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Political Change in a Multifarious Region

POLS 3001-42926-201440: Research MethodsUniversity of Louisiana Monroe

Dr. John W. SutherlinDr. Joshua Stockley

Caleb SmithNovember 20, 2013

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Abstract

Middle East politics tends to be much more complex than that of most places in the world. While thousands of innocent civilians are being slaughtered in one state, a long-awaited transition towards democracy may be developing in the next. This type of scenario is not uncommon when studying the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and serves as the basis for this research design. Until recently, the Middle East was the only major area of the world where authoritarianism had yet to be challenged. While various Arab states have forced their rulers from power since the 2011 “Arab Spring”, other authoritarian regimes have remained intact. This study involves the Arab Spring as a means of political change in Tunisia, Libya and Yemen. It also seeks to explain why Egypt and Syria have not been able to make a transition towards democracy like many of their Arab neighbors. In addition to providing an overview of the previous literature on the Arab Spring, this paper examines the type of rule and the degree of stability of the states.

Keywords: Arab Spring, Middle East, democratization, authoritarianism, political factors

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Table of Contents

Introduction (page 4)

Thesis--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4

Methodology-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4

Literature Review (page 5)

Tunisia-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6

Libya--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------7

Yemen------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------9

Egypt-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------11

Syria-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------12

References

Bibliography---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------15

Introduction

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This research design is set up in order to reveal what factors have led to political transition in the Middle East during the Arab Spring. Additionally, it addresses two Arab states that have not undergone transitions during the Arab Spring and seeks to explain why. It asks the question “What factors of the Arab Spring led to political changes in Tunisia, Libya and Yemen but are not present in Egypt and Syria?” The hypothesis tested is that in Arab states where the military sided with the people rather than the current regime, a transition towards democracy was more likely to occur.

In order to test the hypothesis, a qualitative case study will be used to examine different political factors of the Arab Spring. These factors will ultimately determine whether a state will make a political transition towards democracy or remain an authoritarian regime. To answer the original research question “What factors of the Arab Spring led to political changes in Tunisia, Libya and Yemen but are not present in Egypt and Syria”, each of the five states will be examined through a comparative analysis of the events that took place during the Arab Spring. A social science approach is to be applied in order to analyze the political factors that have or have not led to recent developments throughout the region. Four central factors should be taken into account when analyzing the states: 1) the role the military played within the state, 2) the economic condition of the state, 3) the role of the international community post-Arab Spring, and 4) the state’s ability to form a new legislature. Each of these factors can be applied to all five Arab states. The states will be placed into one of two categories that determine the degree of stability: 1) failed transition state or 2) stable transition state.

Degree of Stability Authoritarian State Transition State

Stable transition N/ATunisiaLibya

Yemen

Failed transition (unstable) Syria Egypt

Egypt and Syria are considered the “failed transition states” of the study due to their present situations characterized by civil unrest. Syrian President Bashar al Assad still has complete control and his authoritarian regime continues to murder thousands of civilians. In Egypt, the military has recently overthrown the incumbent president and as of now holds all the power of the state. In Tunisia, Libya and Yemen the authoritarian rulers have all been overthrown, and each state has made a transition towards democracy since 2011. Therefore, they are

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categorized as the “stable transition states.” The time frame of the study is to take place between 2011 and 2013, representing pre, present and post Arab Spring.

Literature Review

Since December 2010, a series of mass demonstrations and rebellions have echoed across the Arab world primarily in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen where the population has stood up to their respective regime and demanded an improvement in basic human needs and human rights (Friel, 2012). These rebellions that John Friel is referring to are known as the “Arab Spring.” The Arab Spring and the subsequent political changes of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have become a center of global attention. Before the Arab Spring took place, the Arab world was the only major area where authoritarian rule could be established region‐wide in the twentieth century, and where regimes managed to defy global trends beyond the threshold of the twenty‐first century (Beck & Hüser, 5). However, this all changed when internal mass protests in Tunisia forced the leadership to resign within weeks. Across the broader region, beyond Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya, the wave of protests emboldened by North African success were driven by similar demographic realities, failures of state policies and demands for greater representation (Dodge, 64). In Friel’s The Arab Spring and Political Change: A Comparison of Revolutions he states that the protests called for regime changes where citizens would see an increase in political freedom, and a hope for new government leadership that would tackle issues like poverty and corruption (Friel, 2012). After decades of authoritarian rule and political stagnation, popular movements were finally able to destabilize or overthrow a number of authoritarian regimes in the Arab world (Beck & Hüser, 5).

Most of the Arab Spring revolutions started with a common goal of ousting the current ruling regime of the state. However, recent works have shown that the outcome of the revolutions varied amongst different nation-states. Beck and Hüser stated “While in various countries of the Arab world mass protests in 2011 forced rulers to resign, other authoritarian regimes have – despite political and economic pressure – so far been able to remain in power, or have even been only insignificantly affected” (Beck & Hüser, 3). The Arab Spring has dismantled regimes in several Arab countries, sparked mass violence in others, while some governments managed to delay the trouble with a mix of repression, promise of reform, and state largesse (Isaksen, 2013). So, despite the fact that the rebellions were all focused towards a common goal, there has been no recurring theme for their outcomes. There has been obvious political change in some nation-states throughout the MENA region such as Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen. In Libya, the uprisings against Moammar Gaddafi’s regime triggered a military intervention by NATO that drove the Libyan leader from power. Ali Abdullah Saleh finally relinquished his grip on power in Yemen. Tunisian President Ben Ali fled the country and is

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currently enjoying the dubious pleasures of exile in Saudi Arabia (Dodge, 64). By the end of 2011, the governments in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen were swept away by popular revolts, in an unprecedented show of people power (Manfreda, 2013). Since then the Middle East has witnessed an explosion of political activity, particularly in the states where the revolts successfully removed the long-serving leaders. Hundreds of political parties, civil society groups, newspapers, TV stations and online media have been launched, as Arabs scramble to reclaim their country from ossified ruling elites (Manfreda, 2013). The political transitions taking place in Tunisia, Libya and Yemen, though fragile, continue to offer hope for stable outcomes; so what explains the ongoing civil war in Syria and the present civil unrest in Egypt?

Tunisia

The first state to undergo a political change in the Arab world was Tunisia. Although being considered the most democratized regime in the region, Tunisia was also known for strict control and oversight of political activities through the secret police network (Suzuki, 7). For 23 years, a combination of harsh repression and impressive socio-economic development in Tunisia ensured a certain level of stability of President Ben Ali’s regime. However, on 14 January 2011, after several weeks of anti-government protests, the President fled the country, revealing the fallacy of the “Tunisian model” (Paciello, 2011). Following the overthrow of Ben Ali, the Tunisian government quickly collapsed and the state entered an ongoing period of political transition. Tunisia embarked upon a complex reform process led by consultative bodies formed of technocrats and well-known Tunisian figures (El-Issawi, 18). These consultative bodies were tasked with reforming the Tunisian State through a process of legislative change. They were to draft a new constitution and appoint a new government. On October 23 The Constituent Assembly election was held and ended with the victory of the moderate Islamic party Ennahda. The Tunisian elections have been widely acclaimed for the apparently high turnout, with some early estimates suggesting a participation of up to 90% (ChatamHouse, 4). Tunisia’s high voter turnout can certainly be accredited as a factor that has led to their political change. Apart from protests in February 2011, which called for the dismissal of Ben Ali’s supporters in government positions, there have been no destabilizing demonstrations or police suppression (Schraeder & Redissi 14–17).

The development of Tunisia’s transition has been fraught and at times precarious, but at critical moments the country’s political evolution has displayed a self-correcting character (Dworkin, 2013). Tunisia has been confronted with multiple challenges that have run the risk of political breakdown, but every time it has been successful at maintaining a political transition towards democracy. The political and social groups of the state have managed to keep tensions within the political system rather than letting them dismantle the system as a whole. Compared to other Arab states, Tunisia has strong potential for a successful transition due to the political,

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economic, and social structures of the country (Beck & Hüser, 17). In most authoritarian states throughout the MENA region, political institutions and civil society organizations tend to be underdeveloped. This can be accredited to the “depoliticization policies” stemming from authoritarian rule. However, according to Beck and Hüser, Tunisia has had relatively well developed civil society structures for a long time. They attribute this to the Tunisian General Labor Union being well established in the state. Dr. Clement Henry attests to this in his Countries at the Crossroads 2011: “In the period from 1988 to 2009, the number of civil society organizations increased from nearly 2,000 to over 9,000” (Henry, 5). Although the institutional structures for the development of a free civil society seem to have been established pre-Arab Spring, it can certainly be argued that this has acted as a factor in Tunisia’s political transition. In Matt Gordner’s article Comparing Egypt and Tunisia: Democratic Transition vs. Democratic Consolidation, he also argues that Tunisia presents a more promising transition to democracy than other MENA states. Gordner attributes this to three factors as well: 1) the method by which political parties and activists prepared for political transformation in a post-authoritarian setting, 2) the function of the military within these states, and 3) the role of the international community in post-revolutionary democratic transition (Gordner, 2012). After three interim governments and amid a vast on-going legal and institutional reform process, Tunisia can be considered as a positive example of a non-violent and functional transitional phase from dictatorship towards democracy (El-Issawi, 18). In sum, Tunisia has good prerequisites for democratization therefore it can be categorized as a stable transformation state during the Arab Spring.

Libya

The Libyan revolution, inspired by the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, began as protestors took to the streets in al-Bayda and Benghazi in February 2011. Demonstrators demanded similar requests, as those who took to the streets in Cairo and Tunis, of job opportunities, political freedom and reform from Muammar Gaddafi’s regime of 42 years (Friel, 10). What the citizens of Libya encountered over the next eight months, however, was very different from the revolutions of Egypt, Yemen, and Tunisia (Friel, 33). Gaddafi was backed by the military and in an effort to hold onto power, he began a campaign that quickly developed into a civil war and threw the country into complete turmoil. In March 2011 NATO forces intervened against Gaddafi's army, eventually helping the opposition rebel movement to capture most of the state. The resulting conflict continued until October 2011, when - following the death of Gaddafi and defeat of his supporters - the National Transitional Council (NTC) set in place a roadmap for political transition (NDI, 2012). Oliver Holmes defines the NTC as “an interim government that is unelected and slow to restore basic public services and is suspected of employing members that are tarnished by ties to the former regime” (Holmes, 2012). On July 7, 2012, Libyan citizens voted in elections for a General National Congress, which would be

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tasked with overseeing the work of a new government. In the following year, amid the euphoria of historic elections, Libya’s future seemed brighter than ever. The polls were Libya’s first democratic elections in more than 52 years, and the promise of Libya’s Arab Spring seemed closer at hand (Lawrence, 2013).

In their paper Political Change in the Middle East: An Attempt to Analyze the “Arab Spring”, Beck & Hüser use transition theory in order to analyze Libya’s political transition during the Arab Spring. Transition theory can help to describe the complex, and sometimes contradictory, developments in the Middle Eastern countries – particularly in those that have been strongly affected by the Arab Spring. They start by putting much emphasis on the NATO intervention. In the case of Libya, much evidence indicates that Muammar Gaddafi’s regime would not have been overthrown without the intervention of NATO, as the military capabilities of the opposition were too weak to prevail against the forces of the regime (Beck & Hüser, 14). Obviously the fall of Gadaffi set the stage for Libya’s political transition. There was no scenario where Libya could have become democratized as long as he was in power. Although it was Libyan rebels who brought Gadaffi down, as previously mentioned, they could not have done it without NATO. Therefore, the function of the military and the nation’s interests have been prominent factors in Libya’s political transition, just as they have been in Tunisia’s.

While there is hope for democratization in Libya, there are still many skeptics. Wolfram Lacher, a researcher on northern Africa at German Institute for International and Security Affairs, argues “For a society that did not have any civic culture and state structures over decades, the transition towards democratic structures appears to be a particularly difficult and long process in which setbacks are to be expected (Lacher, 2011). One issue that has caused much skepticism is the NTC’s new law that was drafted in January 2012; which explained the procedures for establishing a constitutional assembly in Libya. David Kirkpatrick identifies an issue within the NTC’s law that may present future challenges to Libya’s transition in his article Libya Begins Plan to Elect Assembly. In his article he writes: “As written, the law will ban former Gaddafi regime members from serving on the constitutional committee, but former regime members would not be removed from any current position with the interim government or be prohibited from holding positions with the Libyan government in the future” (Kirkpatrick, 2012). The point Kirkpatrick is trying to make is that although Gadaffi has been removed from power, remnants of the Gadaffi regime still remain within the Libyan government. Having remnants from an authoritarian regime still in power may very well pose a threat as Libya transitions to a new style of governing. Theda Skocpol, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard, provides an excellent quote in her book States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China that advocates Kirkpatrick’s argument. “A key finding of the revolution research is that revolutionary movements can only succeed when

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the ruling regime becomes substantially weakened both externally and internally (Skocpol, 1979). The NTC itself has already seen some dissention among the governing members, as the deputy head of the NTC Abdel Hafiz Ghoga resigned in January 2012, in an attempt to draw criticism (Aljazeera, 2012). In regards to the NTC, Akram Al-Turk, of the Brookings Institute, states “How well it leads the transition and begins to address the challenges facing the country will, in all likelihood, determine the fate of post-Gaddafi Libya” (Al-Turk, 117-118).

Yemen

After also becoming inspired by the uprising in Tunisia that ousted its long-time leader, thousands of Yemeni protestors gathered in streets in the capital city of Sana’a, calling on Ali Abdullah Saleh, president for more than 30 years, to step down. Unlike the Arab uprisings of Tunisia and Egypt, where the heads of state resigned rather quickly to please the population, Yemen’s President Saleh held onto his power and made false promises of resigning. Saleh’s defiance nearly threw the country into civil war, as Hashid Tribesmen sided with protestors in an effort to bring down the regime (Friel, 24). Ali Abdullah Saleh eventually resigned at the end of January 2012, one year after the outbreak of protests. He announced he would not run for reelection in 2013 nor would he pass power to his son. A month later, the former vice president, Abed Rabbo Mansur Hadi, was elected to a two-year term in office and was tasked with initiating constitutional reform. Although President Ali Abdullah Saleh finally ceded power after his administration’s violent reprisals failed to deter protesters, the country remains at a crossroads. As its political future continues to evolve, the new government must also address a range of deep-seated economic and social challenges (Madsen, 2012).

Beck & Hüser see Yemen as a transitional state; however, they are skeptical about Yemen’s outcome and if it will be able to maintain its process of political change. At first glance, this appears to be a prime example of a transition process. A closer look reveals that the country is indeed undergoing a process of political change; however, this process goes hand in hand with significant uncertainties due to a multitude of conflicting forces (Beck & Hüser, 19.) They note that due to the “precarious political and economical situation” of Yemen and the risks posed by al-Qaeda, many regional and international players are skeptical of regime change. According to The World Bank data, Yemen is currently the poorest state in the MENA region. Nearly half of the state’s population of 23 million people lives on $2.00 per day or less, and chronic hunger has stricken one-third of the population (Finn, 2012). Because of this, most of the literature on Yemen’s Arab Spring tends to be skeptic of a major transition towards democracy. Dr. Nora Ann Colton states in her article Yemen: A Collapsed Economy “The economy in Yemen is extremely underdeveloped and could collapse entirely due to a failing regime and the burden of unemployment, poverty, and a growing population” (Colton, 410).

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Although Yemen’s crippled economy seems to be the most prominent challenge to political transition, John Friel argues that the core of Yemen’s problems is the level of corruption within the state. In his case study he states that “the corruption in Yemen continues to send the country into a downward spiral, hindering any hope for economic growth” (Friel, 29). Alkebsi and Boucek assist Friel’s argument, explaining just how widespread corruption has become in the state. Running rampant in Yemen from high ranking government officials to the military, corruption is threatening the legitimacy of the state and can serve to fund terrorism. Corruption only adds fuel to the many problems Yemen is currently facing, and it is corruption that will eventually cause Yemen to crumble well before the terrorist threat (Alkebsi & Boucek, 2010). Elizabeth Madsen points out another challenge to democracy that Yemen must face in her article Yemen: Revisiting Demography After the Arab Spring; which is the challenge of demographics. She argues that Yemen’s population trajectory is one of the underlying factors shaping its prospects for stability and the success of the movement towards democracy. Countries with a very young age structure face higher vulnerability to civil conflict and lower chances of democratic governance. Among the countries where a push for democracy took root during the Arab Spring, Yemen has the youngest age structure (Madsen, 2012). Political demographer, Richard Cincotta, notes that Yemen was more likely than either Egypt or Tunisia to experience ongoing political violence when evaluated in demographic terms.

Amidst all the skepticism, Jens Heibach does try to shed some light on Yemen’s situation. He argues that due to Yemen’s experience with political institutions, a politicized civil society and the existence of a “culture of dialogue”, hope for a successful transition exists (Heibach, 132). However, he does note that it is crucial that political change in Yemen is accompanied by an economic boom. The process of political transition in Yemen is broadly on track but still remains delicate and complex. An essential part of Yemen’s transition is the sixth-month National Dialogue Conference (NDC) that started on March 18, which should pave the way for a new constitution. The NDC is the closest any of the 2011 Arab revolutions has approached to a peaceful, broad-based transition from despotism to democracy. “It is the only negotiated transition that exists in the context of the Arab Spring,” stated Jamal Benomar, the UN special adviser on Yemen (MacFarquhar, 2013). Yemen has also planned for full Presidential and Parliamentary elections in 2014. Although these positive developments on the political side of Yemen provide some hope for a full political transition, the state’s critical humanitarian situation cannot be ignored. The “role of the international community in post-revolutionary democratic transition”, as Gordner describes it, has been the most prominent factor leading to political change in Yemen. The UK has taken a leading role in coordinating international political support for President Hadi as he works to implement reform in Yemen. Using its membership of the UN Security Council and Human Rights Council, the UK has raised the profile of the challenges Yemen faces, to encourage urgent implementation of reform and to demonstrate

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international support for the state’s transition. At the Donor Conference in Saudi Arabia in September 2012, representatives from Gulf Cooperation Council countries, the World Bank and others pledged $6.4 billion of aid to Yemen (United Kingdom, 2013). The UK continues to contribute millions to Yemen to help support successful constitutional and electoral reform and to provide short-term humanitarian assistance to the citizens of the state.

Egypt

In Egypt, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Cairo in January 2011, demanding the resignation of Hosni Mubarak. Just seventeen days later, Mubarak resigned his position and handed power over to the Egyptian military. The demonstrations were successful in removing Mubarak quickly, but Mubarak’s regime held onto power through the head of Egypt’s Higher Military Council, Field Marshall Mohamad Hussein Tantawi. Although the Egyptian military was praised for allowing large demonstrations to occur that eventually persuaded Mubarak to step down, Tantawi was not viewed as a replacement that would promise fresh hope. Tantawi is a long-time trusted aid to the Mubarak regime and has served as Egyptian minister of defense and military production since 1991 (Knell, 2011). On May 28, 2012 the first round of presidential elections were held, and after a run-off in June, Mohamed Morsi was elected president. This meant that the first “democratic election” in Egypt’s history ended with a candidate from an Islamic party becoming new president (Suzuki, 8).

Similarly to Tunisia, Egypt has been in transition since the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. Egypt’s transition, however, appears to be less consolidated than that of Tunisia. Since the fall of 2011, the country has been shaken by massive riots, and the state’s reactions have led to substantial political and economic instability (Beck & Hüser, 11). These riots have been primarily directed against Egypt’s transitional military government, due to the fact that it has delayed or blocked the transition of power to any form of civilian government. This suggests that despite the resignation of Mubarak, the regime’s forces are still strong. As they did for Libya, Beck and Hüser also analyze Egypt through the use of transition theory. In their research they pose two questions: 1) What causes the collapse of authoritarian regimes that appeared to be stable for decades? 2) Which actors play a role in the transition processes? Their paper Political Change in the Middle East: An Attempt to Analyze the “Arab Spring” emphasizes that there is a need to explain the reasons why a significant number of regimes endured the Arab Spring without the destabilization of authoritarian rule. This can be applied to the original research question of this paper as well: “What factors of the Arab Spring led to political changes in Tunisia, Libya and Yemen but are not present in Egypt and Syria?” Thomas Carothers states in his article The End of the Transition Paradigm “The distinction between transition countries that show potential for regime change and those that are at risk

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of falling back into old or new patterns of authoritarianism is a subject of great importance. Transition processes are complex, and there is no guarantee for the establishment of a consolidated democracy” (Carothers 2002).

Beck & Hüser label Egypt as an “unstable transition system”, however, it is debatable whether Egypt is undergoing a progressive transition or not. There are some skeptics who go one step further and already consider Egypt to be making its way back toward an “Arab Winter.” Thus, it is assumed that Egypt is in the state of an unstable authoritarian system (Byman, 2011). These assumptions can be accredited to one factor; the role of the Egyptian military. The Egyptian military has revealed little or no willingness to support a transition towards democracy up to this point. Egypt is entrenched in an early phase of democratic transition and has yet to undergo a full transfer of power from the military to the people (Gordner, 2012). In Gordner’s Democratic Transition in Egypt and Tunisia: Lessons for “Arab Spring” States he compares the military functions of Egypt and Tunisia. He states “The reason why the military’s role in siding with the people is so instrumental as a sufficient condition for successful revolution is because the military and police retain a monopoly on violence, and with it, a means to quash opposition.” In a healthy democratic system, the people are in charge of state functions through direct or indirect means. In Tunisia, Ben Ali maintained the military on the periphery, granting it a minimal role, if any, in the political affairs of the state was unable to reap the benefits of revolution even if it wanted to. In any case, however, Tunisia’s military was amenable to the labor unions, and it played a decisive role in toppling the successor Government after Ben Ali’s flight and overseeing the installation of an interim Government that was supportive of the people (Anderson, 2011). As for Egypt, their military runs more than the means to quash rebellion: the Egyptian military also manages approximately one-fifth of the Egyptian economy. Therefore it is literally invested in maintaining its stronghold over a number of key industries and political positions within Egypt (Gordner, 2012). The fact that President Morsi was overthrown by a staged military coup is a sure sign that the Egyptian military has no interest in giving power to the people anytime soon. The future of Egypt appears to lie heavily in the hands of former regime members. The amount of influence these former regime members will have on the country remains to be seen.

Syria

The Arab Spring activism in Egypt and Tunisia inspired Syria just as it did the other Arab Spring states. Protesters took to the streets in demonstrations against President Bashar al Assad's regime, advocating for democratic reform. However, unlike the other Arab Spring states, for Syria, even a road map to regime change is nowhere in sight. Dr. John W. Sutherlin states “While other Arab regimes in the MENA have crumbled due to popular pressure without massive amounts of blood being spilled, the Syrian government continues to oppress and kill

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oppositional forces and its citizens at an increasingly alarming rate (Sutherlin, 2013). Since March 25, 2011, Anti-government protests have been staged in rural cities all throughout the state, only to be quashed by President Bashar al - Assad time and time again . This movement began when protesters called for the “Friday of Dignity” and Syrians initiated their first serious challenge against their own government (Dughman, 2012). Unlike the Libyans before them, the Syrian protesters did not want outside intervention and were intent on fighting the Assad regime alone. When it gradually dawned on the Syrian rebels that overthrowing Bashar al-Assad’s regime was not as feasible as they had imagined, they little by little started to have second thoughts concerning the idea of requesting external armed involvement. Civilian rebel forces began organizing and arming themselves to combat government violence, which led to government military powers destroying entire neighborhoods and towns (Wiersema, 2013). After multiple battles between government forces and Syrian rebels, on June 26, President Assad finally announced that his country was in a state of war (Suzuki, 10). Recent allegations of the government's chemical weapon use on civilians have prompted the international community to contemplate serious intervention, but that doesn't mean the conflict has been limited to the Syrian population exclusively.

The difficulty of political change in the Middle East and Arab World since 2011 has typically been seen in Libya and Syria. Two years later, Syria now represents the most tragic consequence of the Arab Spring, due to the escalation of the government’s suppression. A civil war is still ongoing and has caused a grave humanitarian crisis with hundreds of thousands of internal and external refugees, and increasing social tensions in neighboring countries (Masetti, Körner, Forster & Friedman, 2013). Nevertheless, the international community has yet to present any effective solutions, and this holds especially true for the UN; which has totally failed to function (Suzuki, 11). Parts of Syria have been in open rebellion for over two years and yet, unlike the dictators of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya, Assad remains in place. So, what sets Syria’s Arab Spring apart from the rest? Why has Assad been able to maintain complete authoritarian control while other states are experiencing transitions towards democratization? In Christopher Phillips’ Syria’s Bloody Arab Spring, he describes the reasons for Assad’s survival thus far as “multi-fold.” Firstly, key pillars of the regime remain in place. Multiple coups following independence in 1946 led Hafez to design his regime to be ‘coup-proof’, with four over-lapping intelligence agencies to spy on the population, the army and one another. This has thus far prevented the kind of internal moves by the military that toppled the Egyptian and Tunisian presidents (Phillips, 39). Phillips also notes that Syria’s military has proven fiercely loyal to the regime: willing to slaughter their countrymen in a manner that Egypt’s army refused. Dr. Joshua Landis provides an extensive journal essay on the topic of the Assad regime survival titled The Syrian Uprising of 2011: Why the Assad Regime is Likely to Survive 2013. He provides six different reasons as to why Assad’s regime will most likely continue into 2014: 1) Assad remains strong militarily, 2) The opposition is weak, 3) The international community is unlikely

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to intervene, 4) The economy is problematic, 5) Growing poverty and income gap, 6) Economic effects of revolution (Landis, 2012). In their paper, Beck and Hüser use revolution theory to define stable authoritarian regimes and to explain how they maintain their power, as Assad has done. They state “Furthermore, the findings of revolution theory should be utilized in order to understand why some Middle Eastern regimes have been able to control the corridors of power despite continued massive mobilization by the opposition” (Beck & Hüser, 15). They argue that Syria has slipped into a state of authoritarian instability. In the eyes of many Syrians the Assad regime has completely lost its legitimacy (Beck and Hüser, 15). However, the reason it is still able to hold on to power is that it can rely on the support of elites and a largely intact security apparatus. They attribute the regime’s inability to restore stability to the fact that the state does not have adequate rent income to buy full legitimacy among the majority of the population.

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