On November 17th, 2014, the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law hosted a half-day conference on “The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform” to analyze the evolution and legacy of this movement with the authors of a critical new book on the Arab Spring. The book is co-authored by Strauss Center Distinguished Scholar Jason Brownlee, Harvard University’s Tarek Masoud, and Andrew Reynolds of the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. In addition to the three co-authors, the conversation featured three experts on Middle Eastern policy. Speaker bios can be found here. For images from the conference, see here.

Panel 1: The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform

Why did regime change take place in only four Arab countries, and why has democratic change proved so elusive in the countries that made attempts?

Jason Brownlee, UT Austin
Tarek Masoud, Harvard University
Andrew Reynolds, UNC Chapel Hill

Strauss Center Distinguished Scholar Jason Brownlee, Harvard University’s Tarek Masoud, and Andrew Reynolds of UNC Chapel Hillco-authors of The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform (Oxford University Press, 2015)discussed the background, methodology, central arguments, and main findings of their book during the first panel of the day.

Andrew Reynolds began the discussion by explaining the difficulties of writing a book about the Arab Spring. The dynamics of the phenomenon, which involve intense swings from optimism to pessimism throughout the region, will probably take decades to fully understand. Unemployment, lack of education, price increases, lack of rule of law, humiliation in daily life, lack of accountability in elected officials, and corruption embedded in political systems, among other causes, sparked uprisings in almost every country of the Arab world between 2010 and 2011 (at least 18 countries). However, said Reynolds, only in four states were there significant enough changes to bring down a dictator: Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. The authors found that the most powerful explanatory variables behind the successes and failures of these uprisings were not the events of 2010-2011 nor the actors on the scene, but trajectories deeply rooted in each country’s history.

In his remarks, Jason Brownlee highlighted the word “pathways” in the book’s subtitle to convey the importance of prior structural variables, which set the trajectory for the developments of the different uprisings and final outcomes. The authors identified the combination of non-hereditary regimes and lack of oil (examples include Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen) as characteristics leading to successful uprisings and the eventual removal of autocratic governments in those countries. (Libya, an oil rich nation, is an exception to this trend due to NATO’s intervention.) In these states, popular uprisings in the face of limited despotic power caused splits in the coercive apparatus of the state and led to leadership changes. In contrast, hereditary and/or oil rich regimes challenged by uprisings drew on their extensive despotic power and the coherent coercive apparatus of the state to crack down on protests and maintain leadership continuity. Therefore, even though human agency may generate uprisings in a range of conditions, preexisting structures will determine the extent to which revolts will achieve their aims.

Despite governmental overthrow, democracy has failed to take root in all but one of these successful uprising cases. Thus far, only Tunisia has maintained a democratic transition. Explanations that center on Tunisians’ historical willingness to compromise compared to other countries in the region, said Tarek Masoud, are misleading. While it is true that Tunisia’s different political sectors showed more compromise, it is also true that secular forces in the country did not aim to bring down the democratic edifice because they saw an opportunity of acheiving success within the democratic structure. Seculars (liberals and non-Islamists) in Egypt, in contrast, did not believe they had that opportunity. While Tunisia’s first legislature is very pluralisticIslamists are present, but do not have a majority, and thus must compromise with political opponentsin Egypt, Islamists had a super majority in the legislature and no incentives to cooperate with liberals. The authors speculate that Tunisia’s wider array of institutions and more articulated civil society (e.g., powerful labor unions) have impeded a single group from dominating the political scene.

Panel 2: Assessing Our Understanding of the Arab Spring

What new leverage do these analyses provide in understanding the dynamics and legacy of the Arab Spring? Is our ability to forecast such critical trends better today than it was four years ago?

Melani Cammett, Brown University
Gregory Gause, Texas A&M University
Amaney Jamal, Princeton University

Following the authors’ presentation, a panel of three experts on the Middle East discussed the work’s major contributions to the existing literature and the insights it provides to improve our understanding of the Arab Spring. After an introduction by Dr. Robert Moser, Chair of the UT Government Department, the panelists, Drs. Melani Cammett of Brown University, Gregory Gause of Texas A&M University, and Amaney Jamal of Princeton, provided their own analyses of the book’s major contributions to our understanding of the Arab Spring.

Dr. Cammet applauded the authors for being explicit about what the book does and does not do, which is to build, rather than test, theory. In building theory, she commended the authors for not just isolating the factors that determine why democratic transitions occur in some countries but not others, but also isolating the structural forces driving those factors. Dr. Gause expressed similar appreciation for the authors’ structural approach and emphasized that they correctly focus on state capacity, getting at the real question of the Arab Spring: declining state capacity after decades of improvement. However, Gause also critiqued the authors’ focus on hereditary succession, pointing to previous examples of fallen dynasties in the Middle East. Finally, Dr. Jamal thanked the authors for tackling what she called an “unwieldy issue” and for doing so both empirically and theoretically. She pointed out that the authors isolated a key factor, the relationship between the military and the regime, and expressed hope that more attention would be given to the origins of this relationship.

Ultimately, the panelists applauded the authors on their conceptualization of variables, their empirical work, and their use of qualitative methods, which they called an excellent example for teaching. Though each panelist expressed their own critique, they agreed that the book is and will be recognized as a seminal contribution to the literature on the Arab Spring. As Dr. Jamal concluded, the book is the most “comprehensive, commanding, and authoritative book on the Arab uprisingsand it will be known as such.”

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