INTRODUCTION

Clement Henry, Jang Ji-Hyang, and Robert P. Parks

O n November 4-5, 2011, the Asan Institute for Policy Studies held
the first Asan Middle East Conference, a biennial gathering of the
world’s foremost experts on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
region. The conference, titled “Democracy and Development in the
Wake of the Arab Spring,” examined the multiple dimensions to the
political turbulence that has fundamentally transformed the region over
the past year. Furthermore, the conference sought to analyze the pros-
pects for states across the region to make the successful transition to
democratic government within the context of unprecedented social and
political change.
At its core, the conference asked the question: What is the Arab
Spring? Is it a singular or multiple processes? Is it an event that happened
and may be essentially over or ending, or is it in fact the beginning of a
long-term historical process? Describing an intra-regional political phe-
nomenon that is occurring in multiple states at different velocities, the
term Arab Spring is over-determined. Drawing from the examples of
conference participants, one way of conceptually simplifying the “Arab
Spring” phenomenon is to broadly distinguish between two distinct
temporal processes: regime change/dynamics (or continuity) and transi-
tion. As conference participants stressed, it is too early to claim that the
Arab Spring is a “domino effect” of democratization in the Middle East
and North Africa, paralleling earlier democratization trends in Latin
American and Eastern Europe. Only three authoritarian leaders have

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 been forced from power, and only one of those states, Tunisia, had en-
tered the transition process by November 2011, when this conference
was held. Saudi military intervention apparently crushed the Bahraini
opposition. Regime and opposition in Syria and Yemen appeared to
have entered a protracted and bloody stalemate, where the outcome was
far from clear, whereas most of the other regimes in the region appeared
to have successfully navigated the waves of popular demonstrations that
spread from Tunis between January and March 2011.
This book, co-edited by Dr. Jang Ji-Hyang, Director of the Middle
East and North Africa (MENA) Center at the Asan Institute for Policy
Studies, and Dr. Clement Henry, Chair of the Political Science Depart-
ment at the American University in Cairo, expands upon these discus-
sions and analyses presented at the 2011 Asan Middle East Conference,
and presents a brief epilogue by way of conclusion, to bring the discus-
sions up to date. It seeks to offer policymakers and researchers a more
nuanced appreciation of the opportunities and challenges that the Arab
Spring presents for the region. The book is organized into six sections
covering a range of themes that have all influenced the shape, scope, and
speed of political change in the region: 1) Domestic Political Transition
and Regional Spillover; 2) Economic Correlates of Political Mobiliza-
tion; 3) Social Networks and Civil Society; 4) Varieties of Political Islam;
5) Uprisings in Libya and Syria; and 6) Dilemmas of the United States.

Domestic Political Transition and Regional Spillover

Focusing on regime change, Lisa Anderson suggests that we look close-
ly at the role timing and place played in Egypt and Tunisia, the “early
adopters.” The intensity and size of the initial wave of popular protest
in January 2011 took those regimes and the international community
by surprise—neither had a road map to navigate unprecedented pres-
sure from the street. Initial political missteps by both Tunis and Cairo
sharply reduced their capacity to endure the storm of protests. The West
abandoned Zine Ben Ali after the third week of mass demonstrations
given that Tunisia has never been a key regional strategic ally. In contrast,
hesitating between President Obama’s “A New Beginning” 2009 Cairo
speech and its historic Middle East strategy, the American position vis-

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 à-vis the protest movement and Hosni Mubarak regime alike wavered in
the initial days of protest in Egypt. Perhaps American inaction induced
Mubarak to make the wrong political calculations, increasingly alienat-
ing Egyptian citizens, the military and the United States, and ultimately
leading to his forced resignation.
While a Tunisia-inspired regime change demonstration effect seems
to be circumscribed to the Egyptian case, the “neighborhood effect” is
salient in the post-Mubarak Arab Spring. Regional and international
considerations, which historically played a role in the persistence of au-
thoritarianism in the region but which had seemingly been sidelined by
the shock effect of the January protests, returned to the fore in March,
April, and May 2011, as regional and international players became in-
volved in the battles pitting incumbent regimes against mass demonstra-
tion. In Bahrain and Libya, for example, oil and other strategic dimen-
sions were at stake. Here, regional and international forces entered what
had hitherto been domestic disputes, though they did so in divergent
ways. NATO coordinated airstrikes with the Qatari-armed Libyan Tran-
sitional National Council (TNC) to undermine Muammar Qadhafi,
whereas Saudi Arabia sent troops into Bahrain to support al-Khalifa’s
crackdown on popular protest. Qatar’s intervention in Libya indicates
that the hydrocarbon rich micro-monarchy plans to play an increas-
ingly important role in regional foreign policy, whereas Saudi Arabia has
made it clear that it will not tolerate democratizing reform in the micro-
states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Syria, by contrast, may
be fair game for GCC countries, but its strategic position between Israel,
Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey raises the specter of a fragmented, if
not broken polity post Bashar al-Assad. Syria has thus been able, at least
temporarily, to keep regional and international intervention at arm’s-
length. Summing the “neighborhood effect,” as Lisa Anderson stressed,
“Where you live matters in terms of what options you have as a regime
facing opposition, or as the opposition.”
Yet the term Arab Spring also connotes political transition. Though
Eva Bellin rightly stresses that discussion of political transition appears
premature, a number of factors could be important to Egypt, Libya,
and Tunisia, if not future transitioning regimes: antecedent institutional

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 development and the demonstration effects of successful transition in
neighboring states. Anderson and Bellin stress that a history of bureau-
cratic development will likely prevent Egypt and Tunisian from falling
into post-authoritarian chaos: the regime is gone but the state remains.
Bellin explains at length why Tunisia appears to have navigated a politi-
cal transition more effectively than Egypt. Her explanation of the dif-
ferences leads us to a more general discussion of possible economic cor-
relates to political mobilization and democratic transition.

Economic Correlates of Political Mobilization

Part two of the book focuses on the impact that specific socio-economic
and political variations have had in explaining the intensity of mass dem-
onstrations and the regime’s margin of maneuver in the different MENA
states. Extant economic grievances, size and development of civil soci-
ety, and regime type are all factors that explain why some regimes have
fallen, some are barely holding together, while still others appear insu-
lated from Arab Spring pressures. In this vein, in a brief paper cited by
Henry, Steven Heydemann highlighted a common structural feature of
the Arab Spring: a deep popular memory of the state’s appropriate role
matched with intense economic grievances, partly based on a perceived
increase in corruption, economic exclusion, and unemployment. While
the state’s role in the economy has slowly diminished over the last thirty
years, Heydemann argues that the state’s ability to implement social jus-
tice and guarantee economic security has plunged over the past decade
in most MENA states.
The declining quality of life is degrading and has touched the Arab
citizen’s basic dignity, or karama. “Karama protests” have been a critical
factor animating the Arab Spring, beginning with Mohamed Bouazizi’s
self-immolation in Tunisia. However, while economic grievances are
necessary, a number of scholars have noted that they do not seem to
be a sufficient condition to transform economic disgruntlement into
anti-regime political protests: in several states, on-going and widespread
economic protests have yet to coalesce into political demonstrations.
Parsing Arab regimes by the development of their financial sectors,
Clement Henry, too, approaches the Arab Spring through an economic

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 lens. He offers three broad political economic regime types, each with
varying degrees of exposure to or insulation from the momentum of
the Arab Spring: “Arab Monarchies,” “Bully Republics,” and “Bunker
Regimes.” Arab Monarchies have been the least affected by the Arab
Spring, echoing Eva Bellin’s suggestion that the truisms of the “persis-
tence of authoritarianism” literature still seem to hold in these polities.
The GCC states, Jordan, and Morocco have resorted to a time-tested
repertoire of political strategies: monarchs appear to have stayed above
the fray by cultivating legitimacy linked to tradition and by distributing
economic largess. For instance, Saudi Arabia has injected billions of dol-
lars into its economy, while the Jordanian and Moroccan monarchs have
promised to “force” their parliaments to deepen democratic reforms.
To date, the Arab Republics appear to be facing the storm alone.
Henry argues that we should broadly divide the republics by the struc-
ture of their banking system, suggesting Bully Republics have more de-
veloped banking and financial systems than Bunker Regimes. The more
developed economies of Bully Republics, he argues, have a developing
division of labor, and thus denser civil societies than Bunker Regimes.
While “bullied” by the regime, associational life nevertheless has per-
sisted in the Bully Republics, straddling clandestinity and formal recog-
nition.

Social Networks and Civil Society

When the wave of protests hit Tunisia and Egypt, civil society indeed
surged from the shadows, and emboldened protester calls for regime
change. Mohammed Kerrou’s discussion on the development of social
networks in Tunisia provides a salient example to this. Over the past
decade, disgruntled Tunisians took to the web to express their frustra-
tion with corruption and authoritarianism. When riots broke out in
Sidi Bouzid in December 2010, cyber dissidents projected the images
of regime violence over Facebook and Twitter, generating widespread
popular revulsion, breaking the antecedent cycle of fear. These networks
helped mobilize trade unions, students, and professional associations.
Similar events transpired in Egypt in late January and February 2011.
Transitions in Egypt and Tunisia, and subsequently in Libya, could

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 also affect the domestic politics of their North African neighbors. Argu-
ing that Algeria does not seem at risk to regime change pressures from
the street, Robert P. Parks suggests that the outcome of the Tunisian
transition could nevertheless profoundly reconfigure Algerian politics.
A successful Tunisian transition led by the Islamist Ennahda party could
have a two-fold demonstration effect. On the one hand, it would show
Algerians that political Islamists can play by the democratic rules of the
game; on the other hand, it could push Algerian Islamists to re-think
both strategy and discourse. A failed Ennahda-led transition, however,
will likely confirm the Algerian political class’ suspicions of political Is-
lam.
Breaking the trend, three MENA republics have witnessed remark-
ably little political protest: Algeria, Iran, and Lebanon. Arang Kesha-
varzian and Robert P. Parks argue that the relatively open nature of the
Iranian and Algerian regimes has absorbed or demobilized demands for
regime change, though in different ways. Keshavarzian suggests that the
Iranian regime is able to manage elite conflict through formal and infor-
mal institutions, using a robust repertoire of political strategies, includ-
ing elite bargaining and horse-trading, patronage and redistribution,
popular parliamentary and presidential elections, as well as violence,
coercion and intimidation. Rather than a call for regime change, the
violent outcome of the June 2009 presidential elections reflects the ten-
sion between current centralizing trends and long standing social and
political transformations that has expanded the size of the Iranian elite.
In contrast, the last two decades of Algerian politics have been
characterized by the growth of a relatively vocal independent press and
multiplication of civil society groups and political parties that have real
room to publicly criticize the government. Parks suggests, however, that
the toothless nature of the parliament as well as political parties and civil
society’s inability to address citizen demands have increasingly demobi-
lized the population. Parties and civic groups are no longer viewed as
credible articulation mechanisms linking the citizen to the state, and
have been altogether bypassed in favor of neighborhood riots and sec-
toral strikes, thus confirming Heydemann’s suggestion of deep-rooted
economic malaise, while explaining the absence of anti-regime protests.

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 Varieties of Political Islam
For many, the Arab Spring might simply be characterized as the pro-
found change of mood and perception that has seized Arab citizen and
regime alike since Ben Ali’s departure from Tunisia. But the principal
beneficiary, albeit not the catalyst, has often been political Islam, the
perennial boogeyman of the Arab World.
Arab regimes and their international backers have long used the
specter of Islamic extremism and terrorism to justify authoritarian prac-
tices. However, in January and February 2011, neither the Egyptian
Muslim Brotherhood nor Tunisian Islamists appeared to have been at
the forefront of the Arab Spring protests that forced Ben Ali and Muba-
rak from power. Nor has the boogeyman of al-Qa’ida captured or been
able to significantly influence the subsequent anti-regime momentum.
This led some pundits to talk about a post-Islamist era. Recent events in
both states, however, have shown that while extremism is at an impasse,
mainstream political Islam is hardly extinguished as a political force in
the Arab World: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is increasingly flexing its
muscles, and the Islamist Ennahda party in Tunisia won over 40 percent
of the seats in the October 2011 Constituent Assembly elections. Simi-
larly, in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party did
equally well, and the Nour Party of Salafi Islamists won an additional
24.4 percent of the seats.
Fawaz Gerges notes that while the Islamist movement has matured
considerably over the last eighty years, political Islamist parties such as
the Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda will face a number of hurdles
as they integrate into the political scene—hurdles that none had been
forced to overcome when they were excluded from the political main-
stream. For example, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood will have to
negotiate serious generational differences over ideas and strategies if it
hopes to maintain political unity in the future. Hitherto excluded from
politics, the movement does not seem to have developed clear economic
or political positions that can define domestic politics or geo-strategical-
ly situate Egypt. And while the Tunisian Ennahda party and Egyptian
Muslim Brotherhood have accepted the rules of the political game, both
have unclear visions of the relationship between civil society and the

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 state. As such, Gerges suggests, Arab Islamists are unable to conceptually
create a baseline by which voters can measure their project, other than
by taking their word.
This may change, however, as they are forced to tackle pressing
economic and political issues once in power. Indeed, Jang Ji-Hyang asks
whether legal status and increased Islamist involvement in business ac-
tivity might clarify the positions of mainstream Islamist political move-
ments. Citing the case of the Turkish Islamist movement, Jang suggests
capitalism can co-opt and moderate political Islam. The “Anatolian ti-
gers” have been a major source of financing for Turkish political Islamists
over the last thirty years. As the impact of their business activities has in-
creased, these “Green Capitalists” have pushed the Islamist leadership to
answer hard questions, forcing it to make political compromises and to
moderate populist and moralistic rhetoric. This thirty-year process, Jang
suggests, has culminated in three successive electoral victories for Presi-
dent Recep Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). Indeed,
Islamic capital in Turkey and probably Egypt has served to promote
Muslim democracy rather than to finance terrorism. This economic log-
ic of pro-Islamic party institutionalization provides policy implications
for the post-Arab Spring Middle East and North Africa.
Looking at the same case, however, Kemal Kirisci is unsure that a
“Turkish model” of political Islam can be exported to the Arab World.
Given the idiosyncratic development of Turkish politics, as well as ongo-
ing tensions within the Turkish polity over the role of Islam in the public
sphere, Kirisci suggests that the Turkish demonstration effect is as far as
we can go. Supporting this argument, he points to the Egyptian Muslim
Brotherhood’s reaction to Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s recent call
for a secular state founded on personal Muslim conviction. The speech
reverberated throughout the Arab World, leading former Algerian Prime
Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem to argue that the “Malaysian model” of
Muslim development might be better suited for Arabs than the AKP
and Turkish experience.

Protracted Violence in Libya and Syria

The less developed civil societies of most Bunker Regimes are less able

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 to articulate political and economic grievances. While Syrian protesters
seem to have largely avoided organization along sectarian lines to date,
in Libya and Yemen tribal politics have surged to the fore. That regime-
opposition mobilization has begun to fall along tribal lines might ex-
plain the intensity of violence in Yemen. The lack of non-governmental
articulation mechanisms linking state and society also hinders negotia-
tion by hardening positions. Indeed, both Diederik Vandewalle and
Bassam Haddad’s respective discussions of Libya and Syria underscore
the development of an “all or nothing” perception among the upper
echelons of power at the outset of mass demonstrations.
Egypt and Tunisia stand in stark contrast to Libya, where Qadhafi
de-institutionalized an already fragile state while encouraging tribal and
regional cleavages, leaving the post-Qadhafi country in what one may
call “an institutional wasteland.” Indeed, given the Libyan Transitional
National Council’s tandem task of nation-building and state-building,
Vandewalle remains skeptical of the short-term prospects of a democrat-
ic transition in Libya. Those same state institutions, however, might also
block democratic transition. Haddad soberly notes that “regime change”
might not be the correct word for describing post-Mubarak Egypt: the
military and many other key institutions and players remain in power,
and may well subvert liberalizing reform.
In Syria, civil society was not able to articulate economic grievances
prior to the uprisings, but the initial Friday protests were at least partly
linked to the perception that the al-Assad regime had ceded public pol-
icy to economic liberals. As Haddad explains, the demand for karama
was both economic and political, a response to a degrading quality of life
as well intimidation and humiliation at the hands of security forces.

Dilemmas of the United States

The Arab Spring highlights many of the inconsistencies in US foreign
policy, Michael Hudson suggests, partly because policy makers are con-
fused on many of the points discussed elsewhere in the conference: Is
the Arab Spring change or continuity? Is it a democratic transition? Is
it still happening? What are its long-term implications? Is it singular or
plural? Whatever the case, the Arab Spring has brought to the fore long-

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 standing contradictions in US Middle East policy, which has historically
been based on secure access to oil, a strategic alliance with Israel, and
fighting the “War on Terror.”
Part of the tension revolves around the spirit of President Obama’s
2009 “A New Beginning” Cairo speech, and how it should be applied,
if at all, in the context of the Arab Spring. While the spirit seems to
have been implemented vis-à-vis Tunisia, the same spirit wavered when
it came to dealing with Mubarak (and Saleh in Yemen). And it certainly
has not been applied in the cases of Bahrain or Palestine. Mubarak was
viewed as a strategic ally in maintaining the 1978 Camp David Accords,
and was abandoned once the US administration reached an agreement
with the Egyptian military: shed Mubarak, keep the peace with Israel,
and continue to enjoy the financial rent of the peace dividend. However,
shedding Mubarak created a new set of problems. Popular opinion in
Egypt is more important now than it ever has been, and it apparently
favors pushing the military into the barracks and re-evaluating Egyp-
tian-Israeli ties. The Obama administration now walks a fine line: it is
encouraging a transition that its main partner, the military, wishes to
control from above. As a result of these ongoing tensions, the United
States standing is at a record low in Egyptian public opinion.
The Obama administration’s veto of the Security Council vote to
accept Palestine into the United Nations and the recent withdrawal of
US funding to UNESCO both appear to contradict the Obama Cairo
speech. The veto and the UNESCO scandal, Uzi Rabi notes, have sig-
naled to Palestinians that the United States can no longer play the role
of a third party arbiter in the Palestine-Israel conflict. Palestinians are
actively seeking new negotiation partners, eroding US hegemony over
the peace process.
Hudson and Rabi also note that abandoning Mubarak affected US
relations with its key strategic partner Saudi Arabia, in multiple ways.
On the one hand, Mubarak’s fall may have signaled to Saudi rulers that
they could no longer absolutely count on American military and politi-
cal support. If the Americans could abandon Mubarak in Egypt, what
would prevent them from abandoning the House of Ibn Saud? On the
other hand, the lack of a clear American policy on the Arab Spring has

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 forced the Saudis to unilaterally adopt a regional foreign policy for its
own back yard, the GCC. While Saudi intervention in Bahrain—a ma-
jor hydrocarbon producer and home of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet—may
not have ruffled too many feathers in Washington, continued Saudi
support of the Saleh administration in Yemen increasingly jeopardizes
the prospects of a negotiated and ordered transition, raising the specter
of another Libya should the regime collapse.
Finally, Rabi suggests that the instability caused by the downfall
of Ben Ali and Mubarak are in line with the interests of the Islamic Re-
public of Iran and al-Qa’ida: pro-Western regimes are falling and pub-
lic opinion in the Arab world is increasingly hostile toward the United
States. This, Rabi suggests, together with the humiliating US withdrawal
from Iraq, and tensions with the Karzai government in Afghanistan, sig-
nals to Iran the slow erosion of American power projection capacities in
the region. Whether this will have an impact on Iran’s relationship with
and role in Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria is a question that remains
unclear.
“Democracy and Development in the Wake of the Arab Spring”
underscored the wide number of factors involved in the changes pro-
voked by the Arab Spring. The discussions stressed the importance of
time, place, structural, and strategic factors in explaining extant regime
change (and future prospects for change) as well as democratic transition
in the region. Varying domestic and international configurations explain
the fall of Ben Ali, Mubarak, and Qadhafi, as much as they explain the
uncertainty of al-Khalifa in Bahrain, al-Assad in Syria, and Saleh in Ye-
men, and the apparent calm in Algeria, Iran, Jordan, Morocco, and Saudi
Arabia. In sum, there appear to be multiple Arab Springs, characterized
by the regime change of the early adopters and the indeterminacy and
stasis of politics in regimes later hit by Arab Spring protests. For Egypt,
Libya, and Tunisia, the transition process remains in flux. Will their
transitions result in democratization? The outcome in the transition of
those states, moreover, will affect regional politics in both anticipated
and unanticipated ways. Nearly two years since protests first began the
very notion of the “Arab Spring” continues to remain in question.

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