Authoritarianism’s reemergence in North Africa and the Middle East: the cases of Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia

Abstract

In the past decade, some of the countries of the Middle East and North Africa experienced large street protests demanding political change, leading to different degrees of either democratisation and/or political liberalisation. However, such changes were short lived, as authoritarian regimes in the region have either reemerged or deepened their grip on power. In this paper, we want to perform a process tracing of the mechanisms that have produced a reassertion of autocracy in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, with the view to understand why political transformation has been stunted in these countries. We are interested in mapping out what triggers explain authoritarian reemergence and theorising on their relative importance for the outcome. Our findings indicate that the necessary causal mechanisms for authoritarian reemergence are threefold: personalist-style leadership (‘strongman’), clientelistic networks, and control over the domestic narratives. Our test for additional causal mechanisms yielded inconclusive or only case-specific evidence.