Democratic Consolidation and Authoritarian Heritage in the Arab World. A Comparative Case Study of Tunisia and Egypt.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review: the Exceptionalism of Arab Authoritarianism 2

3. Theory: Authoritarian Heritage in Processes of Democratic Consolidation 4

   1. Situating the Paper in Broader Democratization Theory

   2. Adapting “Robust Authoritarianism” to the Context of Democratic Consolidation

4. Case Selection: Tunisia and Egypt as Most-Similar Cases 6

5. Analysis: Authoritarian Heritage in Post-Transition Egypt and Tunisia 9

   1. The Fiscal Health and Institutionalization of the Military

   2. The Maintenance of International Support Networks

   3. The Strength of Political Society and the Integration of Political Islam

6. Conclusion 16

Bibliography 18

Abstract

This paper extends Eva Bellin’s analysis of authoritarian robustness in the Arab world to the processes of (failed) democratic consolidation in Tunisia and Egypt in a most similar case-study design based on democratic elections in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings in 2011. It compares three central variables – the fiscal health and institutionalization of the military, the integration into the international security architecture, and the strength of political society – finding all of them to be more present in Egypt than in Tunisia. This points to the long durée of civil-military relations, and indicates the importance of overhauling civil-military relations for democratic consolidation. Adjusted to the context of democratic consolidation, the paper also emphasizes the importance of goal-oriented and positive cooperation among the main political parties, including Islamist parties. Ultimately, these insights also enrich the evaluation of ongoing transitions in the Arab world and provide starting points for designing more effective democracy support policies.

Keywords: democratization, democratic consolidation, civil-military relations, MENA, EU Southern Neighborhood

1. Introduction

The 2011 uprisings in the Arab world surprised autocrats, researchers and analysts alike. The original excitement of some commentators about an “Arab wave of democratization” quickly dissipated, as authoritarian leaders were able to contain unrest in many countries, and/or the uprising spiraled into civil war, such as in Libya (with a NATO-led military intervention), Yemen, and Syria. Tunisia and Egypt present the outliers here, being the two countries in which mass protests led to democratic elections. The results of the democratization processes in these two countries, however, differs starkly. Whereas Tunisia, until recently, continued towards democratic consolidation, the democratic process in Egypt broke down in July 2013, when the first democratically elected president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, was overthrown by the military.

This paper therefore seeks to investigate the process of democratic consolidation in light of the literature on authoritarian robustness in the EU’s Southern Neighborhood, drawing on Eva Bellin’s work on the lack of democracy in the Arab world, which she traces to the particular strength of the coercive apparatus. The main thesis of the paper is that the degree to which features of authoritarian robustness are maintained after transitioning to democratic politics is a crucial determinant for the success of democratic consolidation. Bellin’s contribution to the study of democratization in the Arab world will be positioned within the literature on democratization in the Arab world in Chapter 2.

The main theoretical claim of the paper is thus that the elements identified by Bellin to determine the strength of the coercive apparatus – its fiscal health, access to rents, international support networks, low levels of institutionalization of the military, and a low level of popular mobilization – remain central to analyzing the power struggle between civilian and military governance also after the first democratic elections take place. The paper thus seeks to extend Bellin’s theory and to test its applicability to processes of democratic consolidation. The required adaptation of the theory and the methodology are presented in Chapter 3.

This methodology is then applied to a comparative case study of Egypt and Tunisia, based on a most-similar case study design (democratic elections after the overthrow of an autocrat in the Arab world) with divergent outcomes (democratic consolidation vs. democratic breakdown). The case selection and its limitations are discussed in Chapter 4. In the following chapter, the main analysis takes place. I find that all elements identified by Bellin that contribute to authoritarian robustness are more present in Egypt than in Tunisia, and that they have continued to affect democratization negatively. Such insights are important for assessing democratization processes in the Arab region more broadly, and can serve to analyze recent democratization struggles in Sudan or Algeria.

2. Literature review: the exceptionalism of Arab authoritarianism

When the third wave of democratization swept through most world regions, Arab regimes remained “singularly resistant to democratization” (Bellin 2004). This led democratization scholars to focus on the nature of the Arab state to explain this “Middle East exceptionalism” (Hinnebusch 2015, 335). Depending on the author, the root cause for this exceptionalism has been argued to be an incompatibility of Arab culture with democracy, the “oil curse” of a state being able to rely solely on rents, and the outstanding authoritarian statecraft of Arab leaders (Diamond 2010). As Diamond convincingly argues, the cultural argument already did not correspond to survey data even before the uprising (and the existence of democratic Tunisia further weakens this claim); and not all Arab States can rely on oil and resource rents (Diamond 2010).

The most convincing explanation for the lack of Arab democratization prior to the 2011 uprisings therefore centers around the authoritarian statecraft of Arab leaders. One of the most influential attempts at defining this statecraft was made by Eva Bellin with her concept of “robustness of authoritarianism”. According to Bellin, the staying power of Middle East autocracy rests firmly in the strength of the coercive apparatus, its “will and capacity to […] suppress democratic initiative” (Bellin 2004, 143). When revisiting her own contribution after the uprisings, Bellin maintains that the coercive apparatus plays a crucial role: When strong popular mobilization occurs, the military becomes the central actor in deciding whether it is successful or not – regime survival boiled down to “Would the military shoot the protesters or not?” (Bellin 2012, 129).

Bellin identifies four central variables that favor authoritarian survival based on the coercive apparatus: 1) the fiscal health of Arab militaries, 2) international support networks based on security cooperation, 3) low institutionalization of the coercive apparatus, and lastly, 4) low levels of popular mobilization (Bellin 2004, 144–48). Fiscal health of the military (1) is crucial as the repression of democratic initiatives is costly both in material and morale terms. If soldiers, recruits and police personnel go unpaid, the coercive apparatus falls apart. Indeed, Arab states spend exceptionally high amounts of their GDP on the coercive apparatus, indicating the particular fiscal health of Arab militaries (Bellin 2004, 147-148).

The funding for such exorbitant military spending depends centrally on the regime’s access to rents, another factor that is distinctly pronounced in the Arab world. While natural resources are an obvious source of rent abundant in the region, rents may also come from international security cooperation (2), in which a country exchanges geopolitical allegiance for military and other support. When this international support is cut, it can trigger an existential financial crisis for the regime, but so long as it lasts – and, as Bellin observes, regional and geopolitical competition has heightened in the Arab world after the Cold War – it provides important access to rent. While both of these factors are structural and focus on the coercive apparatus’ capacity, Bellin’s other two variables concern the will of the coercive apparatus to suppress democratic contestations.

A low level of institutionalization (3) incentivizes the military to opt for oppression, as it is organized principally along patrimonial lines in which personal survival as well as the survival of military institutions depend on regime survival. Institutionalization, understood as the existence of predictable rules of meritocratic advancement and a clear separation between the public and the private within the organization, reduces this incentive. It creates a corporate identity for the military that is distinct from the state, that is committed to a broader national mission (development, national defense) rather than to mere private gain. As such, institutionalization increases the likelihood that the military elite perceives regime change as a manageable rather than an existential crisis, reducing its will to squash political opposition by force (Bellin 2004, 145-146). This will to squash opposition may also be impacted by the perceived costs of coercion, which are lower the lower the level of popular mobilization for political reform (4). If popular mobilization is high, repression may negatively impact institutional integrity and domestic legitimacy – something that is, however, only likely to affect the military’s decision-making if there is at least some degree of institutionalization (Bellin 2004, 146).

Bellin put forward these variables to explain the absence of democratic opening in the Arab world. This paper argues that these parameters can also be applied to assess democratic consolidation after the opening. This requires some modifications of the theory: After democratic elections have taken place, and civilian democratic government is exercised, the playing table for the military-civilian power struggle has changed, and the interplay between state, society, and international factors is different. The next chapter identifies and details these modifications of Bellin’s work and situates her theory in broader strokes of democratization scholarship. In this way, the paper seeks to develop a framework for understanding why (or not) initial democratic openings in the Arab world prove salient for a consolidation of this opening.

3. Theory: drivers of authoritarian robustness in democratic transitions

1. Situating the paper in broader democratization theory

A central theoretical divide in democratization studies is between structural approaches (modernization theory, historical sociology) and actor-based approaches (transitology). In recent years, however, “mixed methods” approaches have become more prominent in the field (Møller and Skaaning 2013, 155). The present paper represents an attempt to bridge the structure-agency divide. The analysis of elements of authoritarian resistance represents, in the first place, a structural explanation of (non-)democratization, as a specific structure of the state-executive-society relationship hinders democratic development (or stands in the way of its consolidation). When looking at a specific case, it is also important to pay tribute to the contingency of democratization processes, the limited knowledge actors have access to, and the political gambles they enter into.

When applying the concept of authoritarian robustness to democratic consolidation, one must therefore look at the presence of elements of authoritarian durability, the degree to which they are present, and how this changes the playing field between civilian government and the military. In this way, the paper also seeks to overcome the division of “deep” and “proximate” causes, by looking at their interplay – testing in how far the structural variables are able to explain the higher or lower availability of actions for certain actors. This can be understood most broadly as what Mahoney and Snyder call a “funnel strategy”, which posits that structural variables are a necessary, but not sufficient explanation for the regime outcome (Møller and Skaaning 2013, 163–64). The structural effects make different actions more or less costly and beneficial to the actors, therefore raising the probability of outcomes that correspond to structural incentives.

2. Adapting “robust authoritarianism” to the context of democratic consolidation

Bellin’s theory concerns the strength of the coercive apparatus to suppress dissent and maintain authoritarian order. When applying the theory of authoritarian robustness to the context of consolidation, the position of the military changes: rather than being in support of the current regime, the military’s strength must now be understood as its ability to maintain bastions of exclusive military control, or to stage a coup – how costly it would be to break down the democratic process, and how capable it is to do so. Albrecht and Ohl have analyzed the different options of the military in the case of an uprising: exit, resistance, or loyalty. While “exit” refers to remaining neutral or going into exile, “resistance” refers to breaking with the ruler or staging a coup d’état, and “loyalty” refers to support for the ruler (Albrecht and Ohl 2016). These concepts are equally applicable to democratic governance: in a democracy the military can either remain neutral, resist (and potentially stage a coup d’état), or remain supportive of the civilian government. The subject of analysis is thus how the variables of authoritarian resilience shape these action options for the military vis-à-vis the civilian-controlled democratic process.

Two of the variables identified by Bellin need not be reformulated, as they are favorable to authoritarian rule both before and after the democratic opening. This concerns the fiscal health of the coercive apparatus through rent, and the inverse relationship with the institutionalization of the military. Access to rents, on the one hand, increases the independence of the military and strengthens its position vis-à-vis the civilian government. Low institutionalization, on the other hand, complicates finding a modus operandi with the civilian government, as civilian control may be perceived as a direct threat to the patrimonial nature of the coercive apparatus. With these variables, what concerns this paper is in what way they are present during the phase of transition in Tunisia and Egypt, respectively, and what effect that has on the action options for the military towards civil society.

The two other elements in Bellin’s account – the maintenance of international support networks and the level of popular mobilization – need to be adapted. While research supports the claim that the international influence was detrimental to democratization during authoritarian rule (Hinnebusch 2015), this might prove different in the context of transition – the position of international actors may change in response to the democratic opening. A particular focus rests on international support that centers on security cooperation (or its absence) as this has been identified to be particularly supportive of authoritarian government in the Arab world (Bellin 2004).

The most profound reformulation, however, is required for the concept of popular mobilization. During democratic transition, it is not (only) the people in the streets that make intervention costly for the military. It is also the perceived legitimacy and effectiveness of the democratic system that determine how difficult the resistance option for the military is. Resistance becomes more difficult when the power balance within democracy is “sufficiently even […] to make it impracticable for the administration to be arbitrary and for the opposition to be revolutionary or irreconcilable”, as Walter Lipmann wrote in 1939 (quoted in Masoud 2014, 13).

In the Arab context, this depends crucially on the performance of Islamist parties, who possess infrastructure and organizational depth that favors them over competitors. The nature of the involvement of Islamist parties in democratic governance, and the ability to forge consensus beyond the Islamist-secular divide, is therefore crucial to assess the potential cost of intervention for the military. Essentialist conceptions of political Islam, most famously identified in Samuel Huntington’s claim that “the problem is not Islamic fundamentalism, but Islam” (cited in Stepan and Linz 2013, 18), help little to capture these nuances. The paper therefore follows Stepan (2012) in understanding the relationship between worldly and spiritual authority as a constant process of negotiation, ideally resulting in mutual toleration between the two spheres of society. Such an understanding allows better to analyze the interaction between religious movements, Islamic political parties, and other actors in society in formulating a joint (or at least mutually acceptable) political project.

The importance of the performance of explicitly political actors also requires a broader understanding of civil society, which includes political parties and potentially also bureaucrats that support the consolidation of democracy. Such a conception goes beyond standard definitions of civil society, which often omit political parties and the state apparatus from their purview. Democratic consolidation requires active, positive involvement in the political process, and is better captured by the concept of political society, which includes the ability of political parties and explicitly political actors to reach a minimal consensus on the “rules of the game” of democratic politics (Stepan and Linz 2013, 23).

To summarize, to analyze the heritage of authoritarian robustness and its explanatory power for regime outcome, we need to compare (1) the fiscal health of the coercive apparatus and its access to rents, as well as its level of institutionalization, (2) the existence of international support networks, particularly those that focus on military cooperation, and (3) the strength of political society in delivering the democratic project and to feel mutually obliged by its rules. Before embarking on this analysis, the next chapter will quickly discuss the case selection and its limitation.

4. Case selection: Tunisia and Egypt as most similar cases

While the Arab uprisings seemed to diffuse from Tunisia to all other Arab countries, the degree of upheaval differed significantly, and only six countries experienced unrest to a degree that could be considered dangerous to the regime – Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Syria and Yemen (Brownlee, Masoud, and Reynolds 2015, 2). Of these, only four managed to overthrow their autocrat, and in Yemen and Libya civil war ensued. This leaves Egypt and Tunisia as the only two countries in which the 2011 uprisings led directly to democratic elections. In this sense, they represent the logically possible cases for the analysis envisioned in this paper.

The logic of most-similar case comparison, however, also extends to the previous regime form. After all, both countries were taken to be prime examples of the authoritarian durability so exceptional in the Arab world. Linz and Stepan (1996) characterized both as “sultanistic regimes”, Geddes (1999) as “single-party authoritarian”, and Diamond (2002) as “hegemonic electoral authoritarian” (overview taken from Brownlee, Masoud, und Reynolds 2015, 33). They were both categorized as “unfree” by Freedom House in the period prior to the uprising, with similar scores (Tunisia scored 6, while Egypt scored 5,5) (Freedom House). The academic literature further stresses that both Tunisia and Egypt are among the most homogeneous countries in the Arab world (Gause 2011) and that their respective militaries were more professional and functioned less on patron-client links than other military forces in the region (Bellin 2012). Furthermore, neither of the two are monarchies or extensively oil-rich, which are used as explanatory variables for authoritarian resilience, but hence not applicable here (Hess 2016).

After the first democratic election, however, things played out very differently in Egypt and in Tunisia. This is where the most-similar cases diverge, as Fig. 1 illustrates with the Freedom House scores of both countries since 2008. Freedom House measures the existence and quality of democracy along two central variables: political rights (electoral process, political pluralism and participation, functioning of government) and civil liberties (freedom of expression and belief, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, personal autonomy and individual rights) on a scale from 1 (free) to 7 (unfree) (Freedom House 2022b). While both countries experienced a democratizing movement in terms of political rights in 2012-2013, corresponding to the holding of competitive elections, Tunisia’s democratization proved broader and deeper.

Tunisia progressed not only in terms of political rights, but also, to a lesser degree, in relation to civil liberties. Freedom House considered Tunisia “partly free” since 2012, and “free” after 2015. Egypt only flirted with “partly free” status in 2013 (thus referring to 2012). The following year, Morsi was overthrown by the military and the country returned to similar levels of political repression as those of the Mubarak regime, with civil liberties scores actually worsening in comparison. Tunisia, on the other hand, democratized more profoundly in its initial opening, and managed to further deepen the quality of democracy, particularly in the period 2014-2017.

Fig. 1: Freedom House Freedom in the World Scores for Egypt and Tunisia, 2008-2022

The consolidation of Tunisian democracy – and Tunisian democracy itself – has recently come into doubt. Long-standing socioeconomic grievances, youth unemployment, perceptions of corruption, and a lack of progress on these issues fueled renewed order contestation and disenfranchisement from the political process and democracy (Narbone 2020, 7-8). These developments culminated in July 2021, when President Kaïs Saïed suspended parliament in response to ongoing protests. Saïed has since moved to expand executive powers. This breach of the constitutional process made Tunisia one of the most significant democratic rollbacks in 2021, and Freedom House adjusted its evaluation to “partly free” status again (Freedom House 2022a).

In spite of this, the outcomes of the two cases are still divergent, and still merit investigation. Tunisia still outperforms Egypt in the quality of democracy, and while the constitutional process has broken down, the decade of democratic governance in Tunisia still represents an outlier that deserves explanation. Moreover, the Tunisian military did not play a significant role in the recent power struggle in Tunis, not moving significantly away from its previously adopted exit strategy. As such, the breakdown of constitutional rule in Tunisia at least partially conforms to, rather than contradicts, the hypothesis of the present paper.

Lastly, it is important to recognize the differences between the two cases. The most important point here is the level of economic development, as Tunisia’s GDP/capita was almost 1,5 times higher than that of Egypt prior to 2011 (Abushouk 2016, 61). However, this paper rejects the conclusion by Masoud that Egyptian democracy was “stillborn” due to how underdevelopment played out in the country – Masoud claims that due to underdevelopment, any democratic system would have suffered from Islamist domination, and therefore lead to a military intervention (Masoud 2014). The outcome of the transition process in Egypt, however, is as contingent as any other – as Masoud’s own previous discussion indicates (Masoud 2011). I will get back to this potential limitation at the end of the paper.

5. Analysis: authoritarian heritage in post-transition Egypt and Tunisia

In this chapter, I analyze the degree to which the different elements of authoritarian rule were present and shaped the outcome of the democratic transition in the two countries along the four variables – (1) the fiscal health of the coercive apparatus and its access to rents, (2) the existence of international support networks that focus on military cooperation, and (3) the strength of political society and delivering the democratic project. I consider the level of institutionalization and access to rents of the fiscal apparatus together, and then discuss how this related to international factors. These two elements can be understood to be the more structural part of the analysis that set the stage for the analysis of the strength of political society, which focuses more on how these structures resulted in actions by actors within the country (following the funnel strategy).

1. The fiscal health and institutionalization of the armed forces

In Tunisia, the most remarkable feature of the military during the transition was its absence. After the original decision to refuse Ben Ali’s order to shoot protesters, instead laying siege on the presidential palace and forcing Ben Ali into exile, the military has withheld itself completely from politics and accepted full civilian control (Esposito, Sonn, and Voll 2016b). This is related closely to the specific Tunisian authoritarian heritage: Already since independence, Tunisian dictators – first Bourghuiba, then Ben Ali – kept the military small to avoid the surge of an alternative center of power and centered their repressive tactics on the secret police (Jebnoun 2014). Rather than a remnant of authoritarian durability, Tunisia’s military was relatively weak already and accepted its role under civilian leadership quickly.

The case is very different in Egypt. On the one hand, the military there is also relatively professional, and decided not to shoot protestors in Tahrir Square in January 2011. On the other, the Egyptian military has very strong institutional power within the State, the economy and the so-called “deep state” structures consisting of patron-client networks on the highest level of government (Bassiouni 2016). Zeinab Abul-Magd (2018) has traced the course of the military in Egyptian politics since the Nasser years. She finds that economically, the military was continuously able to increase its economic power through different periods of economic policy (estimates of the military’s share in Egypt’s GDP range up to 40%); and politically, the military has controlled central posts in higher government and bureaucracy before, during, and after the democratic experiment (Abul-Magd 2018). The military thus enjoyed a level of institutional power and fiscal health that allowed it to play a role in post-transition politics.

This becomes clear in the fleeting privileges that the military maintained during the transition. First, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) took over power when Mubarak ceded power directly to it (Bassiouni 2016). During the ongoing democratic process, the military then moved to expand its power shortly before the second round of the presidential election to avoid a challenge from the president-elect. The military’s amendment to the institution gave it complete control over its own affairs and budget (Esposito, Sonn, and Voll 2016a). Whereas Morsi annulled the respective declaration, the military ultimately had its way in the 2012 constitution: it reserved the ministry of defense for soldiers, and kept the military from civilian oversight.

This represents a central divergence between the cases. Whereas both militaries were professionalized, incentivizing against committing atrocities against mass popular protests, their role in the transition itself was antithetical. The Tunisian military did not play a significant role, whereas the economic and political might of the Egyptian military’ patron-client networks allowed it to safeguard its own prerogatives in what seems a textbook case of military “guardianship” over key institutions identified in the context of Latin American democratization processes (Said 2012: 398). The military in Egypt thus maintained one of the central features of authoritarian durability, and kept free from civilian control, throughout the transition process.

2. The maintenance of an international support networks

When looking at the influence of international factors, and the involvement in security cooperation in particular, a similar divergence between Tunisia and Egypt can be observed: whereas Tunisia has close cultural and economic ties to the European Union, Egypt is a key element in the security concerns of both the United States as well as the powerful Gulf states. In the terms of Levitsky and Way (2006), the western actors (and in particular the EU) have significantly more linkage with Tunisia, while they enjoy at least some leverage over Egypt. This leverage is two-sided, however, as Egypt plays a crucial role in the regional security order, and alternative sources of support are available in the Gulf. Again, in Tunisia this element of authoritarian durability was already weak before the uprising, whereas in Egypt the security connections were maintained throughout the period.

In the case of Tunisia, there is a long history of exchange and interchange with Europe as its main (trading) partner. Due to the small size of Tunisia, and its pro-Western stance in security terms ever since independence, it was never in the center of great power confrontation or even attention (Willis 2016). This allowed France to remain the hegemonic partner outside Tunis, a position that was later taken up by the European Union (EU): already in 1995, Tunisia – as the first Arab country – signed an association agreement with the EU (Powel and Sadiki 2010). While political commitments may have only been lip service by the Ben Ali regime, it mirrored an economic reality: In the decade prior to the uprising and ever since, European products always represented at least 60% of Tunisian imports and exports (Observatory of Economic Complexity n.d.).

While indeed there was “no international appetite” for an overthrow of Ben Ali (Willis 2016), European leaders quickly shifted to support the democratization movement – already in 2012, Tunisia and the EU signed a “privileged partnership”, which also envisions the establishment of a comprehensive free trade agreement (European External Action Service n.d.). In this case, the international realm did not represent the archetypal international security networks. In their absence, linkage to the EU – economic, cultural, and social ties and cross-border flows – became very dense, theorized by Levitsky and Way to result in a less permissive and more democratically demanding international environment (Levitsky and Way 2006, 379). As such, Tunisia’s international relations represented a chance rather than a detriment to democratization.

Egypt represents a completely different story. Since the Camp David process, Egypt has formed a backbone of the US security architecture in the Middle East. Continuously, Egypt has been one of the biggest receivers of US military aid – up to 1.3 billion USD annually (Esposito, Sonn, and Voll 2016a). This can create a dependence on capital inflows from the West, which would in turn increase Western leverage, or “the vulnerability of a regime to democratizing pressure from the West” (Levitsky and Way 2006, 382). The pressure, in any case, was not upheld: The position of the US changed only temporarily during the failed democratic transition in Egypt. Parts of the US intelligence community where critical of the Muslim Brotherhood from the beginning on, and while the US suspended its military aid after the coup d’état against Morsi, the US opened the flow of military aid again in December 2014 (Bassiouni 2016).

This re-opening of military aid also indicates that the West did not in fact possess significant leverage. Given Egypt’s central position in the regional security architecture, its interdependence with the West is significantly more symmetric than in the case of Tunisia. Furthermore, alternative sources of funding were readily available to the military, as Saudi-Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were quick to provide economic assistance and to express their support for as-Sisi shortly after the coup (Bassiouni 2016). Interestingly, Saudi-Arabia and the UAE have also significantly increased their share in Egyptian imports and exports since 2014 (Observatory of Economic Complexity n.d.).

Democratic actors thus possessed lower linkage and leverage vis-à-vis Egypt in comparison to Tunisia. Egypt’s quick reintegration into military alliance structures represents a primary case where the element of authoritarian robustness is directly related to the failure of the democratic process: military aid from the US represents an opportunity for seeking rents for the military. This is shown particularly by the military’s insistence to keep its administration of the military aid from the US from civilian oversight (Esposito, Sonn, and Voll 2016a). The military’s role in the breakdown of the democratic process resulted only temporarily in a suspension of funding, signaling a de facto acceptance of the coup for the sake of geopolitical alignment.

These instances where security concerns took center stage strengthened the role of the military both during the transition (through provision of rents via military assistance) and after the coup (through quick expressions of support for as-Sisi and resumption of military assistance). This squares with the assessment of Levitsky and Way that linkage is more effective in democracy promotion, but also goes beyond it in its focus on military cooperation, in which interdependence is tendentially more symmetric and the impact on civil-military relations most pronounced. Overall, one can again conclude that the international factors theorized about in authoritarian robustness were less present in Tunisia, where international relations centered on economic linkage; whereas in Egypt the preference of the most influential international partners for stability and geopolitics over democracy strengthened the military’s position vis-a-vis the political system.

3. The strength of political society and the integration of political Islam

The relative strength of the military in Egypt, a result of the maintenance of elements that guaranteed authoritarian durability prior to 2011, does not in itself explain the breakdown of the democratic process. For the military to intervene, it also requires an opportunity where intervention is not too costly. Whether such an opening comes up depends heavily on the performance of the political system – when it delivers, a majority of the population and most political actors will likely support it and strongly oppose a coup. This last part of the analysis therefore investigates to what extent the political actors in the two countries managed to forge political compromise.

The movements bringing about the downfalls of Mubarak and Ben Ali in 2011 were diverse and drew from various sectors of society, particularly from the youth (Osman Salih 2013). After the downfall of the autocrat, civil society maintained a crucial position in both countries, with regular protests in both countries. In Tunisia, these drew in particular from the strength of the General Tunisian Workers’ Union (Union Générale Tunesienne du Travail, UGTT), which continues to be an important player in Tunisian politics (Allinson 2015). In Egypt, civil society groups were also strongly present in the bigger cities such as Cairo and Alexandria, but less so in other parts of the country (Bassiouni 2016). This divergent strength in the depth of civil society would become important when the arena opened for electoral competition, when Islamist parties took center stage of the process.

In the beginning of the 2011 uprisings, Islamist participation was limited both in Egypt and Tunisia, although individual members did participate in both countries. (Bassiouni 2016; Willis 2016). When the transition turned to electoral politics, however, a central dividing line in transition politics in both countries has been between a secular and an Islamist orientation of the State. Due to their long history in organization and opposition in the regime, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) in Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Ennahda of Tunisia fulfilled the expectation of winning a plurality of seats in the first free legislative election. Furthermore, in both countries, a myriad of other Islamist parties proliferated (Masoud 2011; Willis 2016). As a result, they became central to the transition process, and their ability to find compromise with non-Islamist parties became central to the performance of political society, or the ability of political actors inside and outside parliament to pursue a joint program of democratic state-building.

It is with respect to this formulation of a joint political program that the respective interaction of Ennahda and the FJP with other parties after electoral success differed significantly. In case of the Tunisian Ennahda, the party was very compromise-oriented. Cavatorta and Merone trace in detail how the party continuously moderated itself by excluding radical members, resulting in the adoption of a strict doctrine of non-violence in 1995. From Ennahda’s perspective, this is a result of state repression, works as an appeal to European countries (which hosted the leadership of Ennahda in exile) and a reaction to society’s rejection of more radical approaches to Islamist politics. When it entered the political stage in the transition, they argue, Rachid Ghannouchi, long-time leader of the party, had led it to be a conservative rather than a radical party (Cavatorta and Merone 2013).

There are some legitimate concerns of circularity here, as the factors identified by Ennahda representatives – effectiveness of state repression and linkage to European countries, for instance – are at least partly shaped by the above-discussed variables of fiscal health of the coercive apparatus and international support. Eva Bellin’s original conception of the level of popular mobilization suffered from similar endogeneity, this paper however follows Bellin’s assessment that the popular mobilization (and similarly the performance of political society) cannot be reduced to the previous variables (Bellin 2004, 146). While endogeneity cannot be fully ruled out and it is difficult to identify the precise impact of individual variables, political processes are contingent and are driven by political actors and their decisions, which cannot be explained by structural factors alone.

In its political decisions, the Ennahda leadership proved strongly compromise-oriented. Esposito et. al. identify “the responsiveness and significant concessions […] made by Ennahda” as one of the key elements of Tunisia’s successful transition (Esposito, Sonn, and Voll 2016b). To be clear, also in Tunisia, conflict between Islamists and secular liberals (often oriented towards the radical secularism of French laicité) exists. Clashes between Islamists and seculars occurred in several universities in 2011 and 2012, and the murders of two liberal activists in 2013 have been related to radical Islamists by many (Esposito, Sonn, and Voll 2016b, 128–29). At crucial junctures, however, Ennahda as the largest Islamist party strongly supported democratic bargaining and limiting the role of Islam in politics: It entered into negotiations with the second and third largest party after the first election, making significant concessions to ensure a government of national unity.

Most importantly, when the murders of liberal activists enraged the population against the government, Ennahda resigned from government, and later took up the role of junior partner, again focusing on pragmatic compromise politics that made them a reliable partner even for strongly secular parties (Esposito, Sonn, and Voll 2016b). Crucially, Ennahda supports the concept of a “civil state”, which treats religion as an issue of identity rather than as a source of public policy-making (Cavatorta and Merone 2013). Ennahda has supported inclusive politics and closely cooperated with a variety of different political orientations, making them maybe the most important player in ensuring the efficient performance of the Tunisian political system (Bellin 2013, Marzo 2020).

Another element of this formula has been that Ennahda only won a plurality rather than a majority of the votes in the first election. The party was required to cooperate with other parties to form a government after what Eva Bellin has called a result of “planning and luck”, providing incentives for cooperation (Bellin 2013, 4). This cooperative form of engagement did not occur in Egypt, where the first democratically-elected president ultimately faced political paralysis that was difficult to navigate. Here, the FJP won both a majority of the seats in parliament, as well as the election for president (in spite of their candidate’s rejection by the electoral commission shortly before the election) (Esposito, Sonn, and Voll 2016a).

With such an advantage in political power over its electoral opponents, the FJP presented a threat in the eyes of many liberals – a rift that would ultimately proof important for the army’s ability to overthrow Morsi. Morsi, in the eye of Tarek Masoud a “spectacularly ungifted politician” (Masoud 2014, 4), did not attempt to rectify these concerns by large parts of the population, particularly urban professionals. The 2012 constitution, confirmed by a majority of members of the FJP and Salafist parties, did not tackle any of the wide-ranging prerogatives of the military, but it enhanced the role of Islam in the State and limited women’s rights. It is important to note that Morsi’s range of action was also severely limited by a judiciary that was still closely related to the ancient regime, and that in the occasions where the Muslim Brotherhood offered participation to opposition parties, this was rejected in most cases. To counter these tendencies of the judiciary, Morsi decreed in November 2012 that his decisions would no longer be subject to judicial review. This decision, however, only exacerbated the fears of secular liberals (Masoud 2014).

Together with inept economic policy that was unable to address the pressing socioeconomic issues in Egypt, this uneasy state of Egyptian politics set the stage for the events of 2013 that ultimately led to the breakdown of the democratic process. Egyptians took to the street again to protest against what many saw as a president of the Muslim Brotherhood rather than the Egyptian president. The movement against Morsi, Tamarod, showcased again Egyptians’ resoluteness in protesting. While there was clearly popular outrage, many observers also point out the involvement of “deep state” security structures in the inception of the movement (Bassiouni 2016; Masoud 2014). Morsi failed to address the concerns of the population, and became continuously isolated from other political groups and parties. When the military intervened against his government, this move was supported by liberal secular forces, most notably the most internationally-known face of the Egyptian liberal movement, Mohamed El-Baradei (Masoud 2014).

In stark contrast to Tunisia, then, the political process and political society in Egypt ultimately were not coherent enough in their goals, common agreement on process and compromise, and in their commitment to building a civilian-led democratic state. While such a confrontational outcome of attempts at coalition building can in part be explained by the relatively more hegemonic position of the FJP in Egypt, such asymmetries do not inescapably prevent the formulation of “goal-oriented” cooperation, as was possible in Tunisia (Marzo 2020, 316). In Tunisia the Ennahda party, with its non-extremist Islamist conservatism and commitment to a civil state allowed for cross-ideological alliances with secular parties and civil society movements.

In Egypt, the FJP sought to maximize their political influence, cooperated with more radical Islamist currents in the writing of the constitution, and maneuvered itself into the political off-side for most other parties in Egyptian politics. Attempts to re-engage with other political parties and civil society fell on deaf ears or were not perceived as credible. This inability to agree on a common democratization agenda across the secular-Islamist divide, or this low performance of political society, ultimately meant that intervention for the military would not be costly. The military had maintained its rent-seeking apparatus and its constitutional prerogatives throughout the transition period, and its swiftness in its reaction suggests that there had also been a will to expand its political reach. Instead of facing popular opposition, the military was supported by large swaths of the political system and the public (Masoud 2014), which managed to oust an ill-fated president – at the price, however, of returning to a political system that can be characterized as a continuation of Mubarak-era politics.

6. Conclusion

Whereas Tunisia and Egypt were the poster-children of the Arab uprisings in 2011, both ousting their long-standing dictatorial regime, the fate of the two transition processes proved to diverge significantly. Whereas Egypt quickly returned to a similarly repressive regime, Tunisia was the democratic outlier of the Arab uprisings, being considered “free” by Freedom House from 2015-2020. While recent events in Tunisia cast doubt about the future of Tunisian democracy, a decade of democracy nonetheless represents a widely divergent outcome from Egypt’s short flirt with democratic rule. This paper has analyzed to what extent these outcomes correlate with different heritages of authoritarian robustness, based on the theory by Eva Bellin.

To apply this theory to the context of democratic transition (rather than autocratic breakdown), the paper reformulates the variable of “popular mobilization” to account for the effectiveness and coherence of the political system in the democratic period. And indeed, all three variables – strength and fiscal health of the coercive apparatus, maintenance of international security networks, and coherence of the democratic political project – indicate that the remnants of authoritarian robustness are crucial in explaining the success of democratization in Tunisia as well as the breakdown of the democratic process in Egypt.

This suggests that the success of democratization in the Arab world depends not on overthrowing authoritarian leaders alone, but also on overcoming authoritarian state structures. Where these structures are left in place, as they were in Egypt under the SCAF, the democratic process is delicate and prone to breakdown. This may inform the analysis of the ongoing transitions in the Arab world, such as in Algeria or Sudan, where post-revolutionary politics are also at least partially characterized by a power struggle between civilian and military government. The role of the coercive apparatus, historically the backbone of authoritarian robustness in the Arab world, is as central to maintaining democratic order as it has been in maintaining authoritarian order.

Such insights should, ultimately, also inform democracy support policies. While the recent breakdown of democracy in Tunisia occurred despite a relative absence of an authoritarian legacy, supporting democratic development in the Arab world more generally requires a recognition of the importance of reformulating the civil-military contract, making positive and negative conditionality credible, supporting the deepening and broadening of civil society, and providing incentives for cooperation for moderate Islamist parties. At the same time, the recent events in Tunisia also point to the importance of socioeconomic development for democratic consolidation. Further studies in the spirit of this paper could investigate the causes of economic stagnation, and identify in how far these are related to the particular economic heritage of long-standing authoritarian government.

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