sadiki had examined the 1980’s bread riots in Algeria, Jordan, and elsewhere, showing the link between mass agitation and political reforms, along with the effects of the global diffusion of democracy and human rights and internal crises of economic performance and legitimacy. In suggesting a historical pattern to Arab uprisings – or what the social movement literature calls cycles or repertoires of collective action – Sadiki’s study anticipated the mass social protests of 2011 just as Ben Romdhane’s questioned the authoritarian durability thesis for Tunisia.Footnote ⁶

With that historical record in mind, Andrea Khalil’s book on the diverse “crowds” in Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya looked back at preceding protests. Other studies similarly situated the 2011 protest movements along a historical continuum of social movements reflecting political contestation across the MENA region.Footnote ⁷ In describing the circumstances leading up the revolts, Marc Lynch challenged those espousing the “novelty” of the 2011 uprisings by emphasizing preceding patterns of popular mobilizations around economic and political issues, noting that “the idea that some cultural peculiarities rendered Arabs politically passive has always been at odds with reality.”Footnote ⁸ Indeed, several authors have argued that the Arab Spring protests refute notions of the region’s “exceptionalism,” especially in connection with regime resilience and the presumed absence of prodemocracy movements. Several studies emerged to compare the Arab Spring with what Huntington had termed “the third wave of democratization”; or they suggested that the Arab Spring protests belonged to a proposed “fourth wave of democratization,” which included other prodemocracy movements in the new century. Greshman drew parallels between contemporary democratic transitions and previous ones in Southern and Central Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.Footnote ⁹ (See Chapter 2 for details.)

Several studies have emphasized the role of new actors and social media in shaping transition outcomes.Footnote ¹⁰ Farhad Khosrokhavar summarizes protesters’ demands and the movements that accompanied them, identifying the “new social actors” as youth, women, the middle class, and citizen journalists. Joel Beinin identifies three preexisting “parallel Egyptian social movements” that undergirded the 2011 protests: the workers movement, the oppositional urban middle class, and the youth movement. Maha Abdelrahman refers to loosely-organized “prodemocracy” networks of students, political activists, youth, and professionals operating outside of formal institutions, as well as the more spontaneous and “dispersed” “pro-citizenship” protests by marginalized citizens that swept Egyptian streets. Vincent Durac lists a range of Egyptian protesters, mostly youth groups of various civil society movements or political parties. Beissinger et al. find that participants in Egypt were mostly middle class, middle-aged, and professional. In Tunisia the composition was more diverse, with workers, students, and the unemployed; the Tunisian revolution, they write, represented more of a cross-class uprising than was the case in Egypt. Nonetheless, Tunisia might be alone in the important role of workers, organized by the country’s major trade union, the Union Générale des Travailleurs Tunisiens (UGTT), and members of other civil society organizations such as the human rights league and the bar association – all of whom protested openly on the streets for the end of the Ben Ali regime. Diverse actors notwithstanding, Asef Bayat has argued that the Arab “revolutions” lacked “revolutionaries” – that is, a centralized movement with leadership and ideology, in contrast to the wave of twentieth-century Third World revolutions. In this he echoes Ghassan Salamé’s earlier critical analysis of “democracy without democrats” at a time of limited political liberalization.Footnote ¹¹

Despite the unprecedented mobilization of women in the Arab Spring, studies are largely divided into those written by feminist scholars who have emphasized women’s roles and outcomes,Footnote ¹² and the more mainstream scholarship that generally neglects or eschews such analysis. Even so, most feminist studies have focused more descriptively on women’s participation in the protests and the impact on women’s legal status and social positions of the different outcomes: repression, civil conflict, or Islamist electoral success. Few studies have systematically examined the role of gender relations and women’s movements, and none as a causal factor in the different trajectories, as we do in this book.

Some studies written just after the protests sought to locate outcomes in the effects of regime typology and institutional configurations, including state capacity. Gelvin, for example, highlights the weakness of the Libyan and Yemeni states along with their tribal formations. In the aftermath of the US-led “War on Terror” and the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, the US became more entrenched regionally, supporting authoritarian regimes and their security measures, and rallying its allies to increase spending on the military and security. Yemen’s government, for example, diverted resources – needed for social development in what was the poorest country in the region – toward the military. The war on terror increased the rift between state and society in specific countries while also adding to interstate tensions within the region. External support for ruling autocrats through military sales, along with the patronage relations that prioritize securitization interests – such as those leveraged between Gulf States and the US and other Western states – have contributed to what Eva Bellin terms the problem of authoritarian robustness in the MENA region.Footnote ¹³

Our explanatory framework places a premium on external interference, given the long history of Western involvement – both coercive and noncoercive – in the MENA region. Reference KhosrokhavarKhosrokhavar’s 2012 book similarly emphasizes the role of geopolitical actors such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the Western alliance in shaping the immediate outcomes. As it happens, Arab publics are cognizant of the overlarge role of outside forces in shaping domestic politics and policies. Although the domestic environment motivated most participants of the Arab Spring uprisings, Arab Barometer data show considerable antipathy toward external intervention. Foreign interference is cited by a majority of respondents as an obstacle to economic development and reform in the Arab world.Footnote ¹⁴

Economic factors have been emphasized in the causes (if not the outcomes) of the 2011 protests. In particular, scholars of critical development studies have highlighted the effects of uneven development and neoliberalization on conflict eruption. In their separate writings, Marxist scholars Gilbert Achcar and Adam Hanieh explain the structural causes of the uprisings in terms of economic stagnation and legitimation crises related to elite fragmentation and the local effects of global economic restructuring. Achcar draws on Trotsky’s notion of combined and uneven development to explain both economic and political “blockages” that, when combined with the Great Recession, erupted into mass social protests. Hanieh explores the impact of “lopsided capitalist development,” the consequences of imperialism and neoliberalism on authoritarian durability, and economic stagnation; similarly, Charles Tripp views the 2011 uprisings as the climax of years of the adverse effects of, and popular resistance to, economic restructuring. The edited volume by Haas and Lesch highlights the socioeconomic impact of neoliberal policies imposed on various states by multilateral agencies, including the effects of the spike in food prices.Footnote ¹⁵ Beissinger et al. analyze the Arab Barometer survey results to show that economic grievances trumped other motivations among the majority of protest participants in both Egypt and Tunisia.Footnote ¹⁶ We agree with these analyses and find socioeconomic difficulties and grievances to have triggered the 2011 protests – difficulties that were (and remain) tied to the dynamics of the global economy as well as the interstate system. We situate our country cases and the MENA region as a whole in a capitalist world-system and a world polity (or interstate system) that broadly shape the parameters of state capacity and societal processes.

To elaborate briefly on the broad global context in which the Arab uprisings occurred, changes in both the world economy and the interstate system since the 1980s had affected the region in profound ways. (See also Table 1.1.) The collapse of the USSR and the socialist bloc, along with the rise of the US as the sole hegemon able to impose its preferred economic model on the world, undermined both self-defined “Arab socialist” countries and the capacity of other MENA states to forge an independent economic and political strategy. In some countries, longstanding bans on communist parties were lifted as part of the move toward liberalization, but this was in the context of both the wreckage of the historic Left and a shift toward a neoliberal economic policy model that was being diffused across the globe. The now-legal communist parties, mostly with new names, were hardly poised to challenge governments on neoliberalization or authoritarianism. Nor would MENA states create a united front against US military intervention in the region, whether in the aftermath of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 or the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia had seen worker protests in the 1970s and early 1980s when structural adjustment policies were adopted and some leftists later joined the anti-/alter-globalization movement that emerged in the new century. But for the most part, the 1990s and the start of the new century were characterized by deradicalization (other than the growing Islamist movements), giving rise to the many studies on authoritarian robustness, lack of democratization, and Arab exceptionalism to other regional trends. MENA countries may have been largely unaffected by the financial crisis of the late 1990s and early 2000s that hit Russia and certain countries in Latin America and Southeast Asia, but several were hit by rising food costs and unemployment, and labor protests in Egypt and Tunisia. The 2008 financial crisis and ensuing Global Recession produced loss of European investments and thus jobs, coupled with increases in the cost of living. Shortly thereafter, the Arab Spring protests erupted.

At a regional and country level of analysis, Brownlee et al. attribute two preexisting and complementary structural variables to explain divergent outcomes of the Arab uprisings that swept the region from 2010–12 – namely, the continued presence of oil wealth and hereditary succession or dynasticism. Specifically, the presence or absence of the two variables and their level of institutionalization in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Libya, and Bahrain determined the trajectory of the success or failure of oppositional forces and the variation in the governments’ responses to protesters. In seeking a parsimonious explanation of divergence, the authors acknowledge the absence of oil rents in cases like Syria and explain the persistence of the Assad regime to hereditary rule that produces strong ties between the regime and the state’s coercive apparatus. They argue that the Qaddafi regime in oil-rich Libya would have been durable but for international intervention, and that the GCC intervention in Bahrain sustained the hereditary ruling Sunni Khalifa family.Footnote ¹⁷ Although a component of our analysis overlaps with the Brownlee et al. analysis, our framework differs by accounting for four variables that span both structural and societal, and internal and external, factors and forces. By infusing these dimensions in our explanatory framework, we are able to situate the uprisings’ trajectories along a temporal and contextual setting and thus reframe the complex web of interactions that produced the divergent outcomes. This method also enables us to underscore the processes and causal mechanisms that shaped transition successes and failures.

Conceptual Framework: Modeling Divergent Outcomes

Our book seeks to answer a central question: Why were some but not all the regional mass social protests of early 2011 accompanied by nonviolent and procedural outcomes in the direction of regime change and democratic reforms? And what explains the divergent outcomes? Taking on Gregory Gause’s challenge to reconsider preexisting explanations, we develop an explanatory framework for the varied outcomes and compare two sets of cases – Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco, and Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. The first set of cases is subjected to a further comparative analysis to account for Egypt’s more turbulent transition and authoritarian reversal. With previous research on revolutions and “third wave” democratic transitions as a backdrop, we isolate four variables constituting endogenous and exogenous factors and forces – state and political institutions, civil society, gender relations and women’s mobilizations, and international influences – to contextualize and explain the processes underpinning the protests and subsequent developments across the seven regional case studies. We focus on the impact and interaction of four variables on the Arab Spring trajectories, conceptualized as follows:

State and political institutions is defined here as the type of political system, state ideology, and institutions, including the role and power of the military, state capacity, and center-periphery relations. All the states covered in this book had been affected by colonialism, both Ottoman and European, whether in terms of geographies and borders or political institutions and legal frameworks. In the post-WW II period of state-building, social and economic development took place in a global context of “three worlds” that gave newly-independent countries more room for maneuver, but within limits defined by their location in the periphery of the capitalist world-system. All the Arab Spring cases were characterized by the presence of authoritarian polities that broached no dissent and harassed or imprisoned opponents. However, variations of authoritarian rule and political institutions could be identified: monarchical (Bahrain, Morocco); personalist or neopatrimonial (Libya, Syria); secular and modernizing (Tunisia); military (Egypt), tribal-Islamic (Yemen). In some cases, political parties were present whereas in others, a single party ruled. From a gender perspective, all the states could be termed patriarchal-authoritarian or – drawing on the work of Hisham Sharabi, “neopatriarchal.”Footnote ¹⁸ For the MENA region as a whole, the neopatriarchal state could be seen as constituting a continuum from the West-friendly, secular republican and pro-women’s rights authoritarian state of Tunisia at one end, to the premodern (and prefeminist) form of rule in Saudi Arabia, at the other, with its very large and colossally rich royal family, powerful Sunni religious authorities, strict controls over women’s dress and mobility, and absence of a modern civil society. Between those two poles, political institutions and associational life varied. The Syrian state defined itself as secular and nonsectarian but did not allow for the development of political parties or independent civil society organizations. In the early 1990s, the Moroccan state began to allow some civil society and political society development, enabling the expansion of women’s rights organizations; this accelerated after the November 1997 electoral victory of the Union Socialiste des Forces Populaires (USFP), which had a progressive agenda, although the monarchy retained vast powers. The institutional legacy of the “ancien régime” is salient; whether understood in terms of laws and norms or of the nature and quality of governmental bodies, institutions were arguably most established and developed in Tunisia than elsewhere, and the military played a far lesser role there than in Egypt and Syria.

As Max Weber famously noted in his 1918 essay “Politics as a Vocation,” a modern state has the (legitimate) monopoly on the means of violence. The repressive elements of the state apparatus are deployed almost without hesitation when the state – democratic and nondemocratic alike – is challenged. Charles Tilly pointed out that repression raises the costs to protesters,Footnote ¹⁹ but others have argued that repression can spur a backlash. How this played out in our seven country case studies is explored in Chapter 3, but here we note some patterns. The use of some repression in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011 only galvanized the opposition. Repression was avoided in Morocco through state concessions to the 20 February Movement. Repression succeeded in Bahrain, aided by Saudi military involvement. Repression of the opposition in Libya and Syria was accompanied by external military involvement, though not “with permission,” as in Bahrain’s case. Of all our country cases, Tunisia had the lowest military spending, and arguably the most developed political institutions.

Civil society growth and capacity refers to the presence, relative strength, and autonomy of civil society organizations (CSOs) such as trade unions, feminist groups, human rights groups, and professional associations, as well as the presence and influence of religious bodies. The early 1990s saw a proliferating literature on civil society in MENA and the spread of many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), but little to no comparative studies. As Altan-Olcay and Icduygu cogently argue, understanding the link between civil society and democratization requires case-by-case analysis but also comparing different patterns of political regulation and control, resource inequalities, and relations with larger grassroots mobilization.Footnote ²⁰ Since the 1980s, what had developed in Egypt – unlike Tunisia or Morocco – was a gradual Islamization of civil society, with a vast network of religious networks, associations, charities, and professional organizations largely controlled by Muslim Brotherhood (MB) supporters. Those organizations became mobilizing structures in the immediate aftermath of Mubarak’s downfall and during preparations for new elections. In Yemen, too, Islamic charities and associations prevailed in the absence of a modern, secular civil society or political society. The strength of a modern civil society is also connected to the strength of modern social classes, including workers organized in independent trade unions.Footnote ²¹ Civil society and the social movements that may arise from it – or may create it – are regarded as essential components of democracy. We expect that the Arab societies that had experienced relatively more growth and capacity of modern associational life would have a smoother transition toward democratization.

Gender relations and women’s mobilizations refers to women’s legal status and social positions; their visibility, influence, and presence in the public sphere and public space; the presence or absence of pro-women policies and programs; and the nature of family law (patriarchal or relatively liberal). Gender relations and women’s mobilizations are important in at least three ways. First, research by Caprioli, Hudson, and others has shown that patriarchy and gender inequality are positively associated with both intra- and interstate conflict. In other words, we can expect less violent conflict when women have a strong presence in civil society and in political society. Indeed, on the basis of a large number of well-cited publications conducted by its researchers, the WomanStats project finds that the degree of equality of women within countries is the best predictor – better than degree of democracy and better than level of wealth, income inequality, or ethno-religious identity – of how peaceful or conflict-ridden their countries are.Footnote ²² A second reason for the significance of gender and women’s mobilizations, as Htun and Weldon have demonstrated, is that women’s autonomous organizing in civil society accounts for progressive social policies. This reality makes it more likely that a democratic transition and new political institutions will be more women-friendly. Third, as Moghadam has argued, women may or may not need democracy in order to flourish, but democracy without women is either partial or male-biased or – in some cases – impossible. In their recent empirical study, Wyndow and her colleagues show that women’s empowerment since 1980 has been a causal factor in movements for democratic development.Footnote ²³ On the basis of such research, as well as the prodigious feminist scholarship on women’s movements and the state in the MENA region, we posit that on the eve of the Arab Spring uprisings, MENA women’s rights movements were at diverse stages of development but strongest in Morocco and Tunisia, where gender indicators were also more positive (see Table 1.2 and Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.3 Women’s tertiary enrollments, 2004–11.

International connections and intervention refer to both noncoercive and coercive forms of influence. Positive and constructive forms of international engagement and connections may include ties to international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), international organizations (IOs), and multilateral bodies, along with rights-based treaty ratification. Such involvement in the world polity, along with nonexploitative forms of economic cooperation, is important for socioeconomic development and for peace and stability in the world order.

Less positive, and often destructive, are external pressures on regimes and diplomatic and military intervention. As noted under state and political institutions above, despite the capacity of newly-independent Arab states to define their own path, Arab state sovereignty was still often compromised by their location in the periphery of the world-system, rendering them vulnerable to economic dependency as well as intervention by external powers. Cold War rivalry, the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Arab-Israeli wars that in part echoed rivalry between the two superpowers, US support of Iraq during its war with Iran (1980–8), US intervention in the first Gulf War (1990–1) and its growing regional military presence, and of course the highly consequential 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq – all these forms of external intervention changed the regional (and arguably global) dynamics in profound ways even before the Arab uprisings. Throughout, countries in the region tended to steadily increase their military spending, initially purchasing arms from the Soviet bloc countries as well as the USA but increasingly almost exclusively from the USA, France, and the UK.

Adherence to international law and to human rights norms is important for the world’s stability as well as for the well-being of citizens. However, as Wallerstein and other world-systems scholars have argued, the world-system’s hegemon tends to be a law unto itself.Footnote ²⁴ Çubukçu and others have pointed out that the Iraq War was an example not only of the failure of international law, but also of how the discourse of human rights was used by the USA and its allies as justification for invasion and occupation, despite the UN’s objections.Footnote ²⁵ A similar manipulation of human rights concerns was used during the Arab Spring protests, especially with respect to Libya and Syria.

Western powers have historically deployed noncoercive forms of influence, such as loans and foreign aid (both of which China has more recently adopted as diplomatic tools) and thus we distinguish such forms of external influence from the more coercive forms of interference, notably military intervention. We posit that militarism and military interventions have deleterious effects on our three other variables. Unwanted external military intervention can destabilize the state and its institutions, resulting in risks for vulnerable groups, religious minorities, and women. Such an outcome became apparent after the 2003 US/UK invasion of Iraq, and with the rise of the so-called Islamic State (IS/ISIS/ISIL/Daesh) in Iraq and Syria in 2015.

To return to Tilly’s observation about repression, and depending on the context, unwanted external intervention can raise the stakes for a state’s survival and lead to more repression (as in Syria). It also can derail a revolutionary process (as in Bahrain and Libya). Disruptive external intervention additionally creates a more “dangerous neighborhood” that compels peaceful states to increase military spending (as occurred in Tunisia after 2013). Whereas connections to world society and the world polity, including activist ties to transnational advocacy networks, are positive forms of international influences, hegemonic impositions can complicate internal dynamics, generate backlashes, and create obstacles to smooth democratic transitions. We conjecture that the “benign neglect” of Tunisia and Morocco on the part of external powers served those countries well, in that the prodemocracy movements and their aftermath were organic, generated and led internally. Our book proposes an argument of the Arab uprisings that underscores the importance of situating each state’s political development along a temporal continuum to explicate the socio-structural and political conditions that produced the varied outcomes. As such, our conceptual framework is both case-oriented and variable-oriented. We posit that the presence of strong political institutions, a well-developed civil society, an active women’s movement and gender relations that are moving in a less patriarchal direction, and the absence of external military intervention work in combination to produce a fruitful democratic outcome; conversely, military intervention, we argue, always produces authoritarian reversal or civil conflict. Our analysis indicates that only Tunisia fulfilled those conditions and thus was able to proceed in a democratic direction. Morocco did as well, relative to the other cases, but to a lesser degree than Tunisia.

We situate our inquiry within the analytical frameworks of contentious politics (both social movements and revolutions), political sociology, comparative politics, and international relations. Our framework is also informed by research within both the mainstream and feminist literatures in political science and political sociology.Footnote ²⁶ Following Tilly and Tarrow, we demonstrate that all the Arab Spring cases represent forms of contentious politics that involved interactions whereby actors made claims targeting governments on behalf of shared interests or identities.Footnote ²⁷ The outcomes were shaped by socio-structural and institutional legacies, which we examine along with international factors to explain the divergent course and outcomes in each case and comparatively.

Our book’s explanatory framework is distinctive in several ways. First, the four variables constitute an integrated theoretical framework and are constitutive of state-society relations but also of the given countries’ place and location in the international system (or the hierarchical capitalist world-system) which also could help predict the likelihood for military intervention.Footnote ²⁸ Second, ours is the first book to seriously deliberate the role of gender relations and the mobilization capacity of women’s civil society organizations prior to and following the uprisings as an explanatory variable for gauging the course and outcomes of the uprisings. As noted, in the now-prodigious literature on the Arab Spring, gender relations and women’s rights appear largely as outcomes of the protest movements (if they are considered seriously at all), not as part of an explanatory framework.Footnote ²⁹ We find that the strength of women’s movements and their prior capacity to effect legal and policy reforms affected the nature of the protests and the policies of new governments.

Third, our comparative analysis integrates elite-centric and movement-centric approaches, and it acknowledges the influence of both endogenous and exogenous factors and forces. It is attentive to both structure and agency, that is, constraints faced by actors as well as opportunities for action and change. Fourth, the book considers external intervention as a key variable for explaining the success or failure of protest movements across the Arab Spring country case studies. We find that regional and international intervention in support of, in opposition to, or to neutralize the regimes across the seven cases drastically altered protest trajectories. We posit that the cases that endured external military intervention experienced more violent transitions, culminating in either authoritarian survival – as in Syria and Bahrain – or civil war, state failure, and the expansion of terrorist groups, as occurred in the wake of the NATO-led intervention in Libya, the destabilization of Syria, and the Saudi-led attacks on Yemen. Lastly, we argue that prospects for democratization are highly dependent on the interaction of our four variables.

Methods and Data

Empirically, our book contributes to the academic study of democratization and contentious politics (revolution, uprisings, social movements) as well as to academic and policy debates on the origins and outcomes of the Arab Spring. Applying a historical perspective as well, we are attentive to conditions during the critical period of state formation and state-building under autocratic regimes, situating the transitional outcomes along a historical continuum of contentious politics and state-making in the MENA region. Our mixed methods include in-depth, comparative case study analysis and use of quantitative information. We draw on descriptive statistics from the World Bank, the Fragile States Index, the World Values Survey, the Arab Barometer, and gender indicators compiled from the World Bank and the World Economic Forum. This methodology enables us to trace each state’s socioeconomic and political development prior to and after the uprisings in order to explain comparative progress and stagnation across the selected cases. Conceptually, this project uniquely considers gender and women’s mobilization as a key explanatory variable for measuring outcomes and divergence. By factoring in endogenous and exogenous factors and forces, and accounting for both structure and agency, our explanatory framework builds on and moves beyond the extant literature’s reliance on oil wealth, heredity succession, or the robustness of the coercive apparatus.

Using J.S. Mill’s “method of difference,” which requires “comparing instances in which the phenomenon does occur, with instances in other respect similar in which it does not,”Footnote ³⁰ we contrast three cases of relatively nonviolent uprisings that led to either regime change or constitutional reforms (Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco) with four cases of violent uprisings that at this writing (2019–20) remain characterized by repression, civil strife, or failed states (Bahrain, Libya, Syria, Yemen). Within the first group, we contrast the stalled and polarized process in Egypt with the smoother transitions in Tunisia and Morocco. We agree with political science research positing variance in outcomes based on multicausality, context-conditionality, and endogeneity,Footnote ³¹ but we would argue that the international factor is critical for our comparative analysis of the cases and variables. The presence of a modern state and strong political institutions, a well-developed civil society, an active women’s movement and gender relations that are moving in a less patriarchal direction, and the absence of military intervention by external powers work in combination to produce a fruitful democratic outcome; military intervention always produces authoritarian reversal or civil conflict. As such, our comparative analysis integrates elite-centric and movement-centric approaches and macro- and meso-levels of analysis, and it acknowledges the influence of endogenous and exogenous factors and forces. The structural causes of the uprisings – economic stagnation and legitimation crises related to elite fragmentation and the localized effects of global economic restructuring, all of which, as noted above, have been well documented in the burgeoning literature on the Arab Spring – are assumed for all the cases.

Our data are drawn largely from secondary sources as well as government data relevant to the variables underpinning our analysis. Our research also is informed by our own past and ongoing observations, interviews, and research in Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia.

Chapter Overview

Following this introductory chapter, we begin with a chapter on democracy to provide theoretical grounding and a comparative perspective, given our overriding question of why only Tunisia succeeded in democratization (and to a lesser degree, Morocco). Considering, too, that what transpired during the Arab Spring has been considered “revolutions”Footnote ³² as well as prodemocracy social movements,Footnote ³³ we review and summarize the vast literatures to provide an overview of the conditions that bring about prodemocracy movements, the prerequisites for democratization, and the circumstances under which democratic consolidation can occur. Some historical examples round out the chapter and give the reader insights into “third wave” and “fourth wave” democratic transitions. The chapter helps situate the Arab uprisings in the history of democratic transitions since the 1970s, to underscore similarities and differences in the global context, the type of transitions that occurred, and democracy deficits and reversals that have ensued. The MENA region is not exceptional in its democratizing travails, although the extent of external penetration arguably is.

Chapter 3 follows with an empirical discussion of the states, regime types, and political institutions across our seven cases. All our country cases were authoritarian, but there were differences in regime type, the development of modern political institutions, citizen participation and rights, and international connections. We build on the literature on transitions from authoritarian rule to illuminate how institutional and structural configurations of a given state prior to popular mobilization can shape prodemocracy pathways. We emphasize that state institutions in Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia were more bureaucratically robust and able to penetrate society in noncoercive ways than were their counterparts in Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen.

In Chapter 4, we turn to our civil society variable, starting with a theoretical discussion of the nature of civil society in mature democracies as distinct from authoritarian contexts, and the conditions under which autonomous civil societies can emerge, challenge the state, and provide leadership in a post-authoritarian context. In MENA, civil society capacity is shaped by the nature of the state and the extent of repression, but it is also linked to the presence or absence of modern social classes, professional groups, social movements, and “modernizing women.”Footnote ³⁴ Civil society development is a prerequisite for democratization and is in turn strengthened by democratic rules and norms.

Chapter 5 draws attention to the significance of gender and women’s mobilizations in civil society and democratization, as well as in the propensity of the state – and the prodemocracy movement – to use or to withhold violence and repression. We find that of our seven case studies, only in Morocco and Tunisia were there active, visible, vocal, and influential feminist organizations that reflected the growing presence of women in an array of professions and occupations and in the burgeoning public sphere. Although autonomous, the feminist organizations had developed close ties to both civil society partners and to allies in political parties and government agencies. As a result, they were able to take part in the protests, the transition, and the constitution-writing process in a way that enhanced women’s rights as well as citizen rights more broadly.

The focus of Chapter 6 is on coercive and noncoercive external influence. We demonstrate that external influence is both regional and international, and show how foreign aid (economic and military) and more direct interventions affected the trajectory of the uprisings. As they were spared direct military interventions, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia embarked on a more organic transitional path; however, all three countries have been highly reliant on foreign aid (both economic and military), and thus on Western support. We caveat Egypt’s transition by accounting for its 2013 reversal and argue that America’s influence on autocratic incumbents manifested by military aid and arms sales mollified backlash against the army in its toppling of the country’s democratically elected government. Coercive interventions in Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen drastically impeded the transitions and produced highly internationalized civil wars.

The final chapter, Chapter 7, presents our main findings and conclusions. We reiterate our argument concerning the salience of regime type, civil society, women’s mobilizations, and external influence in shaping the conditions of possibility for democratization after the Arab Spring protests. We conclude that democracy is not a finished product but rather a political model, or variety of models, that demands citizen participation and vigilance, a responsive state, strong institutions, and a global environment conducive to sustained and effective democracies. Both the 2011 Arab Spring protests and the 2019 renewed protest wave confirm that democratic development remains unfinished business in the region, and that scholars of revolutions, social movements, and democracy, and of the state, society, and the international system have much to learn from the MENA experience.