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REFORM AND TRANSITION
IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
Series Editor: Ioannis N. Grigoriadis

THE ARAB
UPRISINGS IN EGYPT,
JORDAN AND TUNISIA
Social, Political and
Economic Transformations

Andrea Teti,
Pamela Abbott and
Francesco Cavatorta
Reform and Transition in the Mediterranean

Series editor
Ioannis N. Grigoriadis
Bilkent University
Ankara, Turkey
The series of political and economic crises that befell many countries in the
Mediterranean region starting in 2009 has raised emphatically questions
of reform and transition. While the sovereign debt crisis of Southern
European states and the “Arab Spring” appear prima facie unrelated, some
common roots can be identified: low levels of social capital and trust, high
incidence of corruption, and poor institutional performance. This series
provides a venue for the comparative study of reform and transition in the
Mediterranean within and across the political, cultural, and religious
boundaries that crisscross the region. Defining the Mediterranean as the
region that encompasses the countries of Southern Europe, the Levant,
and North Africa, the series contributes to a better understanding of the
agents and the structures that have brought reform and transition to the
forefront. It invites (but is not limited to) interdisciplinary approaches that
draw on political science, history, sociology, economics, anthropology,
area studies, and cultural studies. Bringing together case studies of indi-
vidual countries with broader comparative analyses, the series provides a
home for timely and cutting-edge scholarship that addresses the structural
requirements of reform and transition; the interrelations between politics,
history and culture; and the strategic importance of the Mediterranean for
the EU, the USA, Russia, and emerging powers.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/series/14513
 Andrea Teti • Pamela Abbott
Francesco Cavatorta

The Arab Uprisings in

Egypt, Jordan and
Tunisia
Social, Political and Economic Transformations
Andrea Teti Pamela Abbott
University of Aberdeen University of Aberdeen
Aberdeen, United Kingdom Aberdeen, United Kingdom

Francesco Cavatorta
Laval University
Québec, Québec, Canada

Reform and Transition in the Mediterranean

ISBN 978-3-319-69043-8    ISBN 978-3-319-69044-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69044-5

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 Foreword

This valuable study adds a critical dimension usually missing from analyses
of the varying trajectories of the Arab Uprising, namely how citizen atti-
tudes help explain the Uprising, how variations in them matter for regime
trajectories, and how outcomes have, in turn, altered mass attitudes. The
study is based on surveys in Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan administered in
four years—2011 and 2013–2015—combined with a wealth of informa-
tion from pre-existing data bases, permitting the authors to make system-
atic comparisons across countries and time.
The work makes several important contributions to our understandings
of the Uprisings. First, the findings challenge the conventional narrative
that the Uprisings were essentially about democracy: if that had been the
overwhelming demand of the mobilised masses, why has been so little
democratisation? Did the agency of the people not matter compared to
elite interests and external constraints? The book’s findings help us get
beyond this dilemma, demonstrating that the main demand of the protes-
tors was not for purely procedural liberal democracy (competitive elec-
tions, political rights) and that majorities wanted, rather, substantive
democracy—socio-economic rights. Moreover, substantial numbers believed
their country was not ready for democracy or preferred an Islamist regime
or, when a trade-off between democracy and order was perceived, chose
order.
For protestors, the priorities were lack of economic opportunity and
unacceptable levels of corruption, and the protests against regimes were
for breaking the populist social contract under the widespread turn to
neo-liberalism and crony capitalism in the region. The study confirms the

v
vi FOREWORD

widespread impression that the activists driving regime change tended to

be educated youth but also that supporters were more likely to be those
with inadequate income (but not the very poorest) - that is, those who
had probably suffered the most from regimes’ policies and were most con-
scious of them.
The study also provides evidence on how citizen attitudes matter for
outcomes. First, variations in attitudes can be directly linked to differences
in regime trajectories: thus, opposition to the regime was overwhelming
in Tunisia and in Egypt, where presidents were overthrown, but not in
Jordan, were there was no regime change. In Tunisia alone was there high
support for political democracy: it is no accident that only in Tunisia was
there a successful democratic transition.
Second, while in the immediate aftermath of the Uprisings there were
high expectations of positive change, by 2014 disillusionment had set in as
governments continued with neo-liberal policies. A multitude of attitudi-
nal changes indicate political de-mobilisation: in 2014, only minorities
thought the Uprising had been positive for their country and most thought
the economic and security situation had deteriorated significantly com-
pared to 2009. Perceptions of economic decline were worse than objective
indicators showed. In parallel, expectations had drastically declined: peo-
ple now believed reform had to come gradually, not via further revolution.
Security had become a much more salient concern, to the point where the
formerly hated police were now valued, and regimes in Jordan and Egypt
enjoyed support for sparing their countries the violent chaos that had
enveloped neighbouring countries. These changes in attitudes much
reduced pressure on elites to deliver political reform and even re-­legitimised
authoritarian governance. Third, attitudes suggest Tunisia’s democratic
transition is in jeopardy. Its government, although the most democratic,
was not highly rated by citizens; political rights might have improved but
substantive democracy—social rights—had not, while Tunisia now faced a
terrorist threat non-existent before the Uprising.
This study offers a fascinating insight into why the Arab Uprising did
not become a democratic revolution.

International Relations and Middle East Politics Ray Hinnebusch

University of St Andrews,
St Andrews, Scotland
 Preface

This book analyses political, economic and social changes in Egypt, Jordan
and Tunisia since the 2010–2011 Uprisings against the backdrop of pre-­
Uprisings trajectories by integrating survey and non-survey data, both
quantitative and qualitative. In doing so, it shows that there is a need to
reflect on the conception of democracy at the heart of academic analysis
and to take seriously the challenge that collective preferences provide clues
to help address the limitations of existing analytical and policy toolkits. It
is necessary to reconsider the significance of socio-economic rights—as
well as juridical equality in civil and political rights—as non-negotiable
dimensions of a democratic society and of transitions towards it, but also
to re-evaluate the stability of authoritarian regimes in the region.

Acknowledgements
The Arab Transformations Project, Political and Social Transformations in
the Arab World, was funded under the European Commission’s FP7
Framework Grant agreement no: 320214. The Project was coordinated
by the University of Aberdeen (UK) and included: Dublin City University
(DCU), Dublin, Ireland; Análisis Sociológicos Económicos y Políticos
(ASEP), Madrid, Spain; Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale
(ISPI), Milan, Italy; Universität Graz (UNI GRAZ), Graz, Austria;
Societatea Pentru Methodologia Sondajelor Concluzia-Prim (Concluzia),
Chisinau, Moldova; Centre de Recherche en Économie Appliquée pour le
Développement (CREAD), Algiers, Algeria; Egyptian Centre for Public
Opinion Research (BASEERA), Cairo, Egypt; Independent Institute for

vii
viii PREFACE

Administration and Civil Society Studies (IIACSS), Amman, Jordan;

University of Jordan (JU), Amman, Jordan; MEDA Solutions (MEDAS),
Casablanca, Morocco; Association Forum Des Sciences Sociales Appliquées
(ASSF), Tunis, Tunisia.

Disclaimer
The authors alone remain responsible for the content of this book. It can-
not be taken as necessarily representing the views of the EU, the Court of
the University of Aberdeen or any of the project partners.

Aberdeen, UK Andrea Teti

 Contents

1 Introduction and Background   1

2 Understanding the Context: Hopes and Challenges

in 2011  27

3 Political Challenges: Expectations and Changes 2011–2014  55

4 Unmet Challenges and Frustrated Expectations: Economic

Security and Quality of Life 2011–2014  81

5 Employment Creation, Corruption and Gender Equality

2011–2014 103

6 Conclusions: Resilient Authoritarianism and Frustrated

Expectations 123

Index 141

ix
 Acronyms and Abbreviations

AB Arab Barometer
ADI Arab Democracy Index
AfB AfroBarometer
ATS Arab Transformations Survey
BTI Bertelsmann Transformation Index
CSOs Civil Society Organisations
FSI Fragile State Index
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GGI Gender Gap Index
HDI Human Development Index
IFIs International Financial Institutions
NEET Not in Employment Education or Training
NGOs Non-governmental Organisations
UN United Nations
WDIs World Development Indicators
WGIs Worldwide Governance Indicators
WGP World Gallup Poll

xi
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Percentage mentioning economic factors, corruption and/or

political rights as one of the two main reasons that sparked the
Uprisings42
Fig. 2.2 Main challenges facing the country in 2011 (%) 44
Fig. 3.1 The separation of religion and socio-political life (% disagreeing
with religious influence), 2011 and 2014 74
Fig. 4.1 MENA economic growth index: present economic performance
and future enabling conditions (scores out of 100) 89
Fig. 4.2 Concerns about security in 2014 (%) 94
Fig. 4.3 Economic situation of household and country good or very
good in 2009 and 2014 (%) 98
Fig. 5.1 Percentage who say they are satisfied or very satisfied with
government performance in 2014 109

xiii
 List of Tables

Table 1.1 Taxonomies and approaches to transformations 21

Table 2.1 Support for and participation in the uprisings by category, age
18 and over in 2011, % 37
Table 2.2 Confident that the 2011 Uprisings will succeed in achieving
political and economic transformation, % 50
Table 3.1 Agree that political and civil rights are guaranteed in 2011 and
2013, % 63
Table 3.2 Negative effects of democracy, % 69
Table 3.3 ‘Type of political regime suitable/very suitable for my
country’ in 2011 and 2014, % 69
Table 3.4 Two most important characteristics of democracy 71
Table 4.1 Major challenges facing country in 2011 and 2014, %
nominating as one of two 91
Table 5.1 Trust in institutions in 2011 and 2014: political, legal,
religious, civil society and the media, % 107
Table 5.2 Agreeing/strongly greeting on propositions relating to gender
equality in 2014, % 118

xv
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction and Background

Abstract The Arab Uprisings were events of rare intensity in Middle

Eastern history as mass, popular and largely non-violent revolts which
threatened and toppled supposedly stable autocracies. Branded them the
region’s ‘1989 moment’, when counter-revolution followed revolution,
artificial expectations gave way to equally misplaced disaffection, still fails
to recognise the Uprisings’ originality and diversity. Focusing on three
cases epitomising different post-Uprising trajectories—Tunisia, Jordan and
Egypt—this chapter explores how the Uprisings have been analysed.
Explanations for the Uprisings fall into three categories, over-emphasising
in turn chances for democratisation, cultural or material obstacles to
democracy, or the stability of ‘hybrid regimes’. The chapter contextualises
events leading to the Uprisings in each country and examines strengths and
weaknesses of the toolkit through which the Uprisings have been viewed.

Keywords Arab Uprisings • Modernisation • Political transformation •

Democratisation • Authoritarianism • Authoritarian resilience

© The Author(s) 2018 1

A. Teti et al., The Arab Uprisings in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia,
Reform and Transition in the Mediterranean,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69044-5_1
2 A. TETI ET AL.

1.1   Introduction
The Arab Uprisings represented a series of events of rare intensity in the
history of the Middle East, as mass, popular and largely non-violent revolts
took place, starting in December 2010 in Tunisia and reverberating
throughout the region. These protests threatened—and in four cases
resulted in the overthrow of—apparently stable autocratic regimes. The
nature and the extensive domestic, regional and international impact of
the Uprisings merit attention in and of themselves, but coming hard on
the heels of a global financial crisis and given the resonance of the Arab
Uprisings with protest movements beyond the region they appear all the
more significant. The relevance of the Uprisings is not just academic: the
Middle East is one of the most frequently conflictual regions in the world;
it is central to the global political economy as a source of hydrocarbons
and a global logistical nexus; it is a source of and transit point for migra-
tory flows towards Europe; and many of its autocracies have been sup-
ported as key allies by Western governments.
The Arab Uprisings in 2010/11 caught people, governments and many
academics by surprise (Gause 2011). Participants and observers both
within the region and beyond were surprised at the apparent ease with
which mass mobilisation wrong-footed supposedly resilient authoritarian
regimes, galvanising protesters, dismaying regime supporters, and leaving
Western governments’ policies in disarray. In Western capitals and media,
great hopes of swift democratisation were pinned on the Arab Uprisings
and they were quickly branded the Middle Eastern equivalent to the fall of
the Berlin Wall and the domino-like collapse of Soviet bloc dictatorships
in 1989 (Kaldor 2011). However, few significant democratic transforma-
tions have taken place, with only Tunisia formally qualifying as a democ-
racy by 2017 and substantive progress towards democracy often shaky
even there. Other countries in which Uprisings took place have experi-
enced the survival of authoritarian rule through repression (e.g. Bahrain),
counter-revolution (Egypt), civil war and the collapse of state structures
(Libya, Syria), or processes of reform and ‘façade democratisation’
(Morocco, Jordan) designed to maintain the substance of authoritarian
regimes untouched (Malmvig 2014). Both change and continuity have
characterised the post-Uprisings period (Hinnebusch ed. 2015; Rivetti
and Di Peri 2015), and in this book we outline and discuss what public
opinion survey data can tell us about the ways in which ordinary Arab citi-
zens perceive the socio-economic and political changes or lack thereof in
 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND 3

the wake of the Uprisings. We do so by looking at three cases that are

generally taken as epitomising the different trajectories of post-Uprising
countries—Tunisia, Jordan and Egypt—and for which relatively more
information is available.
In Jordan, protesters demonstrated for changes in governance but not
for the toppling of the king and there was no regime change. King
Abdullah II responded to protests with political and economic conces-
sions, but these left the political system substantively unchanged. In the
Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions between December 2010 and February
2011, relatively peaceful demonstrations led to the overthrow of authori-
tarian regimes and embryonic moves towards democracy. It should be
emphasised that although regime collapse was more pronounced in
Tunisia than in Egypt—where the armed forces took power—large parts
of the regime remained intact (Anderson 2011). While reforms are ongo-
ing in Tunisia (Marzouki 2015) and democracy remains a possibility in
principle, in Egypt ruling elites struggled against each other but resisted
any substantive change: the first freely elected post-Mubarak executive and
legislature ignored popular demands and were overthrown by a military
coup in 2013, with a new constitution agreed and a former army chief,
Abdul Fattah El-Sisi, elected President in 2014. While Islamist parties
were elected to power after the first post-Uprisings election in Tunisia and
Egypt, in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood ruled thanks to support from
the Salafist Nour alliance, while in Tunisia the more moderate Ennahda
party agreed to resign in favour of a national unity government in 2013
following mass demonstrations. Their experience in power had been con-
troversial due to their own failures and to the polarised environment
within which they operated.
In Tunisia, the rise of Salafism (Marks 2013) soon after the revolution
endangered the transition because Salafists wanted the implementation of
an ultra-conservative version of Islamic law, which forced Ennahda to dis-
tance itself from them. There were also protests in 2012 against moves by
the ‘Troika’, the Islamist-led government, to revise women’s rights in the
proposed new constitution. All this polarised Tunisian society, with large
sectors of the population holding on to the secular heritage of the previous
regime. Ultimately, Ennahda resigned and a technocratic government
replaced the ‘Troika’, leading to the consensual adoption of a new consti-
tution. The successful 2014 legislative and presidential elections placed
the country on the path of democratic consolidation. In Egypt, the Muslim
Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi was elected President in June 2012
4 A. TETI ET AL.

with a paper-thin majority, but by December a Brotherhood-Salafi alliance

in Parliament and in the Constitutional Assembly alienated non-Islamist
forces by driving through a new Constitution giving a significant role to
Islam, restricting freedom of speech, association and protest, and granting
significant concessions to an already powerful military. Although the new
Constitution was easily approved in a referendum, the Brotherhood-Salafi
alliance—content to ignore non-Islamists forces while cuddling up to the
military—was met with increasingly forceful opposition on the streets.
Popular demonstrations grew into widespread protest in June 2013, of
which the army took advantage to overthrow Morsi and impose military
rule. In December 2013 the Brotherhood was declared a terrorist group,
and in January 2015 the new Constitution banned religious political
parties.
Explanations for the Uprisings abound in the literature, including com-
parative work examining larger regional trends and individual case studies
where events and developments are examined in great detail. While all
these works focus on both structural factors and agency by identifying the
crucial actors involved in the Uprisings and their aftermath, there is very
little understanding of how the socio-economic and political transforma-
tions which the Uprisings generated—or lack thereof—influenced ordi-
nary citizens. This book focuses on two broad areas which responses to
public opinion surveys have identified as of central concern for the popula-
tions of countries in the Arab world: socio-economic cohesion/disloca-
tion and political voice/exclusion. Our findings suggest that these issues,
which drove people to demonstrate in 2010/11, are far from being
resolved and that populations continue to have little confidence in their
governments in general and in their ability to deliver on concrete issues
that matter to people, whether in the social, economic or political sphere.
On the contrary, people’s expectations have largely been ignored or have
gone unfulfilled on a range of issues from social security to still-endemic
unemployment; trust in governments has declined drastically; the econ-
omy remains the single largest challenge (and cause of migration); corrup-
tion remains pervasive, political reforms have been either cosmetic or
reversed (or, in Tunisia’s case, they remain shaky) and people have little
faith that things will change. Neither national governments nor their
international counterparts have been able or willing to address this poten-
tially toxic mix of factors. Indeed, international financial institutions (IFIs)
and Western governments (Hanieh 2015) quickly recast the Uprisings as
a struggle merely for formal democracy and the overthrow of autocracy,
 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND 5

while neglecting the profound socio-economic malaise that decades of

neo-liberal reforms had inflicted. This made it possible to stress the need
for an orderly transition to democracy while continuing the very economic
policies which ordinary citizens blamed for the increasingly precarious
lives they were leading.

1.2   Background
The Arab Uprisings began in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid as a protest
against the police’s arbitrary treatment of Muhammad Bouazizi, who
committed suicide by setting himself on fire outside the town’s police sta-
tion in desperation at police harassment. These protests quickly snow-
balled into increasingly broad-based nationwide demonstrations, despite
government attempts to repress them and prevent awareness of them
spreading. The protests moved from countryside towns towards the capi-
tal, thanks in part to social media’s ability to bypass discredited state-­
controlled national media. An increasingly desperate regime asked the
armed forces to fire upon peaceful protesters; the Army’s refusal effectively
forced President Ben Ali out of office. These events gripped not only
Tunisia but the entire Arab region and increasingly caught world atten-
tion. Opponents of autocracies across the Middle East watched the
Tunisian regime—infamous for the extensive reach of domestic security
services in its ‘soft’ autocracy—in disarray in the face of widespread peace-
ful popular mobilisation. In early 2011, protests then took place across the
region but most notably in Yemen, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya and Syria. The
most significant of these in terms of scale and regional impact were pro-
tests in Egypt starting on January 25 and sparking nationwide protests on
January 28. By February 12 Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had been
forced to step down.
Governments reacted quickly, and where Tunisian, Egyptian and
Yemeni regimes had trodden relatively carefully in the hope of survival,
the Libyan and Syrian regimes swiftly resorted to violent repression to
maintain their grip on power. Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) govern-
ments, particularly Saudi Arabia, propped up their regional counterparts,
helping Bahrain’s rulers quash protests, pressuring Western governments
not to support the Uprisings and even offering Jordan and Morocco GCC
membership. Qatar sought to ride the wave of Egypt’s protests, aligning
itself with the Muslim Brotherhood in an attempt to distance themselves
from Saudi regional hegemony. Meanwhile, Western governments were
6 A. TETI ET AL.

caught in a bind. While they had spent at least two decades espousing a
rhetoric supportive of democracy and human rights as ‘fundamental val-
ues’, they had also wedded themselves to autocratic regimes on ‘prag-
matic’ grounds, espousing those regimes’ narratives that democratisation
should be a ‘gradual’ transition because their citizens were unable to
understand—never mind practise—democracy.
Initially protesters won significant victories. Tunisian President Ben Ali
resigned on January 14, Egyptian President Mubarak stepped down on
February 11 and protests flared in Libya and Bahrain on February 14 and
Syria on the 15th, with smaller protests in Iraq (albeit these were less
related to the Arab Uprisings themselves and more to ongoing strife) and
in Morocco, Mauritania and Jordan. For all the assumed resilience of these
authoritarian regimes, conventional instruments of repression and co-­
option appeared ineffective, betraying both the regimes’ lack of support
domestically and the precarious nature of the altar of stability upon which
Western allies had sacrificed the pursuit of democracy.
By mid-2011, Tunisia and Egypt appeared to be struggling for transi-
tions away from authoritarianism, Libya and Syria had descended into
conflict, Bahrain’s protests had been bloodily repressed with the support
of Saudi forces, Moroccan and Jordanian monarchies had promised
reforms without significant reduction of the monarchs’ power, and Saudi
Arabia and its Gulf allies were shoring up authoritarian regimes through
massive increases in public spending. Algeria alone appeared not to have
experienced significant protests. By late 2011, Syria and Yemen were
mired in conflict, the Libyan conflict had been brought to an apparent end
with Gaddafi’s assassination and foreign intervention, with only renewed
protests stalling—however temporarily—Egypt’s counter-revolution.
Many observers began to describe events either as a conflict-ridden ‘Arab
Winter’ or as an ‘Islamist Winter’, where Islamist parties hijacked popular
uprisings translating them into electoral advantage, as in Tunisia and
Egypt, and where Islamist groups with at best dubious ‘revolutionary cre-
dentials’ suppressed embryonic democracy.
By mid-2014, when the main public opinion survey on which we draw
in this book was conducted, the dreams of a democratic and peaceful tran-
sition of the region away from authoritarianism and conflict had ended.
The civil war continued to rage in Syria and Libya, Iraq was being invaded
by the so-called Islamic State, and Egypt’s military coup had overthrown
the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood government. While much
has been written about the reasons behind the ‘failure’ of the Arab
 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND 7

Uprisings, the descent into civil unrest and retrenched authoritarian rule,
very little attention has been paid to how ordinary citizens have reacted to
all of this. The case studies selected for this book attempt to provide a first
portrait of what public opinion survey data can tell us about how individu-
als have contended with the events described above and the influence the
latter had on values and beliefs. It is too early to pronounce a definitive
judgement on the legacy of the Arab Uprisings, but understanding where
ordinary citizens stand on a number of significant socio-economic and
political issues can be beneficial in appraising recent regional develop-
ments and where they might lead next.

1.3   Country Context

1.3.1  
Egypt
Egypt is one of the most strategically and culturally significant countries of
the Arab world; events here reverberate well beyond the region. The fall
of Mubarak and its aftermath are no exception. Egypt’s political and insti-
tutional landscape has changed several times during the post-Mubarak
period and remains ill-defined. Although the Muslim Brotherhood had
initially opposed the Uprisings, in 2012 free elections returned a
Brotherhood-led government with Mohammed Morsi as President, and
the Brotherhood’s alliance with the Salafist Nour party provided a
Parliamentary majority bypassing political forces which had supported the
revolution. The Brotherhood also attempted to pacify the military with
constitutional protection of its political influence and its vast economic
empire. However, following anti-government protests in 2013 the mili-
tary ousted Morsi, imposed military rule and eventually dissolved parlia-
ment. The May 2014 Presidential elections sanctioned the Army’s renewed
grip on power with the election of El-Sisi as President, followed by elec-
tions for the House of Representatives in 2015. In a post-coup constitu-
tion approved by popular referendum in 2014, the Army obtained
strengthened constitutional guarantees that their independence would
remain unchecked by civilian oversight, including their vast budget.
Although the Constitution guarantees basic political and civil rights, Egypt
remains an authoritarian state, probably even more so than at any time
under Mubarak (Shenker 2017). The government has not only outlawed
the Muslim Brotherhood; it also cracked down on press freedom, non-­
Islamist opposition activism and youth protests (Holmes 2017). On the
8 A. TETI ET AL.

Systemic Peace Polity IV Index for 2015, which measures minimalist lib-
eral democratisation, it is classified as an anocracy. Egypt’s regime remains
brittle; its degree of fragility having worsened slightly since 2007 (Fund
for Peace 2016) and the 2016 Fragile States Index (FSI) placing it on
alert.
The space for independent civil society in Egypt is heavily constrained
and the advocacy work of civil society organisations (CSOs) is impeded
(CIVICUS 2017; Teti et al. 2014). Despite its prominent role in the
uprising and its mobilisations against neo-liberal economics in the preced-
ing decade (Beinin 2016), the independent labour movement remains
weak and divided, and successive governments have attempted to stifle its
voice by curtailing civil rights and by police harassment as well as through
co-option and the use of nationalist propaganda. Religious leaders and
Islamist activists, however, play an important role in politics and the legiti-
mation of the regime. The Muslim Brotherhood’s political stance is to
‘Islamise’ society, and since its removal from office the Salafist movement,
which became politically engaged following the 2011 Uprisings and
formed the Nour Party, has attempted to position itself as the alternative
to the Brotherhood. The Azhar remains an important tool in the Egyptian
state’s strategies for popular legitimisation, with its scholars (ulaama)
scrutinising draft legislation to advise if it is in accordance with Islamic law.
The Coptic Church also remains close to the regime, as they have been to
previous authoritarian governments.
The weakness of Egypt’s social welfare provision is such that charitable
organisations—which are primarily Islamic, with some important Coptic
organisations—play an essential role in Egyptian society, without which a
considerable percentage of the population would probably find life impos-
sible. Subsequent governments’ erosion of welfare provision has made
charities crucial in Egyptian politics and a vital element in the legitimisa-
tion of Islamist political ideology and of specific political actors such as the
Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi Da’wa (Al-Arian 2014).
Egypt remains a rentier regime, with its economy heavily dependent on
petroleum and gas, agriculture, tourism and remittances from migrant
workers, mainly in Gulf countries. Rapid population growth and dwin-
dling supplies of arable land are straining the country’s resources and
economy, while government has done little to address these problems.
The government controls vast financial resources and is the country’s larg-
est employer, and although it is difficult to estimate its true economic
might, the military owns business enterprises that are in almost every
 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND 9

s­ ector and produce an extremely wide range of services and goods (Hanieh
2013; Marshall 2015). Economic growth has been sluggish since 2011
and the economy has been hit hard by the decline in oil prices, given
Egypt’s dependency on the Gulf States for development assistance, invest-
ment and employment for migrant workers (World Bank 2015). Tourism
revenues have been hit by the political instability and the threat of terror-
ism. Official unemployment has increased rapidly since 2010 and Egypt,
along with other MENA countries, has the highest youth unemployment
rates in the world. The decision to float the Egyptian pound and cut sub-
sidies has produced double-digit inflation. Post-2011 governments have
provided no solution to Egypt’s economic woes save the kinds of policies
that contributed to triggering the 2011 uprising. Unemployment, under-
employment, the gap between expectations and the reality of the labour
market, income and wealth polarisation and patronage-generated waste
on a massive scale are crucial economic issues both for sustainable levels of
growth and for long-term political stabilisation.

1.3.2  Jordan
Jordan is also strategically important, located as it is at the crossroads of
Asia, Africa and Europe. Its relevance has increased following the Arab
Uprisings, emerging as a key battleground between those who would like
to see a more democratic region, and those who believe sacrificing democ-
ratisation is necessary to obtain economic stability and security (Helfont
and Helfont 2012). While Jordan witnessed significant protests during the
Arab Uprisings, demonstrations never called for the departure of King
Abdallah II, allowing the monarchy room to manoeuvre its way out of the
crisis by implementing a number of cosmetic reforms aimed at assuaging
dissent.
Domestically there is a continuing schism and socio-economic divide
between the TransJordanians—the descendants of the inhabitants of the
lands which form modern-day Jordan—and the Palestinian-Jordanians
who are the descendants of refugees from Israel and the Occupied
Territories who fled after the establishment of Israel in 1948–1949. The
regime ‘buys’ legitimacy from its TransJordanian supporters by providing
them with employment in state bureaucracy or in the military, which are
oversized compared to the country’s needs. Current electoral law ensures
that TransJordanians, who live mainly in rural areas, are overrepresented
in parliament, while urban areas that account for two-thirds of the
10 A. TETI ET AL.

­ opulation elect less than a third of deputies. Attempts to reform the elec-
p
toral law generate much controversy (Kao 2012). The ongoing conflicts in
Syria and Iraq have had a negative impact on Jordan’s economy and are a
potential threat to stability and security, Jordan being one of the largest
hosts of refugees in the world, with the influx of refugees numbering 1.3
million and making up 17% of the total population (authors’ own calcula-
tions from Census tables). Domestically, this has resulted in security and
stability being prioritised over democratisation and human rights.
The king is the head of state, holds executive powers and is immune
from all liability and responsibility. Security forces have a significant role in
stabilising the regime and being involved in strategic and tactical deci-
sions. The judiciary is subject to executive influence through the Ministry
of Justice and the Judiciary Council, most of whose members are appointed
by the king. Political parties are weak, with low membership, and suffer
from the delegitimising strategies of the regime (Martínez 2016).
Although the Constitution guarantees basic political and civil rights,
Jordan remains an authoritarian and illiberal state: on the Polity IV Index
2015 it is classified as an autocracy, while on the Fragile States Index it has
an elevated warning and its degree of fragility worsened between 2007
and 2016.
The labour movement and CSOs are generally weak, space for them is
heavily constrained and their advocacy work is regularly impeded
(CIVICUS 2017). Labour unions have few members and poor internal
democracy. Civil society organisations (CSOs) and international non-­
governmental organisations (NGOs) tend to focus on service delivery
rather than tackling overtly political issues (Ferguson 2017). The various
Hirak (movements) formed during the 2011 Uprisings made demands
ranging from regime change (a minority) to economic reforms aimed at
reversing the government’s neo-liberal policies. However, these move-
ments have become less active as the space for political activism has become
more restricted and mainly limited to the web. The Jordanian regime has
fostered an official Islam that supports regime dominance, which enables
it to limit opposition through non-violent conflict resolution (Robbins
and Rubin 2013). The Muslim Brotherhood has significant influence over
its supporters, who live mainly in urban areas. Lower-level religious schol-
ars who issue the Islamic rules, interpret religious regulations and lead
prayers in the Mosques play an important role in influencing citizens. In
addition, there is a small but growing Salafi constituency (Wagemakers
2016).
 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND 11

Ongoing conflicts in Syria and Iraq have seriously disrupted economic

activity. Public debt has risen, there are persistent budget deficits and gov-
ernment has failed to tackle unemployment. Jordan has been in recession
since 2011 and unemployment has remained worryingly high—especially
youth unemployment, which has increased amongst young women (World
Development Indicators [WDIs]). For structural reasons such as lack of
natural resources and cultivable land the Jordanian economy has been tra-
ditionally poor and characterised by a heavy dependence on international
aid—5.9% of GDP in 2016—and remittances, which constitute 14.3% of
GDP (WDIs). The economy is heavily dependent on the service sector
and especially touristic revenues, which have not been noticeably affected
despite post-2011 regional instability.

1.3.3  Tunisia
Tunisia has never been seen as a central actor in the politics of the Arab
world because of its size, geographical marginality, absence of significant
hydrocarbon resources and relative social and political stability following
independence from France in 1956. It has, however, led the region in
implementing reforms and influencing political and economic develop-
ments across the region, and for this reason the country has been of con-
siderable importance (Anderson 2011; Sfeir 2006).
There are three main cleavages in Tunisian politics: religious-secular,
socio-economic and regional. The religious-secular cleavage has had a
profound impact on post-2010 politics, with a largely urban, wealthier
and Francophone elite arguing for a secular state, while semi-rural poorer
groups argue that religion should be central to policy-making, especially
for criminal and personal status law. Ideological conflict was intense dur-
ing the transition, but it ultimately ended in a democratic compromise
whereby the state remains secular and refrains from interfering with reli-
gion and religiosity (Merone 2014). Socio-economic cleavages are along
lines of class and especially gender. While Tunisian women have enjoyed
greater personal status rights than their counterparts across the Arab
world, conservative and traditional views about the role of women in soci-
ety persist and are quite widespread, most notably in rural areas (Gray
2012; Kolman 2017). Class cleavages are also significant, although at the
time of the Uprisings there was a coincidence of interests between a mid-
dle class that felt betrayed by the corruption of the Ben Ali regime and a
working class that had never had much of a stake in the system (Beinin,
12 A. TETI ET AL.

2015). After the revolution this cleavage reappeared, with economic issues
becoming central to political arguments and social unrest a daily occur-
rence in one part or another of the country. The regional cleavage is
between a more prosperous coastal region and the poorer interior. Since
independence, Tunisians in the south and the interior have felt margin-
alised politically, economically and socially. Encouraging social and eco-
nomic development in the south and the interior is one of the most
important challenges that Tunis faces.
Tunisia’s political and institutional landscape has changed dramatically
since 2011. Political parties agreed quite quickly that democratic politics
was the only way out of the quagmire of authoritarianism. Ordinary
Tunisians are free to participate in politics, form and join political parties,
be active in civil society and vote in free and fair elections for all levels of
power, and their individual rights are enshrined in a new constitution
approved in 2014. There remain issues and areas for improvement such as
policing, access to media and genuine gender equality, but in six years the
country has accomplished a remarkable feat of democratisation. On the
Polity IV Index Tunisia is classified as a democracy. On the Fragile States
Index—which is a broader measure of stability taking account of the cohe-
sion, political, economic and social situation—it is rated as having an ele-
vated risk, but unlike Egypt and Jordan it has been improving since 2012.
Most political parties have pre-Uprisings roots either directly or indirectly
but have managed through consensual politics to become protagonists of
the transition to democracy. The trade union movement, a crucial figure in
the Tunisian Uprising, has sought to influence economic policy-­making so
as to improve economic conditions for ordinary people. It has stayed above
the political fray and contributed to working out a deal between political
parties to put the transition back on track when it hit problems in 2013, for
which it won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015. Civil Society organisations
have become active in Tunisia in all sectors of society and they contribute
both to the pluralism of Tunisian associational life and to policy-making now
that genuine channels of communication have been opened with the politi-
cal system and the political parties. However, despite the considerable results
that the transition has achieved, there is a distinct lack of enthusiasm and
participation on the part of ordinary citizens, which might ultimately under-
mine a fragile political system. Although the Constitution guarantees politi-
cal and civil rights, CIVICUS ranks the space for civil society organisations
(association, peaceful assembly and expression) as obstructed—that is, heav-
ily contested by power-holders imposing constraints on fundamental civic
freedoms. While rights are protected in the Constitution, archaic laws, a
 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND 13

resurgent security sector and the use of force undermine them in practice.
This situation has been exacerbated by restrictions on associational life, with
a State of Emergency in force since 2015 because of concerns about terrorist
attacks that have targeted foreign tourists as well as local people. As Boukhars
(2017) puts it, ‘the country is still caught in a turbulent grey zone where
strong authoritarian tendencies threaten to pull down the country’s tortu-
ous march towards democracy’ (p. 1).
The economic situation has not improved, and while political squab-
bling and the volatility of the transition have played a role in this, the
economy’s structural problems have remained almost intact. IFIs and
development partners still put pressure on Tunisia to follow the neo-­liberal
economic policies that failed to deliver in the 2000s, giving the executive
little room to manoeuvre. Tunisia went into recession in 2011 but then
recovered and experienced modest growth (2%–3% a year) before going
into recession again in 2016. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has
declined since 2011 and tourism revenues, on which Tunisia relies heavily
for foreign currency, have nearly halved. Weak economic performance is
preventing the country from dealing with its main problems, including
unemployment, which remains high despite significant hiring in the public
sector (African Development Bank 2017). Furthermore, regional dispari-
ties persist because of meagre government investment and inefficient local
authorities in the interior and southern parts of the country. Activity is
concentrated in the expanding urban areas on the coast and the gap
between these and the interior is widening.

1.4   The Challenges of the Arab Uprisings

for Analysis and Policy

The ways in which the Uprisings began and developed in the three coun-
tries pose challenges as to how the politics of the Arab world has been
understood, particularly when it comes to the debate between the para-
digms of authoritarian resilience and democratisation. In fact, the out-
come of the Uprisings so far does not fully substantiate either paradigm
(Bellin 2012; Pace and Cavatorta 2012; Teti and Gervasio 2011; Valbjorn
2015). On the one hand, authoritarian resilience models, particularly
when based on culturalist explanations about the role of Islam or Arab
political culture, cannot explain the fall of some regimes and the strong
challenges to others: regime resilience was clearly not as strong and perva-
sive as such models portrayed it as being. On the other hand, the enthusi-
astically revived democratisation paradigm does not fare much better in
14 A. TETI ET AL.

explaining the revolts or the effectiveness of post-Uprisings authoritarian

retrenchment, as only Tunisia managed to democratise.
This section begins with an outline of the analytical and political con-
texts and problems within which the toolkit offered by existing scholarship
was forged, paying particular attention to debates over and limitations in
how democracy, authoritarianism and political systemic transformations
leading towards one and away from the other are conceived. It then out-
lines approaches found in the literature to the question of democratic
transitions (or lack thereof) both in general and in the Middle East specifi-
cally. It identifies the principal domains/categories these approaches
inhabit and the variables they use to explore the transformation of political
systems.

1.4.1  
Challenges for the Democratisation Toolkit
By the middle of the 1990s, orthodox approaches to political transforma-
tions towards democracy came to be dominated by so-called transitology,
not least thanks to the apparent success of democratisation in Central and
Eastern European countries (CEEC) and Latin America. ‘Transitologists’
explained successful democratisation by emphasising the importance of
elements—such as competitive, free and fair elections and the role of civil
society in constraining the authoritarian impulses of the state—which per-
tain to (liberal) democracy’s procedural and formal aspects. In addition,
they emphasised ‘market democratisation’—namely that the freedom and
openness which liberal democratic structures require are provided by
market-­oriented economies.
Most studies of political transformations, then, understand democracy
as the confluence of a recognisably limited number of necessary factors.
These factors—presented as prerequisites of democracy—are generally
assumed to be:

1. a sufficient level of stateness (e.g. guaranteeing the rule of Law, monop-

oly of the legitimate use of force);
2. polyarchy (universal suffrage, free and fair elections, free speech, free-
dom of association, free media, responsible and accountable govern-
ments and politicians); and
3. a set of minimal material rights and conditions in the political, social
and economic ‘spheres’ required for civil and political rights provided
in polyarchy to be effectively exercised.
 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND 15

This approach assumes first and foremost that the fundamental precon-
dition for democratisation or any political system is a state (Linz and
Stepan 1996a), as without the basic ability to enforce the rule of law—
which requires institutional capability—democracy is not possible. A basic
requirement in this respect is the state’s monopoly over the legitimate use
of force, with the absence of exceptions or jurisdictional enclaves or privi-
leges for particular actors (e.g. the military). Thus, state capacity-building
for legal enforcement is both a causal and political requisite for democra-
tisation. The use of force has often been emphasised over legitimacy,
implicitly reinforcing the ontological priority of security over other aspects
of a socio-economic-political compact. However, enforcing the rule of law
also requires popular consent; legitimacy is the lynchpin of social con-
tracts, and without it disintegrative forces would undermine the rule of
law and eventually the polity itself. In turn, such consent requires (demo-
cratic) governments to deliver on promises made to their citizens. In this
sense, the question of legitimacy draws attention back to the conditions of
social, economic, and political inclusion and responsiveness.
Secondly, the possibility of regular elections and replacing leaderships
in ‘free and fair’ elections is taken as the defining characteristic of democ-
racy (understood as polyarchy), with only ‘first generation’ human rights—
civil and political liberties—seen as necessary to support such a dynamic
(Dahl 1973).
Thirdly, most orthodox approaches consider other possible characteris-
tics of democracy ‘less essential’, or ‘extensions’ of democracy present in
‘more advanced and complete’ democracies. In particular, elements of
social democracy such as the ‘welfare state’ have been argued to be not
contributions to but results of democratisation and to have negative unin-
tended consequences, including demobilised, politically disengaged, and/
or economically ‘parasitic’ citizens (Huntington 1968; O’Donnell and
Schmitter 1986). Others have recognised that the effective exercise of civil
and political rights necessary for a functioning democracy—even when
understood merely as polyarchy—requires a number of socio-economic
conditions to be present, particularly a reduction of inequalities and the
provision of basic services such as education (Dahl 1989; Hyland 1996).
These last issues raise the question of the relation between the political
and economic conditions for democracy. Orthodox approaches view the
state’s role in the economy as minimal but central, as a regulator of mar-
kets, guarantor and arbiter of contracts and provider of essential services.
For everything else—including socio-economic rights, social justice, and
16 A. TETI ET AL.

so on—the combination of political liberalism (polyarchy) and economic

liberalism (‘free markets’) supposedly affords citizens all the decision-­
making levers necessary to allocate rights and resources as they see fit.
Civil society is important but complementary to this process: a vibrant civil
society and a political society (political parties) independent from the state
are considered essential, but it is political society’s role to translate demands
emerging from civil society into priorities for and policies of the state.
There are several important criticisms of this approach. Some focus on
specific aspects which are misconstrued or entirely absent. For example,
one factor which is as important in real transformations as it is infrequently
mentioned in literature is the absence of significant foreign interference
(Dahl 1989; Whitehead 1986).
Other criticisms focus on limitations of the framework itself. For exam-
ple, the tripartite distinction between economic, civil and political spheres
which underpins orthodox approaches is predicated on an assumed differ-
ence in form and nominal function. However, civil society comprises
groups of various kinds which act politically, albeit often on single issues,
pressing on political society as well as on the state directly, while political
society is made of parties which have ‘interest aggregation functions’
which social movements can also take on, albeit without the same formal
characteristics as either CSOs or parties (Teti 2015). In addition, both civil
society and political society depend on—and reflect—specific ways in
which societies organise their economies. The notion that these three
‘spheres’ constitute ontologically distinct or causally separable objects is
itself questionable (Mitchell 1991; Teti 2012). This should raise questions
about the conception of democracy as a balance of such separate but com-
plementary spheres.
In the event, empirical development has forced questions about ortho-
dox approaches to democratisation (Carothers 2002). By the end of the
1990s, a ‘reverse wave’ of authoritarianism undermined democratisation’s
supposed ‘third wave’, with several post-Soviet states in the Caucasus and
CEEC being downgraded, for example, by Freedom House to ‘not free’,
while ‘hybrid regimes’ (‘façade democracies’ or ‘democracies with adjec-
tives’) emerged in the Middle East, and post-9/11 ‘securitisation’ eroded
democracy among even supposedly established liberal democracies. These
three trends, which have thus far been considered separately, ought to
raise questions both about the political future of democracy and about the
analytical categories and concepts underpinning its analysis. The ensuing
debate has yet to overcome important analytical and political obstacles,
 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND 17

amongst which is the narrowness in the conception of democracy employed

in both scholarly work and policy practice (Teti and Abbott 2017). Indeed,
one of this volume’s broader aims is precisely to contribute to that debate.
With this double objective in mind, several tendencies stand out in ortho-
dox scholarship:

• Teleology: a tendency to think of (marketised) Western liberal democ-

racy as the political form which transformations away from autocracy
tend towards (e.g. Fukuyama 1989; cf. O’Donnell 1996a, b).
• Determinism: early studies of democratisation often assumed that as
societies modernise and move from pre-industrial to industrial econ-
omies, there would be an inevitable (linear) path from autocracy to
democracy. However, both logically and empirically, there is nothing
causally necessary about any such transformations towards any pre-
determined outcome. On the contrary, such transformations are
always contested, open-ended and precarious, and they can be stalled
or even reversed (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986; Teti 2012).
• Polarity: while eventually scholars accepted that political transforma-
tions away from authoritarianism were not necessarily linear or deter-
ministic and allowed for temporary reversals and multiple pathways,
the taxonomy upon which orthodox scholarship relies has remained
fundamentally ‘polar’, defined by two prescribed end points—totali-
tarianism and (liberal) democracy—within which analysis of transi-
tions take place (Teti 2012). A prescribed set of preconditions are set
down as necessary for democratisation, with a normative preference
for liberal democracy over and above all other political systems in the
form of a normative priority awarded to ‘polyarchical’ characteristics
supposedly representing democracy’s ‘core’, minimum and causally
prior prerequisites.
• Taxonomy: Complementary to polarity is the taxonomical grid which
maps out the possible transformations of states and through which
processes of political transformations are viewed. It is shaped by a set
of normative assumptions, particularly in relation to a causal and
normative hierarchy between aspects of democracy. These normative
hierarchies are apparent in the disposition of types and subtypes of
political systems according to an ‘accretive layering’ reflecting the
assumption that certain conditions—specifically procedural aspects
of democracy—are both necessary and causally prior to others (Linz
and Stepan 1996b). The conditions for democracy and transitions
18 A. TETI ET AL.

towards it are summed up in five dimensions: Stateness, Elections,

Civil and Political Society, Economic Society, and Rule of Law and
Monopoly of the Legitimate Use of Force.

In brief, even a cursory outline such as is offered above suggests that

there are potential pitfalls in orthodox approaches to the study of transfor-
mations towards democracy both in the explicit theoretical focus of these
approaches and in the ‘meta-theoretical’ normative assumptions on which
they rely. Central to both is a specific conception of liberal democracy as
twinned mechanisms of political and economic choice, the effect of which
is to prioritise (a specific set of) civil and political rights over socio-­
economic rights and social inclusion (Carothers 2002; Linz and Stepan
1996b; Teti 2012, 2015). The frameworks for scholarly analysis and policy
formulation which result from such conceptions are inevitably selective,
closing off potential alternatives. These specificities result in a ‘fixed menu’
from which scholars and also policy-makers debate and select priorities—
for instance, focusing on civil and political rights over social and economic
ones, or focusing on capacity-building of states or of civil society (Huber
2013).
While this volume is not the place in which to elaborate an entirely dif-
ferent approach to political transformations, it will endeavour to keep the
limitations of existing frameworks in mind and point to the possibility of
alternative accounts where possible. To do this, the following section dis-
cusses both mainstream approaches and two possible alternatives, while
the rest of the volume critically examines survey data to probe orthodox
accounts and, where necessary, to look beyond them.

1.4.2  Models of Political Transformation

Political Science and Sociology approach the question of political transfor-
mations largely through a range of models rooted in the logic of Rostow’s
modernisation theory. Whether through modified versions of that
approach (Ingelhart, Welzel, Huntington) or through its counterparts in
studies of Democratisation and ‘Authoritarian Resilience’, these approaches
share a set of assumptions and analytical strategies. Democracy and
Authoritarianism are conceptualised as polar opposites, with the path
between them traced by a specific set of necessary transformations, albeit
reversible and not necessarily always in the same sequence. This also
explains the existence of three main interrelated types of models:
 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND 19

• Democratic Transition (DT): identifies necessary (if not sufficient)

conditions for a transition to take place from authoritarian rule to
democracy, requiring at minimum the combination of a split in
authoritarian elites and a degree of pressure from populations
(mobilisation). Democratic transitions usually emerge from crises
(economic recessions, massive human rights abuses, defeat in foreign
wars) that hit the authoritarian system.
• Hybrid Regimes (HR): variously referred to as ‘hybrid regimes’,
‘façade democracies’, ‘democracy with adjectives’ and so on, this
approach hypothesises the possibility and emergence of regimes that
present themselves as democratic but are de facto autocracies, in which
informal practices of rule render formal democratic institutions and
procedures empty of substance. Thus, while there might be elected
and nominally accountable institutions, the real wielders of power are
unaccountable and sometimes unelected, operating through informal
channels and placing their priorities above society’s.
• Authoritarian Resilience (AR): identifies blockages making demo-
cratic transitions impossible either in principle or in practice. As such,
AR models present variables and causal processes that are the inverse
of those found in DT. As for DT models, necessary conditions for
AR include institutional, material and cultural conditions ranging
from economic factors such as rentierism to cultural ones such as
orientalism or political culture and from undemocratic and illiberal
agents to international sanctioning of authoritarian practices.

Some of the notable problems of this limited ‘menu’ include under-

standing the complex possibilities of political transformation along a single
‘axis’ linking authoritarianism to (liberal) democracy, the desirability of
more than just liberal versions of democracy, or the blindness to transfor-
mations and possibilities within authoritarian systems. To address these
problems, two additional types of authoritarian categories should be
considered:

• Cyclical Authoritarianism (CA): points to the superficiality and

reversibility of ‘openings’ by autocracies, suggesting that regimes
adopt a strategy alternating political and economic concessions and
clampdowns. CA regimes fluctuate adaptively between reversible
formal configurations while not fundamentally undermining autoc-
racy (Hinnebausch 2006).
20 A. TETI ET AL.

• Brittle Authoritarianism (BA): Authoritarian regimes may generate

broad social consensus (e.g. Nasser’s Egypt) allowing them the vio-
lent repression of dissent. However, the use of violence is not in itself
an indication of consensus. Indeed, in repressing dissent autocracies
may appear stable but remain vulnerable if they are unwilling or
unable to absorb, co-opt or respond to the dissent (Ayubi 1995; Teti
and Gervasio 2011). Such regimes rely on both extra-legal violence
and the legalisation of violence (harassment, torture, detention with-
out trial) and find concessions difficult.

Table 1.1 sets out the taxonomy underpinning the approaches to trans-
formations, based on a tripartite distinction between political, social and
economic spheres. We use this as a framework for analysing the transfor-
mation in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia using macro- and microdata but
focusing crucially on the perceptions of ordinary citizens. This is the
dimension that has often been missing in analyses of the Arab uprisings,
their roots and their consequences.

1.5   Methodology
This book draws on research carried out as part of the EU-funded Arab
Transformations Project. The research was cross-national and comparative
and drew on existing macrodata, indexes and public opinion survey data
as well as carrying out a further public opinion survey in six Arab countries
in mid- to late 2014 (full details of the research methods can be found in
Abbott et al. 2017). The project’s overarching aim was to describe, explain
and understand the root causes and evolution of and the outlook for the
Arab Uprisings by shedding light on what drives change, how change hap-
pens and where (global and regional) transformations lead, with particular
attention to whether transformations might lead to democracy or whether
they might result in a reinforcement of authoritarianism.
We use a comparative approach to examine the post-Uprisings trajecto-
ries of Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia, focusing mainly on changes in public
opinion. This makes it possible to detect both significant similarities across
apparently diverse cases and distinctive features of each case, allowing
more general and less case-specific explanations. A comparative approach
is fundamental to understand the similarities and differences between
countries’ background conditions before the Uprisings, between the way
protests played out and regimes adapted to them, and between the nature,
 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND 21

Table 1.1 Taxonomies and approaches to transformations

Transition Hybrid Authoritarian Brittle Cyclical
to democracy regimes resilience authoritarianism authoritarianism

Political system
Democracy Elections, change of governments,
Formal Parties (barriers to formation), parliaments
political arena
Checks and Judicial independence
balances
Rule of law (In)dependence of judiciary, equality before the law, no exceptions/
privileges
Political Authoritarian, democratic, liberal, secular, emancipatory
attitudes
Gov’t Law and order, basic services (education, health, welfare)
performance
Human rights Civil and political: granted/not fully granted/denied
Security Personal, regional, national
Corruption Government, business, financial, petty corruption, influence
International Permissive/oppositional
context
Economic system
Economic Granted/not fully granted/denied
rights
Economic Living conditions, ‘development’/‘modernisation’, economic rights
development satisfaction, material conditions, political and economic reforms/
repression
Political Equality/inequality, income/wealth polarisation, social mobility,
economy economic rights, reforms, Patrimoniality, Clientelism, Rentierism,
corporatism, crony capitalism.
International Levels of dependency (economic, geopolitical)
context
Social system
Social and Granted/not fully granted/denied
cultural rights
Civil society Absence/presence, (in)dependence/co-optation, (de)politicisation
Legitimacy Culture/semiotic system: identity (religion, ethnicity, etc.) and politics
Cultural (anti-)essentialism, but importance of previous experiences
Role of local ‘political culture’
Elites’ symbolic manipulation/symbolic capital
22 A. TETI ET AL.

trajectories and results of post-Uprisings transformation processes in the

countries. To do this, we draw on data from the Arab Transformations
Survey (ATS), Arab Barometer (AB), AfroBarometer (AfB) [only Egypt
and Tunisia], World Values Survey 6 (WVS) and Gallup World Poll (GWP)
as well as non-survey macrodata such as the World Development Indicators
(WDIs) and Indexes measuring democratisation and governance. (For
details of the range of variables, macrodata and indexes used in the project
see Lomazzi et al. 2017.) Unless otherwise indicated, to make the text
more readable, we are drawing on ABII when discussing public opinion in
2011, ABIII when discussing 2013 and ATS when discussing 2014, and
macroindicators are from the WDIs.
While surveys undoubtedly have their limitations, they provide a broad
picture of a society’s public opinion and permit the generalisation of the
findings from the survey to the population of each country as a whole with
a specified degree of precision. They therefore provide an important
insight into the political and social attitudes of adults in the three coun-
tries in the aftermath of the Uprisings, making it possible to investigate
what significant factors or combinations of factors (a) made protests pos-
sible in the first place, (b) triggered the protests themselves and (c) affected
the outcomes of those processes.

References

Macro Indicators and Indexes

Polity IV data. http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscrdata.html
World Development Indicators. http://data.worldbank.org/products/wdi

Other References
Abbott, P., Sapsford, R. J., Diez-Nicholas, J., & Teti, A. (2017). The Methods
Handbook for the Political and Social Transformations in the Arab World Project.
Aberdeen: University of Aberdeen.
African Development Bank. (2017). Tunisia – Country Strategy Paper 2017–2021.
Tunis: African Development Bank.
Al-Arian, A. (2014). A State Without a State: The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s
Social Welfare Institutions. Project on Middle East Political Science. Retrieved
from https://pomeps.org/2014/09/30/a-state-without-a-state-the-egyptian-
muslim-brotherhoods-social-welfare-institutions/
 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND 23

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 CHAPTER 2

Understanding the Context: Hopes

and Challenges in 2011

Abstract This chapter discusses the causes of the Arab Uprisings, who
took part, what people saw as the main challenges facing their country and
what their hopes were. It outlines the principal explanations for the
Uprisings, then uses survey data to explore people’s views on key issues.
We consider what we can learn from public opinion surveys about ordi-
nary people’s assumptions about the Uprisings’ causes and outcomes.
Data suggest that the Uprisings generated considerable optimism and
keen awareness that structural problems remained acute. The chapter sug-
gests that what drove protesters was a demand for social justice as much as
for civil-political rights. It also problematises concepts such as democracy
which are often discussed in scholarly and policy debates without much
reference to how ordinary citizens perceive them.

Keywords Arab Uprisings • Social justice • Unemployment • Corruption

• Democracy • Political and civil rights

© The Author(s) 2018 27

A. Teti et al., The Arab Uprisings in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia,
Reform and Transition in the Mediterranean,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69044-5_2
28 A. TETI ET AL.

2.1   Introduction
In this chapter we discuss the causes of the 2010–2011 Arab Uprisings,
who took part in them, what people saw as the main challenges facing
their country and what their hopes for the future were. We consider both
what the academic literature has identified as the main triggers of the
Uprisings and what we can learn from public opinion surveys. Survey data
are particularly useful for exploring assumptions about the Uprisings’
causes and outcomes and are crucial in problematising concepts such as
democracy, democratisation and authoritarian resilience which are often
discussed in both scholarship and policy debates without much empirical
grounding in what ordinary citizens think and believe their ‘content’ is or
should be.
We begin by outlining the principal explanations given for the Uprisings
and then use survey data to help understand ordinary citizens’ views on
social, political and economic issues.

2.2   Explaining the Uprisings

Some observers have presented the Uprisings as a movement for (liberal)
democratic reform or the Arab world’s ‘1989 moment’ (e.g. Kaldor 2011)
although this tends to both project onto protesters notions of liberal
democracy currently hegemonic in the West and underestimate the degree
to which these were reactions against a specific form of capitalism: neo-­
liberalism (Bogaert 2013; Teti and Gervasio 2011). While much Western-­
based discussion at the time centred on democracy, on closer scrutiny it
was clear that the central issues triggering the Uprisings for protesters
were social justice and abuse of power: ‘the people’ wanted a responsive
government that would deliver a decent society (Acemoglu and Robinson
2013). In the decade before the Arab Uprisings, people became increas-
ingly disaffected with corrupt regimes which maintained power by reward-
ing a narrow political and economic elite while excluding much of the
population from economic gains, social mobility and political voice (Beinin
2015). As wealth generated by structural reforms failed to ‘trickle down’
and only increased the crony elites’ position of privilege (Dillman 2002),
the middle classes joined the working classes in becoming disaffected and
politically mobilised against the status quo (Kandil 2012; Hanieh 2013).
However, the Uprisings were certainly intensely political, with protest-
ers demanding ‘the downfall of the regime’ (Ash-shab yurid isqqat
 UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT: HOPES AND CHALLENGES IN 2011 29

­an-­nizam) in most—though not all—countries. This does not mean pro-

testers and sympathisers were a homogenous group all explicitly demand-
ing (liberal) democracy: people who took part or even just supported
protests came from a wide variety of social and economic backgrounds and
displayed a broad range of political allegiances. What most protesters
appear to have shared was revulsion against corruption, mismanagement
of the economy, and the abuse of power by politicians and security forces
(Hanieh 2013) as well as frustration at being denied political avenues for
voicing dissatisfaction. In brief, protesters were reacting to regimes’ breach
of the ‘authoritarian social contract’ which had emerged in various forms
in previous decades, whereby citizens to various degrees accepted political
subordination by autocratic regimes in exchange for economic security
and social services. This ‘authoritarian bargain’ was often contested and
had already come under pressure in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Sadiki,
1997). However, these protests were followed by a renewed authoritarian
bargain, albeit this time incorporating a ‘new’ middle class into the win-
ning coalition (Albrecht and Schlumberger 2004), co-opting their politi-
cal support. This compromise did not last long, despite slowing the pace
of economic ‘reform’—that is, privatisations, lowering labour protection
and wages, cutting subsidies—in an attempt to reduce mass opposition, as
regimes increasingly developed predatory economic tendencies made pos-
sible by neo-liberal policies’ emphasis on reducing the cost and political
leverage of labour while also shrinking the checks on abuse of power in
increasingly privatised economies (Beau and Graciet 2009) which had
nonetheless not liberalised.
In this sense, the Uprisings can be understood as a crisis of—and
brought about by—neo-liberalism. This crisis entailed a breakdown of the
social contract between the state and citizens, a perception of growing
inequalities and a decline in satisfaction with life (Therborn 2013; World
Bank 2015). Ordinary people became increasingly dissatisfied with their
standard of living, with high inflation, with the negative impact of the
2008 global economic crisis and with a growing food crisis (Hanieh
2013). During the Uprisings, protesters demanded social justice in the
face of increasingly aggressive implementation of a new modality of capital
accumulation in regimes where the persistence of authoritarianism offered
highly restricted economic and political opportunities (Arampatz et al.
2015; Sika 2012) while political channels for voicing discontent, far from
being opened, were increasingly shut down. The middle classes in particu-
lar had become frustrated by a progressive deterioration in their real and
30 A. TETI ET AL.

perceived living conditions, a continued lack of meritocracy, corruption

and the persistence of a system in which connections and patronage deter-
mined progress. In Egypt (Kandil 2012) and Tunisia (Kelly 2016), middle-­
class support for the new authoritarian social contract of the 1990s could
last only if economic advantages continued: once predatory business elites
linked to the regimes absorbed gains which were earlier redistributed
downwards—however selectively and partially—the middle classes increas-
ingly became disaffected.
While middle-class dissatisfaction was genuine, it should not be forgot-
ten that the initial revolutionary drive came from ordinary workers and
disenfranchised youth in the poorer parts of their respective countries.
The support of the middle classes might have been crucial in swelling
crowds in the main cities’ squares, but it was from factory floors, slums,
poor towns and villages that protests drew their revolutionary force, build-
ing on years of localised demonstrations and activism (Bogaert 2013;
Beinin 2015; Hanieh 2013). Subsidies and state expenditure had man-
aged to relieve the pressure from below, temporarily, but the necessity of
conforming to the requirements of global neo-liberal capitalism as well as
the imperatives of authoritarianism had been left unaddressed, and they
undermined the effectiveness of such measures. Privatisation and ‘labour
market flexibility’ reforms, presented as central to inclusive growth,
reduced the real income of low-wage households, made employment
increasingly precarious and failed to create jobs to absorb the ‘youth
bulge’.
These debates raise the more general question of the relationship
between the economic and political spheres—between material and ide-
ational causes of political change and the strengths and weaknesses of
existing scholarship in understanding it. The orthodox models outlined in
the previous chapter—Democratic Transition (DT), Authoritarian
Resilience (AR) and Hybrid Regimes (HR)—conceive these causes as
either driving democratisation (DT), blocking it (AR), or presenting a
stable mixture of democratic façade and authoritarian substance. These
models are far from satisfactory, however, and empirical evidence—includ-
ing survey data—suggests a more complex picture.
Early approaches to democracy and economics suggested that the like-
lihood of democratisation was directly proportional to the level of eco-
nomic development. Since most Arab countries have industrialised,
modernisation theory and its variants expected that Arab states would
democratise or at least display evidence of pressure for democratisation. In
 UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT: HOPES AND CHALLENGES IN 2011 31

the absence of such signs, some came to believe that democratisation in

this region was impossible or at least improbable, and they focused on
identifying barriers to democratisation which made autocracies ‘resilient’.
This quest for barriers came up with two types of answers: hydrocarbon
rentierism and/or culture (particularly religion, after 1989). The first
argument suggested that the income from oil meant that ‘rentier states’
were able to neutralise opposition to political repression—or at least
achieve acquiescence—by providing a high level of social and economic
benefits to their populations, including public sector employment, espe-
cially for the middle classes (Bablawi and Luciani 1987; Martinez 2012;
Malti 2012). This was true not only for hydrocarbon-rich countries but
also for the ones that benefited indirectly from oil and gas revenues in the
region (Peters and Moore 2009), and for countries like Jordan which ben-
efited from non-economic (‘strategic’) rents and, in some cases, develop-
ment assistance and remittances. This, together with the powerful security
sector that could be maintained through rentier revenues, enabled the
regimes to remain in power (Bellin 2004). However, it should be noted
that other studies suggest rentierism per se might not constitute as insur-
mountable an obstacle as it was often believed to be (Hachemaoui 2012).
In fact, hydrocarbon revenues can also be a source of profound divisions
between different actors (Okhruhlik 1999), thereby generating dissent
and division rather than acquiescence over how resources are distributed.
In addition, the hydrocarbon industry’s integration in the global economy
makes oil in particular a potentially volatile commodity.
The second type of explanation for the absence of democratisation was
that culture—religion in particular—acted as a barrier. This view sug-
gested autocracies were resilient because they relied on consensus around
authoritarian social norms rooted in religion and/or were adept at manip-
ulating traditional symbolism in order to enhance their legitimacy. The
essentialism of the claim that there is something inherent in Arab culture
or in Islam that stalls or even entirely prevents democratisation (e.g.
Huntington 1993) has been heavily criticised on both logical and empiri-
cal grounds. This said, there is some evidence from the analysis of survey
data, which we discuss further in Chapter 3, to suggest that populations
in the region hold conservative values that are difficult to reconcile with
the ‘emancipatory values’ which are requisites of democracy. It is crucial
not to confuse correlation with causation, nor contingence with essence:
while so-called traditional values may be a barrier to (liberal) democratisa-
tion, they do not necessarily stem from religion nor are they inextricably
32 A. TETI ET AL.

­ edded to either religion or culture. It is also important not to confuse

w
democracy with its liberal variant: it is perfectly possible to support
democracy and democratic mechanisms and procedures without necessar-
ily subscribing to liberal democracy (e.g. Youngs 2015). Again, much
hinges on the ‘substance’ one has in mind when it comes to the definition
of ‘democracy’, or indeed religion. Post-Uprisings public opinion poll
data capture such complexities, despite the use that is sometimes made of
them. The populations in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia agree that democ-
racy is the best system of government despite its faults, and they do not
see democracy and Islam as incompatible (Tessler and Robbins 2014).
However, public opinion also continues to display conservative attitudes
to gender and want shari’a to have a strong influence in policy-making
(Abbott 2017) in ways which may be incompatible with democracy.
Chapters 3 and 5 provide a more detailed analysis of how survey data can
help conceptualise these issues.
Models of democratic transition present different explanations for the
impact of both economic systems and culture—including setting out dif-
ferent explanations for survey data on ‘conservative values’—suggesting
that any impediments are not as strong or unchangeable as AR models
would claim. In addition, they suggest that intra-elite competition might
in itself generate openings towards democracy: transitologists, drawing on
seminal work by O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986), focus on intra-elite
bargaining in times of uncertainty and crisis, which can give way to democ-
ratisation despite original intentions (Bermeo 1990). Specifically, in the
case of Arab states, Salamé (1994) and his collaborators suggested that
they might develop a ‘democracy without democrats’: democracy could
come about even if political actors were not ideologically supportive of it,
either because it represented the best compromise solution for all elites or
because elite splits allowed mass mobilisation to extract concessions which
elites later found themselves unable to reverse. In this elite-only game,
however, non-elite and non-institutional actors are marginal and vulnera-
ble to elite co-option (Przeworski 1991), and while they play a role push-
ing for wider reform and have an impact on intra-elite bargaining once a
transition is under way (Collier 1999; Linz and Stepan 1996), they are
unable to initiate such transitions themselves. In addition, in what is a
manifestation of transitology’s more teleological dimension, these models
find it difficult to explain why regimes appear to have given themselves
liberal democratic forms while remaining autocratic in substance, halting
what was expected to be an inevitable slide away from an ever-precarious
autocracy towards democracy.
 UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT: HOPES AND CHALLENGES IN 2011 33

‘Authoritarian resilience’ addresses this, arguing that such regimes

‘upgraded’ their authoritarianism by giving themselves democratic façades
(e.g. Carothers 2002; Heydemann 2007; Hinnebusch 2006). Since the
1980s, Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia have pioneered precisely this regime type:
while they had all the institutions one associates with democracy—elections,
multi-party politics, civil society activism, progressive legislation, a nomi-
nally independent judiciary—these were simply a façade, with real power
residing in unaccountable ruling elites. The form of neo-liberal capitalism
that had developed from the 1980s meant that the political and business
elites shared common interests, and in Egypt the military were also a part of
this elite coalition. At the same time, regimes co-opted political parties and
CSOs, played them off one against the other and harshly repressed any sig-
nificant dissent, to maintain control of political, civil and economic spheres
of society. Political parties were kept under control through complex bureau-
cratic measures that prevented them from being effective opposition actors
(Storm 2014). Civil society, equally, was co-­opted and prevented from being
meaningfully independent (Abdelrahman 2004; Jamal 2007). This combi-
nation of co-option and repression was believed to give ‘hybrid regimes’ a
stability which could not be reduced to a ‘stalled’ transitional stage between
autocracy and democracy. Although these mechanisms certainly fit actual
developments in the Middle East region, models of authoritarian resilience
do raise the question of what if anything might in principle rupture resil-
ience and how to explain its emergence: it appeared that only a significant
crisis could force ruling elites to review the arrangements in place, but how
such crises might come about hybrid-regimes models do not explain.
Social Movements Theory (SMT) has remained outside mainstream
debates in Political Science, although civil society has been considered a
key agent of change in DT models since the 1990s. For its part, SMT
blamed the lack of pressure for democratisation on a weak and repressed
civil society, arguing that significant protests—democratisation from
below— occur when there is a growing realisation by ordinary people that
they have shared experiences; they become empowered and come together
to take collective action, as happened in 2011 (Della Porta 2014). Among
agents of democratisation, civil society and social movements received the
lion’s share of political and public attention during the Uprisings. Some
SMT scholars have suggested that the Uprisings represent a troubled
democratisation characterised by strong repression, a split in the military,
weak civil society and limited spread of democratisation frames (e.g. Della
Porta 2014). Looking back after the Uprisings, however, analysts have
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Up they climbed in the Cimmerian gloom of midnight like so many
panthers stalking their prey; now and again a rock, dislodged by
accident, would disturb the stillness of the night as it rattled down
into the valley below, and instantly the column would halt and remain
motionless expecting the next moment the mountain side would be
illumined by the enemy’s flares and their presence discovered, but
their quarry slumbered in blissful ignorance of their approaching
doom, and the sentinels, fortunately, heard nothing.
Half-an-hour before dawn the various detachments reached the
summit and found themselves within a few yards of the front line of
entrenchments. These were instantly rushed and captured at the
point of the bayonet within a few minutes, most of their defenders
being killed before they were awake.
The second line shared the same fate after a short and stubborn
fight, for once aroused the Austrians fought like cornered rats and
with the courage of despair, but they had no chance against the
athletic Alpinist, many of whom had not even troubled to put on their
boots after the long climb.
By the time the summits of the mountains were illumined by the
rays of the rising sun the whole of the heights and slopes of Monte
Nero were in the hands of the Italians—750 unwounded prisoners, a
large quantity of rifles and ammunition and several machine guns.
The prisoners were brought to Udine, and made a sorry spectacle
as they marched through the streets. It was the first time the
inhabitants had seen Austrian captives, and they produced a strange
impression, as what had been seen of the war so far had been only
the troops passing on their way to the front line.
Most of the men were Hungarians between 17 and 25 years of
age; many were slightly wounded, their uniforms were in tatters, and
the majority had no boots, but wooden shoes fastened to the foot
and ankle by leather straps.
They were confined temporarily in an old building on the Piazza
Garibaldi and I managed to get in and make a sketch and have a
chat with one of them. He told me that most of them had come from
the Serbian front and had had a very rough time. Looking round the
motley crowd in the picturesque courtyard, I could quite believe him,
but the men seemed quite reconciled to their fate and taking it very
philosophically.
There was a group playing cards in one corner, and lying about in
the shade were others chatting and smoking long German pipes, or
sleeping peacefully. The heat that day was terrific, and certainly the
prisoners in their scanty attire had a better time of it than their guards
in full uniform.
Mentioning the tropical heat recalls to my mind a very curious
incident which occurred when the prisoners were being brought into
camp, and which gave a vivid idea of the awful conditions in the
Austrian positions the suddenness of the Italian attack had brought
about.
Some soldiers were bringing up big canteens full of water to be
served out in due course, when suddenly there was a veritable
stampede amongst the prisoners, and before it could be stopped
there was a wild fight to get at the water. So overwhelming was the
rush that the carriers were literally swept aside.
The struggle only lasted a few moments, as it was, of course, only
a question of who was biggest and strongest; then those who had
got at the receptacles flung themselves on the ground and literally
buried their faces in the water, lapping it up greedily like so many
animals, whilst their weaker comrades tried madly to drag them
away to get at it also. It was a sickening spectacle, and proved how,
under certain conditions, some human beings revert instantly to their
primordial nature.
The capture of Monte Nero by the Italians appeared to put the
Austrians on their mettle, and they made every endeavour to re-take
it.
Battalion after battalion was thrown against the position, whole
regiments were destroyed in the vain attempt to dislodge the Alpini,
and as a last resource the Austrians brought up their own mountain
troops, the famous “Kaiser Jagers,” but with no more success.
 Thus the first few weeks of war fully bore out the expectations of
those who were convinced that the skill of General Cadorna and the
spirit of the Italian army would be more than a match for any efforts
of the Austrians, and justified the confidence which was felt on all
sides.
Events moved rapidly during those early weeks of the war, and
success followed success without intermission.
Monfalcone, the seaport on the Adriatic, with its important
shipbuilding yards, Gradisca and Sagrado were added to the list of
Austrian towns captured by the Italians in June, together with the
important position of Monte Corrada. All of which represented a
distinct advance into enemy territory in the direction of Trieste.
It was not, however, a “walk over,” and the Italians had to pay
dearly in places for their successes. The fighting for the middle
Isonzo continued fiercely, and there were severe losses round Plava
before the place was taken. The Austrians, however, lost still more
heavily.
The attack on Gorizia, which was to last so many months, may be
said to have commenced about the middle of June, when the Italians
were able to start bombarding the fortifications of Santa Maria, San
Pietro, San Marco, and Santa Lucia, besides the Austrian positions
dominating the town, especially Mount San Gabriele.
Of course all this meant long range artillery duels day after day,
which presented but little spectacular interest, though it was obvious
that there was method in all this vast expenditure of ammunition,
purposeless as it may have appeared to the layman; to me as an
artist, however, there were plenty of subjects for sketches, and
without having to search for them through field glasses. Not far afield
there were always interesting incidents—little touches of human
nature in the camps and on the road that fortunately for me had so
far escaped the attention of the ubiquitous photographer.
On one occasion, for instance, I saw Mass being celebrated in a
small encampment in the mountains; for it must be remembered that
the innate piety and religious spirit of the Italian Army have been
evident in every step of our Ally’s campaign against Austria.
On a road in the wild district near Pontebba a rude altar of rough
boxes was set up—the altar cloth was a soldier’s blanket—the
priest’s assistants were soldiers.
It was a common soldier who rang the bell at the Elevation of the
Host, and the kneeling troops told of the devout spirit in which they
had entered not only into the Divine Service but also into the war.
A battery was passing along the road at that moment, and the
artillerymen bared their heads and piously made the sign of the
Cross, whilst a sentry before a row of grey tents fell on his knees.
Even in the haste of a rapid transport of guns, reverence was not
forgotten, although it was not possible for the convoy to stop. The
kneeling troops were Alpini, who were encamped in this
mountainous district and had already figured gallantly in action.
The operations on the frontier in the vicinity of Pontebba were
especially interesting from an artistic point of view. The scenery here
is magnificent, and much of the fighting took place along the big
military highway constructed by Napoleon to connect Milan with
Vienna.
It was always a pleasure to be amongst the troops, and it was an
endless source of astonishment to me to see how they had in so
short a time settled down to the irksome daily routine of warfare as it
exists at the rear of the fighting line.
The glorious summer weather doubtless contributed in no small
degree to the high spirits of the soldiers, for camp life in the Italian
army is very different to that of the English—it is far more
picturesque, but of comfort there is very little, it appeared to me. The
quaint tentes d’abri afford very slight shelter either against the
intense glare and heat of the Italian sunshine, or the cold and rain in
bad weather, yet the men appeared to be thoroughly happy and
contented under any conditions.
It may be said that it is all a question of habit or rather custom; but
there is no doubt that the English Tommy expects to be, and is,
pampered in the way of quarters and catering to an extent that would
astonish the Italian soldier if he could see it; as a matter of fact, it
was frequently a revelation to me what these men had to put up with
at times, and their invariable cheerfulness in spite of all hardships
and discomfort.
 CHAPTER V

Udine the Headquarters of the Army—The King—His indefatigability

—His undaunted courage—A telling incident—The King with the
troops—Love and sympathy between Victor Emanuele and the men
—Brotherhood of the whole Army—A pleasant incident—Men salute
officers at all times—Laxity shown in London—Cohesion between
rank and file—The Italians of to-day—The single idea of all—Udine
crowded with soldiers—The military missions of the allied nations—
Big trade being done—Orderly and sedate crowd—Restaurants—
The food—The market-place—The Cinemas—Proximity of the
fighting—The Café “Dorta”—Pretty and smartly-dressed women—An
unexpected spectacle—The Military Governor—The streets at night
—Precautions against “Taubes”—The signal gun—Curiosity of
inhabitants—No excitement—Udine a sort of haven—I remain there
six weeks—A meeting with the British Military Attaché, Colonel Lamb
—My stay in Udine brought to an abrupt ending—The police officer
in mufti—Am arrested—Unpleasant experience—An agent de la
Sureté—At the police station—The commissaire—Result of my
examination—Novara—Magic effect of the undelivered letter again—
I write to General Cafarelli—My friends at the “Agrario”—General
Cafarelli—His decision—The third class police ticket for the railway
—Packed off to Florence—The end of the adventure.
 CHAPTER V
Udine, as I have pointed out, was practically “the Front” in the early
weeks of the war. It was also the Headquarters of the army, and
every building of importance in the town had been requisitioned for
Staff purposes.
It was said that the King and the Generalissimo were living there;
but this, of course, was only surmise, although one was constantly
seeing them motoring through the streets.
In fact, after a time one got to recognise instantly the Royal Fiat,
however grimy and bespattered with mud it might be, for the King
appeared indefatigable and was out and about in all weathers, and
was said to have visited all the sectors of the Front and to be never
satisfied unless he saw for himself all that was going on amongst the
troops.
His undaunted courage is proverbial in Italy, and no danger,
however great, deters him going anywhere if he sets his mind on it,
as his personal staff knows only too well. In this connection I
recollect a story that was told which will illustrate this.
On one occasion His Majesty expressed his intention of joining the
advance guard on a height just occupied and which was being
heavily fired on by the enemy. An officer of Alpini respectfully pointed
out the danger and difficulty of attempting it. The King laughingly
replied that where the Alpini could go an old Chamois-hunter like
himself could also go, and insisted on climbing to the position.
The presence of the King always stimulated immensely the
enthusiasm of the troops, and this was particularly noticeable when
he accompanied the first brigade which crossed the Isonzo on a
bridge thrown by the Engineers.
 It is this desire to be not only with but amongst his soldiers and
sharing their perils that has helped so much to establish the sort of
fraternal love and sympathy that exists between Victor Emanuele
and me men, which one cannot fail to notice whenever the word
goes round “Here comes the King.”
It was quite touching to hear on all sides the expressions of
affection of the big rough soldiers for the wiry little man, covered with
dust, who saluted one and all so genially as he whirled past in the
big car.
It is this feeling of brotherhood of which the King sets the example
that animates the whole army—one could not fail to be struck by it—
officers, non-commissioned officers and men are all on the most
friendly terms together and there is probably no more democratic
army in the world to-day than the Italian.
In this connection I recall a pleasing incident I witnessed one day
on a mountain track; an officer riding a mule at the head of a small
detachment of soldiers, who were plodding along stolidly in the
intense heat, was reading his newspaper aloud for the benefit of
them all. Curiously enough this camaraderie leads to no impairment
of discipline—rather the contrary perhaps, as for instance, one sees
men go out of their way, so to speak, to salute officers at all times,
not as a matter of duty only, but to show their respect for their rank.
I was more particularly reminded of this on my return to London,
where the laxity shewn by the rank and file towards officers in the
matter of saluting in the streets is particularly noticeable.
 A rude altar of rough boxes was set up (see page 45)
To face page 50

The effectual result of this cohesion between the rank and file in
the Italian Army is proved by the zeal which animates all, and which
helps to lighten the most irksome duties.
During the six weeks I spent in and around Udine practically alone
I had ample opportunity for studying the character of the Italian
officer and ordinary soldier under true war conditions, and the more I
saw of them the more I liked them and admired their fine qualities.
 These virile, self-possessed specimens of the Italy of to-day
present a remarkable contrast to those one recollects of the older
generation, for in the matter of physique the Italian army now in the
field can compare favourably in every respect with any other army in
the world.
From the highest officer to the most humble private, one and all
are animated with but a single idea—that of thrashing the Austrians
and restoring to Italy the territory which is hers by right. But there is
no frothy bombast about them; in the town, as in the trenches,
though the conversation always reverted to “la guerra,” it was to
discuss it in the sober, self-contained manner of the strong man who
knows his own strength and therefore does not deem it necessary to
insist on it.
As might have been expected, Udine, owing to its proximity to the
enemy’s lines, was crowded with soldiers, and during the evening,
when officers and men were off duty, it was almost difficult to walk
along the main streets.
The three great allied nations were represented in the throng also,
as “military missions” soon arrived in the town, and it was very
pleasing to see Russian, French and English officers in their
respective uniforms, fraternising everywhere with the Italians. Since
then Japan, Belgium, and Serbia have also sent representatives, so
there is now quite a foreign military colony as it were, with officers
and permanent staffs.
The shops, cafés and restaurants were evidently doing a big trade,
but it was always a very orderly and sedate crowd of young fellows
one saw everywhere, and displayed far less ebullition of animal
spirits than one would see in a French garrison town.
Although fighting was taking place within an hour’s motor run,
nothing in the usual life of Udine was changed. There were several
good restaurants, which were crowded for lunch and dinner, the
delightful old twelfth century market-place that is one of the artistic
treasures of the town, presented every day the customary scene of
peaceful animation and brilliant colour one always associates with
Italy, and which has such charm for the painter; it was “business as
usual,” although you could generally hear the thunder of the guns
quite distinctly.
Nor was amusement lacking of an evening, as there were two
large Cinemas open, and at one a sort of music-hall entertainment
as well; both these places were so well attended by the civilians, as
well as the military element, that it was always difficult to get
anything but bare standing room.
Here again the proximity of the fighting would often be vividly
brought home to you when the booming of the guns was audible in
an interval of the performance.
Of course the ordinary soldiers were only allowed out of barracks
up to a certain hour—I forget for the moment what that was—so the
streets looked comparatively deserted when they had gone.
The principal cafés were, however, well patronised up till closing
time, and “Dorta’s,” in particular, was always very crowded with
officers and civilians.
It was quite remarkable the number of pretty and smartly dressed
women one saw about of a day—of course many of these were the
wives or daughters of residents, but there were others also. On a
fine Sunday morning, the Church parade on the Piazza Vittorio
Emanuele and along the Via Mercato Vecchio was quite one of the
sights of Udine, for it was usually a galaxy of beauty and fashion.
To anyone like myself, newly arrived in the town, and expecting to
find himself in the midst of warlike scenes considering how close one
was to the operations, this unexpected spectacle came as a positive
shock.
After a week or so, however, this impression of incongruity wore
off, and you ended by feeling that after all these dainty apparitions in
the streets or the restaurants were not so unpleasant to look on, and
that they served to accentuate the grimness of the dust-covered
warriors around them.
With the general advance of the Army, the majority of the troops
was gradually shifted nearer the new Front, but the whole district
was, and still is, under the command of a military governor, who
wields the power of a dictator so far as the civilian element is
concerned.
The streets were practically pitch dark on moonless nights, only
the merest pretence of a glimmer of electric light in blue bulbs being
allowed here and there, though the Stygian gloom was constantly
being illumined by the powerful headlights of military cars passing
through—a curious anomaly which appeared to me quite
inexplicable.
Of course these precautions were taken owing, as I have said, to
the proximity of Udine to the enemy’s lines and the fact in
consequence that neighbourly visits from “Taubes” were frequently
received, though fortunately they seldom succeeded in doing any
damage or causing loss of life.
On several occasions, though they provided us with spectacular
displays overhead, as there were always a number of our Capronis
in the aerodrome close by in readiness to go up and tackle these
intruders as soon as they were sighted, and there are few things
more exciting to witness than an aerial fight.
A signal station was established on one of the highest buildings,
and on the approach of a Taube a gun was fired to give the
inhabitants timely warning, though the usual effect of this warning at
first was to bring crowds into the streets to catch a glimpse of what
was going on aloft rather than induce the people to make for safety.
After a few of these alarms the novelty wore off, and though it cannot
be said that scarcely any notice was taken of them, there was
certainly no undue excitement when the signal gun was heard.
As will be gathered, therefore, the war, beyond transforming Udine
from a picturesque, sleepy, little provincial town into a bustling and
important military centre, had not effected so much change in it
materially as might have been expected, so it was a sort of haven to
return to after one had been in the zone of actual operations for a
time.
I had now been up at the Front for six weeks, and was beginning
almost to consider myself as settled permanently at Headquarters.
How I managed to stay so long undisturbed I could not understand,
considering the stringency of the police regulations.
It may have been that the authorities winked complacently at my
presence during all these weeks in consequence of my being an
artist as distinct from a journalist, for by this time I made no attempt
at secrecy since no one took any notice of me apparently, and I went
about everywhere as freely as if I had an official permit from the
General himself.
I recollect one day meeting Colonel Lamb, the British Military
Attaché, in the street. He had just arrived from Rome. He expressed
his surprise at seeing me in Udine, and asked how long I had been
there; when I told him he laughingly said: “You’ll end by being sent to
prison and perhaps shot one day.”
I replied in the same vein that I had been expecting it to happen
every day for weeks past, so should not be surprised when it did.
Well, whatever the reason, I had no unpleasant attention shown
me until the last few days of my stay, and then it was suddenly
brought home to me that I had overstayed my welcome.
It was really the last thing I was expecting to happen, as I had got
on quite friendly terms with the Commandant of the Carabinieri, and
only a few days previously the Commissaire of Police had given me
his official sanction to remain in Udine. The order for what now took
place must therefore have emanated from someone in higher
authority than either of these gentlemen, so there was absolutely no
appeal from it, as will be seen. It came about in this wise.
I was leaving the restaurant where I usually lunched when a tall,
well-dressed civilian came up to me, and, as far as I could make out,
since I hardly understood a word of Italian, asked me if I were Mr.
Price, and if I were that person would I do him the inestimable favour
to walk with him as far as the Questura, as they had something of
importance they desired to communicate to me at once.
I guessed at once that he was a police officer in mufti, and that it
was not for anything particularly agreeable to me that he stopped me
thus. Thinking that perhaps he did not know that my papers were
quite in order, I pulled out my police pass and shewed it to him; but
this was not what he meant.
With the old time garrulity of the Italian, and unctiously wringing his
hands as though he was in mental distress, he made me understand
that it was very distasteful to him to have to interrupt my walk, but it
was merely for a few moments, when I should be free to resume it,
and he would again offer me his sincere apologies for venturing to
accost me, but it was of sufficient importance for him to urge me to
go with him now, as I was expected and being waited for. This is
what I gathered from the few words I understood of all this verbosity.
Just at this moment, as luck would have it, someone I knew came
along. He spoke a little French, so I asked him to tell me what it all
meant. It was as I had guessed: this was an Agent de la Sureté, and
I had to go with him to the police station at once for reasons which
would be explained when I got there.
Of course there was no arguing the matter; I realised that it was all
mock politeness I had been treated with, and that if I made any
objection I should be spoken to very differently. At the station I was
asked to produce “all my papers and my passport”; these were taken
into an adjoining room. In a few minutes they were returned to me,
and I was informed that I would hear further in the matter.
Whereupon I was allowed to go, much mystified as to what was
going to happen next.
The following morning a note was left at my Hotel to the effect that
at 10 o’clock I was called upon to present myself again with “all my
papers and my passport” at the police station, accompanied by
someone to interpret for me. A young fellow who spoke French fairly
well consented to accompany me.
I was taken before the Commissaire, the one who had given me
the permis de séjour, and two other officials, who began to ply me
with questions as to how I came to be in Udine, what I came for, and
how long I had been there, together with a lot of other questions
which were very irritating since the Commissaire knew all about me
already, as he had his own signature before him on my papers.
 There was a short conversation between the Commissaire and the
officials, who looked towards me meanwhile in a friendly manner as I
thought. I was soon to be undeceived though. They then turned to
my interpreter and announced the upshot of these mysterious
happenings.
“Well, what’s the result of all these proceedings?” I asked him.
“You are to be sent to Novara,” he replied unconcernedly.
“Be sent to Novara,” I repeated in amazement. “Where’s Novara?”
“Oh, a long way from here, near the Swiss frontier—beyond Turin.”
He then went on to say as coolly as though it could be but of little
interest to me.
“They say you must leave Udine by the first train.”
It suddenly flashed through my memory that I had heard of Novara
as the town where Austrians and Germans were interned. I was so
stupified for a moment that I did not know what to say. Then I told
him as calmly as I could to ask the Commissaire what was the good
of having a passport and such papers as I had if I was to be treated
the same as an alien enemy. I could understand being requested to
leave Udine, but not being ignominiously sent away. The
Commissaire merely shrugged his shoulders and replied those were
his orders.
Suddenly I remembered the letter for the Military Commandant of
Udine I had still in my pocket, fortunately. I pulled it out and asked to
be at least permitted to deliver it before I was sent away.
Its effect was, as it always had been, magical. The Commissaire
looked at the address attentively, motioned me politely to be seated,
then picking up my passport, took it with the letter into an adjoining
room. He was gone some few minutes.
When he returned he told my interpreter to inform me that if I
would write out at once a full explanation of my object in coming to
the Front and my reasons for desiring to remain, the letter should be
given to General Cafarelli, who would decide what I had to do. I was
warned, however, that there must be no delay, the statement must
be delivered in a few hours. My papers were returned to me, and I
was then allowed to leave the office.
My good friends at the “Agrario” came to my help and got the letter
drawn up in Italian and duly forwarded. The following day I had again
to present myself at the Questura, and I was at once taken to the
General’s offices in the adjoining building.
General Cafarelli, the Governor of Udine, was a very tall, thin,
elderly man, with a grey beard, strikingly like the popular pictures of
Don Quixote. He held my dossier in his hand, and had evidently just
read it. He received me in the most frigid and unsympathetic manner,
and I felt instantly that if it depended on him I was done with Udine
and the Front.
Without waiting for anything I might have to say, he said abruptly
in French: “You must leave Udine at once; you are not permitted to
remain.”
I produced the famous letter, and asked if he could tell me when I
could deliver it as it might perhaps affect his decision.
To my surprise he just glanced at the superscription, then without
hesitating, opened it and read it through.
“This does not alter your case. You leave to-day,” he snapped out.
“But not for Novara I hope, mon General,” I ventured to remark.
“Well, I will make you that concession, but you must go either to
Turin or Florence or Rome by the first train,” and then he added
significantly: “I hope you will make no difficulty about it.” There was
no mistaking his meaning.
“Of course I will not,” I replied; “my only regret is that I should have
given you any trouble at all, and I trust you will understand that my
motive in coming here was perfectly innocent.”
This appeared to mollify him considerably.
“Well, it is understood then that you leave to-day; the police will
provide you with a ticket for whichever of the places I have named
you decide to go to.” Then, to my surprise, he held out his hand as I
turned to leave the room, and said in almost a friendly manner:
“The question of permitting correspondents to visit the Front is
being considered, and perhaps in another month or so you will be
allowed to return.”
“Then I will say au revoir, not adieu, mon General,” I said, with an
attempt at cheerfulness I did not feel as we shook hands.
Well, to cut a long story short, I was packed off to Florence that
evening with a third class police ticket, and with instructions to report
myself immediately on my arrival there to the Commissaire of Police.
Railway journeys are not pleasant in Italy in midsummer—and in
third class especially—but I had no option as I was not permitted to
go in another class by paying the difference in the fare.
It was therefore a hot and tiring journey, but not quite so bad as I
expected. True, the carriage was crowded all the way, but I found the
peasant folk who were my travelling companions kindly unobtrusive
people, and had I been able to converse with them should probably
have found them very interesting; as it was, when they discovered I
was an Englishman they insisted on giving me a corner seat—a little
touch of good feeling which was as pleasing as it was unexpected.
At Florence the formalities I had to go through were soon over. My
arrival was evidently expected. I was given a permis de séjour, with
a little note certifying I had duly reported myself, and then I was free
once more.
 CHAPTER VI

Florence in war time—War correspondents to visit the Front—I

receive a letter from Mr. Capel Cure of the Embassy—Return to
Rome—Signor Barzilai, Head of Foreign Press Bureau—I am
officially “accepted”—Correspondents to muster at Brescia—Rome
to Brescia via Milan—The gathering of the correspondents—Names
of those present—Papers represented—The correspondent’s armlet
—Speech of welcome by General Porro—Plan of journey announced
—Introduced to officers of Censorship—To leave war zone at
conclusion of tour of Front—“Shepherding” the correspondents—
Censorships established at various places—Correspondents’ motor
cars—Clubbing together—Car-parties—My companions—Imposing
array of correspondents’ cars—National flags—Cordiality amongst
all correspondents and Censors—Good-fellowship shown by Italians
—Banquet to celebrate the occasion.
The King appeared indefatigable and was out and about in all weathers (see page
49)
To face page 62
 CHAPTER VI
I stayed in the City of Dante for nearly a month, and was fully
engaged the whole time working up the sketches I had brought with
me from the Front. It was fortunate, as I soon discovered that I had
plenty to occupy me, for there was nothing whatever to be seen in
Florence that conveyed any suggestion of war.
As a matter of fact, the war did not appear to affect the Florentines
at all; everything was going on in the city exactly the same as when I
was there some few years before, and if you did not read the papers
of a day you might have almost forgotten it. I was glad therefore to
be able to keep in touch with it through the medium of my work, as I
had no desire to live the life of an art student or dilettante here,
delightful as it is under normal conditions.
Towards the end of July it became known that there was a chance
in the near future of a restricted number of Italian and foreign war
correspondents being officially recognized and permitted to visit the
Front, and I received a friendly letter from Mr. Capel Cure, at the
British Embassy, advising me to return forthwith to Rome if I wished
to be included in the English group. I left Florence, therefore, by the
first train for the capital.
For the next few days I haunted 11 bis via Pompeo Magno, the
residence of Signor Barzilai, the genial President of the Italian Press
Association, and the rooms of Signor Baldassarre, the Head of the
Foreign Press Bureau, at the Ministero del Interno, till at last, to my
great relief, I was notified that I was on the official list of
correspondents.
I had been on tenterhooks all the time for fear my escapade at
Udine would militate against my being accepted.