Academic literature on the topic 'Arab countries – Armed Forces – Political activity'
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Journal articles on the topic "Arab countries – Armed Forces – Political activity"
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Karbal, Mohamed. "Western Scholarship and the Islamic Resurgence in the Arab World." American Journal of Islam and Society 10, no. 1 (April 1, 1993): 49–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.35632/ajis.v10i1.2523.
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During the last two decades, the politics of certain Arab countrieshave been influenced by various Islamic groups. Some of these groupshave expressed their dissatisfaction with the performances of theirgovernments by Using the available political channels to seek change;others have resorted to violence. Armed protests have taken the form ofbombings, assassinations, and mass demonstrations.Suicide attacks and armed struggle took place against Israeli, American,and French forces in Lebanon (1982-83). President Sadat of Egyptwas assassinated in 1981 by Egyptian military pemnnel who were membersof an Islamic movement. Another armed struggle against the Syrianregime was initiated by the Syrian Islamic Front in 1976-82. Numerousdemonsttations against the governments of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisiatook place during the 1980s.Other Muslim groups attempted to participate in the decision-makingprocess in their countries. The Society of Muslim Brothers in Egypt encouragedits prominent members to run for election to the Egyptian Parliament.However, the Society was not considered a legal party accordingto Egyptian law. The Wafd, a legitimate party, allowed the Society ofMuslim Brothers to campaign under their banner. As a result, membersof the Society voted in accordance with their ideological and political beliefsrather than the Wafd party line. In Jordan, the Society of MuslimBrothem campaigned as an independent party during the 1988 electionsand won twenty percent of the seats.Due to the Arab countries’ economic and strategic importance, variousgovemments, scholars, and private and public organizations have paid closeattention to these incidents. In an attempt to understand this phenomenon,academic conventions have been held, books and articles have been published,and gmnts have been awarded for research. Western and Arabscholars have described it with such labels as Islamic fundamentalism,revivalism, awakening, reformism, resurgence , renewal, militancy, or simply ...
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Khodzhin, Maksym. "Peculiarities of the Sunni-Shiite Сonfrontation during the Arab Spring." Kyiv Historical Studies 14, no. 1 (2022): 49–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.28925/2524-0757.2022.16.
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The article reveals the main features of the Sunni-Shiite confrontation during the events of the Arab Spring. In particular, the author of the article notes that one of the main results of the Arab Spring was the collapse of the ruling regimes in a number of Arab countries, which was accompanied by the growth of Islamic radical ideologies. Under these circumstances, the factor of Sunni-Shiite confrontation is becoming more and more radical during these events, which has resulted in a series of armed confrontations between members of both faiths. The author of the article also argues that despite all its complexity and contradictions, the events of the Arab Spring have led to a complete change in the political map of the Middle East. Рolitically, these countries are undergoing a complete reform of the Arab East, due to the change from secular to religious, which was embodied by Sunni-oriented regimes. At the same time, as the course of events showed, Islamist organizations did not become the main organizing force in the protest movement in the Arab countries and were not its instigators. However, in many countries, it is the moderate Islamist parties that have come to power as a result of the election due to their strong influence on the general population of the Middle East. The Arab Spring has also shown that the actions of the modern and most educated part of society against dictatorship and harsh authoritarianism do not necessarily lead to democratic change in these societies. In a traditional society, forces that do not share liberal values and are unable to offer a frustrated and embittered population a democratic alternative have entered the political arena. All this in general not only did not solve the main domestic and foreign policy problems of the Middle East, but on the contrary led to their further aggravation. At the same time, the factors of the Sunni-Shiite confrontation in the region were increasingly used by various political forces of these countries to solve their own interests.
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Antyukhova, E. A. "The "Arab Spring": New Mechanisms of Change of Authoritarian Political Regimes." MGIMO Review of International Relations, no. 2(41) (April 28, 2015): 238–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.24833/2071-8160-2015-2-41-238-246.
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The article explores the use of mechanisms in bringing down authoritarian political regimes in the Middle East and North Africa with the "Arab spring" in focus. The technique of "non-violent" methods of fight suggested by "godfather" of the "Arab spring" Gene Sharp is analyzed. It is noted that the distinctive features of his system were planned, determined and dynamic actions of protest forces. A special place in the article is devoted to the study of the role of non-governmental organizations in selecting and training protest leaders and activists and in creating a network of supporters of prodemocratic movements. The article examines the role of the Internet and cyber technologies used by the opposition during protest rallies. Non-violence as means of bringing down the existing power turned out to be an alternative to armed resistance. The key role of non-violent actions consisted in changing the point of view of anti-government forces, demonstrating that the public solidarity could make the regime overthrow possible. It is noted that the latest information means gave the process of political changes due activity and focus which was followed by the information actions designed to discredit the government in place and form the corresponding public opinion. Mediatization of politics promoted the creation of a dense information veil retouching a real picture. The overall system of methods used during the "the Arab spring" indicates that the mechanism of overthrowing authoritarian regimes and its technologies came from Western culture and were borrowed by Arab activists.
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Hatzivassiliou, Evanthis. "The Crisis of NATO Political Consultation, 1973–1974: From DEFCON III to the Atlantic Declaration." Journal of Cold War Studies 19, no. 3 (August 2017): 104–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_00755.
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After war broke out between Arab countries and Israel in October 1973, the U.S. government asked its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to do the unthinkable: establish an agreed position on an ongoing “out-of-area” crisis. Then, on 25 October, the United States unilaterally raised the alert level of its armed forces to DEFCON III, affecting the NATO area without consulting any allies. These actions constituted a radical departure from established NATO practice and angered the Europeans. U.S. officials, for their part, were upset at what they saw as a dismal European failure to support U.S. objectives in the Middle East crisis. In subsequent months, NATO frantically searched for ways to improve consultation, especially on out-of-area issues. The outcome in 1974 was the promulgation of the Atlantic Declaration, along with a series of functional reforms in alliance consultation procedures. The crisis forced NATO to adjust to the new trends of globalization that were rapidly becoming evident.
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Ahmedov, Vladimir M. "The Philosophy of the Civil-Military Relations in the Middle East." Oriental Courier, no. 3-4 (2021): 85. http://dx.doi.org/10.18254/s268684310018024-4.
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The Army has played a significant role in the contemporary history of the Middle Eastern states. This fact was determined not only by the frequency of wars and military crises but mainly by the role of the military in domestic politics. In the past few decades, the army and security apparatus presented a focal point of Arabian countries’ politics. The military was the center of the power and decision-making mechanism in Middle Eastern countries. In the 1980–1990-s Arab rulers managed to curb the appetites of their military for power and military coups. Further developments of “Arab spring” proved this tendency wasn’t irreversible. The author studies universal Russian and Western methodological and theoretical approaches and criteria for examining civil-military relations. Based on the given results the author attempted to work out an original model for studying the civil-military relations in the Middle Eastern countries regards specific of its developments and in view of the special characteristics of the Arabic society. The main attention is paid to historical preconditions for the formatting of the armed forces in Arab countries. The author also examines the interaction between politics and military, military and society and tries to show the main reasons behind the army’s seizure of power in many Arab countries from the social, political, and economic backgrounds of military rule. The criteria of the civil control under the military and different approaches for preventing army’s intervention in politics are in the focus of this article. The author stresses the role of the national and religious factors in the system of civil-military relations. The role of the ruler and ruling élites in determining the behavioral patterns of the military are the subject of the author’s investigation as well.
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Trunov, F. "Relations between Germany and the Countries of North Africa." World Economy and International Relations 65, no. 8 (2021): 61–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.20542/0131-2227-2021-65-8-61-71.
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The article examines the process of the growing German political and military activity in North Africa during the second half of the 2010s. The first key reason of this process was the new awareness of the regional role in the ensuring of Germany’s and the EU security. During and after the “Arab Spring”, the interstate “corridor of instability” arose. It went from Mali further to Niger and Libya which has been facing permanent instability after the intervention of the group of Western countries (2011, without German participation). The full-fledged functioning of the “corridor of instability” could cause the worse version of the refugee crisis and growing terrorist activity than it was in the EU in 2015–2016. The second reason was the necessity to ensure Berlin`s strong political-military positions in North Africa for the realization of Germany`s ambitions as a future world power. The research examines the features and “narrow places” of interstate cooperation in the security sphere between Germany and Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria. Germany became a senior partner for Tunisia in 2015–2017, and positioned these relations as exemplary. Since 2015–2016, Germany and Egypt have been supporting the realization of each other’s leadership ambitions. The key elements of this tactic have been the cooperation in Syrian and Libyan armed conflicts regulation and launch of the EU–LAS negotiation format (2019). The article also shows the dynamics of partnership between Germany and Algeria, paying special attention to bilateral cooperation in the sphere of the Mali, Libyan and Western Sahara conflicts regulation. The transition of Germany’s bilateral relations with Egypt and Algeria to the level of advanced cooperation in the second half of 2010s caused a powerful growth of the FRG`s arms export to these countries. At the beginning of 2020, Germany launched the multilateral Berlin conference for resolution of the Libyan conflict. Germany’s late but rather successful involvement in the Libyan conflict management should ensure its efforts to become the external participant of the North African regional security system. The paper concludes about the perspectives of the FRG`s political-military line in the region considering the factor of COVID 19 pandemic.
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Han, Shiying. "Chinese Scholars on the Progress and Outcomes of the Military Reforms in Russia (from the 1990s till Present)." Moscow University Bulletin of World Politics 13, no. 3 (October 28, 2021): 48–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.48015/2076-7404-2021-13-3-48-74.
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Since the early 1990s, Russia and China have come a long way in developing military cooperation. It began with an exchange of delegations, the reduction of troops along the border, the adoption of confidence-building measures, and, by now, has transformed into a strong partnership. Two countries annually conduct several joint military exercises and develop military training cooperation. In this regard, the Chinese assessments of the Russian military policy after the collapse of the USSR are of particular interest. The survey of specialized publications shows that Chinese scholars commenced studies on the Russian military reforms in the mid-1990s. The author notes that there was a spike of research activity on that matter in 2009 soon after the start of radical reforms of the Russian Armed Forces. Chinese scholars usually identify four waves in the Russian military reforms, each determined by a combination of domestic and external political and economic factors. Chinese military and academic experts assessed these reforms both in terms of their impact on the global balance of power in the military-political sphere and their potential relevance to similar reforms in China. The first two phases of the Russian military reforms (from 1992 to 1997 and from 1997 to 1999) are usually assessed negatively. The general failure of military reforms is attributed to the economic challenges, the lack of political will, and the absence of an adequate theoretical and methodological basis for such transformations. Subsequent reforms (from 2001 to 2004, and, particularly, after 2008) are generally assessed positively. In that regard, Chinese experts emphasize the importance of the processes of political power consolidation and economic recovery that took place in Russia in that period, as well as the role of lessons learned by the Russian military from local wars and armed conflicts. Nevertheless, according to Chinese assessments these reforms still have certain drawbacks, particularly, associated with hasty and misguided attempts to copy the Western military models at the turn of the 2000s — 2010s. In general, Chinese civilian and military experts conclude that throughout a long and difficult process of military reforms Russia has made a significant progress in rearmament and increasing the combat potential of its armed forces. Moreover, such reforms could serve as a valuable source of experience and an example for further development and modernization of the People’s Liberation Army of China (PLA).
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Harfesh, Shams Abd. "Iraq in the face of ideas and terrorist planner s and the challenges of the future after ISIS defeated." Tikrit Journal For Political Science, no. 15 (May 11, 2019): 141. http://dx.doi.org/10.25130/poltic.v0i15.131.
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The phenomenon of terrorism is one of the most important issues on the Arab and international arena because of its importance related to security and stability. Terrorism is a means to confuse civil regimes and individuals by using all the mechanisms of intimidation, killing, kidnapping and plundering of wealth. Iraq after the entry of elements of the organization calling the terrorist to Mosul in 2014, and carried out many acts of sabotage and violations of the killing and looting and control of oil refineries and agricultural land, and so after the Iraqi armed forces in cooperation with the popular crowd In order to protect the liberated lands and to cleanse them of the remnants of the unflagging war, to uncover dormant cells and to secure the borders between them and the neighboring countries. The study then posed several questions, the most important of which were the implications and political implications And the security of the phenomenon of terrorism in Iraq, as the study aimed to identify the causes of terrorism and its motives, and what solutions to eliminate the terrorist thought, and the study assumed that terrorism is not limited to a particular religion or gender or people, and the study relied on descriptive and analytical methods to reach the concept of Qabli is working to describe and analyze the problems and challenges before and after the defeat of Iraq in light of the recommendations of the proposed study.
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Krylov, A. V. "Jewish extremist and terrorist organizations in Israel." Journal of International Analytics, no. 1 (March 28, 2017): 99–115. http://dx.doi.org/10.46272/2587-8476-2017-0-1-99-115.
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This article is an extension of the research material published in the previous issue of the Journal “International Analytics” (2016, vol. 3 (17), p. 45–58), and focused on the activity of the Jewish paramilitary groups in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Originally the conspiratorial Jewish extremist organization opposed the policy of the Jewish immigration restraint which had been carried out by the socialist countries, especially the USSR. Some ultra-Orthodox groups, such as the Union of Zealots, used openly the terrorist methods in the struggle against the development of Israel as a secular and democratic state. After the war of 1967 and the Israeli occupation of the Arab territories the orthodox-nationalists, who formed the vanguard of the “Movement for Greater Israel”, created an underground network of extremist armed organizations. From the beginning, the activities of these groups were contrary to the Israeli Law on the Fight against Terror. The term commonly used for the Jewish underground groups in Hebrew is “mahteret”. There have been several dozen groups of this kind in the history of the Israeli settlements movement. The most famous of them are “Kach” (“Thus”) and “Kahane Chai” (“Kahane Lives”).The initiator and inspirer of the “Jewish Underground” was an American Orthodox Rabbi Meir Kahane. He founded a political settlement party “Kach” which had legally existed until in 1988 a ban on the list of its candidates in the parliamentary elections was imposed by the Supreme Court of Israel because of the accusations of the denial of the democratic character of the state of Israel and the promotion of racism. The activities of both organizations were declared terrorist and banned in the USA and some other countries.The article analyses religious, philosophical and political routes of the modern ideology of Israeli orthodox nationalists who participate in the settlement movement on the occupied Arab territories as well as the illegal activities of the most famous parties and organizations supporting the policy of the extension of the Israeli jurisdiction over the occupied Arab territories.
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Kjellén, Jonas. "The Russian Northern Fleet and the (Re)militarisation of the Arctic." Arctic Review on Law and Politics 13, no. 2022 (2022): 34. http://dx.doi.org/10.23865/arctic.v13.3338.
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Over the last decade, Russia has considerably ramped up its military presence in the Arctic. This is something that attracted much attention from Western countries, especially against the backdrop of deteriorated relations and general mistrust following the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Current developments are to some extent familiar, as they echo the militarisation of the Arctic during the Cold War and the attendant US-Soviet tensions. Although comparisons with the Soviet Union’s Arctic military posture lie close at hand, we need to analyse Russia’s current military build-up in the Arctic with fresh eyes. Two of the most indicative developments were studied. Firstly, the formation of a single Arctic military command, with its implications for a reassessment of the Arctic strategic direction; secondly, the physical expansion of its Arctic military footprint, which includes both the construction of modern facilities and the increased activity of its armed forces there. In both these developments, the Northern Fleet is taking on a leading role, but the overall military posture relies on other military and civilian actors as well, and is closely related to security concerns of the developing latitudinal axis of the Northern Sea Route, rather than the Cold War longitudinal axis of a massive nuclear weapons exchange.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Arab countries – Armed Forces – Political activity"
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Madani, Hamed. "Socioeconomic Development and Military Policy Consequences of Third World Military and Civilian Regimes, 1965-1985." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1992. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc277872/.
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This study attempts to address the performance of military and civilian regimes in promoting socioeconomic development and providing military policy resources in the Third World. Using pooled cross-sectional time series analysis, three models of socioeconomic and military policy performance are estimated for 66 countries in the Third World for the period 1965-1985. These models include the progressive, corporate self-interest, and conditional. The results indicate that socioeconomic and military resource policies are not significantly affected by military control. Specifically, neither progressive nor corporate self-interest models are supported by Third World data. In addition, the conditional model is not confirmed by the data. Thus, a simple distinction between military and civilian regimes is not useful in understanding the consequences of military rule.
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KOEHLER, Kevin. "Military elites and regime trajectories in the Arab spring : Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen in comparative perspective." Doctoral thesis, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/29621.
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Defence date: 13 September 2013Examining Board: Professor Laszlo Bruszt, (EUI - Supervisor); Professor Philippe C. Schmitter, (EUI - Co-Supervisor); Professor Holger Albrecht, (American University in Cairo); Professor Robert Springborg, (Naval Postgraduate School, Monterrey, CA.)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
Why did different regimes react differently to the mass uprisings that shook the Middle East and North Africa in 2010 and 2011? Why did the personalist presidencies of Husni Mubarak in Egypt and Zine al-Abidin Ben Ali in Tunisia collapse only weeks into the uprisings while Syria’s Bashar al-Assad still holds onto power and Yemen’s Ali Abdallah Salih could negotiate his way out of office? Focusing on the cases of Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen, this thesis is an attempt to answer this question. The central argument of this thesis is that military elite behavior shaped regime trajectories in the Arab Spring. Where the armed forces as an institution defected from the incumbent, the presidency immediately collapsed; where at least some military elites remained loyal, the respective chief executives survived in office for a significantly longer period. I develop an explanation that focuses on the presence of regime cronies within the military leadership. Where such cronies exist, the costs of defection increase for all members of the officer corps. Since the loyalty of cronies appears as a forgone conclusion, defection would likely lead to confrontation within the military. In other words, the absence of crony officers is a necessary condition for the cohesive defection of the armed forces from authoritarian presidents. Empirically, the fact that there were no crony officers in their respective militaries enabled the Egyptian and Tunisian armed forces to defect from their commanders in chief without endangering their internal cohesion. In Syria and Yemen, on the other hand, the defection of the armed forces as an institution was not an option given the fact that key units in both militaries were controlled by officers closely connected to the president. The result was the swift collapse of personalist presidencies in Egypt and Tunisia and the escalation of conflict in Syria and Yemen. This thesis traces the emergence of patterns of political-military relations in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen from regime foundation in the 1950s and 1960s to the uprisings of 2010 and 2011. I argue that path dependent processes of institutional development link patterns of political-military relations at the outbreak of the uprisings to the dynamics of regime foundation in the early 20th century. While the institutional form of the founding regimes that II emerged in the 1950s and 1960s was a function of the composition of regime coalitions, the patterns of political-military relations that shaped regime trajectories in 2011 were shaped by attempts to reproduce these initial institutional features over time and under changing environmental conditions. The initial role of the armed forces in founding regimes was determined by whether or not the regime coalition had drawn institutional support from the military. Where this was the case as in Egypt and Syria, the military developed into a central regime institution, whereas the armed forces remained marginal in Tunisia and institutionally weak in Yemen. These initial differences were reproduced in the context of a period of institutional and economic reform from the second half of the 1970s onwards. While all four regimes succeeded in reining in the military, they used different strategies that had different and partially unintended consequences. In Egypt the depoliticization of the military was sugarcoated by the emergence of a parallel ‘officers’ republic’ that ensured substantial military autonomy, in Syria the armed forces were controlled via a system of praetorian units, while in Tunisia the military remained marginal but largely independent from the regime and in Yemen tribal dynamics prevented the army from developing into a strong institution. These processes all fulfilled their primary goal of ensuring that the armed forces would not actively intervene in politics. At the same time, however, they produced different incentive structures for military elites confronted with regime threatening protests.
Books on the topic "Arab countries – Armed Forces – Political activity"
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Ware, Lewis B. Tunisia in the post-Bourguiba era: The role of the military in a civil Arab republic. Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala: Air University Press, 1986.
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Bamrungsuk, Surachāt. Khō̜. Sō̜. 2000: Yutthasāt lōk lang songkhrām yen. Krung Thēp Mahā Nakhō̜n: Samnakphim Matichon, 1994.
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Derekh ha-kaṿenet: Hiṿatsruto shel ha-miliṭarizm ha-Yiśreʼeli, 1936-1956. Tel-Aviv: Devir, 1995.
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Ben-Eliezer, Uri. The making of Israeli militarism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.
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The Israeli military and the origins of the 1967 war: Government, armed forces and defence policy 1963-1967. London: Routledge, 2007.
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Military institutions and coercion in the developing nations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
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Majid, Al Haj, and Ben-Eliezer Uri, eds. Be-shem ha-biṭaḥon: Sotsyologyah shel shalom u-milḥamah be-Yiśraeʾel be-ʻidan mishtaneh. Ḥefah: Universiṭat Ḥefah, 2003.
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Yoaz, Hendel, and Ṭal Rami, eds. Tenu le-Tsahal le-natseaḥ: Ha-sismah she-higshimah et ʻatsmah. Tel-Aviv: Yediʻot aḥaronot, 2010.
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Norden, Deborah L. Military rebellion in Argentina: Between coups and consolidation. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.
Find full textBook chapters on the topic "Arab countries – Armed Forces – Political activity"
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Głogowski, Aleksander. "The Arab Spring in Pakistan?" In North Africa in the Process of Change: Political, Legal, Social and Economic Transformations, 71–91. Ksiegarnia Akademicka Publishing, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.12797/9788376386553.05.
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Pakistan, although it is not an Arab state, has long lasting contacts with the Arab World. They are based on the same religious and cultural foundations and deep economic contact as well. Many Pakistanis work in the Gulf States. Pakistani military has been training and supporting armed forces of such countries as e.g. Jordan. So the ideas of The Arab Spring have influenced young elites of Pakistani society somehow. The goal of the article is to show similarities and certain differences between the political situation in Pakistan and Arab states (esp. Egypt as comparable by the size and population, and role of military in politics too). The Author tries to answer the question whether something like the Arab Spring possible in Pakistan and/or maybe something like that just has happened.
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Barany, Zoltan. "The Middle East and North Africa, 2011." In How Armies Respond to Revolutions and Why. Princeton University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691157368.003.0005.
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This chapter analyzes the armies’ roles in the 2011 upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa, concentrating on the six countries where considerable bloodshed occurred: Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. In these cases, the regular military forces assumed roles that followed one of three distinctive patterns: they either supported or opposed the uprising or split because they disagreed about how to respond to it. The chapter explains that once one is reasonably familiar with these countries’ political dynamics, societies, and civil–military relations, the reactions of the armed forces to the revolts should not have been all that unexpected. Looking only at cases where the military did play an important role constitutes something of a selection bias, so this chapter also surveys two Arab kingdoms, Morocco and Oman, where the armed forces’ involvement in controlling unrest was far more subdued.
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Veguilla, Victoria. "Government and power relations." In Political Change in the Middle East and North Africa. Edinburgh University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474415286.003.0007.
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This chapter analyses the change (or continuity) of MENA regimes in a post-Arab Spring context, focusing on governments and power relationships. This chapter firstly analyses the place governments occupy in their respective political systems; how they are perceived by their populations; and the extent to which are they capable of managing violence and imposing their authority across the whole of their national territory. Governments are responsible for the policies carried out in their countries. Thus, many of the social protests - predominantly focused on the high levels of corruption - were directed against governments. However, while governments are perceived to be the institutions responsible for meeting citizens’ welfare needs, there are other non-elected institutions (formal or informal) with significant decision-making powers that are non-accountable, such as the presidents of the republic, the monarchs, and other national (the armed forces in the case of Egypt; armed groups in the cases of Libya, Syria and Yemen) or international actors (such as Saudi Arabia and Iran). On the other hand, this chapter studies changes in the power structure. The author finds evidence of greater power concentration, with the exception of the new democratic regime of Tunisia.
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Hill, J. N. C. "Tunisia." In Democratisation in the Maghreb. Edinburgh University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474408974.003.0003.
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Drawing on Levitsky and Way’s model, this chapter offers a sophisticated assessment of Tunisia’s political liberalisation. Of all the region’s countries, it alone emerged from the Arab Spring significantly more democratic than when the protests began. Ostensibly, Levitsky and Way’s model can account for this outcome. Not only did does Tunisia have high linkage to the EU and US, but the West has high leverage over it. In such circumstances, the Ben Ali regime’s high organisational power is of secondary importance. Yet this being the case, why did he remain in office for so long? The chapter argues that the EU and US consistently failed to put as much democratising pressure on him as they could have done, and that the regime’s organisational strength was not as great as it seemed owing to the persistent alienation of the country’s armed forces.