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Ed Webb

Jadaliyya - 0 views

  • To study the Middle East is to study authoritarianism. Its presence is unavoidable and pervasive. It is evident not only in the organization of political institutions and the formal rules of the game that shape political behavior, but in virtually all aspects of the everyday lives of citizens across the region. Indeed, the extent to which authoritarianism defines and dominates the political, economic, social, and cultural landscapes of the region, and its resilience even in the face of severe challenges such as the mass uprisings of 2011, are widely acknowledged as distinctive features of the Middle East, a form of exceptionalism that is itself a longstanding source of debate and disagreement among scholars.
  • as contemporary Arabic fiction becomes more widely available in translation, the works of authors such as Basma Abdel Aziz, Sinan Antoon, Hassan Blassim, Khaled Khalifa, Mustafa Khalifa, Mohammad Rabie, Mahmoud Saeed, and Nihad Sirees, bring new depth and dimensionality to non-Arabic speaking readers about the corrosive effects of authoritarianism.
  • volume that Linz co-edited together with H. E. Chehabi, Sultanistic Regimes (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), focuses on a form of authoritarianism that is prevalent in the Middle East: regimes exhibiting high levels of patrimonialism, where institutions, in the words of Max Weber, are “instruments of the master,” and the exercise of authority is marked by arbitrariness and discretion.
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  • The readings noted below should thus be approached largely but not solely as selective entry points to the study of authoritarianism in the Middle East from the perspective of comparative politics and political economy
  • Jennifer Ghandi and Ellen Lust in their article, “Elections Under Authoritarianism," Annual Review of Political Science Vol. 12 (2015), 403-422
  • Hanna Batatu’s magisterial study of Iraq, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (now available in a paperback edition from Saqi Books, 2004), and Madawi al-Rashid’s A History of Saudi Arabia, 2nd Edition (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
  • Giacomo Luciani, ed., The Arab State (University of California Press, 1990); Suad Joseph, ed., Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East (Syracuse University Press, 2000); Marsha Pripstein Posusney and Michele Penner Angrist, eds., Authoritarianism in The Middle East: Regimes and Resistance (Lynne Rienner, 2005); and Oliver Schlumberger, ed. Debating Arab Authoritarianism (Stanford University Press, 2007)
  • Lisa Wedeen’s Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (University of Chicago, 2015), explores why people comply with, and even extend the appearance of legitimacy to, a regime that rests on demonstrably false claims
  • In Counting Islam: Religion, Class, and Elections in Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Tarek Masoud helps us understand why Islamist parties take part in elections they know are neither free nor fair.
  • Asef Bayat’s Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East, 2nd Edition (Stanford University Press, 2013) examine how consolidated and encompassing authoritarian systems of rule shape practices and modes of resistance, and generate politically potent forms of alienation among citizens.
  • a good overview of debates about whether the Middle East is exceptional in the resilience of its authoritarian regimes can be found in Ghassan Salame, ed., Democracy Without Democrats?: The Renewal of Politics in the Muslim World (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994), and in an article by Larry Diamond that appeared just prior to the onset of the uprisings: “Why Are There No Arab Democracies?,” Journal of Democracy 21, no. 1 (January 2010), 93-112
  • Roger Owen’s The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life (Harvard University Press, 2014), and Joseph Sassoon’s Anatomy of Authoritarianism in the Arab Republics (Cambridge University Press, 2016)
  • Abdullah Hammoudi’s Master and Disciple: The Cultural Foundations of Moroccan Authoritarianism (University of Chicago Press, 1997)
  • Two distinctive but related research programs of particular interest have developed since the 1990s and taken on new forms since the mass protests of 2011: one focusing on questions of authoritarian resilience and authoritarian modes of political and economic liberalization, another on the strategies that authoritarian regimes have embraced to respond to the changing configurations of challenges they have confronted with the rise of neoliberal globalization, technological change, new communications technologies, and the emergence of a post-democratization international order.
  • Two articles by Eva Bellin highlight conditions that contribute to the resilience of authoritarianism at a regional level, “The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Politics 36, no. 2 (January 2004), 139-157, and a follow-up article Bellin published in the wake of the uprisings of 2011, “Reconsidering the Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Lessons from the Arab Spring,” Comparative Politics 44, no. 2 (January 2012), 127-149. Two further articles by Daniel Brumberg unpack the strategic logics that guide authoritarian regimes as they work to contain challenges to their long-term survival: “The Trap of Liberalized Autocracy,” Journal of Democracy 13, no. 4 (October 2002), 56-68, and “Transforming the Arab World’s Protection-Racket Politics,” Journal of Democracy 24, no. 3 (July 2013), 88-103. In addition, readers will benefit from Jason Brownlee’s Authoritarianism in an Age of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and Nicola Pratt’s Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Arab World (Lynn Rienner, 2006).
  • “Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World” (Brookings, 2007), describes the tactics authoritarian regimes across the region adopted to address the specific challenges they confronted in the 1990s and early 2000s; these tactics remain relevant in the post-uprising era
  • Transformations within authoritarianism, as opposed to transitions from authoritarianism to something else, will continue to be relevant across the region, save for the case of Tunisia, the only Arab country thus far to experience a transition from authoritarianism to democracy.
  • Project on Middle East Political Science, The Arab Thermidor: The Resurgence of the Security State, POMEPS Special Studies 11 (February 2015)
  • If there is one overarching sensibility that distinguishes important contributions to research on authoritarianism in the Middle East, it is an appreciation for how fluid, malleable, and adaptive it has been and remains. The appearance of stability, even stagnation, in the decades prior to the 2011 uprisings often obscured an enormously varied and vibrant environment of contestation, resistance, competition and conflict both within and among regimes, and between regimes and the societies over which they govern. As the Middle East moves today through a post-uprising phase in which in which regimes are reconfiguring authoritarian practices in the context of highly mobilized societies, violent conflict that has caused massive levels of human displacement and suffering, climate change, the declining influence of the United States, the rise of Russia and Iran as important actors, and continued demands for neoliberal restructuring of political economies, there can be little question that the study of authoritarianism in the Middle East will continue to occupy the attention of students and scholars of the region.
Ed Webb

Chernobyl Has Become a Comforting Fable About Authoritarian Failure - 0 views

  • Policymakers who face unfamiliar challenges often turn to the past. The problem is they don’t see the messy questions that historians do but, instead, a warehouse of analogies providing easy answers. That seductive simplicity can lead them badly astray.
  • The actual events of the Chernobyl disaster that took place 35 years ago have been transmuted into a fable about how the revelation of a calamity can undermine an authoritarian regime. That story has led to a ceaseless search for how any disaster in an authoritarian system opposed to the United States presages the imminent defeat of U.S. adversaries from within. It’s an analogy that instructs U.S. policymakers of the fragility of other systems and the inherent superiority of their own. In doing so, it absolves them of any need to shore up the foundations of their own system or prepare for long-term coexistence with a resilient authoritarian rival.
  • relying on analogical reasoning clutters rather than clarifies thinking about international relations and foreign policy.
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  • the claim that Chernobyl caused a legitimacy crisis for the Soviet Union rests on sweeping causal claims that underestimate authoritarian resilience and oversimplify how complex societies really work
  • More than two decades after the end of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, it should be clear that authoritarian regimes can endure chronic and acute crises that rival, if not exceed, the severity of Chernobyl. After all, the Soviet Union itself had done so many times, from the famines of 1921 to 1922, 1932 to 1933, and 1946 to 1947.
  • Many systems endure a long time even as they produce a plenitude of lies.
  • If Soviet collapse was not inevitable or if we can attribute it to factors other than legitimacy or calamity, then the political importance of Chernobyl recedes. What becomes more important, then, is not the roots of instability in authoritarian countries per se but how political systems of any stripe grow brittle or susceptible to collapse—a lesson one would think Americans have learned from the past several years. Indeed, as nonprofit organization Freedom House notes, at the moment, it is contemporary democracies, not autocracies, that seem to be on the waning side as the world enters the 15th consecutive year of democratic recession.
  • The National Endowment for Democracy’s blog pivoted effortlessly from calling the January 2020 shootdown of a Ukrainian airliner “Iran’s ‘Chernobyl’ moment” to labeling the COVID-19 infection as “China’s biological ‘Chernobyl.’” The Atlantic Council mused (as did others) whether the coronavirus could be a “Chernobyl moment” for Russian President Vladimir Putin. An independent review panel suggested the coronavirus could be a “Chernobyl moment” for the World Health Organization—the clearest evidence the Chernobyl metaphor has become untethered from any evidence-based moorings.
  • Where the logic of the fable emphasizes how closed authoritarian systems promote untruths and thus engender disaster, the relatively open societies of the United States, Canada, Europe, Brazil, and now India have proved vulnerable to COVID-19, a failing that crossed ideological complexions of ruling parties and varieties of democracy alike.
  • the appeal of the fable is it reassures Western audiences that democratic institutions possess some natural immunity to the lies and bureaucratic dysfunction that poisoned the Pripyat marshes with radiation.
  • It may be true (indeed, it’s probably likely) that open systems prove more self-correcting in the long run than closed ones. Yet societies that pride themselves on being democratic are apt to overrate their own virtues—and their preparedness for disaster.
  • COVID-19 failures are already creating a fable in China that democracies won’t take the tough measures needed to halt disasters despite the counterexamples of Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand.
  • Authoritarian systems are not fated to crumble because of one or another catastrophe, and democratic ones will not avert disaster out of their own innate virtues.
Ed Webb

How democratic institutions are making dictatorships more durable - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • authoritarian regimes use pseudo-democratic institutions to enhance the durability of their regimes. The figure below shows the increasing durability of authoritarian regimes, particularly in the post-Cold War period. From 1946 to 1989, the average authoritarian regime lasted 12 years. Since the end of the Cold War, this number has increased to 20 years. Today, the typical autocracy has been in power for 25 years. From China (where the current regime has been in power for 66 years) to Jordan (69 years), and Belarus (21 years) to Zimbabwe (35 years), today’s authoritarian regimes are remarkably durable.
  • rising authoritarian durability has tracked closely with the spread of democratic institutions (elections, legislatures, and parties), suggesting authoritarian leaders have learned to leverage these institutions to enhance their staying power
  • Dictatorships with multiple political parties and a legislature now last 14 years longer than those without
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  • Regularly holding elections further extends their tenures to 22 years.
  • democratic institutions are not just features of regimes that sit closest to democracy on the democracy-autocracy spectrum. Democratic institutions are now almost universal, and the ways in which authoritarian incumbents use them are contributing to the increased durability of contemporary dictatorships
  • leaders understand that institutional manipulation offers greater advantages and fewer liabilities than reliance on traditional tactics like overt repression, which forces compliance with the regime through brute force, but risks creating popular discontent that can lead to destabilizing civil unrest. Incorporating seemingly democratic institutions mitigates some of these risks by providing a leader with alternative methods of control that promote citizen participation, but on the authoritarian regime’s terms
Ed Webb

Tunisia and the authoritarian upgrading and democratization paradigms - 1 views

  • thisarticle highlights three distinct mythologies (economic miracle, democraticgradualism and secularism) about Tunisia that prevented a clearer understandingof the political and socio-economic situation
  • studies of Arab politics haveswung between the democratization paradigm and the authoritarian resilience one.Both certainly captured important aspects of the political developments taking placein the Arab world over the last two decades and to an extent still do, but, at the sametime, missed equally significant changes that, if identified earlier, might havecontributed to lessen the surprise of the Arab Spring. Specifically, the contentionhere is that both paradigms tended to focus too strongly on what was visible andreadily identifiable at the level of the state and state – society relations, but did notaccount for important unintended consequences that were occurring and diffusing inwider society as well as for less visible socio-political phenomena because they werepartially trapped in the mythology served up by the Ben Ali regime. What this meansis that both paradigms operated from similar mythologies about Tunisia, while, atthe same time, drawing very different conclusions about them
  • unintended consequences have animpact on the regime because the reforms it initiates have surprising effects that itneeds to deal with, but, interestingly, they also have an impact on scholars whosetheoretical tools might need sharpening in light of the occurrence of events thatcontradict what seemed to be valid theoretical assumptions
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  • When one looks in detail at the data provided by the World Bank theimpression is certainly positive and some notable achievements have been realizedby the Tunisian regime in the social sphere as well. Poverty rates declined from 7.7per cent in 1984, three years before Ben Ali came to power, to 3.8 per cent in 2005.Literacy rates went up from a low 48 per cent in 1984 to 78 per cent in 2008 andwomen were included in this literacy drive
  • the Tunisian regime wasable to increase its spending on education and health, apparently confirming thevalidity of the model of ‘social liberalism’ given that in 2011 its Index of HumanDevelopment was still higher than its North African neighbours
  • While the fundamentals of the economymight indeed have been good enough for global markets and international investorsand trading partners, the economic miracle of Tunisia had a very dark side whereunder-employment, unemployment, difficult access to the labour market, incomeinequalities and wide regional gaps were the main features
  • if the figures published by the interimgovernment after the revolution are accurate, ‘the unemployment rate among youngpeople from 18 to 19 almost rose to 30 per cent in 2009, and soared to 45 per cent inthe case of higher education graduates’.
  • thecomplexity of the Ben Ali period and how to ‘read’ it increases if one looks at thefact that between 1995 and 1998 the Caisse 26 – 26 (a national solidarity fund)implemented a number of development projects in the area of Sidi Bouzid and inpoorer regions such as the one around Gafsa, but after 2000 no further projects werelaunched in that region partly because from that moment the funds in the Caissewere used by Ben Ali’s inner circle to sustain their economic activities
  • a predatory economicsystem with members of the president’s family and close collaborators takingadvantage of these networks of patronage to acquire an increasingly larger slice ofthe economy
  • there was very littlethat was predictable about the uprising and the fall of the regime, and even withthe benefit of hindsight it remains quite difficult to find a causal mechanism toaccount for the success of the Tunisian uprising because events could have turnedout very differently
  • the same corrupt practicesalienated many working-class youth who, rather than becoming fully de-politicized,chose ‘below-the-radar’ social activism based around loosely structured socialnetworks and developed a particular dislike for state authorities, a factor that wouldbe useful when fighting running battles with the police during the uprising
  • the regime monitored Publinets veryclosely and periodically blocked access to a number of websites, but the point here isthat the regime also inadvertently improved not only the skills necessary foreconomic growth, but also those necessary for anti-regime online mobilization
  • For the supporters of the democratization paradigm, there was no doubt that theBen Ali regime seemed to keep the promises of democratic gradualism. Initially, itsslow pace was explained as necessary in order to avoid the problems that Algeria hadencountered in the same period when the country liberalized the political systemquite abruptly and, in hindsight, with catastrophic consequences
  • Ultimately the authoritarian resilience paradigm has been more fruitful inexplaining that the regime survived thanks to a mix of co-optation and repressionwhere rhetorical commitment to democracy and human rights was far from genuine,but does not capture the whole story because it does not pay sufficient attention tohow society reacted to sustained repression of dissent
  • there was an almost hidden, but very significant increase inIslamization based on the adoption of personal pious behaviour that was overtlya-political, but had quite clear anti-regime overtones
  • the increasing disconnect between thevalues of the ruling elites together with an urban-based, French-speaking milieu anda large part of the population which both lived by and wished society to be moreattuned to Arab-Muslim values
  • such behaviour was also a personalact of defiance against an authoritarian regime that did not perform its duties and wasmired in what many saw as decadence and corruption
  • The events of 2008 in themining district of Gafsa (Allal, 2010) is probably the best known episode ofanti-regime social mobilization in Tunisia during the Ben Ali years, as the wholedistrict took to the streets and faced down the security services in order to protestagainst the hiring policies and working conditions in the local mines. What issignificant about the protest is that it was not simply the workers taking to the streets.The whole population of the area was on board with this protest, which was brutallyput down. There are however other smaller incidents that occurred throughout thecountry (Chomiak & Entelis, 2011) and that indicated that social peace wasa fabrication of the regime
  • Upgradedauthoritarianism (Heydemann, 2007) was the notion that many scholars utilized toargue that authoritarian ruling elites were, paradoxically, strengthening their grip onthe different countries through the adoption of political and economic liberalreforms that were subsequently deprived of any substance and meaning and hijackedfor the elites’ own benefit. One of the masters of such authoritarian upgrading wascertainly Ben Ali, who in the process also managed to project an international imageof a secular and liberal modernizer bent on slowly constructing a democraticpolitical system
  • liberaleconomic reforms of the late 2000s resulted in growth in the economy while at thesame time rewarding social groups and clan members most loyal to the president,but also generated an economically and culturally globally connected middle class,which developed its own mechanisms to voice political dissent, but had benefited inthe 1990s from the liberalization of the economy that Ben Ali had implemented toget the country out of stagnation
  • the promulgation of secularlegislation out of kilter with the values of the majority of the population and theespousal of a rhetoric of modernization that clashed with the everyday reality ofhuman rights abuses, elitist consumerism and corruption, saw the emergence ofpublic expressions of a social pious Islamism that made important inroads inTunisian society while going almost undetected
Ed Webb

The ghost people and populism from above: The Kais Saied case - Arab Reform Initiative - 0 views

  • Kais Saied’s brand of populism can be identified based on two observations: on the one hand, this populism subscribes to a Tunisian dynamic of relentless fighting for equality that began with the revolution, and on the other hand, it is an extension of the populist waves rippling through different democratic regimes around the world.
  • people called for equality among regions against a backdrop of strong disparity between the coast and the hinterland as well as in their relations with the State (clientelism, nepotism, institutional violence, etc.) or among citizens themselves (abolishing discrimination, particularly based on gender, skin colour, or geographical origin, right to dignity in the name of equal belonging to the nation)
  • a population that has been systematically classified, compartmentalized, and segregated into two categories: the "forward thinkers" and the "backward thinkers", the "educated" and the "ignorant", the "modern" and the "traditional".
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  • By relying on "technocrats" and experts from the private sector, successive governments have sidelined the political and economic issues that were raised by the revolution since 2011: an economic development model, equality among regions, relationship to law enforcement, employment, etc.
  • from the 2019 "explanation campaign" to sidelining the people since the 25 July 2021 protests, the president’s brand of populism is a populism from above
  • reviving the practices of those authoritarian leaders who ruled Tunisia from 1956 to 2011.
  • This "organized oblivion of the social issues" was quickly combined with the democratic stalemate of the transition itself: it has imposed a growing lockdown of politics through a so-called technocratic rationale.4
  • the people in Kais Saied's project may be called on to be the basis of sovereignty, but they are only welcome to participate in local affairs. Sovereign issues remain within the prerogatives of the president who is elected by universal suffrage
  • the pitfalls of neoliberal de-democratization: "governance" to replace government, de-politicization, and increasing de-confliction of political stakes in favour of expertise
  • By claiming to be of the people and against the elites, Kais Saied breaks away from Tunisian political history which usually classifies the people as either "forward or backward thinkers,” in line with the most common trajectory followed by nations to catch up with Western modernization. He seems to align himself with those who, historically, have been left behind by the State, wanting to follow on the path of the revolution and its calls for equality.
  • The "restoration" occurred with the support of Ennahdha, by now allied with Nidaa Tounes, but it has paid for its normalization with a widening rift with its base and its activists who have grown tired of swallowing the insult (Law for Administrative Reconciliation that whitewashed the old regime, marginalizing transitional justice despite the abuses incurred by Ennahdha supporters under the old regime).
  • Raising once again the "the people want" slogan of the revolution, Saied asserted his position as a simple representative of the people. As the good populist he is, he would never specify this "people" to whom he claimed to be: no mention of social class, region, or other divisions fueling a political struggle over diverging interests. Simply put, an oligarchy in complete disconnect with the realities of the country, the “people”, had taken the reins. He, the outsider, embodied righteousness, integrity, and incorruptibility in a political space marred by a strenuous discourse on corruption for 10 years, and where the "fight against corruption" had become the only political prospect for a better future. As such, one could say that, to a fairly large extent, the election of Saied resulted from a misunderstanding: it was the image of Saied, incorruptible and "close to the people" that was elected rather than the democratic and populist project he proposed.
  • behind his so-called “from the people” discourse lies a paternalistic, vigilant, and pedagogical rhetoric, presuming the people’s ignorance, hence the need for those below to be enlightened by the more sophisticated
  • the idea of governance and dialogical participation among "stakeholders": the closed circle of donors-State-experts-civil society
  • The issues on the e-estichara platform (E-consultation) speak volumes in this regard. Citizens are called to express their views on issues (such as health, education, environment, agriculture, culture) "in their regions" and not "in the country." On the other hand, sovereign issues (police, the army, economy, currency, justice, diplomacy) are immediately excluded as topics under this democratic discussion.
  • The last months before the coup were marked by an open conflict between the president and the head of government over the control of the Ministry of Interior. Therefore, Saied carefully avoided alienating security services, a strategy that paid off given that on the evening of 25 July, the police and their unions sided with him.
  • Since the coup of 25 July 2021, Kais Saied has continued to appeal to "the people", claiming to represent their sovereignty and their will, while being the sole captain of the ship. In his opinion, his actions are a direct manifestation of the people’s will, thus erasing all elements of individual will and interests,8“Not having a will of their own and being the mouth of the people, the leaders can circumvent the risk of appearing part of the establishment. This strategy is primed to have an impact on the performance of the populist leaders, who can always claim to be on the right track (because the people is their master) and who can always disclaim requests of accountability (as they are truly irresponsible, having no will of their own)” Urbinati, Nadia. 2019. Me the People: How Populism Transforms Democracy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. p.146 as is often the case with populist leaders.
  • Saied’s attempts to truly embody the people also involve categorically refusing to engage with political parties9Several political parties including Ennahda, as well as civil society organizations have called for "dialogue" in efforts to end the crisis through consensus, seeking to take up a national dialogue chaired by a quartet of civil society organizations (the General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT), the Tunisian Union of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA), the Human Rights League and the National Bar Association of Tunisia), following the assassination of Mohamed Brahmi in July 2013. This request was curtly refused by Kais Saied during an interview with the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Grain Board on 5 August 2021. and civil society actors or deal with the media (the Tunisian press has never been invited to any press conference he has held, and there is no official presidential spokesperson to whom the media could reach out). Saied refuses to go through middlemen, based on the desired osmosis with “the people”.
  • popularity could refer to the approval given to a person or specific actions, measured by polls and approval rates. Based on this understanding, Saied could be considered popular, although the recent numbers show a downward trend.13
  • if popularity indicates the capability of a person or specific actions to generate popular mobilization,14Differentiating between populism and demagogy, Federico Tarragoni wrote: "[The populist rhetoric] must produce a decisive action amongst the people, to make them political subjects (even if it means dominating and subjugating them, of course). It must generate accession processes, conflicts and demands, and dynamics of mobilization and awareness: anything that, within a population, can lead to the emergence of a people that deliberates, judges, acts, demands and monitors. In other words, the evocation of the people must be a true call aiming to bring them into being." Tarragoni, Federico. 2019. L'esprit démocratique du populisme. Paris : La découverte p.75-76. For more on how populism can unleash organizational skills, see the work of Jacques Rancière. then Kais Saied's ability to mobilize has shrunk because of the exercise of power and because, in short, he has become a "statesman", although he so wishes to continue to portray himself as the "man of the people".
  • The coup carried out in the name of the "people" did not create a space allowing the "people" to have a say in politics and to make their voices heard – as demonstrated by the low levels of participation on the E-estichara platform, a portal intended to be the basis of the institutional reform Saied seeks.
  • he affirmed that he had come to deliver his speech in Sidi Bouzid to set himself apart from the protesters rallying against him in the city centre of Tunis, implying that "the others" were "elitists" while he was "of the people". Therefore, the only reason for addressing the public was to respond to “enemies” (and not exactly because he had anything particular to say to the “people”). Saied was thus taking on the “enemies” head-on: leaving the people to do nothing but watch a war between the self-proclaimed "champion of the people" and the "enemies of the people".
  • the existence of an enemy “persona” is necessary for every populist leader, to be used as a pretext to evade political responsibility
  • By emphasizing the ever-renewed need to fight in the name of the people against their enemies and their conspiracies, Saied refuels the waiting politics. As a result, Tunisians have found themselves in prolonged powerlessness because of the populist leader and the so-called efforts he made in the name of putting people back in power in the face of a parliamentary regime plagued by divisions.
  • In addition to arrests, house arrests, the conviction of activists and opponents, and police violence against journalists and civil society actors, Kais Saied’s style of ruling ever since he became the sole captain of the ship ticks all the boxes of personal and authoritarian power that Tunisians have known all too well since 1956:  the use of women as a measure of progressiveness, the ubiquitous presence of acts of State, and peculiar legal "instructions" in his exercise of power, the rhetoric of "enemies", "traitors", and "foreign conspiracies", and of course, surprise visits and the removal of administrative officials according to accidents and incidents. This form of authoritarian centralization combined with a refusal to take political responsibility for failures is far too familiar to anyone acquainted with the history of authoritarianism in Tunisia, to take Saied seriously when he claims to stand with the Revolution.
  • Saied is doomed to sink into authoritarianism, with plenty of help from a justice system and a police force that still follow a draconian legal arsenal, kept from the days of the dictatorship. In fact, in 11 years of "democratic transition" that was supposed to rid the people of a police state, no political party has ever sought to challenge that legal system
Ed Webb

Study finds evidence that films can activate authoritarian tendencies - 0 views

  • People are more likely to endorse authoritarian values after watching the movie 300, according to new findings published in the journal American Politics Research.
  • The students who watched 300 were more likely to endorse authoritarian views, the researchers found, while the opposite was true of students who watched V for Vendetta.
  • we should always be prepared to think critically about the messages we get in media.”“This is particularly the case with entertainment media because we engage with these films and television shows in a relatively passive way, which is to say we do not have our normal psychological defenses up as we might with news media.”
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  • we did not test for a decay effect. We do not know how long these effects last
  • “Are more entertaining films more likely to elicit these responses than films that are boring? What other latent personality dispositions can be activated by films and television programs? These are questions that we are considering for our future research on entertainment media.”
Ed Webb

Global Protests Round-Up: Authoritarian Adaptation, Data Gathering, and the Role of Cla... - 0 views

  • Erica Chenweth begins “Trends in Nonviolent Resistance and State Response: Is Violence Towards Civilian-based Movements on the Rise?” (Global Responsibility to Protect[1], July 2017) with the following rather discouraging statement, at least if you’re a protester: Through 2010, nonviolent mass movements tended to be surprisingly effective in removing incumbent leaders from power or achieving territorial independence, even when they experienced some repression from the government. However, since 2010, the success rates of nonviolent campaigns have declined by a staggering rate (about 20% below the average)
  • She speculates that the cause of the this decline is due to Authoritarian Adaptation: the ability of authoritarian governments to adopt more politically savvy repressive tools may be part of the reason for the decline in success rates in the past six years.21. Authoritarian leaders have begun to develop and systematize sophisticated techniques to undermine and thwart nonviolent activists.
  • Dana R. Fisher, Kenneth T. Andrews, Neal Caren, Erica Chenoweth, Michael T. Heaney, Tommy Leung, L. Nathan Perkins, and Jeremy Pressman in “The science of contemporary street protest: New efforts in the United States” (Science Advances, October 23, 2019). This is a fascinating article, which I encourage all big data fans to read in full. From the abstract: This article reviews the two most central methods for studying street protest on a large scale: building comprehensive event databases and conducting field surveys of participants at demonstrations.
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  • Unique to today’s environment is the sheer number of sources and the time-limited nature of the discovery-and-review period: Given the transience of information on the internet compared to print media, thousands of sources produce reports of variable reliability on a daily basis. Researchers must archive and extract information such as where, when, and why a protest took place, as well as how many people attended, before that content is moved behind a paywall, deleted, or otherwise made unavailable.
  • Moving forward, best practices will require forming teams of scholars that are geographically dispersed in a way that corresponds with the distribution of the events under investigation. While previous studies have concentrated on conducting surveys in different regions and in major cities, the datasets would be more representative if data were collected in multiple locations simultaneously in a way that represents smaller cities, suburbs, and rural areas.
  • What this article does show, however, is how blind the public and the press are flying
  • Sirianne Dahlum, Carl Henrik Knutsen, and Tore Wig, “Who Revolts? Empirically Revisiting the Social Origins of Democracy” (The Journal of Politics, August 2019)
  • We expect that both the urban middle classes and, especially, industrial workers have the requisite motivation and capacity to engender democratization, at least in fairly urban and industrialized societies. Other social groups—even after mobilizing in opposition to the regime—often lack the capacity to sustain large-scale collective action or the motivation to pursue democracy. We collect data on the social composition of opposition movements to test these expectations, measuring degree of participation of six major social groups in about 200 antiregime campaigns globally from 1900 to 2006. Movements dominated by industrial workers or middle classes are more likely to yield democratization, particularly in fairly urbanized societies. Movements dominated by other groups, such as peasants or military personnel, are not conducive to democratization, even compared to situations without any opposition mobilization. When separating the groups, results are more robust for industrial worker campaigns
  • we expect opposition movements dominated by the middle classes or industrial workers to be related to subsequent democratization. Yet, we anticipate a clearer relationship for industrial worker campaigns, due to their multiple sources of leverage and especially strong organizational capacity allowing for effective and sustained challenges to the regime.
Ed Webb

Strongmen Die, but Authoritarianism Is Forever - Foreign Policy - 0 views

  • Erdogan and his party have irrevocably altered Turkey; there is no going back.
  • Turkey’s political trajectory is an exemplary case of a country permanently rolling back democratizing reforms, but it’s not the only one. Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s Law and Justice party in Poland are undermining the rule of law, democratic values, and human rights in the service of what they define as authenticity and security. These are developments that predate the migrant crisis that is buffeting Europe, though the large number of people from Africa and the Middle East seeking refuge in the European Union has made Orban’s and Kaczynski’s message more politically potent, and thus the undoing of democratic institutions and liberal values politically acceptable, for large numbers of Hungarians and Poles.
  • what’s important is how, in response to opposition, leaders in Turkey, Hungary, and Poland have established new institutions, manipulated existing ones, and hollowed out others to confront political challenges or to close off their possibility
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  • One of the best examples of institutional manipulation is the way in which Turkey’s AKP used its majority in the Grand National Assembly to whitewash a 2014 parliamentary investigation into corruption charges against four government ministers that threatened to ensnare Erdogan and his family. The process rendered the idea of parliamentary oversight essentially meaningless and gave the Turkish leader an opportunity to argue — credibly for his constituents — that the original allegations were an attempted coup. Since the corruption allegation, Erdogan has manipulated institutions to reverse the outcome of an election he did not like in 2015, tried his opponents in courts packed with his supporters, and debased Turkey’s electoral laws to ensure the passage of a referendum on constitutional amendments that would grant the presidency extraordinary powers
  • attacks on the press, along with the transformation of the state-owned broadcaster and state-run news service into an arm of the AKP, have crowded out independent newsgathering
  • the state-owned Anadolu Agency called the presidential election for Erdogan well before the Supreme Electoral Council — made up of AKP appointees — could count the vast majority of ballot boxes. This prompted Erdogan to appear on television graciously accepting another presidential term, making it impossible for the election board to contradict Anadolu’s projection and thus rendering the board a mere prop in AKP’s electoral theater
  • institutions tend to be sticky — they remain long after the moment when they are needed, often leveraged by a new cohort of politicians to advance their agendas. This does not imply that institutional change is impossible. It is just that revisions take place in the context of existing institutions and previous innovations
  • authoritarianism tends to build on itself. It may eventually give out, but short of a revolution that undermines a mutually reinforcing political and social order, institutions will have a lasting impact on society
Ed Webb

What does 2022 hold for democracy in the Middle East? - 0 views

  • “It was hoped that because of [the Arab Spring revolts of 2011 and the Iranian Green Movement in 2009], the ground had shifted in the direction of democracy but for various political, not religious, reasons, this did not happen,” said Dr Nader Hashemi
  • Dictators and despots all over the Arab world have benefited from the myth of authoritarian stability, which many in the West fully embrace. After the Arab Spring revolts, widespread violence unleashed across the MENA region led many cynics in the West to conclude that Arabs shouldn’t be entitled to democracy
  • many regimes in the MENA region concluded that the messiness which followed the Arab Spring stemmed from their perceived failure to be sufficiently authoritarian
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  • With strong support from some Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states - chiefly the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the patron of the counterrevolution - the leaderships in Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, and other Arab states have been emboldened in their crackdowns on civil society and pro-democracy movements
  • “Not only have these regimes not paid a price for their ruthless suppression of civil society but many of them have been rewarded by Western democratic governments. Last year, for example, Emmanuel Macron hosted Egypt’s fascist dictator in Paris and gave him the ‘Legion of Honor’ award for great leadership and statesmanship. A month earlier, Germany did something similar.”
  • Biden’s administration is quite like Donald Trump’s in terms of being indifferent to democratisation in the Arab world
  • Just as the Obama administration never determined that Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi’s ouster in 2013 resulted from a “coup”, the current leadership in Washington has refused to designate either last year’s autogolpe in Tunisia or General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s takeover of the Sudanese state as a “coup”. The Biden administration’s responses to both have been mild and cautious.
  • n Washington, there will be more of a willingness to accommodate greater autocracy in countries that have official diplomatic ties with Israel or at least are non-confrontational toward Tel Aviv
  • “The pandemic has helped authoritarian regimes reassert control over society and environmental conditions have increased the level of suffering, despair, and mass pauperisation. For many people in the region, the focus is on survival, not democratisation.”
  • Citizens of MENA countries are willing to die for democratisation, exemplified by recent events in Sudan
Ed Webb

Elon Musk: Good for MENA Twitter? - by Marc Lynch - 0 views

  • The MENA online ecosystem is not a good place for freedoms or civil debate right now, to say the least. The Digital Authoritarianism collection I edited last year makes for grim reading. Many MENA states have set in place legal frameworks criminalizing online dissent (and a lot more than just dissent). The pervasive use of Israeli-designed digital surveillance tools has turbocharged the ability of autocratic regimes to spy on their citizens (or on anyone else). Online discourse is plagued by armies of bots and trolls. And the suppression of Palestinian activist content shows how social media platforms have proven an uneven playing field when it comes to content moderation. Apocalyptic takes on what Musk might do really do need to grapple with how terrible things already are.
  • Musk explained his approach to free speech in a recent tweet: “By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.” That may sound good to some people in an American context, I suppose. But in the MENA, it would play directly into the hands of authoritarian regimes which have spent years constructing elaborate legal and normative frameworks to criminalize online dissent. Those laws don’t just ban violent hate speech, but range from political dissent, criticism of royal family members or the military, human rights monitoring, even dancing on TikTok. Following these cybercrime laws as a guide to content moderation would entail censoring a wide range of legitimate political speech - the opposite, presumably, of what an avowed free speech advocate would want to see.
  • If new Twitter policies drawn from the right wing understanding of the American online arena were applied consistently in the MENA context, it could potentially ease the suppression of Palestinian voices. I mean, that wouldn’t be the intention and it probably wouldn’t, but it’s worth thinking about.
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  • if he really means requiring users to authenticate their identity with some form of legal ID, that would mean a world of trouble for users in highly repressive MENA states. Many activists and dissidents face extreme consequences should their identities be discovered. So do many LGBTQ, atheist, or other users from marginalized or even criminalized communities
  • The bot armies really are annoying, and if Musk could figure out a way to remove them then the MENA region would benefit greatly. Disinformation, harrassment and abuse (especially of women), polluting hashtags to make conversation impossible, obnoxious trolling, intimidation… all of these have contributed to making MENA Twitter at worst almost unusable, and at best a highly distorted reflection of reality. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran are among the worst offenders among states, but the problem is endemic
  • Sure, if Musk actually does end up taking over and running Twitter (big ifs, still), he probably wouldn’t actually have those positive effects, at least not intentionally. But it’s still tempting to read some real significance into his intriguing little public spat with Waleed bin Talal, where he asked “What are the Kingdom’s views on journalistic freedom of speech?”
Ed Webb

War in Ukraine and the fight for human rights in the Euro-Mediterranean - EuroMed Rights - 0 views

  • the confrontation is likely to reduce the level of pressure to reform until now put by Europe on Middle Eastern and North African autocrats. The shift in the attention of European leaders towards security in Eastern Europe will likely permit despots and autocrats to further consolidate and roll back the respect for human rights and good governance.  
  • authoritarian leaders in the Southern Mediterranean have over the past two decades successfully built leverage among Western leaders by posing as partners in fighting Islamist terrorism and as partners in fighting migration towards Europe
  • autocratic leaders in oil- and gas-exporting Middle Eastern and North African countries will in the short run be able to increase their political leverage among European leaders by posing as suppliers of Europe’s immediate energy gap. Algeria has already done so – and other countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran are likely to follow.
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  • For almost a decade Russia has been propping up authoritarian leaders in the Southern Mediterranean.   Its pivotal role in tilting the local power balances in favor of Syria’s Assad with minimal efforts and resources was particularly disturbing. Later examples of Russian support have emerged from many other countries struck by domestic power battles and conflict including Egypt, Libya and Algeria. A protracted Russian military operation in Ukraine is likely, however, to decrease its capacity to continue playing this role in the Southern Mediterranean region
  • authoritarian leaders in the Southern Mediterranean region are also likely to experience increased domestic pressure derived from increasing socio-economic strains. This expected knock-on effect of the war in Ukraine will be more directly felt in countries where food security depends heavily on imports of basic commodities such as wheat. As sanctions roll out and world trade with Russian supplies is likely to stall, the socio-economic challenges faced by populations in the south will likely rise
Ed Webb

The Dictators Are Smarter Than You Think - By Christian Caryl | Foreign Policy - 1 views

  • today's autocrats are not idiots. They have learned from the mistakes of their predecessors. Putin is not Stalin, and Hu Jintao is not Mao Zedong. In many cases, Dobson writes, modern dictators understand that it's in their interest to observe the appearance of democratic norms even while they're subverting them
  • "The Chinese Communist Party understands what its vulnerabilities are," Dobson told me recently. "No one needs to lecture that government on what they need to worry about at night." (Hint: Corruption and inequality lead the list.)
  • Putin understands that completely isolating his citizens from the world at large is a game with rapidly diminishing returns. Instead, like Chávez, he's focused on controlling the media that matter (like national TV) and carefully manipulating laws to tilt the political playing field in favor of the state. And so far, at least, he's managed to pull the whole thing off without putting large numbers of opponents into concentration camps.
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  • what do you do when you've tamed parliament so thoroughly that you can no longer use it to generate useful feedback about the needs and fears of the citizenry?
  • The fact that authoritarian regimes feel compelled to act like they're really listening to voters reflects the extent to which democratic norms have become part of the woodwork
  • The rapid spread of information is making it harder for governments to concentrate power, thus chipping away at the very essence of authoritarianism. A rumor of government misbehavior in one part of China can immediately trigger riots in another place thousands of miles away. "This is not something the Ming Dynasty had to worry about," Dobson observes. "So you can't tell me that the tasks these regimes have to worry about haven't become more complicated."
Ed Webb

Mohamed ElBaradei hits out at west's support for repressive regimes | World news | The ... - 0 views

  • the strategy of supporting authoritarian rulers in an effort to combat the threat of Islamic extremism had been a failure
  • "I see increasing radicalisation in this area of the world, and I understand the reason. People feel repressed by their own governments, they feel unfairly treated by the outside world, they wake up in the morning and who do they see – they see people being shot and killed, all Muslims from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Darfur."
  • where do you find this regime change in international law? And if it is a violation of international law, who is accountable for that?
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  • "Western policy towards this part of the world has been a total failure, in my view. It has not been based on dialogue, understanding, supporting civil society and empowering people, but rather it's been based on supporting authoritarian systems as long as the oil keeps pumping."
  • "Only if you empower the liberals, if you empower the moderate socialists, if you empower all factions of society, only then will extremists be marginalised."
  • ElBaradei said he was not afraid of intimidation by Egypt's vast security apparatus, but revealed that several foreign governments had expressed concern about his safety in the country, following recent reports of his followers being arrested and tortured by police.
Sherry Lowrance

Democracy Digest » Arab Spring? Forget it - 0 views

  • Dictators watch Al Jazeera too
  • The region’s rulers have gone through an accelerated process of authoritarian learning,
  • Regimes have adapted tactics,
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  • and identified the degree of “acceptable violence” that entails minimal costs in terms of international or domestic reaction.
  • The military’s decision as to whether to open fire or not depends in part on the size and conduct (whether peaceful of violent) of protesters, and on whether the unrest threatens the nation’s integrity. But it hinges primarily on calculations of the armed forces’ institutional interests which are largely determined by the military’s level of professionalism and political neutrality (high in Tunisia and Egypt) or, alternatively, its patrimonial links – by blood or marriage – to the ruling elite (extensive and intimate in Syria).
  • contingent events are also significant.
  • “There was something admirable about pro-democracy organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy and the National Democratic Institute working under difficult constraints, trying to push Arab regimes to open up, even if slightly,” writes Shadi Hamid, research director at the Brookings Doha Center.
  •  
    The region's rulers have gone through an accelerated process of authoritarian learning, said Steven Heydemann, an analyst with the United States Institute of Peace, reassessing and reinforcing their capacity to survive
Ed Webb

Why do Egyptian courts say the darndest things? - 0 views

  • the judiciary does have incomplete but real institutional guarantees of independence: It has a long history; a sense of mission to the rule of law; an impressive and well-developed legal framework; considerable autonomy in personnel and budgetary matters; constitutional guarantees of independence and due process; and rulers who routinely pledge fealty to the rule of law. But six problems have been on full display in recent years – and while the first three are likely to get slowly better, the other three might even get a bit worse.
  • Perhaps the most important official was the prosecutor general – responsible for deciding whom to investigate and prosecute and whom to ignore. (For that reason, much of the judicial tussling among various political forces after the 2011 uprising has focused on this post.)
  • the judges generally have a very strong sense of loyalty to the Egyptian state and supporters of political and social order. As suspicious as they may sometimes be of executive influence, Egyptian judges tend not to behave as freestanding actors mediating between the state and the society or among various social actors, but as enforcers of the law and interests of the state, standing above and guiding the society in what they see as a principled fashion
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  • I have certainly found some judges who are already troubled by the enthusiasm displayed by some of their colleagues for the counterrevolution (my term, definitely not theirs!)
  • what I have referred to as the “Balkanization” of the Egyptian “wide state,” a phenomenon that renders the judiciary overly isolated from the entire society rather than just walled off from executive interference and partisan politics
  • Egypt’s legal framework, the one that judges take such pride in upholding, is deeply authoritarian ­– since all of its lawmakers have been authoritarian. Laws governing civil society, political life, the press, states of emergency, local government, religion, education, or virtually any feature of Egyptian life have been written in a way that augments state authority and undermines or bypasses accountability to democratic mechanisms. And this has often been done in a manner sufficiently vague as to turn many citizens into potential criminals when they undertake what they might see as normal activities
  • Egypt’s judicial system is dependent not only on its own integrity and judgment but also on the evidence gathered and presented by the security apparatus – an apparatus that has shown little sign of integrity and judgment in recent decades. Cases are investigated and prosecuted by the public prosecution, to be sure, and the public prosecution is a judicial body. But when various security forces turn over cases involving outlandish plots – such as the one implicating Emad Shahin – the public prosecution seems at least so far to go along with the game. And I do not see any sign of any political desire to rein in the security services now.
Ed Webb

Social Media Made the Arab Spring, But Couldn't Save It | WIRED - 2 views

  • Activists were able to organize and mobilize in 2011 partly because authoritarian governments didn’t yet understand very much about how to use social media
  • governments have also become adept at using those same channels to spread misinformation. “You can now create a narrative saying a democracy activist was a traitor and a pedophile,” says Anne Applebaum, an author who directs a program on radical political and economic change at the Legatum Institute in London. “The possibility of creating an alternative narrative is one people didn’t consider, and it turns out people in authoritarian regimes are quite good at it.”
  • “The activists’ accounts on Twitter and Facebook are very active and they have a lot of followers, but they cannot drive masses,”
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  • bad people are also very good at social media
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