Holger Albrecht | University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa (original) (raw)
Papers by Holger Albrecht
Journal of International Development, 2022
This article investigates the demand side of social contracts. It asks what people expect from th... more This article investigates the demand side of social contracts. It asks what people expect from their governments. Drawing on original, nationally representative surveys in Egypt, Tunisia and Lebanon, it explores popular preferences for the three possible government deliverables in social contracts: provision of social and economic services, protection from physical harm and political participation. Findings reveal that citizens expect governments to deliver all three 'Ps' (even if this costs a price), yet preferring provision over protection and participation if they have to prioritize. Findings do not show robust preferences among social groups identified by economic, gender, educational and communal differences.
Civil Wars, 2022
This article explores how rebel groups come into being and how they sustain their activities. Its... more This article explores how rebel groups come into being and how they sustain their activities. Its core premise is that the strategies used in rebel recruitment are crucial for such organisations. Knowing how rebel groups attract members will tell us why they are strong and, by extension, who is getting the upper hand in violent domestic conflicts. Drawing on empirical findings from the Syrian civil war, the article unpacks strategic choices in rebel recruitment: successful rebel groups benefit from the recruitment of combat-ready fighters (warriors) at the time of their inception and of high-commitment rebels (saints) amid sustained insurgent activities.
The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research Since the Arab Uprisings, 2022
International Political Science Review, 2022
The article draws on nationally representative telephone surveys in Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon to... more The article draws on nationally representative telephone surveys in Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon to unpack popular beliefs about who can best handle the social and economic consequences from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It therefore offers insights into state-society relations under stress and contributes to the debate on whether or not the state should play a key role in social protection. Findings reveal intriguing differences between countries, but also among social groups within societies. Communal identities and economic status do not appear to drive differences, with roughly half of the three countries' populations sharing trust in their respective state authorities. In turn, the article challenges findings on the gender gap in people's expectations about the provision of public goods amid crisis. On the country-level, Egyptians exhibit significantly greater trust in their state authorities than Tunisians and Lebanese, which substantiates arguments about the perceived advantage of autocratic governance to fight health crises.
Democratization, 2022
Surveys around the world report exceptionally high levels of support for the military. This is pa... more Surveys around the world report exceptionally high levels of support for the military. This is particularly relevant for countries in transition from authoritarian rule to democracy, where militaries can play a vital role for democratic consolidation or autocratic backsliding. Given the sensitive nature of the issue, we suspect that figures indicating strong support for the military are at least partly driven by sensitivity bias. We explore this possibility through list experiments in two nationally representative surveys in Tunisia. We find that misreporting of support for the military in Tunisia is substantial, with respondents overreporting positive attitudes by 40-50 percentage points. Moreover, misreporting is not random, but instead varies systematically by incumbency, with supporters of governing parties misreporting support for the military to a significantly higher degree than opposition supporters or non-voters. Our results suggest that public opinion researchers should be wary of using direct questions to measure support for the military.
International Studies Quarterly, 2021
This research note introduces new global data on military coups. Conventional aggregate data so f... more This research note introduces new global data on military coups. Conventional aggregate data so far have conflated two distinct types of coups. Military interventions by leading officers are coups "from above," characterized by political power struggles within authoritarian elite coalitions where officers move against civilian elites, executive incumbents, and their loyal security personnel. By contrast, power grabs by officers from the lower and middle ranks are coups "from below," where military personnel outside of the political elite challenge sitting incumbents, their loyalists, and the regime itself. Disaggregating coup types offers leverage to revise important questions about the causes and consequences of military intervention in politics. This research note illustrates that coup attempts from the top of the military hierarchy are much more likely to be successful than coups from the lower and middle ranks of the military hierarchy. Moreover, coups from the top recalibrate authoritarian elite coalitions and serve to sustain autocratic rule; they rarely produce an opening for a democratic transition. Successful coups from below, by contrast, can result in the breakdown of authoritarian regimes and generate an opening for democratic transitions.
Mediterranean Politics, 2021
Popular attitudes in support of authoritarian alternatives and weak party systems constitute impo... more Popular attitudes in support of authoritarian alternatives and weak party systems constitute important threats to democratic consolidation and the stability of new democracies. This article explores popular alienation from established political actors in Tunisia. Under what conditions do citizens support alternatives to the elites in power and the institutional infrastructure of a new democracy? Drawing on an original, nationally representative survey in Tunisia administered in 2017, this article examines three categories of popular attitudes in support of political outsiders.Military interventionism appears in people's preferences for anti-system politics-the most immediate challenge to the country's stability and democratic transition. Anti-political establishment sentiments are shown in people's preferences for an enhanced role of the country's main trade union as a civil-society alternative to political party elites. Finally, outsider eclecticism is the seemingly incoherent phenomenon of concurrent support for a civil society actor and the military as an 'authoritarian alternative.' Anti-establishment sentiments will continue to be an important element in Tunisian post-authoritarian politics, evidenced by the rise to power of Kais Said in the 2019 presidential elections and his 2021 decision to dismiss parliament. In turn, popular support for military intervention may have implications for the country's domestic security and peaceful transition.
APSA MENA Newsletter, 2021
Political Research Quarterly, 2021
International Peacekeeping, 2020
What is the impact of international peacekeeping missions for civil-military relations at home? T... more What is the impact of international peacekeeping missions for civil-military relations at home? This article unpacks the conditions that produce positive effects of peacekeeping participation on the domestic politics of an authoritarian regime. Drawing on field research, I discuss four mechanisms that link foreign policy making to domestic civil-military relations in Ben Ali's Tunisia. First, the deployment of troops for peacekeeping abroad presents obstacles for the coordination of coup plots at home. Second, incumbents can allocate material resources to meet officers' economic grievances. Moreover, peacekeeping operations serve to enhance corporate institutionalization through specific training programmes. Finally, peacekeeping contributes to a professional ethos and hence the depoliticization of the officer corps. These findings give rise to the notion that contributing to peace can have similar effects for domestic politics as going to war.
International Area Studies Review, 2020
This article explores the conditions under which revolutionary mass uprisings are likely to occur... more This article explores the conditions under which revolutionary mass uprisings are likely to occur. We offer a probabilistic explanation of the social and political conditions that make people rise against autocrats. The article presents a medium-n dataset of 79 revolutionary mass uprisings in 165 autocracies since 1945. Since revolutions are rare events, a combination of factors must come together to trigger them. Drawing on the extant literature on revolutionary change, we find initial support for a range of discrete factors. Our findings suggest that four such factors are particularly powerful explanations of revolutionary mass uprisings-and a combination of those factors will go a long way in predicting revolutionary change: a history of protracted low-level popular contention; the presence of personalist regimes; long tenure of incumbents in office; and the showroom effect of uprisings in the temporal and spatial vicinity of states. In a broader theoretical perspective, these findings give rise to a breaking-point explanation of revolutionary situations, emphasizing that mass uprisings build up over time, whereas structuralist theories or grievance-based approaches fare less well in predicting revolutionary ruptures.
Armed Forces and Society, 2019
This article presents a systematic analysis of military coups following popular mass uprisings in... more This article presents a systematic analysis of military coups following popular mass uprisings in nondemocratic regimes, conceptualized as endgame coups. Drawing on our original, medium-n data set of revolutionary situations, we find that such end-game coups form a distinct type of military intervention in politics. Compared to regular coups, episodes of popular mass contestation prompt conservative interventions in politics of the military's leadership aimed at preserving the regime's authoritarian infrastructure. A systematic test of factors characterizing postcoup political trajectories is based on Cox proportional hazard models and provides empirical evidence in contrast to the widely held notion of "democratic coups." Our findings reveal that endgame coups are conservative rollback coups, executed by military leaderships, that result in continued political instability and illiberal politics.
Political Science Quarterly, 2019
International Studies Quarterly, 2018
What are the most efficient strategies to prevent military coups d'état? The answer depends on co... more What are the most efficient strategies to prevent military coups d'état? The answer depends on coup agency, that is, who attempts to overthrow the regime: elite officers or lower-ranking combat officers. Elite officers and lower-ranking combat officers have different incentives, opportunities, and capacities when it comes to perpetrating coups. Using original data on coup agency, public spending, and officer salaries in the Middle East and North Africa, we find that counterbalancing—a strategy designed to increase barriers for coup plotters' coordination efforts—and higher shares of defense spending prove more effective at preventing coups by elite officers. However, higher social spending reduces the risk of coups by combat officers. Political liberalization has mixed effects on military agents. It decreases the risk of coups by combat officers, but makes elite officers more likely to mount coups. Our findings suggest that the study of coups needs to better incorporate variation and that we need to rethink the image of coups as purely elite-led power grabs.
Security Studies, 2018
Under which circumstances do soldiers and officers desert in a violent domestic conflict? This ar... more Under which circumstances do soldiers and officers desert in a violent domestic conflict? This article studies individual military insubordination in the Syrian civil war, drawing on interviews with deserters from the Syrian army now based in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. A plausibility probe of existing explanations reveals that desertion opportunities originating in conflict events and the presence of safe-havens fail to explain individual deserters' decision making. Accounting for socio-psychological factors-moral grievances and fear-generates more promising results for an inquiry into the conditions under which military personnel desert. While moral concerns with continued military service contribute to accumulating grievances among military members engaged in the civil war, fear-that is, soldiers' concerns for their own safety-is a more effective triggering cause of desertion. The article presents a theory-generating case study on the causes of military insubordination and disintegration during violent conflict.
Armies and Insurgencies in the Arab Spring, 2016
Comparative Politics, 2016
Scholarship on intrastate conflict and civil-military relations has largely ignored individual de... more Scholarship on intrastate conflict and civil-military relations has largely ignored individual desertions during civil war. We show that high-risk behavior, such as desertion, is best thought of as coordinated action between individual decision-makers and their strong network ties. Soldiers hold preexisting opinions on whether high-risk action is worthwhile, but it is their networks that persuade them to act. Specifically, it is the content of strong network ties (rather than their mere existence) and the ability to interpret information (rather than the presence of information), which helps explain individual action under extreme risk. Our thick empirical narrative is based on substantial fieldwork on the Syrian conflict and contributes to debates on military cohesion, intrastate conflict trajectories, and the power of networks in catalyzing high-risk behavior.
Perspectives on Politics, 2016
A few years into the most recent wave of popular uprisings—the Arab Spring—studying regime trajec... more A few years into the most recent wave of popular uprisings—the Arab Spring—studying regime trajectories in countries such as Syria, Egypt, and Yemen still seems like shooting at a moving target. Yet what has not escaped notice is the central role military actors have played during these uprisings. We describe how soldiers have three options when ordered to suppress mass unrest. They may exit the regime by remaining in the barracks or going into exile, resist by fighting for the challenger or initiating a coup d'état, or remain loyal and use force to defend the regime. We argue that existing accounts of civil-military relations are ill equipped to explain the diverse patterns in exit, resistance, and loyalty during unrest because they often ignore the effects of military hierarchy. Disaggregating the military and parsing the interests and constraints of different agents in that apparatus is crucial for explaining military cohesion during such crises. Drawing on extensive fieldwork we apply our principal-agent framework to explain varying degrees and types of military cohesion in three Arab Spring cases: Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria. Studying military hierarchy elucidates decision-making within authoritarian regimes amid mass mobilization and allows us to better explain regime re-stabilization, civil war onset, or swift regime change in the wake of domestic unrest.
Regional Insight, Nov 24, 2015
Military desertions have significantly shaped the dynamics of the Syrian conflict. While desertio... more Military desertions have significantly shaped the dynamics of the Syrian conflict. While desertions have contributed to the emergence of an armed rebellion since early fall 2011, they have failed to critically weaken the Syrian regime’s army. International actors need to better understand the drivers of desertion and loyalty in the Syrian military in order to devise effective policies to weaken the regime without strengthening radical rebel groups.
Mediterranean Politics, 2015
The popular mass uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) call into question the assu... more The popular mass uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) call into question the assumption, widespread prior to the "Arab Spring", that militaries in these countries were subservient to civilianized and consolidated authoritarian regime incumbents. In most countries militaries have stepped in to suppress uprisings, replace incumbents, or cause civil wars. The analysis of political-military relations explains the immediate outcome of popular mass mobilization in the MENA region and helps re-conceptualize coup-proofing as an important authoritarian survival strategy. Accounting for variation in the degree of officers' loyalty toward incumbents provides an opportunity to test the efficacy of coupproofing. The article accounts for questions largely ignored in the theoretical literature: which coup-proofing mechanisms work best, and under which circumstances? In a qualitative comparison of Egypt and Syria, the article illustrates that authoritarian regimes have applied fundamentally different coup-proofing strategies. The Syrian regime has engineered integrative strategies to tie officers closer to the incumbent, provoking a greater degree of loyalty during regime crisis than in Egypt where officers were excluded from politics.
Journal of International Development, 2022
This article investigates the demand side of social contracts. It asks what people expect from th... more This article investigates the demand side of social contracts. It asks what people expect from their governments. Drawing on original, nationally representative surveys in Egypt, Tunisia and Lebanon, it explores popular preferences for the three possible government deliverables in social contracts: provision of social and economic services, protection from physical harm and political participation. Findings reveal that citizens expect governments to deliver all three 'Ps' (even if this costs a price), yet preferring provision over protection and participation if they have to prioritize. Findings do not show robust preferences among social groups identified by economic, gender, educational and communal differences.
Civil Wars, 2022
This article explores how rebel groups come into being and how they sustain their activities. Its... more This article explores how rebel groups come into being and how they sustain their activities. Its core premise is that the strategies used in rebel recruitment are crucial for such organisations. Knowing how rebel groups attract members will tell us why they are strong and, by extension, who is getting the upper hand in violent domestic conflicts. Drawing on empirical findings from the Syrian civil war, the article unpacks strategic choices in rebel recruitment: successful rebel groups benefit from the recruitment of combat-ready fighters (warriors) at the time of their inception and of high-commitment rebels (saints) amid sustained insurgent activities.
The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research Since the Arab Uprisings, 2022
International Political Science Review, 2022
The article draws on nationally representative telephone surveys in Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon to... more The article draws on nationally representative telephone surveys in Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon to unpack popular beliefs about who can best handle the social and economic consequences from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It therefore offers insights into state-society relations under stress and contributes to the debate on whether or not the state should play a key role in social protection. Findings reveal intriguing differences between countries, but also among social groups within societies. Communal identities and economic status do not appear to drive differences, with roughly half of the three countries' populations sharing trust in their respective state authorities. In turn, the article challenges findings on the gender gap in people's expectations about the provision of public goods amid crisis. On the country-level, Egyptians exhibit significantly greater trust in their state authorities than Tunisians and Lebanese, which substantiates arguments about the perceived advantage of autocratic governance to fight health crises.
Democratization, 2022
Surveys around the world report exceptionally high levels of support for the military. This is pa... more Surveys around the world report exceptionally high levels of support for the military. This is particularly relevant for countries in transition from authoritarian rule to democracy, where militaries can play a vital role for democratic consolidation or autocratic backsliding. Given the sensitive nature of the issue, we suspect that figures indicating strong support for the military are at least partly driven by sensitivity bias. We explore this possibility through list experiments in two nationally representative surveys in Tunisia. We find that misreporting of support for the military in Tunisia is substantial, with respondents overreporting positive attitudes by 40-50 percentage points. Moreover, misreporting is not random, but instead varies systematically by incumbency, with supporters of governing parties misreporting support for the military to a significantly higher degree than opposition supporters or non-voters. Our results suggest that public opinion researchers should be wary of using direct questions to measure support for the military.
International Studies Quarterly, 2021
This research note introduces new global data on military coups. Conventional aggregate data so f... more This research note introduces new global data on military coups. Conventional aggregate data so far have conflated two distinct types of coups. Military interventions by leading officers are coups "from above," characterized by political power struggles within authoritarian elite coalitions where officers move against civilian elites, executive incumbents, and their loyal security personnel. By contrast, power grabs by officers from the lower and middle ranks are coups "from below," where military personnel outside of the political elite challenge sitting incumbents, their loyalists, and the regime itself. Disaggregating coup types offers leverage to revise important questions about the causes and consequences of military intervention in politics. This research note illustrates that coup attempts from the top of the military hierarchy are much more likely to be successful than coups from the lower and middle ranks of the military hierarchy. Moreover, coups from the top recalibrate authoritarian elite coalitions and serve to sustain autocratic rule; they rarely produce an opening for a democratic transition. Successful coups from below, by contrast, can result in the breakdown of authoritarian regimes and generate an opening for democratic transitions.
Mediterranean Politics, 2021
Popular attitudes in support of authoritarian alternatives and weak party systems constitute impo... more Popular attitudes in support of authoritarian alternatives and weak party systems constitute important threats to democratic consolidation and the stability of new democracies. This article explores popular alienation from established political actors in Tunisia. Under what conditions do citizens support alternatives to the elites in power and the institutional infrastructure of a new democracy? Drawing on an original, nationally representative survey in Tunisia administered in 2017, this article examines three categories of popular attitudes in support of political outsiders.Military interventionism appears in people's preferences for anti-system politics-the most immediate challenge to the country's stability and democratic transition. Anti-political establishment sentiments are shown in people's preferences for an enhanced role of the country's main trade union as a civil-society alternative to political party elites. Finally, outsider eclecticism is the seemingly incoherent phenomenon of concurrent support for a civil society actor and the military as an 'authoritarian alternative.' Anti-establishment sentiments will continue to be an important element in Tunisian post-authoritarian politics, evidenced by the rise to power of Kais Said in the 2019 presidential elections and his 2021 decision to dismiss parliament. In turn, popular support for military intervention may have implications for the country's domestic security and peaceful transition.
APSA MENA Newsletter, 2021
Political Research Quarterly, 2021
International Peacekeeping, 2020
What is the impact of international peacekeeping missions for civil-military relations at home? T... more What is the impact of international peacekeeping missions for civil-military relations at home? This article unpacks the conditions that produce positive effects of peacekeeping participation on the domestic politics of an authoritarian regime. Drawing on field research, I discuss four mechanisms that link foreign policy making to domestic civil-military relations in Ben Ali's Tunisia. First, the deployment of troops for peacekeeping abroad presents obstacles for the coordination of coup plots at home. Second, incumbents can allocate material resources to meet officers' economic grievances. Moreover, peacekeeping operations serve to enhance corporate institutionalization through specific training programmes. Finally, peacekeeping contributes to a professional ethos and hence the depoliticization of the officer corps. These findings give rise to the notion that contributing to peace can have similar effects for domestic politics as going to war.
International Area Studies Review, 2020
This article explores the conditions under which revolutionary mass uprisings are likely to occur... more This article explores the conditions under which revolutionary mass uprisings are likely to occur. We offer a probabilistic explanation of the social and political conditions that make people rise against autocrats. The article presents a medium-n dataset of 79 revolutionary mass uprisings in 165 autocracies since 1945. Since revolutions are rare events, a combination of factors must come together to trigger them. Drawing on the extant literature on revolutionary change, we find initial support for a range of discrete factors. Our findings suggest that four such factors are particularly powerful explanations of revolutionary mass uprisings-and a combination of those factors will go a long way in predicting revolutionary change: a history of protracted low-level popular contention; the presence of personalist regimes; long tenure of incumbents in office; and the showroom effect of uprisings in the temporal and spatial vicinity of states. In a broader theoretical perspective, these findings give rise to a breaking-point explanation of revolutionary situations, emphasizing that mass uprisings build up over time, whereas structuralist theories or grievance-based approaches fare less well in predicting revolutionary ruptures.
Armed Forces and Society, 2019
This article presents a systematic analysis of military coups following popular mass uprisings in... more This article presents a systematic analysis of military coups following popular mass uprisings in nondemocratic regimes, conceptualized as endgame coups. Drawing on our original, medium-n data set of revolutionary situations, we find that such end-game coups form a distinct type of military intervention in politics. Compared to regular coups, episodes of popular mass contestation prompt conservative interventions in politics of the military's leadership aimed at preserving the regime's authoritarian infrastructure. A systematic test of factors characterizing postcoup political trajectories is based on Cox proportional hazard models and provides empirical evidence in contrast to the widely held notion of "democratic coups." Our findings reveal that endgame coups are conservative rollback coups, executed by military leaderships, that result in continued political instability and illiberal politics.
Political Science Quarterly, 2019
International Studies Quarterly, 2018
What are the most efficient strategies to prevent military coups d'état? The answer depends on co... more What are the most efficient strategies to prevent military coups d'état? The answer depends on coup agency, that is, who attempts to overthrow the regime: elite officers or lower-ranking combat officers. Elite officers and lower-ranking combat officers have different incentives, opportunities, and capacities when it comes to perpetrating coups. Using original data on coup agency, public spending, and officer salaries in the Middle East and North Africa, we find that counterbalancing—a strategy designed to increase barriers for coup plotters' coordination efforts—and higher shares of defense spending prove more effective at preventing coups by elite officers. However, higher social spending reduces the risk of coups by combat officers. Political liberalization has mixed effects on military agents. It decreases the risk of coups by combat officers, but makes elite officers more likely to mount coups. Our findings suggest that the study of coups needs to better incorporate variation and that we need to rethink the image of coups as purely elite-led power grabs.
Security Studies, 2018
Under which circumstances do soldiers and officers desert in a violent domestic conflict? This ar... more Under which circumstances do soldiers and officers desert in a violent domestic conflict? This article studies individual military insubordination in the Syrian civil war, drawing on interviews with deserters from the Syrian army now based in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. A plausibility probe of existing explanations reveals that desertion opportunities originating in conflict events and the presence of safe-havens fail to explain individual deserters' decision making. Accounting for socio-psychological factors-moral grievances and fear-generates more promising results for an inquiry into the conditions under which military personnel desert. While moral concerns with continued military service contribute to accumulating grievances among military members engaged in the civil war, fear-that is, soldiers' concerns for their own safety-is a more effective triggering cause of desertion. The article presents a theory-generating case study on the causes of military insubordination and disintegration during violent conflict.
Armies and Insurgencies in the Arab Spring, 2016
Comparative Politics, 2016
Scholarship on intrastate conflict and civil-military relations has largely ignored individual de... more Scholarship on intrastate conflict and civil-military relations has largely ignored individual desertions during civil war. We show that high-risk behavior, such as desertion, is best thought of as coordinated action between individual decision-makers and their strong network ties. Soldiers hold preexisting opinions on whether high-risk action is worthwhile, but it is their networks that persuade them to act. Specifically, it is the content of strong network ties (rather than their mere existence) and the ability to interpret information (rather than the presence of information), which helps explain individual action under extreme risk. Our thick empirical narrative is based on substantial fieldwork on the Syrian conflict and contributes to debates on military cohesion, intrastate conflict trajectories, and the power of networks in catalyzing high-risk behavior.
Perspectives on Politics, 2016
A few years into the most recent wave of popular uprisings—the Arab Spring—studying regime trajec... more A few years into the most recent wave of popular uprisings—the Arab Spring—studying regime trajectories in countries such as Syria, Egypt, and Yemen still seems like shooting at a moving target. Yet what has not escaped notice is the central role military actors have played during these uprisings. We describe how soldiers have three options when ordered to suppress mass unrest. They may exit the regime by remaining in the barracks or going into exile, resist by fighting for the challenger or initiating a coup d'état, or remain loyal and use force to defend the regime. We argue that existing accounts of civil-military relations are ill equipped to explain the diverse patterns in exit, resistance, and loyalty during unrest because they often ignore the effects of military hierarchy. Disaggregating the military and parsing the interests and constraints of different agents in that apparatus is crucial for explaining military cohesion during such crises. Drawing on extensive fieldwork we apply our principal-agent framework to explain varying degrees and types of military cohesion in three Arab Spring cases: Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria. Studying military hierarchy elucidates decision-making within authoritarian regimes amid mass mobilization and allows us to better explain regime re-stabilization, civil war onset, or swift regime change in the wake of domestic unrest.
Regional Insight, Nov 24, 2015
Military desertions have significantly shaped the dynamics of the Syrian conflict. While desertio... more Military desertions have significantly shaped the dynamics of the Syrian conflict. While desertions have contributed to the emergence of an armed rebellion since early fall 2011, they have failed to critically weaken the Syrian regime’s army. International actors need to better understand the drivers of desertion and loyalty in the Syrian military in order to devise effective policies to weaken the regime without strengthening radical rebel groups.
Mediterranean Politics, 2015
The popular mass uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) call into question the assu... more The popular mass uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) call into question the assumption, widespread prior to the "Arab Spring", that militaries in these countries were subservient to civilianized and consolidated authoritarian regime incumbents. In most countries militaries have stepped in to suppress uprisings, replace incumbents, or cause civil wars. The analysis of political-military relations explains the immediate outcome of popular mass mobilization in the MENA region and helps re-conceptualize coup-proofing as an important authoritarian survival strategy. Accounting for variation in the degree of officers' loyalty toward incumbents provides an opportunity to test the efficacy of coupproofing. The article accounts for questions largely ignored in the theoretical literature: which coup-proofing mechanisms work best, and under which circumstances? In a qualitative comparison of Egypt and Syria, the article illustrates that authoritarian regimes have applied fundamentally different coup-proofing strategies. The Syrian regime has engineered integrative strategies to tie officers closer to the incumbent, provoking a greater degree of loyalty during regime crisis than in Egypt where officers were excluded from politics.
Edited by Holger Albrecht, Aurel Croissant, and Fred H. Lawson 312 pages | 6 x 9 | 2 illus. Clot... more Edited by Holger Albrecht, Aurel Croissant, and Fred H. Lawson
312 pages | 6 x 9 | 2 illus.
Cloth Sep 2016 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4854-8 | $65.00s | £42.50
Ebook Sep 2016 | ISBN 978-0-8122-9324-1 | $65.00s | £42.50
"An excellent contribution to the literature on civil-military relations in the Arab world. The strength of the book rests in the diversity of the essays, which combined enable the volume to cover more ground, and in more depth, than a single-authored work ever could."—Jeffrey Martini, The RAND Corporation
"Armies and Insurgencies in the Arab Spring is a much needed attempt to think systematically about the changing role of militaries in the Arab world and how they fit within efforts to reinforce regime security, democratization, and state stability."—Ariel Ahram, Virginia Tech University
Following the popular uprisings that swept across the Arab world beginning in 2010, armed forces remained pivotal actors in politics throughout the region. As demonstrators started to challenge entrenched autocratic rulers in Tunis, Cairo, Sana'a, and Manama, the militaries stormed back into the limelight and largely determined whether any given ruler survived the protests. In Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, senior officers pulled away from their presidents, while in Algeria, Bahrain, and Syria, they did not. More important, military officers took command in shaping the new order and conflict trajectories throughout that region.
Armies and Insurgencies in the Arab Spring explores the central problems surrounding the role of armed forces in the contemporary Arab world. How and why do military apparatuses actively intervene in politics? What explains the fact that in some countries, military officers and rank-and-file take steps to defend an incumbent, while in others they defect and refrain from suppressing popular protest? What are the institutional legacies of the military's engagement during, and in the immediate aftermath of, mass uprisings?
Focusing on these questions, editors Holger Albrecht, Aurel Croissant, and Fred H. Lawson have organized Armies and Insurgencies in the Arab Spring into three sections. The first employs case studies to make comparisons within and between regions; the second examines military engagements in the Arab uprisings in Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria; and the third looks at political developments following the cresting of the protest wave in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and the Gulf. The collection promotes better understanding not only of the particular history of military engagement in the Arab Spring but also of significant aspects of the transformation of political-military relations in other regions of the contemporary world.
Contributors: Holger Albrecht, Risa A. Brooks, Cherine Chams El-Dine, Virginie Collombier, Aurel Croissant, Philippe Droz-Vincent, Kevin Koehler, Fred H. Lawson, Shana Marshall, Dorothy Ohl, David Pion-Berlin, Tobias Selge, Robert Springborg.
Holger Albrecht is Associate Professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo. Aurel Croissant is Professor of Political Science at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. Fred H. Lawson is Professor of Government at Mills College.