Egypt Without Mubarak, Tunisia - Kniele

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Egypt without Mubarak, Tunisia

after Bin Ali: theory, history and

the Arab SpringEberhard Kienle

Published online: 05 Dec 2012.

To cite this article:Eberhard Kienle (2012): Egypt without Mubarak, Tunisia after Bin

Ali: theory, history and the Arab Spring, Economy and Society, 41:4, 532-557

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Egypt without Mubarak,

Tunisia after Bin Ali: theory,history and the Arab Spring

Eberhard Kienle

Abstract

Focusing on Egypt and Tunisia the present contribution first analyses the scope andlimits of political change prompted by the large-scale protests that in early 2011 ledto the resignation of the two veteran presidents Zin al-Abdin Bin Ali and HusniMubarak. In a second step it examines some broader theoretical implications ofpopular contestation, government responses and processes of regime transformationin both countries. Events over the past 15 months further question dominantapproaches to the study of collective action in authoritarian contexts; however,contrary to recent claims, they fail to invalidate in part even confirm structuralnon-culturalist explanations for the longevity of authoritarian regimes in Arabcountries. Above all, the contribution argues that some critical differences betweenthe anciens regimes in Egypt and Tunisia account for the partly divergent dynamicsand outcomes of change so far. At the same time, rather similar long-term processesof state formation have shaped the politics of both countries in ways that differsubstantially from most other Arab countries.

Keywords: regime transformation; social movements; democratization; ArabSpring; historical sociology; state formation.

Since December 2010 large-scale popular protests have prompted the

departure of four Arab autocrats who had been in power for decades and

showed no desire to retire. Putting up little resistance Zin al-Abdin Bin Ali of

Tunisia and Husni Mubarak of Egypt stepped down a month after peaceful

demonstrators began to press for change. With the help of heavy-handed

repression Ali Abdallah Salih of Yemen managed to cling on for a year but at

Eberhard Kienle, CNRS-PACTE, IEP de Grenoble, BP 48, F-38040 Grenoble, France.

E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

Copyright # 2012 Taylor & Francis

ISSN 0308-5147 print/1469-5766 online

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2012.719298

Economy and Society Volume 41 Number 4 November 2012: 532 557

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the price of pushing some of his opponents to respond in kind and bringing

the country close to civil war. Even less responsive to popular demands,

Muammar al-Qadhafi of Libya was forced out by international military

intervention after his attempts to crush initially peaceful protests descendedinto a protracted armed confrontation with his opponents. The simple courage

and quick success of protesters in Tunisia and Egypt inspired Arabs elsewhere

to confront their authoritarian rulers with similar demands for social justice

and political reform. Spreading like wildfire the protests nonetheless reflected

roughly similar grievances rather than simple processes of contagion and

emulation. Everywhere large and growing parts of the population had become

tired of the wide gap between their living conditions on the one hand and

expectations derived from better days, the false promises of official propaganda

and comparisons with the outside world on the other. Everywhere unaccoun-table rulers restricted the freedom of expression to articulate these grievances

openly and effectively and, even more so, political participation to bring about

change. In this sense the protests highlighted the patronizing and infantilizing

features of regimes unwilling to respect universal standards of human and

political rights. The self-immolation of a graduate street pedlar in a provincial

town slapped in the face by a police officer all of a sudden pushed Tunisians,

and soon other Arabs, to demand fundamental change. Victims of repression

turned into historical actors shaping their own destiny. Whatever the longer-

term successes or failures of these protests, oppressed subjects transformed

themselves into confident citizens. Clearly a revolution took place in their

minds, independently of whether their action entailed or put in motion a

revolution in the political sense of the term.

Since the beginnings of the protests developments in the various Arab states

have followed different paths and trajectories. In most of the major oil- and

gas-exporting countries protests have been sporadic at best and therefore failed

to prompt significant political change. In Libya the demise of the ancien regime

has entailed a degree of political fragmentation that partly recalls the situation

in Iraq following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Possible scenarios include

partition, protracted domestic conflict, the advent of another authoritarianregime or the emergence of a new democratic regime. In contrast, the ruling

family in Bahrain seems to have crushed the opposition, at least for the time

being. In Syria the incumbents, in spite of sustained and increasingly violent

contestation, continue to cling to power. In Yemen the inauguration of a new

president basically leaves the old political order in place and may fail to

reconcile the contending groups. In Morocco and Jordan limited protests have

been absorbed by equally limited reforms that entail continuity rather than

change.

In Tunisia and Egypt, however, the tentative contours of a new politicalorder are taking shape. Even though there is no guarantee, the current

transition from authoritarian rule in Tunisia may culminate in democratic

government. In Egypt the ancien regime may not have collapsed entirely yet;

however, important breaches have been opened that promise a greater degree

Eberhard Kienle: Egypt without Mubarak, Tunisia after Bin Ali 533

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of pluralism and participation even in the absence of a full-fledged transition to

democracy. In spite of numerous challenges the processes of change seem

irreversible in the sense that they have not only precipitated the fall of the

previous rulers and their friends and family; they have also empowered new orhitherto marginalized political actors and forces, thereby renewing ruling

groups and coalitions more or less substantially. Simultaneously, the modalities

of the exercise of power, the workings of the broader state apparatus, including

the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the security services, and more generally

the relations between the rulers and the ruled have changed in various ways.

Under these conditions even new authoritarian regimes would differ from their

predecessors, should they emerge.

Largely focusing on Egypt and to a lesser extent on Tunisia, the present

contribution will first assess the scope and extent of change that has occurred,as well as the degree to which it is counterbalanced by continuities. It thus

seeks to determine how revolutionary such change has been not only in the

minds of the protestors but also politically. On this basis it will discuss some

important implications that the recent protests and their broader political

effects have for relevant theoretical debates in the social sciences. It will revisit

some issues that have been central to the work of Sami Zubaida, such as the

impact of long-term social and economic transformations on religion, politics

and the state.

The extent and scope of change

In Tunisia and Egypt the course of events has been facilitated by the armed

forces which in spite of differences in size and role had been important

components if not major pillars of the anciens regimes. Likewise, civilians

strongly identified with these regimes played significant, if transitory, roles in

the early days of the transition to a yet uncertain new political order. Thus

supporters of the old regimes were, or continue to be, able to influence events

and protect part of what they and the ousted rulers stood for. Step by step mostof the remaining visible civilian representatives of the old order including

ministers and prime ministers had to go. However, in publicly less exposed

positions, in the bureaucracies and partly in the judiciaries (which in Egypt

had managed to maintain considerable independence) the turnover has been

slower and far more limited. At the same time, entrepreneurs close to the

former rulers continue to play an influential role in the economies even though

some of the prominent crony capitalists are under investigation or in prison.

In Egypt the departure of Husni Mubarak entailed that of his wife Suzanne

and their sons Alaa and Gamal, all of whom played significant, if sometimesinformal, roles under the ancien regime. It also led to the demise of a group of

prominent business people closely associated with Gamal, who had earlier tried

his luck as an investment banker. Several among them rose to prominence in

the regime party, the National Democratic Party (NDP), after 2000 when

534 Economy and Society

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Gamal with the help of his father first became an assistant secretary general

and then the head of the policies secretariat. Some of them also entered the

government under prime minister Ahmad Nazif whom Mubarak appointed in

2004 to further liberalize the economy and reform the welfare state. InFebruary 2011 they first lost their ministerial positions when Mubarak in a last

ditch attempt tried to save his position by dismissing the Nazif government

that in the eyes of many Egyptians had become synonymous with social

injustice. As thousands of people flocked to Tahrir Square it seemed

increasingly unwise to leave the housing portfolio in the hands of a developer

and the ministry of industries in those of a steel magnate. After Mubaraks

resignation the entrepreneurs were also purged from the NDP which

subsequently was disbanded altogether.

Many of those fallen from grace have been charged with corruption orsimilar offenses and crimes; like the former minister-entrepreneurs Ahmad Izz

and Ahmad al-Mughrabi they await (re)trial in Tora prison which was

previously filled with regime opponents ranging from Islamists to Saad al-Din

Ibrahim, the founder of the Ibn Khaldun Center. A number of academics who

had thrown their lot in with Gamal and his business cohort were able to return

to their university positions, but may well face corruption charges at a later

point in time. Mubaraks last prime minister, Ahmad Shafiq, resigned a few

months after the former president, seemingly illustrating the growing

marginalization of individuals and networks associated with the ancien

regime. Led by Essam Sharaf, the first revolutionary government included

no prominent business people; their place was taken by civil servants and

neutral or left leaning academics untainted by the old regime such as Yahya al-

Gamal, Ahmad al-Burai, Magid Osman, Hazem Beblawi and Gouda Abdel

Khalek.

At the institutional level, the position of president of the republic fell vacant

when Mubarak stepped down on 11 February 2011. So did that of vice

president, to which he had just appointed the then intelligence chief Omar

Sulayman; an optional extra under the 1971 constitution (last amended in

2007), the latter position merely reverted to the realm of the virtual to which ithad been confined ever since Mubarak took office in 1981. For about a year

and a half the highest authority in the land was the Supreme Council of the

Armed Forces (SCAF) made up of some 20 high ranking military officers who

collectively exercised presidential (and other) powers. A new body unknown

to the old constitution, it is vaguely reminiscent of the Revolutionary

Command Council through which Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Free Officers

ruled the country immediately after their 1952 coup. The SCAF soon asked a

committee of lawyers to draft amendments to the constitution, put them to

referendum in March 2011, and promulgated them as a ConstitutionalDeclaration to replace the 1971 constitution until a new basic law could be

drafted.

Parliamentary elections were held from December 2011 to February 2012,

first to the lower house, the Peoples Assembly (Maglis al-Shab), then to the


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upper house, the Consultative Assembly (Maglis al-Shura). For the first time

for decades elections were free and fair in the sense that no centrally organized

fraud took place. Other caveats of course apply, ranging from local fraud and

other irregularities to the less than level playing field on which new partiesformed after February 2011, like the Social Democracts, had to compete with

long-established organizations such as the Muslim Brothers (MB); though

outlawed since the 1950s and operating semi-clandestinely, the latter had

managed to maintain a large network of support inside and outside the country

and an efficient organizational infrastructure. In the lower house the list led by

the Freedom and Justice Party, formed as the political arm of the MB, obtained

some 47 per cent of the seats. Able to rely on long-established Salafi charity

and other networks, the new Nur Party and its list garnered another

25 per cent of the seats. The elections to the politically less central upperhouse yielded roughly similar results. Islamists thus occupied about as many

seats as did members of the old regime party in most previous parliaments

(even though the majority of the NDP could sometimes reach up to 95 per cent

of the seats), which looks like a complete reversal of fortunes. Although the

remaining seats went to not explicitly religious party lists and independents,

candidates representing the various youth coalitions born in the protests and

other constituencies who actively contributed to their success obtained no

more than a single digit fraction of the vote and the seats

However, the SCAF maintained the state of emergency and lifted it

completely only at the end of May 2012 following major protests. The old

internal secret police, State Security(Amn al-Dawla,)was officially disbanded;

however, the recently created National Security (Al-Amn al-watani) liberally

recruited among former agents of its predecessor and continues to watch many

of the same people. Thousands of people were unlawfully arrested, detained

and sometimes tortured by military police and other securityforces. Civilians

continued to be tried in military court which frequently handed down heavy

and disproportionate sentences for unproven crimes and offenses. A campaign

against foreign funding for Egyptian NGOs and its legal ramification exceeded

earlier restrictions and accusations under Mubarak. The deep or shadowstate returned with a vengeance.

In June 2012 the Supreme Constitutional Court ruled unconstitutional

legislation passed in 2011 that governed the parliamentary elections. In the

eyes of the Court the electoral law disadvantaged independent candidates, an

argument it had already developed twice to strike down similar legislation

under Mubarak. Parliament was dissolved and the influence of Islamists in

state institutions seemed to decline . They still had a majority in the committee

supposed to draft the new permanent constitution, but the legitimacy of the

latter was also in doubt as it had been elected by the dissolved lower house. Afew days later, when Muhammad Mursi, a Muslim Brother, was about to win

the second round of the presidential elections, the SCAF issued a

supplementary constitutional declaration reinforcing its own prerogatives.

It temporarily assumed legislative powers and more forcefully than before


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claimed the right to veto the new constitution once it had been drafted; it also

largely removed military affairs and the defence budget from civilian control.

In other words, the SCAF established itself as a second major executive power

alongside the president, a move that profoundly modified state institutions inorder to guarantee the predominance of a key component of the ancien regime.

So far half empty at least, the glass of change filled up a little more in

August 2012. Not long after taking office Mursi who won some 51 per cent

of the vote against 48 per cent for Ahmad Shafiq - issued his own

constitutional declaration, dissolved the SCAF and assumed legislative powers

till the proclamation of a new constitution. He thus strengthened the

presidency beyond the dispositions of the 1971 constitution in order to limit

the influence of forces associated with the ancien regime. In the process he

retired a number of high ranking officers including the chairman of the SCAF,Field Marshal Muhammad Husayn Tantawi, who had been minister of defence

since 1991. A little earlier Mursi had dismissed Kamal al-Gunzuri, one of

Mubaraks former prime ministers, whom the SCAF had called back to form a

new government and replace the more independent minded Sharaf. Led by

Hisham Qandil, the new largely technocratic government includes a handful of

Islamist ministers alongside several survivors of the Gunzuri cabinet. Mursi

also appointed a vice president, Mahmud al-Makki, whose powers remain as

limited as those of his sporadic predecessors.

Ever since the departure of Mubarak the judiciary, has attempted to further

emancipate itself and to reclaim more of its partly lost independence. In spite

of the increasing influence of Islamist judges perceptible over decades the

judiciary remains heterogeneous in its world views. Recent court rulings

against measures taken by the executive including the SCAF demonstrate the

revival of a tradition of insubordination. Partly challenging conservative moral

codes, the Council of State, the highest administrative court, for instance

banned virginity tests that the male military police practised on detained

female protesters.

New faces at the top and attempts to build new institutions are of course

only part of the change. In actual fact, they are the result of far more importantand basic processes that have redefined the relationship between the rulers and

the ruled. In January 2011 for the first time in decades hundreds of thousands

of Egyptians took to the streets to voice their demands. Unlike the bread riots

in 1977 the protests were entirely peaceful; violence only erupted on a few

occasions when protesters were attacked by the police, army or Mubarak

sympathizers as in the camal attacks in early February 2011. Historically the

closest precedents are the student demonstrations against the monarchy some

60 years ago. Until today considerable numbers of protesters more or less

regularly return to Tahrir Square and the adjacent streets to demand change orsupport forces supposed to bring about such change. And until today protests

are largely peaceful, except when the police, the army and on some occasions

MB vigilantes use force. Contestation is indeed omnipresent as illustrated by

frequent strikes and other protest action throughout the country. Citizens have


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even occupied and searched the headquarters of the much hated state security

services.

Remarkable as they are, even the more recent and the more basic changes

need to be seen in the light of a number of continuities. Major representativesand components of the old order continue to wield power and influence. The

chief prosecutor, Abd al-Maguid Mahmud, who now investigates Mubarak, is

the very same who not long ago brought charges against those who challenged

Mubarak. With the dissolution of the SCAF the military establishment merely

returns from centre stage to the wings from where it had defended its interests

before February 2011. Mursis new choice of defence minister, Abd al-Fatah

al-Sisi, and the new chief of staff were both members of the SCAF. Like all

other SCAF members they had been appointed to their military positions by

Mubarak. Simultaneously, the temporary constitutional changes promulgatedfirst by the SCAF and then by Mursi maintained a strong executive branch of

government, even though they reduced some of its powers, in particular with

regard to emergency rule.

Faced with the protests in January 2011 the armed forces first attempted to

marginalize the less reputed components of the old regime including the

police, the NDP and the state-owned media. Devoid of any democratic

credentials they were not necessarily the spontaneous defender and guarantor

of democracy as they were initially seen by some of the protesters in 2011. The

unity of the people and the armyhad been talked up into a consensus without

agreement that for some time served both parties. The military runs its own

industries and seeks to remain a key economic actor; its officers defend their

entitlements to status and benefits; and they have an etatist, nationalist and

partly developmentalist view of the future of Egypt and its role in the region

and the wider world. The military commanders dropped their fellow officer

Mubarak only when protests in the country and foreign reactions led them to

think that their interests would be better served without an increasingly

cumbersome president unable to diffuse the crisis. While they probably never

wanted to govern the country directly they sought to remain a state within the

state and obtain important concessions concerning their own status, promotionprocedures, budget and independence from future democratically elected

rulers. They sought to carve out for themselves a place like the one occupied

until recently by their Turkish counterparts, or the one that the Chilean

military had managed to preserve for a considerable length of time after the

departure of Pinochet. They aimed to establish no more than a heavily

hyphenated or thoroughly hybrid democracy (e.g. Merkel et al., 2006).

Unwilling to rely on the much compromised NDP the SCAF had to look for

allies strong enough to help guarantee as much as possible the status quo, yet

weak enough not to challenge military supremacy. The strongest candidate forsuch a pacted transition (e.g. ODonnellet al., 1987) was the MB, whose moral

conservatism and middle class background endeared them to many officers.

Simultaneously, their penchant for economic liberalism and attempts to

strengthen their own position and networks of patronage challenged some of


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the foundations of the militarys power and influence. Conversely, the marriage

of convenience appealed to the MB as it marginalized new political forces that

could develop into competitors and challengers.

The conflictual alliance may continue to dominate Egyptian politics as thearmed forces remain influential even after the dissolution of the SCAF; like any

grand coalition it may marginalize other political forces. Alternatively, cracks

may also appear among the MB whose broad tent includes anything from

ideological Salafis to pragmatists. Current members and sympathizers may join

the Nur Party which stands for a different sort of Islamism and partly

represents a different and more destitute electorate. Others may move to the

centre and seek common ground with non-Islamists as do the founders of the

Wasat Party and some followers of Abd Al-Munim Abu Al-Futuh, a

presidential candidate eliminated in the first round of the elections. Havingbeen shaped and reshaped by history, Islam - and therefore Islamism - is no

more thananidiomin terms of which many social groups and political interests

express their aspirations and frustrations, and in which ruling elites claim

legitimacy . . .(Zubaida, 2011, p. 106). Sooner or later the room for politics may

therefore extend beyond street protests that are likely to continue in some form.

No doubt continuities also accompany change in Tunisia where, however,

their relative importance seems to be inverted. The major characters of the

ancien regime fell with Bin Ali, some of them managed to flee, others were

arrested soon afterwards. The former president and his wife, Leila Trabelsi,

took refuge in Saudi Arabia; many of their close associates stand trial,

including family members who hitherto had dominated the crony capitalist

networks. Lesser figures associated with the regime played an important part in

the period of transition that in October 2011 temporarily culminated in the

elections to the Constituent Assembly. However, many of them had not

occupied positions in government or in the regime party, the Neo-Dustur, for

many years. For instance, the second transition prime minister, Beji Caid

Essebsi, had been a close associate of former president Bourguiba but left the

limelight in the early years of Bin Alis reign. Step by step representatives of

the ancien regime were dropped from the government, largely as a result ofcontinued popular pressure.

At the same time the remaining influence of the forces of the past was

circumscribed by the creation of new institutions such as the Council for the

Implementation of the Objectives of the Revolution. All members of this and

other new bodies originated from within society and the opposition to Bin Ali.

Although the prerogatives of this body were quite different from those of the

SCAF, the comparison is nonetheless telling: in Egypt institutional innovation

temporarily perpetuated and strengthened the role of major representatives of

the old regime while in Tunisia institutional innovation quickly contributed tothe renewal of the political personnel and weakened the remnants of the old

regime. Moreover, legislation was enacted to exclude from political life those

who over the previous 10 years had occupied leading positions in the Neo-

Dustur Party. In Egypt similar attempts failed to translate into law. Also in


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contrast to Egypt, the newly elected assembly enjoys full legislative powers for

the interim period and full responsibility for drafting the new constitution.

Finally, the new assembly is politically more diverse than was its now dissolved

counterpart in Egypt. The Islamist Al-Nahda party certainly garnered some 40per cent of seats, but other Islamists like the Salafis failed to enter parliament.

Notwithstanding its strength, Al-Nahda had to strike an explicit power sharing

deal to choose the president of the republic, the council of ministers and the

assembly. Moncef Marzouki of the centre-left Congress for the Republic was

elected to the first, Hamadi Jebali of Al-Nahda to the second, and Mustapha

Bin Jafar of the leftist Al-Takkatul to the third of these positions.

Such far-reaching political change in Tunisia to a considerable extent hinges

on the more limited size and role of the armed forces. Even relative to a smaller

overall population than their Egyptian counterpart, the Tunisian armed forceswere able to withdraw support from Bin Ali but far less able to control

subsequent events. As Tunisia had never been involved in any major armed

conflict the army also lacked the popular legitimacy that Egyptian officers

could derive from defending the nation. Finally, Bin Ali even more than

Mubarak had attempted to rely on the police rather than the armed forces.

Still, the survival of General Rashid Ammar in the position of chief-of-staff

illustrates that not all has been change in Tunisia either. As in Egypt

continuities in terms of personnel and practices also seem to prevail at the

intermediary and lower levels of numerous state agencies.

In other areas as well continuity has so far prevailed. The leaders of the

protests, the opposition at large, and the representatives of the transitory

regimes are largely male. This is not surprising in the case of SCAF as the

Egyptian military does not recruit women. However, the Sharaf government

included a single female minister; the Qandil government includes two, one of

whom is also the only Copt in the cabinet. Women have been well represented

on Tahrir Square, but much less so in the coordinating committees of the

protestors. In Tunisia the new electoral law certainly requires competing party

lists to allocate half of the slots to female candidates but only about a quarter of

the seats in the Constituent Assembly went to women. In Egypt women wononly about 2 per cent of the seats in the lower house (which however is not

worse than in some EU countries). Attempts to broaden political participation

and strengthen the respect for human rights still seem to have little effect on

gender imbalances More generally, moral conservatism and illiberalism remain

on the rise and tend to restrict the liberties of everybody except non-alcohol

consuming heterosexual males. Similarly, states remain weak when faced with

their societies (Migdal, 1988); in many areas state institutions have even been

further weakened and partly replaced by local notables, strongmen, and the

like. The absence of centrally organized electoral fraud does not imply theabsence of electoral fraud altogether. As in the past candidates spent money

and used other means to bribe voters and officials supposed to supervise the

elections. In some cases they continued to use violence to intimidate

competitors and their followers. Thus, sociological continuities compound


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political continuities and raise further doubts as to the revolutionary nature of

change that has occurred over the past 15 months. Even though revolution

remains a contested concept (e.g. Pincus, 2007), more may be needed than a

popular uprising and the departure of the old rulers.

Theoretical perspectives

Beyond contagion

Much of the debate on the recent upheavals has centred on the contagion

effects that events in one Arab country may have had on other Arab countries.

The successive eruption of contestation in different places within only weekscertainly points to the diffusion and emulation of a model. There is also little

doubt that the perception of a shared history, or rather predicament, helped

unrest in Tunisia to spread at such speed to Egypt and beyond. In this respect

the events recall the protests that some 20 years earlier led to the fall of the

equally discredited and increasingly dysfunctional communist regimes in

Eastern Europe. In the Arab case the perception of a common history was

moreover facilitated by a shared language that allowed people in different

countries to communicate with great ease (even though in some cases

grievances were voiced in Kurdish and Tamazight/ Berber). However, neither

contagion nor the use of Arabic by protesters of different geographical origins

amounts to the revival of Arab nationalism as an ideology uniting Arabs across

state borders in search of a common political project or even a unitary state. So

far none of the protests has been couched in such terms; Egyptians waving

Tunisian flags on Tahrir Square will not necessarily inaugurate permanently

stronger links between their countries.

The domino effect of initial contestation in Tunisia has been largely

premised on important similarities among Arab states in terms of socio-

economic change and political stagnation or worse. Ingredients for unrest had

been omnipresent in all of them for quite some time as rulers were less and lessable to meet the expectations and indeed demands of their populations. For

more than two decades globalization and related economic reforms tended to

increase the income and wealth of some constituencies while leaving behind,

impoverishing or locking into lasting destitution others. Internationally,

competitive entrepreneurs and members of liberal professions, often closely

linked to the rulers, and part of their staff were the major winners of the

selective economic liberalization implemented since the late 1980s (and

sometimes the mid-1970s). Public-sector workers and civil servants, as well

as employers and employees in the non-competitive parts of the private sector,increasingly fell behind, at least in relative terms. Restrictions on the freedom

of expression and political participation incarnated in government-dependent

media, censorship, rigged elections (or their complete absence) and the

repression of strikes and other forms of collective action left the losers with


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little hope of making their voices heard and influencing policies. Simulta-

neously, discontent was prevalent among many of the winners whose upward

mobility remained ultimately blocked by authoritarian rulers who monopolized

political power and crony capitalists who benefited from privileged access tocredit and markets.

However, the differential strength and impact of unrest in the various Arab

countries also reflect a number of economic, social and political differences

among them. Authoritarian rule came and still comes in all sizes, varying in form

and intensity. Equally uneven is the distribution of wealth among and within the

individual states. High-income countries by and large thrive on hydrocarbon

rents and high-value-added recycling of such rents; in contrast, low-income

countries scramble to survive on the production and supply of low-value-added

goods and services, small amounts of rent, partly transferred from majorhydrocarbon exporters, and other forms of external support. Finally Arab

countries differ in terms of social structure, some being far more deeply divided

than others into sub-state loyalty groups based on religious, linguistic, family,

tribal and other ascriptive ties. The similarities and differences of recent

protests and their broader political consequences put into question received

wisdoms about Arab politics and raise broader theoretical questions that go

beyond the roles of contagion, diffusion and imitation.

Popular contestation

Whatever the medium- and long-term results of recent protests, the eruption

onto the scene of history of large numbers of determined people hitherto

considered passive, weak or disorganized seriously challenges widely held

assumptions about collective action in Arab and Muslim countries in particular

and in authoritarian contexts in general. Having grown new heads whenever it

was decapitated, the hydra of culturalist explanations could now safely be

considered defeated. All too obviously the protests prove wrong the

Orientalist assumptions, long critiqued by Said (1978), Al-Azm (1981),Zubaida (2009) and others, which draw an ontological boundary between a

rational Occident subject to change and an irrational Orient located outside

history. Contrary to these assumptions the protests have not been simply

emotive and unorganized eruptions of discontent but structured processes in

which actors at least partly assessed the means in view of the ends they pursued

(Bennani-Chrabi & Fillieule, 2003, pp. 22, 25). Collective action that has

unfolded over the past 15 months cannot be reduced to collective activism,

which by its very nature is unlikely to result in substantial change. Rather, it

will have to be analysed in light of current debates about the causes anddynamics of collective action and social movements (Bayat, 2009, pp. 34;

Wiktorowitz, 2004, pp. 34).

Another argument, equally popular but not quite compatible with the

former, holds that Muslims worry primarily about religious issues or at least


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express their grievances in religious terms. Consequently, Islamist groups,

groupings and movements are the only ones worth watching while contestation

expressed in non-religious terms can only be marginal and ultimately

irrelevant. How influential the misconception has been may be gauged fromthe thematic focus of the academic and semi-academic literature over the past

few decades. Publications dealing with various forms and aspects of political

Islamhave by far outnumbered those interested in industrial action and other

protests where religion or the language of religion played a minor role at best.

To specialists and a broader public focusing on Islamism, protests in Tunisia,

Egypt and elsewhere necessarily had to come as a complete surprise as they

were largely the work of actors absent from their watch list. Initially at least,

the language of contestation was that of the universal values of human rights,

social justice, democratic government and human dignity. Religious servicesand prayers that Muslim and Christian protesters held side by side on Tahrir

Square may illustrate the importance or instrumentalization of religion but

hardly the Islamist nature of contestation. Observers focusing on Islamism may

feel vindicated by the growing importance of such actors and forces later in the

process that culminated in their electoral success in Tunisia and Egypt.

However, their late arrival on the scene and subsequent rise underscore

precisely the dependence of their success on opportunities and other historical

circumstances rather than their natural and enduring strength as essentialist

views would have it. As Sami Zubaida puts it, religion is . . . embedded in

social institutions and practices that are open to determination by economic

and social factors (2011, p. 1).

More generally, the surprise at recent large-scale collective action in Arab

countries may also flow from the broader and hitherto more reasonable

assumption that such action was not only different but also more difficult

under authoritarian rule. Whether defined in the classical terms of Juan Linz

(2000) or otherwise, authoritarianism restricts political pluralism as well as the

autonomy and the liberties of the ruled. It therefore tends to limit

opportunities to act, be it only by weakening real or perceived political

opportunity structures one of the three components of the contentiouspolitics (or political process) model, which, in spite of growing debate,

continues to influence much of our thinking about collective action (for the

debate, see Fillieule et al., 2010; Mathieu, 2010; McAdam et al., 1996). A

recent attempt to redefine opportunity structures (Tilly & Tarrow, 2006) as

dependent on (1) the number of independent power centres coexisting within a

given polity, (2) the degree to which these centres are open to outside actors,

(3) the (in)stability of alliances within the polity, (4) the relations between

dominant actors and their challengers, (5) the degree of repression and (6)

change affecting the previous elements over time neatly illustrates theadditional constraints allegedly posed by authoritarian rule.

At the same time, authoritarianism is frequently supposed to limit resources

available to protestors and to contain organizations able to mount opposition

(for relevant debates, see Bennani-Chrabi & Fillieule, 2003); as resources and


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organizations form the second component of the dominant model (Pierru,

2010), authoritarianism by implication seems to limit possibilities for collective

action. Many of us tend to relate the size, strength and effectiveness of

collective action to the resources that activists are able to mobilize and to theirorganizational capacity (Tilly & Wood, 2009). The latter is frequently seen as a

major resource able to generate additional resources; conversely, such other

resources seem relevant only if there is enough organizational capacity to

exploit and deploy them. Most crucially, organizational capacity is commonly

identified with the existence of formally established organizations (Pierru,

2010). Seen from this perspective sustained large-scale protests were unlikely

to occur in countries like Tunisia and Egypt where the extent of discontent was

unmatched by the strength of organizations able to channel it. In both

countries the authoritarian regimes in more or less subtle ways controlledalmost all major organizations, including chambers of commerce, trade unions,

professional syndicates and the like. In spite of continuous international

support civil society, in the sense of non-lucrative and not directly political

organizations mediating between the individual and the state, has never been

the agent of change that foreign donors and local activists hoped it would be

(Kienle, 2011). Clearly the rulers sought to prevent the emergence of any

potentially countervailing powers. Even the framing of situations as legitimate

points of departure for collective action, which is the third component of the

dominant model, appears to be a more difficult endeavour under authoritarian

rule, in particular when lack of pluralism favours uncritical unanimity around

hegemonic views and interpretations produced by the rulers and their

supporters.

Ultimately the surprise at recent events in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere was

the result of collective action that largely developed without or outside formally

established organizations and other easily identifiable forms of organization

(see also Leenders, 2012). Even the organizations that protesters could (have)

form(ed) and use(d) under authoritarian conditions played a relatively minor

role. In Egypt, for instance, individual civil society organizations (CSOs) had

occasionally provided forums, training and advice for some of the (future)protesters but neither these organizations nor their leaders were the main

movers and shakers of the events. According to one director of a CSO, who

spent days and nights on Tahrir Square, most activists had only weak and

intermittent ties with CSOs if at all; they had acquired their political skills on

the ground, sometimes in previous protests starting with Kifaya, sometimes

on the square itself.1 The widely assumed dependency of collective action on

strong, even formal, structures such as associations and other organizations

obscured the simple truth that similar developments may be precipitated by

different causes and that dependent variables need not reflect one singleindependent variable. Nor did the common distinction between organization

and mobilization help to avoid the error; as it localizes organization outside

mobilization, the distinction neglects the frequently organized nature of

mobilization (Fillieule et al., 2010, referring to Friedberg, 2004) and thus


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reinforces the search for analytically distinct and separate features of

organization.

The emphasis on electronic means of communication and information, like

satellite television, mobile phones, Facebookand other social media, fails toprovide an alternative explanation for the recent protests. These tools had been

widely and increasingly available from the mid-1990s al-Jazira since 1996

and mobile phones since 1998 (Beinin, 2011a). No doubt they facilitated

coordination, at least until electronic communications were shut down as

happened in Egypt. However important, they always remained means or

resources that must not be confused with causes.

Most likely the effective organization of the protests and the effective use of

electronic means of communication relied on non-virtual real ties forged in

neighbourhoods, work places, universities and previous protests. Against thebackdrop of such ties, the success of collective action no doubt also resulted

from more spontaneous forms of interaction on the sites of protest. Bathing in

an atmosphere of collective excitement, minds may become more inventive and

people more daring, and all the more so as earlier smaller protests had already

lowered the barriers of fear (Beinin, 2011a). Used selectively, some older and

almost forgotten arguments about the interactive aspects of collective

behaviour may be worth considering (Cefa, 2007, pp. 199 ff.). At the end of

the day, however, the protests provide further evidence that common concerns

may be advanced not only through formally coordinated and organized action

but also interactively by individuals and groups that attentively observe each

others moves and autonomously act and react to reinforce them.

In Tunisia and Egypt discontent was rampant among not only the losers but

also many of the winners of the orthodox economic reforms implemented

over the past decades (Achy, 2011; Camau & Geisser, 2003; Kienle, 2001; Roll,

2010). According to government statistics, the percentage of the poor

fluctuated but basically remained stable over the years (Achy, 2011; Assaad,

2009; Marottaet al., 2011; World Bank, 2007). Some people managed to climb

above the various official poverty lines while others fell through the cracks.

Official poverty lines are calculated to recognize as poor only a fraction of thosewho are actually poor. The upper poverty linesupposed to define the poor

in actual fact defines the ultra-poorwhile the lower poverty line supposed to

define the ultra-poor corresponds to a level of destitution that is hardly

imaginable for the armchair reader of the poverty literature. An Egyptian

living on the emblematic dollar per day realistically spends up to one third of it

on public transport if s/he has to travel to work. Official poverty lines

moreover fail to account for large parts of the population that have become

increasingly impoverished but have not (yet) reached the bottom (Sabry, 2010).

The impoverished account for a yet larger part of the population if one takesinto account not only those who lost in absolute but also those who lost in

relative terms. As the income and wealth gap between the affluent few and the

others continued to grow an increasing number of people were worse off than

before, simply because their relative purchasing power decreased. Among the


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winners of economic reform discontent grew as they increasingly noticed that

their upward mobility was blocked by crony capitalist arrangements reserving

market shares and other benefits for the friends and family of the regime. The

constraints of authoritarianism prevented them as much as others fromarticulating their grievances in ways that could effectively help to alleviate

them.

Discontent manifested itself ever more frequently and openly over the past

few years. In Egypt, industrial action has been on the rise since the late 1990s

and even more so after 2003. Since 1998, more than 2 million workers have

participated in roughly 3,500 strikes, some of them involving up to 25,000

people (Beinin, 2010, 2011a, 2011b; Duboc, 2011). Simultaneously, the number

of sit-ins and similar actions grew steadily as well. Towards the end of

Mubaraks tenure hardly a day passed without smaller groups of peopleprotesting in front of parliament against lack of services, government failures

or the abuse of power. In 2003, a larger than usual crowd ignored official

threats and demonstrated against the US invasion of Iraq, thus emphasizing

political rather than social and economic issues. From 2004 onwards the Kifaya

movement staged protests and demonstrations against repression, authoritarian

rule and attempts to anoint Gamal Mubarak as his fathers successor. These

concerns mobilized in particular the educated, independent of their standard

of living. Yet, there were only a limited number of large protests that

unambiguously demonstrated the capacity of protesters to organize and

coordinate action. Chief among them were the prolonged 2007 and 2008

strikes by more than 20,000 textile workers in Mahalla al-Kubra in the Nile

Delta. None of these protests involved organizations in the formal sense of the

term. Workers could not count on trade unions that were part and parcel of the

regime while Kifaya always remained a rather loose coalition of like-minded

individuals and groups.

Events in Mahalla, though, also illustrated the limits of large-scale collective

action prior to the Arab Spring. Police ultimately managed to infiltrate the

strikers and thwarted a third major walk out (Beinin, 2010, 2011b; Duboc,

2011). Even the successful Mahalla strikes remained geographically circum-scribed and never ramified beyond the town and its spinning and weaving

company. By and large domestic intelligence and police forces managed

effectively to discourage or repress protests that involved more than very

limited numbers of people. Participants in demonstrations were generally

outnumbered by up to three times as many police. Social media were used and

subverted by regime agencies, even though recent investigations in Egypt

emphasize the limits rather than extent of such subversion. Thus, economic

and political discontent appeared to be neutralized by formidable obstacles to

effective large-scale collective action.The situation in Tunisia was similar in many ways. CSOs were numerous

but weak due to the various legal and extra-legal restrictions imposed by

authoritarian rule. However, in spite of many efforts by Bin Ali and his

lieutenants, some key intermediary structures continued, at least in part, to


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escape government control. Such relative independence is best illustrated by

the trade unions, the Union Generale Tunisienne des Travailleurs (UGTT).

In particular at lower organizational levels the trade unions provided channels

of communication for opponents and others seeking to articulate theirgrievances. As it had in Egypt, contestation had been on the rise years before

demonstrations in Sid Bouzid and Tunis led to the departure of Bin Ali.

Industrial action in the mining area around Gafsa in 2008 suggested to some

observers that future collective action in the country would emanate from the

provinces and informally organized actors (Geisser & Chouikha, 2010; Geisser

& Gobe, 2007).

Regime transformation

Simultaneously, the broader political consequences of the recent protests in

Tunisia, Egypt and beyond may challenge received wisdoms about the

resilience and survival of authoritarian regimes in Arab countries. First and

foremost, this applies again to explanations built on religious and other cultural

features which essentialize some sort of Arab or Muslim exceptionalism (e.g.

Lakoff, 2004). However, it applies as much to far preferable explanations with a

claim to universal validity that emphasize historical processes and historically

produced structural features such as the dynamics of state and nation-building

in the global south (e.g. Luciani, 1990; Salame, 1987), the related effects of

state borders that fail to coincide with the borders of imagined communities (in

the sense of Anderson, 2006), ensuing intra- and inter-state conflicts (Kienle,

1990), external conflicts in general or the concomitant ends-oriented nature

of the state (Waterbury, 1994). Similarly, assumptions about the role and

impact of the military (Owen, 2004) and dominant parties (Brownlee, 2007)

may be questioned again. No more immune to criticism may be writings that

link authoritarian rule to the ability of hegemonic regimes to shape, manipulate

and divide opposition (Lust-Okar, 2005; Zartman, 1990), to economic catch-up

strategies (Hirschman, 1979; ODonnell, 1973; Waterbury, 1983), rentieraspects of the state (Beblawi & Luciani, 1987; Dunning, 2008; Herb, 2003;

Karl, 1997; Mahdavy, 1970; Ross, 2001; Smith, 2007), various forms ofliberal

and orthodox economic reforms (Kienle, 2001, 2010), social pacts, contracts

and compacts (in particular those dating back to the revolutionary periods of

the 1950s and 60s) and other coalitions or corporatist arrangements entailing

trade-offs between material welfare and political participation (Bellin, 2002;

Heydemann, 1999, 2007). Elaborate models that, for instance, insist on the

interplay of specific features characterizing the economy, society, political

regime and international environment of the states concerned (Schlumberger,2008) may also face additional scrutiny.

However, any attempt to re-examine these explanations needs to start from

the appropriate point of departure. Claiming that they failed not only to take

note of societal transformations (Gause, 2011) but also to anticipate large-scale


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collective action and the accelerated transformation of a few political regimes

since late 2010 is incorrect (Lobe, 2011). Rather than extolling the immortality

of Arab autocracies most of this literature sought to understand why the

famous third wave of democratization (Huntington, 1993) and its ramifica-tions fizzled out on their shores (Bellin, 2002; Camau & Geisser, 2003;

Schlumberger, 2007, 2008). Its conclusions and expectations were borne out by

history over several decades as none of the authoritarian regimes developed

into a significantly less authoritarian regime. They may be further vindicated

by the deceleration of change once Bin Ali, Mubarak and Qadhafi had fallen

from power. Almost two years into the Arab Spring most authoritarian

regimes are still in place. If this literature failed to anticipate large-scale

contestation it failed in a task that was not central to its concerns.

Even the regimes that collapsed had been in place for quite some time. BinAli came to power in 1987, Mubarak as early as 1981. While replacing

associates of their predecessors with their own friends, cronies, followers and

family, they both took the reins of an already existing regime based on a partly

changing but always identifiable coalition of interests. In Tunisia these

continuities stretched back to the days of independence after the Second

World War, in Egypt to the coup detatby the Free Officers around Gamal

Abd al-Nasser that in 1952 brought down the monarchy.

The explanation of regime longevity nevertheless needs to be combined with

explanations of regime erosion, transformations and collapse. One way of

addressing the conundrum is to reduce the deterministic character of

explanations by accepting the potentially larger impact of contingency, as

suggested by some contributors to the democratization literature (e.g. Lust-

Okar, 2005). As, methodologically, the relationship between dependent and

independent variables has increasingly been redefined from one of causation to

one of dependency, nothing should stand in the way of further diluting it and

allowing additional room for the spontaneous, unexpected and unexplainable.

Another, less radical solution is to remind ourselves that the conditions which

accounted for regime stability and resilience persisted for a long time and

disappeared only gradually. By implication, the rulers could avoid adjustmentsand reforms and live in the hope that these could be postponed indefinitely. In

the Tunisian and in the Egyptian case the ability to avoid political liberalization

over decades indeed seems inversely related to the strength of recent

contestation.

Authoritarian rule in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere rested to a considerable

extent on corporatist and populist arrangements including coalitions and

social contracts. Under these conditions regime survival is related to the

capacity to adjust these arrangements to satisfy winners and losers of economic

transformations. Populist authoritarianism, as described by Heydemann(1999) for Syria, may run out of the means to remain populist, either because

of declining resources or because of changing balances of power among its

constituent groups. State-sponsored capital, as discussed by Bellin (2002)

for Tunisia, may emancipate itself from the state that sponsored it while


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state-sponsored labour may fall through the cracks of orthodox economic

reforms and their effects on welfare provision. Confronted with such

developments regimes need to find a new balance between the interests of

losers and winners or replace part of their social base. Failing suchrealignments, they lose control over the arrangements supposed to stabilize

them. Alongside economic demands both winners and losers have political

demands, including participation in decision-making, the former to reverse

developments that penalize them, the latter to ensure that their wealth and

resources are used in line with their own expectations and interests. Depending

on size and continuity, revenues from rent (whether directly accruing to the

regimes or indirectly through transfers) and related possibilities of repression,

cooptation, corruption, redistribution and social appeasement facilitate

adjustments to populist and corporatist arrangements. However, such revenuesprovide no answer to the political demands of the winners who, in addition to

deciding where their money goes, simply seek to translate economic into

political strength.

The Arab Spring began in Tunisia and Egypt, two countries where new

economic policies inspired by orthodoxand neoliberalrecipes over the years

had increasingly eroded the existing relatively egalitarian social contract and

coalitions reflecting it. Global economic developments such as the rise in food

prices and the financial crisis contributed to this erosion (even though the

effects of the global financial crisis were more limited in the Middle East and

North Africa region than elsewhere, for instance in Latin America). In both

countries, the rulers continued to avoid adjustments that could have cushioned

discontent. Most importantly, they failed to enable losers and winners to vent

their grievances and participate in decisions to alleviate them. Obviously, they

could not have satisfied everybody, but by sticking to their old ways they did

not please anybody.

At a first glance, necessarily to be confirmed by more extensive research,

recent protests in Tunisia and Egypt involved three categories of protesters:

the destitute unemployed or working poor, increasingly impoverished

segments of the middle classes and some of their upwardly mobile counter-parts. In different ways they all faced material conditions that, exacerbated by

global economic developments, failed to meet their divergent expectations.

Conditions as well as expectations were closely linked to trends in income

distribution and access to knowledge that in turn largely reflect the effects of

economic reform and related exchanges with the outside world. In a nutshell,

inequalities in income and wealth were on the rise while some of the poor and

impoverished, thanks to satellite television and the internet, managed to reduce

the knowledge gap. Authoritarian restrictions on freedom of expression and

political participation were resented all the more as economically motivateddiscontent increased. But, rather than granting these (and other) categories of

people a greater say in decisions concerning their lives, the rulers further

reduced them to subjects and spectators. Bin Ali in Tunisia continuously

amended the constitution in order to remain in power indefinitely; Mubarak in


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Egypt rigged the 2010 parliamentary elections to an extent unseen for 15 years.

In both countries old and fearful men sought to sort out the succession

question in camera and to allow their friends and family to monopolize power

and dominate economies in the future. The narrow-minded attempts toperpetuate an increasingly exclusivist spoils system beyond the life span of the

incumbents precipitated their demise and that of their associates (Owen, 2012).

Younger people took a lead because many of them were more heavily exposed

to material difficulties; the rate of unemployment among the young, for

instance, was far higher than average. However, younger people may also have

been particularly sensitive to the gap between reality and expectations. In the

light of domestic and international discontent the armed forces, as major

constituent parts of the regimes, progressively distanced themselves from these

attempts in order to save as much as possible of their own privileges andadvantages. As suggested by transitology classics, events were heavily

influenced by splits within ruling groups (ODonnell et al., 1987).

History

Without necessarily contradicting other structural explanations for the long-

evity of authoritarian regimes referred to above, the Arab Spring and events

in Tunisia and Egypt in particular seem to confirm the validity of some

assumptions associated with theories of modernization. Popular upheavals and

large-scale collective action in a context marked by economic growth without

equitable distribution, further complicated by an economic downturn, are at

least compatible with claims made about the contradictory and socially

unsettling effects of state modernization (Pincus, 2007). Even if protests

are more difficult to stage in authoritarian regimes, as part of the collective

action literature assumes, these regimes are more exposed than others to the

mismatch between rising social demands and stagnant institutions unable to

process these demands (Huntington, 1968). From this perspective, orthodox

economic reforms prompt or favour collective action as part and parcel ofbroader transformations that lead to higher economic growth, marketization

and social inequalities. Orthodox economic reforms therefore contribute to

upheavals and possibly revolutions in those cases in which they are not

accompanied by progressive adjustments such as political liberalization and

distributional policies that mitigate their more disruptive effects (e.g.

Acemoglu & Robinson, 2006). Similar to the gradual and relatively smooth

process of political liberalization, the advent (and ultimate success) of

upheavals hinges on the emergence of independent power centres strong

enough to provoke changes to the existing order, as ultimately suggested byRueschemeyer et al., (1992). Which trajectory materializes depends on the

balances of power among such competing centres and, perhaps sudden,

changes affecting these balances of power (as also suggested by Pincus (2007),

referring to Boix (2003)).


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The validation of some aspects of modernization theories obviously does not

imply the validation of modernization theories as such, which in any case form

a rather diverse body of literature (e.g. Peet & Hartwich, 2009). Nothing of

what could be observed in Tunisia and Egypt confirms the teleologicalassumptions that are sometimes associated with modernization. Nor does

anything confirm claims about a transition fromtraditiontomodernity, be it

linked to the advent of capitalist transformation or to reflexivity. Quite

modestly, recent events in Tunisia and Egypt highlight no more, but also no

less, than changes in the balance of power among the various local actors and

forces that are related to broader changes affecting the predominantly capitalist

world order.

Concurrently, the effects of economic growth combined with the absence of

sufficient political adjustments also allow a Tocquevillian reading of the eventsthat, in spite of some convergences, does not squeeze Tocqueville into the

Procrustean bed of modernization theory (Tocqueville, 1964 [1858]). Similar

to the French bourgeoisie under the ancien regime that, in terms of economic

and intellectual resources, increasingly resembled or even surpassed the

aristocracy, a (possibly smaller) critical mass of Tunisians and Egyptians

resented the remaining barriers that separated them from the regime and its

cronies. In the eyes of the upwardly mobile, the better-off and the educated

(though many of the latter suffered from declining standards of living) there

was ever less justification for their own limited access to credit, markets, jobs

and decision-making. In line with Tocquevilles paradox, increasing equality

sharpened the sensitivity to persisting inequalities. Simultaneously, the actual

situation of far larger constituencies failed to match their expectations, which

were based on egalitarian views of society propagated by the old social contract

or on universal standards of rights and liberties. Why for instance should an

educated and resourceful young Egyptian entrepreneur Khalid Said be

arbitrarily arrested and tortured to death by thuggish and ignorant secret

police officers (El-Meehy, 2011)? Or why should a Tunisian pedlar with a

higher education degree (Muhammad) Tarik Bouazizi be slapped in the

face by an arrogant police sergeant who probably held no such degree? Parallelswith Tocquevilles analysis of the French revolution should, however, not be

overstretched and generalized. Declining segments of the middle classes,

whose reproduction depended on the state, and workers played an important

part in the events in both countries, though in different ways and at different

junctures. Whatever the resources available to them and their aspirations to

equality, they may have been moved by the simple wish to arrest their decline

or marginally improve their living standards.

A related and last question pertains to the different turns that events have

taken in the various Arab countries. Neither the forms and extent ofcontestation nor those of its broader political effects have been the same

everywhere. While not entirely unaffected, rentier states have weathered the

storms rather well. The rulers of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar and

Algeria have faced only smaller protests if any. The same applies to their


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Sudanese counterparts, even though the country faced other challenges

including partition. Temporary contestation in Oman and sporadically

recurrent protests in Saudi Arabia have been absorbed by slightly more

generous distributional policies than in the past, minor measures ofauthoritarian face lifting and repression. In Kuwait, the least docile of the

hydrocarbon states, protests have not much exceeded the usual challenges that

the ruling family has faced more or less since the 1960s. In Bahrain, which lives

largely on the recycling of rents accruing to its neighbours, protests mobilized

a considerable part of the population but were repressed with the help of

troops from Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In Libya strong opposition was

violently repressed and managed to topple the old regime only thanks to

NATO intervention. Beyond the major hydrocarbon exporters larger political

protests were easily pre-empted or contained by additional welfare expenditureand limited political reforms or authoritarian face-lifts in Morocco and Jordan.

Larger protests in Yemen and Syria developed into increasingly violent

stalemates. Only in Tunisia and Egypt did peaceful protests prompt important

regime transformations; in Tunisia in particular these changes may lead to the

emergence of a new democracy.

These diverging trajectories do not easily translate into differential exposure

to the dynamics discussed above that recall aspects of modernization theories

or the work of Tocqueville. For instance, in percentage terms there seem to be

as many unemployed youths in Algeria as in Tunisia. Rather the different

trajectories seem to reflect different features of the states concerned, possibly

even their different nature, and thus a degree of path dependency. The

argument is moreover consistent with the limited effects that the Arab Spring

has had in Lebanon and Iraq where political regimes, in spite of numerous

caveats, are more participatory, and in Palestine where Israeli occupation and

encirclement considerably change the situation. The overall calm and quiet in

most oil- and gas-exporting countries confirms the much challenged view that

rentier states manage to avoid contestation through a combination of

expansionary budgets and repression. Major protests took place only in the

two rentier states where internal divisions into sub-state loyalty groups basedon ascriptive, or in the sense of Barth (1969) ethnic, criteria were

particularly deep and disadvantaged large parts of the population in terms of

distribution. In Bahrain, a mainly indirect rentier state, the excluded account

for the majority of the nationals. The relative calm and limited political change

in Jordan and Morocco highlight the advantages of monarchies able to balance

the lack of rents and resources with institutions that provide a degree of

representation and participation without threatening the dominant role of the

unelected sovereign. Larger protests in Yemen and Syria mirror deep societal

divisions that, as in Bahrain and Libya, coincide with differential access topower and other resources. At the same time the authoritarian rulers of Yemen

and Syria could not even think of creating relatively open institutions similar to

those in Morocco, simply because their republican constitutions do not shield

the ultimate seat of power from demands for participation. The same applied


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to Tunisia and Egypt, where seemingly representative institutions, in spite of

their different forms and workings, were empty shells.

Though reinforced by such delusionary institutions, the strength, non-

violence and effectiveness of contestation in Tunisia and Egypt appears toreflect a rather developed sense of ownership of the state shared by their

inhabitants. Both Tunisia and Egypt come closer than most other Arab states

to the model of the nation-state. At least two centuries of state- and nation-

building strategies, including country-wide legislation, taxation, conscription,

repression and indoctrination, pursued by successive rulers and their

increasingly powerful government apparatuses, made the boundaries of a

political arena (Owen, 2004) or national political field (Zubaida, 2009)

coincide with those of an imagined community in the sense of Anderson.

Though to a lesser extent than in the capitalist heartlands of Europe and NorthAmerica, the processes of economic development and political centralization

contributed to the breakdown of primary social units and solidarities of tribe,

village and urban quarter (Zubaida, 2011, p. 91). They destroyed primary

communities of production and exchange dependent on kinship, governed by

patriarchal authority, reinforced by religion and custom, and buttressed by

religio-political institutions and powers and thus favour[ed] the liberation of

individuals, including women, from the patriarchal authorities of household

and community (Zubaida, 2011, p. 6). Social change nonetheless remained

partial even though it was more far reaching than in most other Arab countries;

economic development simply failed to produce a full-fledged capitalist and

industrial revolution that would have generalized the destruction of such

primary communities. By implication, ascriptive ties at sub-state level remain

relatively strong and may still be mobilized with considerable ease in the

competition for power and other resources. Closely related to such competi-

tion, these ties may of course reflect new societal boundaries and cleavages that

result from the aggregation and disaggregation of existing societal groups.

To an extent, similar processes of political centralization have affected

Morocco, where, however, politics are also governed by the institutional design

referred to above. In contrast, the other Arab states are largely territorial states(Korany, 1987) divided into various imagined communities that frequently

even criss-cross state borders and create loyalties that compete with those to

the state. Ultimately shared by the rulers and the ruled, the sense of belonging

to the same imagined community also accounts for the largely non-violent

solutions that were found only in Egypt and Tunisia for the political problem

of who should be in power. Although all recent protests were in one way or

another prompted by the obstacles that authoritarian rule put in the way of

effectively voicing and addressing popular grievances, the different manifesta-

tions and results of these protests echo the rather different forms and workingsof the various Arab states. Within these limits, the recent events confirm the

adaptive capacity of authoritarianism, as much as its fragility (Heydemann &

Leenders, 2011), and its continued ability to rely on legitimacy, cooptation and

repression for survival (Merkel et al., 2011).


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Note

1 Interview Cairo, April 2011.

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