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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
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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
Eberhard Kienle: Egypt without Mubarak, Tunisia after Bin Ali 537
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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
Eberhard Kienle: Egypt without Mubarak, Tunisia after Bin Ali 547
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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).
Eberhard Kienle: Egypt without Mubarak, Tunisia after Bin Ali 553
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Note
1 Interview Cairo, April 2011.
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