Larry Diamond and Hesham Sallam
When the Arab Spring erupted in December 2010, advocates for change in the Arab world had reason to be hopeful. But, as we saw in 2016, authoritarianism has returned, and whether that trend can be reversed in 2017 will depend on how well regional and international leaders have absorbed lessons from the recent past.
When the “Arab Spring” erupted in December 2010, advocates for change in the Arab world had reason to be hopeful. But, as we continued to see in 2016, authoritarianism has returned, most notably in Egypt, which is now ruled by a repressive military-backed dictatorship.
Meanwhile, Syria has been so ravaged by civil war, vast refugee outflows, war crimes, and human rights violations that it will take at least a generation to rebuild that country and its society – that is, if it can ever be rebuilt. Yemen, for its part, is being sundered by civil strife and a Saudi Arabian-led military intervention; and, since Muammar el-Qaddafi’s overthrow in 2011, Libya has remained a deeply divided, largely ungoverned country. And, of course, no one can ignore the rise of the Islamic State.
Tunisia is often seen as the Arab Spring’s one “success” story. But while its democracy has miraculously survived in the midst of so many failures elsewhere in the region, Tunisia is not exempt from geopolitical forces that burden its security apparatus and threaten its economy. And the Tunisian government’s repressive use of anti-terror emergency laws has now called into question the future of its democratic experiment.
As we head into 2017, we should consider lessons from the Arab Spring and its aftermath to determine whether the region’s tilt toward autocracy can be reversed. For starters, we know that state-managed reforms often fall short. While Arab autocrats often resort to the “stick” of repression to buttress their power, they also employ the “carrot” of limited political reforms. This option appeals to autocrats because, by creating a regulated political space, they can curtail and co-opt their opponents, while allowing their disaffected societies to “let off steam.”
This explains why some regimes now combine authoritarian and democratic features. For example, Morocco and Jordan’s monarchies have permitted “opposition” parties to form, but have kept them under strict control and tight surveillance. Likewise, media outlets may criticize the government in some cases, so long as they do not cross the “red line” of criticizing the ruler himself.
Many activists and scholars believe that state-managed politics, despite its imperfections, does offer meaningful opportunities for democratic reform. According to this view, opposition activists who participate in limited democratic processes can expand the boundaries of political dissent beyond what an autocrat had initially intended. Thus, over time, democratic change can be achieved by pushing for serious reforms from within.
Now that most of the Arab Spring uprisings have failed, risk-averse activists and opposition parties tend to favor this type of incrementalism. But while this approach makes strategic sense, there is little evidence that state-led reforms have ushered in genuine democratic change in the Arab world. In fact, the popular uprisings in recent years were a response to political stagnation and dysfunction.
Rather than releasing steam, the state-managed political systems that Arab autocrats have long maintained became a new source of public anger, because they failed to address basic social demands for bread (literally and figuratively), economic opportunities (and their fair distribution), and the rule of law. During the Arab Spring, citizens abandoned organized, formal politics and relied on protests, strikes, and sit-ins to advance their demands: the impetus for change did not come from the state or formal politics, but from the people.
Thus, another lesson from recent years is that it is in Arab leaders’ interest to get ahead of public alienation, and to allow for gradual but genuine institutional reforms, rather than a Potemkin-like spectacle. The monarchies of Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, and other Gulf countries would do well to launch transitions from absolutism to constitutional rule. And yet, throughout the region, there appears to be no political will to move in this direction, incrementally or otherwise; and this includes Morocco and Jordan, which are better positioned than other countries to reestablish themselves as constitutional monarchies.
Arab regimes have failed to fashion a new bargain to replace the old social contract, whereby the state provided a degree of economic security in exchange for citizens’ dignity and political freedom. Any new bargain must allow for freer expression, more political and economic competition and rights, and genuine enforcement of the law – all of which are needed to combat endemic corruption and crony capitalism.
To be sure, corrupt autocracies like those in Egypt and Bahrain have so far succeeded in silencing dissidents though brute repression; but their long-term prospects are grim. But, in the absence of any strategy to create, even gradually, a new bargain between the people and the state, these regimes’ legitimacy is shallow, fleeting, and increasingly illusory.
A final lesson is that external actors have always had an outsize influence on Arab regimes, and on the spread of democracy in the Middle East. Unfortunately, that influence has historically been negative: the United States, like European colonial powers before it, has protected and armed various Arab autocrats, even as they undermined human rights. And many of the violent conflicts that began in the Arab Spring’s aftermath have been fueled by international and regional actors, not least Russia in 2016.
The prospects for peaceful political change in war-torn Arab countries is now also closely linked to the actions of strategic rivals such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, which are fighting proxy wars in Syria and elsewhere. In fact, since 2011, Saudi Arabia has quite visibly sought to shape other Arab countries’ political developments, in order to prevent spillover effects.
Meanwhile, the US, Russia, Iran, and Turkey have become equally important protagonists in the region’s conflicts, and peaceful change will depend on their capacity to reconcile their conflicting interests. Barring long-term settlements between regional and international rivals, the people themselves will have to find innovative, peaceful ways to send a clear message to their rulers that the old order cannot hold, and, sooner or later, democratic change must come.
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