Is the Arab Spring over? Unpacking perceptions of democracy, elections and regime-types in MENA countries

ABSTRACT

One of the main questions that has resurfaced in the post-2011 Arab Uprisings era has been to what extent these public protests and the popular calls for political opening would result in democratization in the MENA region. Despite the conventional arguments that explain the persistence of authoritarian regimes as a derivate of cultural authenticity and patriarchy, the Arab Uprisings have unlocked the threshold of fear, and given rise to a new moment of political activism in the region. In light of this, one of the arguments of this paper is centred on the idea that during and after the 2011 Arab Uprisings, regimes did not travel similar trajectories in this region; as a result, it is not possible to talk about an ‘Arab path’ and/or an ‘Arab regime typology’. This work draws its data from the opinion surveys conducted between 2017 and 2020 by the World Values Survey Wave 7, and aims to shed light on the current demands for and perceptions of democracy and elections in the MENA region. To that end, this paper will scrutinize the various trajectories in the post-Arab Spring era through the lenses of three selected countries. These countries are Tunisia, Jordan and Lebanon.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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³ Marwan Muasher, ‘Is This the Arab Spring 2.0?’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 30 October 2019,

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⁷ Al Jazeera Newspaper, ‘Lebanon’s Daily Star publishes “no news” protest edition’, 8 August 2019. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/8/8/lebanons-daily-star-publishes-no-news-protest-edition

⁸ Marwan Muasher, ‘Is This the Arab Spring 2.0?’.

⁹ Martina Ottoway, ‘Protests in the Arab World: The Second Wave’.

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¹³ Larry Diamond, ‘Democracy’s Past and Future: Why Are There No Arab Democracies?’, Journal of Democracy 21, no. 1 (January 2010): 94.

¹⁴ Ibid., 98

¹⁵ Hazem Beblawi and Giacomo Luciani (eds). The Rentier State, London: Croom Helm, 1987, 53.

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¹⁸ Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

¹⁹ David Brumberg, ‘Democratization in the Arab World? The Trap of Liberalized Autocracy’, Journal of Democracy 13 (October 2002): 56.

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²¹ David Brumberg, ibid., 56.

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²³ Elie Kedourie, Democracy and Arab Culture, Washington, D.C.: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1992; Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam, The Random House for Publishing Group, 2003; Mark Tessler, ‘Islam and Democracy in the Middle East: The Impact of Religious Orientations on Attitudes Toward Democracy in Four Arab Countries’, Comparative Politics 34, no. 3 (2002): 337–354; see also Yahya Sadowski, ‘The New Orientalism and the Democracy Debate’, Middle East Report, 183 (1993): 14–21.

²⁴ Roger Owen, State Power and Politics in Making of Modern Middle East, London: Routledge, 1991; Simon Bromley, Rethinking Middle East Politics, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994; Francesco Cavatorta, ‘The Convergence of Governance: Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World and Downgrading Democracy Elsewhere?’, Middle East Critique 19, no. 3 (2010): 217–232; Raymond Hinnebusch, ‘Change and Continuity after the Arab Uprising: The Consequences of State Formation in Arab North African States’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 42, no. 1 (2015): 12–30.

²⁵ Nazih Ayubi, Overstating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East, I.B. Tauris, 1995.

²⁶ Kevin Koehler, ‘Authoritarian Elections in Egypt: Formal Institutions and Informal Mechanisms of Rule’, Democratization 15 (2008): 974–990.

²⁷ Steven Heydemann, ‘Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World’, ibid.

²⁸ Hinnebusch, ‘Change and Continuity After the Arab Uprisings’, ibid., 18.

²⁹ Nur Köprülü, “Consolidated monarchies in the post-‘Arab Spring’ era: the case of Jordan’, Israel Affairs 20, no. 3 (2014): 325–345; Curtis R. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings: Regime Survival and Politics Beyond the State, Columbia University Press, 2018.

³⁰ Bruce Rutherford, ‘Egypt’s New Authoritarianism under Sisi’, Middle East Journal 72, no. 2 (Spring 2018).

³¹ Ibrahim Fraihat, Unfinished Revolutions: Yemen, Libya, and Tunisia after the Arab Spring. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.

³² Marina Ottaway, Democracy challenged. The rise of semi-authoritarianism, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003.

³³ Ibid.

³⁴ Freedom in the World 2022, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2021/democracy-under-siege

³⁵ Freedom House 2020, ‘Countries and Territories’, Available at: https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores (date of access: 17 July 2020).

³⁶ David Collier and Steven Levitsky, ‘Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research’, World Politics 49, no. 3 (1997): 430–451.

³⁷ Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, ‘Elections Without Democracy: The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism’, Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (2002): 51–65.

³⁸ Edward Schatz, ‘The Soft Authoritarian Toolkit: Agenda-Setting Power in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan’, Comparative Politics 41 (2009): 203–222.

³⁹ Charles Boix and Martin Svolik, ‘The Foundations of Limited Authoritarian Government: Institutions, Commitment, and Power-Sharing in Dictatorships’, Journal of Politics 75, no. 2 (2013): 300–316.

⁴⁰ Andreas Schedler, ‘Elections Without Democracy: The Menu of Manipulation’, Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (2002): 36–50.

⁴¹ Larry Diamond, ‘Elections Without Democracy: Thinking About Hybrid Regimes’, Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (2002): 21–35.

⁴² David Waldner and Ellen Lust, ‘Unwelcome change: Coming to terms with democratic backsliding.’; Larry Diamond, In search of democracy, Oxon: Routledge, 2015.

⁴³ David Brumberg, ‘Democratization in the Arab World? The Trap of Liberalized Autocracy’, ibid., 64.

⁴⁴ Lust-Okar, ‘Elections under authoritarianism: Preliminary lessons from Jordan’, Democratization 13, no. 3, (2006).

⁴⁵ Jason Brownlee, ‘…And yet they persist: Explaining survival and transition in neopatrimonialism regimes’, Studies in Comparative International Development, 37 (2007): 35–63.

⁴⁶ Diamond, In search of democracy, ibid., 166–167.

⁴⁷ Jason Brownlee, ‘…And yet they persist: Explaining survival and transition in neopatrimonial regimes’, ibid.

⁴⁸ Andreas Schedler, ‘Elections Without Democracy: The Menu of Manipulation’, ibid.; see also Diamond, ‘Elections Without Democracy: Thinking About Hybrid Regimes’, ibid., 23.

⁴⁹ Lee Morgenbesser, ‘Elections in Hybrid Regimes: Conceptual Stretching Revived’, Political Studies 62, no. 1, (2013): 25.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 33.

⁵¹ Jennifer Gandhi and Adam Przeworski, ‘Dictatorial Institutions and the Survival of Dictators’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, CA, 2001.

⁵² World Values Survey, Wave 7, Available at; 2017–2020. https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV7.jsp

⁵³ ‘Tunisia: Freedom House’, Freedom House Report, 2021, https://freedomhouse.org/country/tunisia/freedom-world/2021

⁵⁴ ‘Jordan: Freedom House’, Freedom House Report, 2021. https://freedomhouse.org/country/jordan/freedom-world/2021

⁵⁵ Ellen Lust-Okar, ‘Elections under authoritarianism: Preliminary lessons from Jordan’, Sean Yom, ‘Jordan: Ten More Years of Autocracy’, Journal of Democracy 20, October 2009.

⁵⁶ World Values Survey, Wave 7.

⁵⁷ Jillian Schwedler, Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007; Glenn Robinson, ‘Can Islamists be Democrats? The Case of Jordan’, Middle East Journal 51, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 373–387.

⁵⁸ Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, ‘Elections Without Democracy: The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism’, ibid.

⁵⁹ Francesco Cavatorta and Fabio Merone, ‘Moderation through exclusion? The journey of the Tunisian Ennahda from fundamentalist to conservative party’, Democratization 20, no. 5 (2013): 857–875.

⁶⁰ Thomas Carothers, ‘Tunisia in Transition: A Comparative View’, Project on Middle East Democracy, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 30 May 2018. Available at:https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/05/30/tunisia-in-transition-comparative-view-pub-76501

⁶¹ Yazan Doughan, ‘The New Jordanian Patriotism After the Arab Spring’, Middle East Brief, March 2020. https://www.brandeis.edu/crown/publications/middle-east-briefs/pdfs/101-200/meb134.pdf

⁶² Hannah Stewart, “Lebanon’s National Identity: Walking between raindrops?’, The Levantine Review 1, no. 2 (2012): 153–180.

⁶³ Halim Barakat, ‘Social and Political Integration in Lebanon: A Case of Social Mosaic’, The Middle East Journal 27, no. 3 (1973): 301–18.

⁶⁴ A. Rigby, ‘Lebanon: Patterns of Confessional Politics’, Parliamentary Affairs 53, no. 1 (2000): 169–80.

⁶⁵ Asma Ajroudi and Alia Chughtai, Lebanon 2018 elections: Politics as usual. Al Jazeera Newspaper. 2018. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/lebanon-elections-2018-politics-usual-180501091710689.html

⁶⁶ 51 A. Assi and J. Worrall, “Stable instability: the Syrian conflict and the postponement of the 2013 Lebanese parliamentary elections’, Third World Quarterly 36, no. 10 (2015): 1944–1967.

⁶⁷ Freedom House Report on Tunisia, https://freedomhouse.org/country/tunisia/freedom-world/2020

⁶⁸ WVS 2020, ibid., 324

⁶⁹ Laurie Brand, ‘Palestinians and Jordanians: A Crisis of Identity’, Journal of Palestine Studies XXIV (1995): 51.

⁷⁰ Ibid., 51.

⁷¹ Freedom House Report on Tunisia 2020, ibid.

⁷² Al Jazeera Newspaper, ‘Decade after revolution, Tunisia’s women face uphill battle’, 17 January 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/17/a-decade-after-revolution-tunisias-women-face-an-uphill-battle

⁷³ Ibid.

⁷⁴ Freedom House Report on Tunisia 2020.

⁷⁵ Arab News, ‘Jordanian women have come a long way, but much work remains to be done’, 8 March 2021, https://www.arabnews.com/node/1821501/middle-east

⁷⁶ Lust-Okar, ‘Elections under authoritarianism: Preliminary lessons from Jordan’, ibid.; Curtis Ryan and Jillian Schwedler, ‘Return to Democratization or New Hybrid Regime?: The 2003 Elections in Jordan’, Middle East Policy 11 (Summer 2004).

⁷⁷ Lisa Anderson, ‘Absolutism and Resilience of Monarchies’, Political Science Quarterly 1, no. 15 (Spring 1991): 1–15; Nur Köprülü, ‘Consolidted Monarchies …’, ibid.

⁷⁸ Thomas Carothers, ‘Tunisia in Transition: A Comparative View’, ibid.

⁷⁹ Larry Diamond, ‘Elections Without Democracy: Thinking About Hybrid Regimes’, ibid., 25.

⁸⁰ Andrea Teti, Pamela Abbott and Francesco Cavatorta, ‘Beyond elections: perceptions of democracy in four Arab countries’, Democratization, https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2019.1566903, published online 2019.

⁸¹ Matthijs Bogaards, ‘How to classify hybrid regimes? Defective democracy and electoral authoritarianism’, Democratization 16, no. 2 (2009): 415.

⁸² Sara Ababneh, ‘The Struggle to Re-Politicize the Political: The Discourse on Economic Rights in the Jordanian Popular Movement 2011–2012’, https://pomeps.org/the-struggle-to-re-politicize-the-political-the-discourse-on-economic-rights-in-the-jordanian-popular-movement-2011-2012