Elite Change after the Arab Spring: Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen
Panel 120, 2014 Annual Meeting
On Monday, November 24 at 8:30 am
Panel Description
How do formerly excluded political elites assume office after authoritarian breakdown? This panel seeks to develop a new perspective on transition processes after the revolutionary uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. A mainstream perspective in the Political Science literature analyzes these processes as (democratic) transitions, with a strong focus on the emergence of new institutional structures that regulate access to political power. Such a focus on constitution-drafting and founding elections, while valuable in its own right, captures only parts of the dynamics. The contributors to this panel demand a more cautious perspective on processes of transformation, which remain "moving targets" and do not allow for a conclusive judgment on possible outcomes. Rather than focusing on the establishment of new rules and procedures, we propose to take a closer look at the trajectories of elite change as a perspective that allows us to assess the extent of change in the alignment of forces undergirding political regimes.
The contributors of this panel study four Arab Spring cases--Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen--in which authoritarian incumbents have been washed away by popular mass uprisings and where transition processes have started in 2011. These processes include the recruitment of formerly sidelined political elites into the political arena (governments, bureaucratic apparatuses, parliaments, higher committees). Formerly excluded elites were politically active in the fallen authoritarian regimes as members of opposition parties, civil society activists, labor leaders, and representatives of religious social movements.
In the four country studies, authors detect two distinct patterns of elite change: "competitive recruitment" and "co-optative recruitment." In competitive recruitment, new elites draw upon popular legitimacy (often proclaimed to be "revolutionary") in their push for political office; the main mechanisms of competitive recruitment are thus elections or less institutionalized forms of popular support, such as petitions or protests. Co-optative recruitment, by contrast, refers to a process by which formerly excluded elites are drawn into the political process through appointment rather than elections. Contributors to this panel find both patterns in their respective countries, with varying degrees. The study of elite change is a valuable analytical tool for analyzing the degree to which authoritarian regime break-down has actually happened. Studying elite change is both empirically feasible and contributes to better theoretical understanding of post-revolutionary transition are promising. The papers are based on substantial field research and rely primarily on semi-structured, open-ended interviews with political elite members and country experts.
What explains variation in the pattern of elite recruitment into office since authoritarian breakdown in post-Mubarak Egypt? Contrary to conventional expectations, elite change in post-Mubarak Egypt has been driven by more than just electoral politics. This pattern can be explained through changes in which actors were perceived as legitimate at different junctures. Immediately following Mubarak’s ouster, elites were recruited on the basis of their participation in the January 25 uprising, leading to a pattern of elite recruitment based on "revolutionary participation." When parliamentary elections were held in November 2011, legitimacy was defined in terms of electoral weight. This led to the emergence of a pattern of "competitive recruitment," where elites including Muslim Brotherhood members, were recruited mainly on the basis of their popular support. This is clearly evident in the way in which elites were recruited into the constituent assembly tasked with drafting the 2012 constitution. This electorally-based pattern of elite recruitment changed radically following the military’s ouster of popularly-elected President Mohammed. Morsi on July 3, 2014. In the post-July 3 period, legitimacy was defined instead solely with reference to a new revolutionary participation in the June 30 protests that led to Morsi’s ouster. This excluded Morsi supporters and included state and societal actors who demonstrated their support for military intervention to remove Morsi. Therefore, elites were co-opted into office on the basis of their participation in the June 30 protests, ushering a new pattern of “co-optative recruitment.” This paper focuses mainly on explaining modes of elite recruitment into office during periods of transition. In doing so, it draws on and contributes to theories of democratization, elite change in transitions, and transition from authoritarian rule. The paper utilizes primary sources and first-hand interviews with political actors in Egypt.
The revolutionary forces that overthrew Qaddafi were a motley alliance of long-time opponents to the regime with ordinary citizens, and early defectors from the regime. Within the National Transitional Council and the transitional institutions subsequently created, a new political elite has therefore emerged that mixed together old and new actors alike, from various backgrounds.
A fierce struggle has rapidly engaged among them for the control of the centers of power represented by the newly created institutions (especially the Government and the General National Congress). In that struggle, the passing of the Political Exclusion Law constituted a turning point that highlighted the rift between those who claimed to be “genuine revolutionaries” and those who had once collaborated with the former regime.
Yet the competition between these included elites eager to take control of the transitional institutions should not obfuscate the fact that these have often not proved a sufficient tool for them to assert their authority. Furthermore, they have on many occasions either been challenged by or had to ask for support from outside elites, i.e. elites which have not been taking part in the new institutional game, or whose role within it has remained ambiguous.
This has particularly been the case with local institutions such as the civil and military councils created during the war, whose status and role within the new institutional structure have so far remained unclear.
Similarly, while formally kept outside the new institutional order, traditional social structures such as tribal elders councils have often been used and proved crucial to restore peace between conflicting parties at the local level.
Also important have been those with the capacity to use force. While weapons have been key to the success of the 2011 uprising, they have remained so in the transitional period, in the hands of gunmen eager to assert their power over networks or territories or as a tool used by political parties to impose their agenda upon decision-makers.
Against such background, this paper will analyze the issue of elite change in post-Qaddafi Libya by questioning the very concept of political elites intended as those elites included in the newly created institutions. For a better understanding of the form and scope of political change, attention should also be paid to those outside elites whose influence and power do not derive from their participation in the formal institutional game.
While popular mobilization in Yemen has triggered a severe regime crisis, it cannot explain the course of action and regime trajectory since the early demonstrations in spring 2011. This paper argues that the uprising served as a catalyst for the outbreak of a simmering conflict that henceforth came to characterize transitional politics in the Southern Arabian country. The defection of core members of the political and military elite—most notably Saleh’s long-time ally Ali Mohsen—was a consequence of subliminal intra-elite rivalries since the mid-1990s. Fissures have appeared within the politico-military elite, in particular between the family of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh and core members of the Sanhani elite. These intra-elite fissures have created and deepened cracks in the regime’s institutionalized infrastructure, in particular in the security apparatus and the military.
The main part of the paper is concerned with an explanation of elite change in the period immediately following the 2011 uprising. None of the procedures introduced in 2012 and 2013 employ competitive forms of elite recruitment, owing to the fact that electoral processes have been absent. Rather than, for instance, in Egypt and Tunisia, elections for parliaments and presidencies, or constitutional referenda have not characterized this transition period. Elite change came about through an inclusive negotiation process in a National Dialogue Conference. Its composition represented different strata and interest groups in society, but it was not inspired by competitive procedures, in which the population was asked to vote for their representatives. Another form of co-optative recruitment—concurrent to negotiations in the National Dialogue—could be witnessed behind the scenes: only poorly disguised as “security sector reforms,” the new president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi began to replace the higher echelons of security and military officers, loyal to him and recruited primarily from his Abyan province. Elite change here characterizes a continuing power struggle between formerly sidelined regime members—such as Hadi and Ali Mohsen—and the Saleh family which has continued to play a role in post-revolutionary politics.
The findings in this paper are based on a three-week long research mission to Sanaa in January 2013, during which I conducted multiple open-ended, semi-structured interviews with political observers, civil society activists, and members of the Yemeni security forces. If the security situation allows me to return to Sanaa, I will do so on a follow-up mission in September of this year.
