Abstract
In thanking Professors Goldstone, Hajjar, and Korotayev and Shishkina for the time and effort they put into their reviews, and Professor Gottfried for having organized the symposium for Critical Sociology, I want to take this opportunity to address some of the issues they raise in their comments on the book that I co-authored with Shamiran Mako, After the Arab Uprisings: Progress and Stagnation in the Middle East and North Africa. The reviews are generally positive, especially on the book’s importance attached to gender relations and women’s mobilizations, but some of the remarks offer a fruitful occasion to deepen the political-sociological discussion of the Arab Spring’s dynamics and its outcomes.
Let me begin by reiterating what drove the research that culminated in the book. As with many scholars of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, as well as researchers of revolutions and social movements, I began to study and write on the Arab Spring protests early on, seeking to make sense of why the immediate outcomes seemed not to align with previous democratic transitions, especially the much-vaunted third-wave transitions of the mid-1970s to 1990. By 2014, only Tunisia had embarked on a democratic transition, and only Morocco had adopted constitutional reforms to respond to protester grievances and aspirations (at least partially). The others, as we all know, had descended into violence and internationalized civil conflict (Bahrain, Libya, Syria, Yemen) or reasserted authoritarianism (Egypt). I settled on the four explanatory variables and was delighted when Shamiran Mako agreed with the formulation and went on to co-author the book, adding a valuable political science perspective.
As Lisa Hajjar correctly notes, our book is not about ‘the relationship between the uprisings and the contemporary state of affairs in the region writ large’. Rather, it addresses the question of why democratization could not diffuse across the region. We found explanations for the absence of democratization, as well as for the immediate divergent outcomes, in the nature of the state and political institutions, civil society, women’s mobilizations, and international influences or interventions. The interaction of those factors, we felt, was a far more satisfactory explanation than one that focused on the presumed intractability or inevitability of authoritarianism in the region. And yet we were concerned about the shaky situation in Tunisia; as we write early on, ‘A decade after its democratic transition, Tunisia faces serious challenges that could impede consolidation and durability’ (p. 71).
Lisa Hajjar also states her preference to ‘privilege the state’ and finds that our book validates that perspective. Yes and no. We certainly emphasize state-centered variables, but we also draw attention to the wider context – the hierarchical and unequal capitalist world-system and the entitlements of the hegemon and other major powers, hence the outcomes in Libya and Syria in particular. It is also that broader international context which makes the book anticipate the difficulties that Tunisia faced. As we write, ‘MENA’s democracy movements took place in the context of the global economic crisis, which itself was a consequence of neoliberal economic policies on a world scale’ (p. 233). Tunisia’s widely celebrated democratic transition did not receive the necessary international economic support for democratic development. As I have written elsewhere (Moghadam, 2023), between 2011 and early 2022, European Union (EU) assistance to Tunisia amounted to about €3 billion with over €2 billion in grants and €1.1 billion in macro-financial assistance (concessional loans). In contrast, the EU paid out €4.1 billion to Ukraine in the first 5 months after the outbreak of war with Russia. As we know, those amounts to Ukraine have only increased. Today, renewed EU financial support to Tunisia is geared toward keeping migrants at bay.
Jack Goldstone sympathetically surveys our discussion of democracy prerequisites and asks a pertinent question: if even the oldest democracies – notably the United States – can backslide significantly from democracy, ‘how certain can we be of the conditions and pathways that sustain democracy?’ Perhaps a more relevant question is: how sustainable is democracy in a domestic context of widening income inequalities and the growing political influence of an oligarchy, and an international context of rivalries and hegemonic impositions? This is why we write at the end of the Introduction and Overview chapter that ‘. . . democracy is not a finished product but rather a political model, or variety of models, that demands citizen participation and vigilance, a responsive state, strong institutions, and a global environment conducive to sustained and effective democracies’ (p. 25).
We do not claim that Tunisia successfully consolidated democracy, we write instead of ‘pathways’ to democratic consolidation, and we argue that only Tunisia had the prerequisites for such a pathway. Sadly, its economic difficulties led to political dysfunction and then the summer 2021 presidential coup. Thus, we absolutely agree with Goldstone’s statement: ‘If Tunisia’s government had been able to more effectively resuscitate the economy before the pandemic, or if foreign countries had provided more economic assistance to the new regime, perhaps we would still be calling Tunisia a democratic success today’.
Goldstone raises questions about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) assault on Libya and our approach to it, and offers a counterfactual, adding that at least Iraq is today ‘more stable and democratic’, and wonders if ‘a different pattern of foreign intervention could have produced a different outcome’. Iraq is hardly an exemplar of stability, democratic development, and citizen well-being, as a recent assessment explains (Cook, 2023) and an Iraqi woman activist’s statement to the UN Security Council confirms (Latif, 2023). (Nor, for that matter, is Afghanistan, after two decades of NATO and US military presence.) A different pattern of foreign intervention would be no military incursions or destabilization efforts toward regime change. That might have prevented the Da’esh reign of terror in Iraq and Syria – and the outflow of many Tunisian men to join its ‘caliphate’.
Korotayev and Shishkina begin by raising questions about our approach to Tunisia, as the singular case of a democratic transition. Korotayev and Shishkina prefer the J-curve analysis to our Millsian method, and they correctly point out that Tunisia’s serious socio-economic problems preceded the 2011 democratic transition. Yes, there were heightened expectations after 2011 which were dashed quite soon, as we mention throughout the book. Our analysis, however, is not just fixated on internal factors and forces but also takes account of the international context. Where was the international support for Tunisia’s democratic development, given its peaceful history, modern political institutions, and strong civil society? Recall civil society’s impressive role in the hot summer of 2013, when the National Dialogue Quartet successfully mediated between government and opposition. Tunisia’s misfortune was that its democratic transition took place in the midst of the post-2008 Great Recession and in a neighborhood made especially dangerous by NATO’s military intervention in Libya. The 2020 pandemic only exacerbated matters. I remain convinced that had the EU and United States supported Tunisia’s economic revival with a fraction of the funding it has provided to prolong war between Russia and Ukraine since early 2022, the presidential coup would not have been possible. But let us not give up hope. The institutional legacy of Tunisia’s strong feminist movement and civil society organizations, including its influential and activist trade union, may yet overpower presidential excess.
When we wrote the book, we could not foresee the 2021 Tunisian presidential coup, although – as I have noted – we did anticipate the crisis by underscoring the economic difficulties that Tunisia experienced throughout its transition. Nor did we foresee Syria’s return in March 2023 to the Arab League, from which it had been ejected a decade earlier. The Iran-Saudi rapprochement, brokered by China, may also signal larger changes in the region, which at this time are difficult to foresee. Certainly, a more peaceful and stable region, with intra-regional trade and development assistance, would be most welcome. Still, to the extent that our book draws attention to the tragic consequences of coercive external intervention, and to the need for an enabling international environment for democratic consolidation, our overall framework remains intact – and confirms the structure-agency interaction to which Goldstone refers.
Once again, I thank the reviewers for their attention to our book and their cogent and thought-provoking comments. This review exercise shows the vitality of our fields – political sociology, studies of revolution and democratic transitions, and Middle East Studies.
