Defecting Authoritarian Militaries in the Arab World (original) (raw)

To Shoot or to Defect? Military Responses to the Arab Uprisings

Occasional Paper 22, 2019

By examining the events of the Arab uprisings, this paper looks into the nature and dynamics of armies’ responses to popular uprisings. It argues that the outcome of the massive, regime-threatening Arab revolts in 2011 can be assessed by how a military responded to protests: did the army shoot protesters, did it stay idle, or did it largely defect? In light of the rich literature available on the historical experience of the “Arab Spring,” this paper shows that an army’s response to end popular uprisings in authoritarian regimes is determined by several key factors: the military’s level of institutionalization; its relationship to the regime; the degree of the regime’s legitimacy; the amount of international aid it receives; the prospects of foreign intervention; and, finally, the strength of the army’s bond with society and its perception of its own role within society. Additionally, there is a factor often overlooked by scholars; namely, how the military assesses a regime’s capacity to solve the crisis in order to triumph. The paper draws on evidence from the six cases of the 2011 Arab Spring—Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, and Tunisia—to illustrate the dynamics of troop loyalty or defection.

Military defections in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria

The scientific literature indicates that there are many complex variables that determined whether the militaries in the Arab Spring turned against their regimes or not. In this paper I focus on three variables that the scientific literature highlights as the most important. These are: (1) organising and structuring of the militaries; (2) identity differences between the military and the general population; and (3) the type and extent of civilian demonstrations. Through a theoretical part, these variables examined in order to create a comprehensive overview, which ends in the creation of three different hypotheses. I illustrate these various dynamics through an analysis of four different countries that experienced demonstrations: Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria. I finally argue that Tunisia and Egypt were two similar cases, where both militaries sided with the protesters because of structural factors and large peaceful demonstrations. Libya's military split in two because of structure, identity differences in tribe affiliation within the military, as well as the demonstrations became violent. Syria's military has broken into several parts due to identity differences within the military, extensive coup-proofing of Assad, which goes under organisation and structure, and that the demonstrations were violent. In the conclusion I elaborate the outcome in the various cases.

Myths of military defection in Egypt and Tunisia

Mediterranean Politics, 2018

In this article, we challenge existing analyses of military behaviour during the Arab uprisings. Egypt and Tunisia are often presented as cases where the military formed an explicit or implicit alliance with the opposition and thereby ‘defected‘ from the regime. In contrast to this interpretation, we show that in Tunisia, insubordination took the form of a police mutiny rather than military defection, while in Egypt the military did not defect from, but rather preserved the regime. Finally, we challenge the arguments about Tunisia being a ’pacted’ transition, while in Egypt polarization led to calls for the military to intervene. We show that in Tunisia there were also calls for the military to intervene, and in Egypt the decline of support for Mursi did not directly translate into support for military intervention. The military’s popularity rating had in fact declined substantially since 2011. Misinterpreting military behaviour has led scholars to underestimate the level of regime cohesiveness and the significance of other security agencies in the overthrow of rulers. Finally, it has fed into the (false) belief that the military could mediate the transition to democracy.

A new theory of military behavior in the Arab uprisings: ‘Pro-State’ and ‘Pro-Regime’

The Journal of international studies, 2021

Many articles have been published on civil-military relations. But the unexpected events circle that was the so-called Arab spring or Arab uprisings has created a gap that should be filled by scholars. The article sets forth a new theoretical framework that is pro-state and pro-regime by applying this framework respectively to the two different cases Tunisia and Libya. This article provides a comparison of the military’s behavior in Tunisia, which led to the success of the uprisings, and the military’s behavior in Libya, where the army fought protesters and precipitated in the NATO intervention and about 9 months of armed struggle. The data indicates that the military’s response to the social protests played an undeniable role in the diverse outcomes of the uprisings. Prostate and pro-regime framework aids in the exploration of this response by integrating rational choice and institutionalism to develop a comprehensive lens through which we can view this phenomenon.

Exit, Resistance, Loyalty: Military Behavior during Unrest in Authoritarian Regimes

Perspectives on Politics, 2016

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.

Why Armies Reacted Differently to the Arab Uprisings? Dynamics Affecting the Decision of Military.

Ortadoğu Etütleri (Middle Eastern Studies), 2016

The uprisings, which began in Tunisia, have spread at a rapid pace with an unprecedented intensity, and influenced all Arab countries in a variety of ways, followed particular pathways and ended differently. However, the reactions of armies to the orders of their respective governments have varied from loyalty to defection. This paper aims to examine the reciprocal and combined effect of government and military institutions on the issue. The qualitative method with some quantitative figures has been used. The effects of institutionalization of governments and the professionalization of armies have been studied in this article along with the consequences of uprisings in five separate cases: Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Syria. It is found that while instability has indeed occurred at different levels in all of these cases, the interaction of the institutionalization of government and the professionalization of the military have played decisive effects.

Dilemma and Cascades in the Armed Forces - The Tunisian Revolution

Democracy & Security, 2019

Soldiers and policemen make or break revolutions. Yet we know little about why they betray a dictator or stay loyal in the face of mass protests. I investigate the dynamics of the mutiny that overthrew Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali on 14 January 2011, turning the Tunisian uprising into a regional wave of Arab unrest. Drawing from rich archival and interview data, I trace the likelihood of mutiny to the moment when reserve forces face the imminent prospect of using large-scale lethal violence against civilians. The moment represents a critical decision, manifested in collective doubt and uncertainty. This makes the armed forces susceptible to cascades, which are driven by expectations rather than preferences, positional interests or institutional rules. Hence the stance of the armed forces as a whole is highly sensitive to small events that shape officers' beliefs regarding their colleagues' likely behavior. The initiative of a handful of driven officers can tilt the institution as a whole. Flows of information prove to be decisive. The argument implies that accounting for the variation in outcomes of mass uprisings requires shifting the explanatory focus toward endogenous, locally proximate causes. It has implications for the study of revolutions, authoritarian breakdown, civil-military relations, and nonviolence.

Soldiers and Societies in Revolt: Military Doctrine in the Arab Spring

2018

This dissertation explores civil-military relations in democratizing contexts, specifically how the historical relationship between the military and the broader public shapes responses to political crises such as riots and revolutions. I develop a novel theory, rooted in civil-military relations literature from political science and sociology, for how an army's historical interactions with the population and with foreign sponsors create doctrine by shaping organizational culture and practices toward the population. Doctrine, in turn, influences the military's response to a popular uprising. The foundations of military doctrine are historical and include the military's institutional origins, role in national independence, and relationship to the ruling party. Subsequently, doctrinal innovation occurs as a result of interacting with the domestic population and foreign military sponsors. The dissertation features qualitative case studies of Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria during the Arab Spring and a quantitative data analysis of major uprisings worldwide since 1950. Both qualitative and quantitative evidence demonstrate that the nature of military doctrine explains soldiers' behavior during popular uprisings better than alternative arguments based on capacity, patronage, and ethnicity. Contents List of Figures iii List of Tables iv 1. My definition mirrors standard definitions (e.g. Zisk 1993, 4) but broadens its scope to encompass military missions other than warfighting, i.e. domestic crisis response.

Political militaries in popular uprisings: A comparative perspective on the Arab Spring

What determines whether militaries will defect from authoritarian incumbents during regime crises? Variance in military behavior in the Arab Spring has given rise to a debate around this issue. This article highlights weaknesses of the dominant explanation and develops an alternative account of military behavior in ‘endgame scenarios’. If militaries are politicized institutions that play a major role in regulating access to power under authoritarianism, they are more likely to intervene during normal times, but less likely to defect during mass uprisings. I quantitatively test this argument against data on military coups between 1975 and 2000 drawing on a new variable that allows me to explicitly model the impact of major regime crises. I illustrate the emergence of different forms of political–military relations and their consequences in the Arab Spring by drawing on evidence from Syria, Egypt, and Tunisia.