Arab Spring,Its Aftermath,and James Davies’ Inverted J-Curve

We would like to start our review of After the Arab Uprisings by sympathizing with its authors. In some respect, the book experienced a sort of bad luck almost immediately after it appeared. Indeed, Amazon site asserts that the monograph by Mako and Moghadam was published on the 22 July 2021, whereas just in 3 days, on the 25 July, Tunisia experienced a ‘phase transition’ in its authoritarian backslide, Kais Saied’s coup (if not coupvolution ¹ ), after which the Tunisian post-Arab Spring democratization could hardly be regarded as a success story anymore. But Mako and Moghadam had bet on it so much. It is constantly mentioned throughout the book just as a success story, and the book’s conclusions rely too much on this qualification.

The whole enterprise of the authors must have looked extremely risky from the very beginning. The problem was that they decided to use a very small sample that was especially problematic in view of their intent to apply to it some sort of qualitative comparative analysis using J.S. Mill’s ‘method of difference’ (p. 22). The point is that this method requires a substantial variation of outcomes, whereas out of seven cases analyzed by Mako and Moghadam only one was characterized by an unequivocally positive outcome (Tunisia: ‘Democratic transition’), one more outcome was somehow positive rather than unequivocally negative (Morocco: ‘Constitutional reforms; stalled democratization’), whereas the rest five outcomes were negative (Syria and Yemen: ‘Internationalized civil war’; Libya: ‘Failed state’; Bahrain: ‘Authoritarian survival’; and Egypt: ‘Authoritarian reversal’; p. 219). With such a ratio of positive to negative cases the application of Mill’s method of difference was rather problematic from the very beginning, but 25 July 2021 coupvolution in Tunisia put the conclusions produced by the authors by their qualitative comparative analysis of their sample cases (presented at pp. 219–220) into an especially serious doubt. Indeed, now the Tunisian outcome should be rather classified (together with the Egyptian one) as ‘Authoritarian reversal’; and with one rather infirm positive outcome versus six negative outcomes any meaningful application of Mill’s method of difference becomes rather problematic.

The point that the Tunisian coupvolution turned out to be a total surprise to the authors seems to be somehow connected with their not quite accurate treatment of some numerical data. For example, Mako and Moghadam maintain

A decade after it began its democratic transition, Tunisia faces serious challenges that could impede consolidation and durability. First, the socioeconomic conditions that fueled the uprising in 2010 remain unchanged, particularly as Tunisians experience inflation, high unemployment and even higher youth unemployment, weak economic growth and a downturn in its gas, tourism, and agricultural sectors. (p. 71)

This suggests that the authors dramatically underestimated the seriousness of the situation in Tunisia. In fact, it was much more vulnerable to radical regime change/authoritarian reversal than one would think reading the description above. The point is not that actually the socioeconomic conditions did not ‘remain unchanged’, they dramatically declined. Before the Jasmine Revolution, Tunisia (like almost all the other countries of the Arab Spring) experienced a rather fast economic growth (that was much faster than in the United States, or Western Europe), ² which was followed by a rather dramatic slowdown. In fact, this is just the socioeconomic context that is most prone to severe destabilization.

Actually, we are dealing here with the famous inverted J-curve effect that was first described by James C. Davies (1962)—risks of revolutionary destabilization are especially high when a pronounced economic slowdown comes after a few years of dynamic economic growth that creates inflated expectations. And this destabilization can well be not only revolutionary, but also quasi-revolutionary and counterrevolutionary; it can well result in regime change—and not only in democratic, but also in authoritarian direction, as well as in general state breakdown. As a classical example, of such an inverted J-curve effect one may regard the Nazi revolution analogue, when the Nazis came to power in a quasi-revolutionary way against the background of dramatic economic decline that followed a few years of dynamic economic growth (see, for example, Grinin et al., 2022).

In fact, one may find the inverted J-curve effect also in the cases of Egypt, Yemen, and Libya where post-revolutionary economic decline that followed a few years of pre-revolutionary dynamic growth produced this effect that contributed to the start of revolutionary episodes (30 June 2013 Revolution and 3 July 2013 coup in Egypt that resulted in authoritarian reversal; the Houthi 21 September 2014 Revolution that triggered the Saudi military intervention and general state breakdown in Yemen; 16 May 2014 Haftar Rebellion/‘Amaliyyat al-Karāmah in Libya that triggered general state breakdown in this country; see, for example, Grinin et al., 2019).

However, notwithstanding all the above-expressed criticisms, we would still definitely advise all those interested in the Arab Spring, its aftermath, or, in general, the Arab world, revolutions and related phenomena to read this book and, if possible to buy it, as the positive features of the book far outweigh its defects.

With the exception of certain problematic points that we have outlined above, this monograph is quite well-grounded and structured in terms of logic, theoretical validity, and general inclusion in the context of the discussion about the events of the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring provoked the emergence of a huge number of monographs, research papers, and expert analytics (e.g. Alpher, 2019; Cammett, 2018; Cherribi, 2017; Haas and Lesch, 2017; Howard and Hussain, 2013; Lynch, 2012; Schumacher and Schraeder, 2021; Weyland, 2012), and in this case, an important and quite complicated task is to conduct a comprehensive research that takes into account various aspects of the phenomenon under study and at the same time is novel and does not repeat already discovered patterns.

Mako and Moghadam managed not only to present an extensive literary and theoretical review of the problems of the Arab Spring and theories of democratization, but also more or less successfully focused their research in the existing set of studies. They built the logic of the study in a way allowing talking both about the causes and factors that led to the uprisings in the Arab countries, and to analyze the trends launched by these events in different parts of the region and largely determining the structure of society after the uprisings.

One of important features of the Arab Spring is certainly a certain heterogeneity of the outcomes of the uprisings that followed different paths in different countries and different regions of the Middle East and North Africa. This feature, of course, is of particular interest from the point of view of the choice of methodological approaches to the analysis of such events. Mako and Moghadam’s book raises important questions about the impact that the uprisings have had on the region as such, and the overall prospects for democratization there. They do this through multileveled and cross-national analysis of divergent outcomes, taking into account a set of factors such as regime type, civil society, the influence of internal and external forces, as well as gender relations and women’s mobilization (albeit with some methodological problems outlined above).

The events of the Arab Spring marked the growing role of political minorities in protest actions and demonstrated the transformation in the position of some groups, and in particular women in the political arena of Arab countries. During this period, women’s participation in political life has reached a significant magnitude compared to previous periods. This book discusses how gender relations developed in the Arab countries, as well as how the dynamics of the inclusion of women in protest actions evolved and, most importantly, what trends were entrenched in the legislation and socio-political sphere of the Arab countries after the uprisings. It is particularly important that gender relations in this book are presented in the context of the authoritarian bargain discussion and the authors note that from a gender perspective, all the states could be termed patriarchal-authoritarian or neopatriarchal (p. 14).

From the point of view of the choice of methods for the analysis of mentioned factors, this book is embedded in a discussion about the applicability of qualitative and quantitative research methods in the context of divergent outcomes. The conceptual framework of this book combines both case-oriented and variable-oriented approaches, which allows the authors to conduct comparative analysis using both elite-centric and movement-centric approaches as well as acknowledge both endogenous and exogenous factors and forces (albeit with some problems outlined above). This book focuses on mixed methods, which seems to be the most relevant strategy in the context of the discussion about the various paths of political development in the Arab countries after the uprisings. In this case, the use of purely quantitative methods can be considered as an approach that does not take into account the specifics of particular cases, and the use of exclusively qualitative methods may suffer from a deliberately meager potential to generalize the revealed trends. Given this context, the authors tried to integrate their findings into the existing discussion and find a certain balance through the use of mixed methods. And though their formal application of Mill’s method of difference suffers from serious problems outlined above, this is by far compensated with a very skillful qualitative analysis.

Answering the main question raised in the book—Why did the Arab Spring not produce region-wide robust democratization?—Mako and Moghadam conclude that whether or not a region or cluster of countries is prepared to embark on a democratic transition depends on socioeconomic, institutional, and cultural preconditions along with the nature of international connections and interventions. On the example of seven cases—Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen—the authors have factored in the country-cases of the Arab uprisings that represent the diverse causal pathways for capturing divergent outcomes. They analyze key elements in explaining the divergent outcomes of the Arab Spring uprisings revealing that those structures, institutions, and social forces shaped their further evolution. Talking about the role of external influence, the argument is that it can be regarded as an important condition explaining divergent pathways of the Arab Spring countries. Of special interest is the most profound up to date study of the role of women in the Arab revolts, as well as the influence of the gender issues on the post-revolutionary development offered by Mako and Moghadam.

To conclude, in their recent review of the most recent (‘fourth’) generally recognized generation of the studies of revolutions, Goldstone et al. (2022) note that ‘these works are, despite their other virtues, not satisfactory in their treatment of the role of women, or of gender issues in general’ (p. 48). We may say that After the Arab Uprisings fills this gap to a very considerable extent, at least with respect to the Arab Spring revolutions and their aftermath.