The events of the Arab Spring have suggested the necessity of rethinking the logic of authoritarian persistence in the Arab world. However, the internal variation in regime collapse and survival ...observed in the region confirms earlier analyses that the comportment of the coercive apparatus,
especially its varying will to repress, is pivotal to determining the durability of the authoritarian regimes. At the same time, the trajectory of the Arab Spring highlights an empirical novelty for the Arab world, namely, the manifestation ofhuge, cross-class, popular protest in the name
of political change, as well as a new factor that abetted the materialization of this phenomenon-the spread of social media. The latter will no doubt be a game changer for the longevity of authoritarian regimes worldwide from now on.
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How might Arab countries build the foundations for rule of law in the wake of prolonged authoritarian rule? What specific challenges do they confront? Are there insights to be gained from comparative ...analysis beyond the region? Exploring these questions, the authors of Building Rule of Law in the Arab World provide a theoretically informed, empirically rich account of key issues facing the countries at the forefront of political change since the Arab Spring as governments seek to develop effective and responsible judiciaries, security sectors, and anticorruption agencies.
In this ambitious book Eva Bellin examines the dynamics of democratization in late-developing countries where the process has stalled. Bellin focuses on the pivotal role of social forces and ...particularly the reluctance of capital and labor to champion democratic transition, contrary to the expectations of political economists versed in earlier transitions. Bellin argues that the special conditions of late development, most notably the political paradoxes created by state sponsorship, fatally limit class commitment to democracy. In many developing countries, she contends, those who are empowered by capitalist industrialization become the allies of authoritarianism rather than the agents of democratic reform. Bellin generates her propositions from close study of a singular case of stalled democracy: Tunisia. Capital and labor's complicity in authoritarian relapse in that country poses a puzzle. The author's explanation of that case is made more general through comparison with the cases of other countries, including Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey, and Egypt. Stalled Democracy also explores the transformative capacity of state-sponsored industrialization. By drawing on a range of real-world examples, Bellin illustrates the ability of developing countries to reconfigure state-society relations, redistribute power more evenly in society, and erode the peremptory power of the authoritarian state, even where democracy is stalled.
Many classic works of political economy have identified capital and labor as the champions of democratization during the first wave of transition. By contrast, this article argues for the contingent ...nature of capital and labor's support for democracy, especially in the context of late development. The article offers a theory of democratic contingency, proposing that a few variables, namely, state dependence, aristocratic privilege, and social fear account for much of the variation found in class support for democratization both across and within cases. Conditions associated with late development make capital and labor especially prone to diffidence about democratization. But such diffidence is subject to change, especially under the impact of international economic integration, poverty-reducing social welfare policies, and economic growth that is widely shared. Case material from Korea, Indonesia, Mexico, Zambia, Brazil, Tunisia and other countries is offered as evidence.
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The Arab uprisings of 2011-2012-popular protests that challenged authoritarian rule across the Middle East and North Africa-took the world by surprise. The possibility that the Arab region might ...finally be loosening the chains of tyranny was electrifying. But within five years, this hope had largely been dashed. Popular mobilization had left in its wake a political scene littered with state collapse, civil war, and authoritarian regression. To pessimists, this glum reversal in the Arab world was inevitable. But to others, alternative paths were possible.
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Explanations of the robustness of authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa have focused on absent prerequisites of democratization in the region, including weak civil society, ...state-dominated economies, poor socioeconomic performance, and nondemocratic culture. By contrast, the region's enduring authoritarianism can be attributed to the robustness of the coercive apparatus in many Middle Eastern and North African states and to this apparatus's exceptional will and capacity to crush democratic initiatives. Cross-regional comparison suggests factors both external and internal to the region that account for this exceptional strength.
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Studies of religion and politics have begun to force their way into the mainstream of the discipline thanks to their increasing methodological sophistication and theoretical ambition in addition to ...the push of real-world events. In comparative politics, puzzle-driven structured comparison has yielded new insights into the rationality of religious behavior, the weight of path dependence in shaping religious values, and the play of socioeconomic factors in shaping religion's vitality. In international relations, recognition of the importance of religious identities and values in the play of international affairs has spelled an advance over realist caricatures that long discounted ideas as epiphenomenal and focused on the quest for wealth and power as the sole driver of international politics. But notable lacunae remain. The comparative subfield still needs to reckon with the noninstrumental aspect of religious behavior, the power of religion as an independent variable, and the differential appeal, persuasiveness, and political salience of religious ideas over time. The IR subfield must move beyond “paradigm wars” focused on whether religion matters in international politics in favor of more empirically grounded, structured comparison to illuminate when and why religion matters in international affairs.
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Surprise is an intrinsic fact of political life and its elimination, especially with regard to extraordinary moments of protest and revolution, is a vain endeavor. Prediction and explanation are ...fundamentally different enterprises. While scholars may be well-positioned to trace, retrospectively, the motivation, networks, leadership, and other contextual factors that fueled the events of 2011 and 1989, such analysis will never bestow the sort of predictive power that will eliminate the surprise of mass uprisings. Verstehen-esque studies of mobilization, while crucially enlightening, have limited capacity to augment our powers of foresight due to the fundamental gulf between agency and intention as well as the causal disconnect between precedent and prediction.
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