This paper examines three separate episodes of contention in Algeria, Jordan, and Tunisia in order to unpack the complex relationship between various sites of power and possibilities of resistance. It calls for a re-examination of the spatial and temporal dynamics of protest, along with attention to the uneven reach of state power (that is, how “stateness” varies across space and over time). Each of the three cases illustrates an instance of solidarity in a marginalized area that became visible through recent moments of political and economic rupture. Many scholarly analyses view the uprisings or contentious moments thereafter, as having been launched from unprecedented “sparks”—such as the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Sidi Bouzid or the violent death of a fish monger in Al-Hoceima, Morocco. This study takes as central a history of ideological commitments, political desires and fears, and instances of transgression as elements of a genealogy of dissent in addition to street-based protest or other observable forms of resistance. By broadening the lens of the contours of contention, this paper highlights the complexities and paradoxes of contentious politics oftentimes absent in linear approaches to the repression/resistance model. But rather than critiquing studies that count event data or reduce contentious politics to economic determinism, this paper builds on such approaches to theorize the modes and histories of resistance, their transformation and response to state asymmetry, expansion/amalgamation, ambiguity and paradoxes, as well as their meaning for the political present. Genealogies of dissent open the possibility to think beyond the state/society or repression/resistance binaries and explore the tensions, conflicts, solidarities, causes and effects that run counter to the standard story of uprising and revolt post-Arab Spring. This paper will utilize original research conducted in Algeria, Jordan, and Tunisia from the late 2000s to the present. Field methods include elite interviews, public and spatial ethnography, participant observation, analysis of newspapers and other public records, and other documents. Sources are in English, Arabic, and French. None of this research has been previously published.

Polarization -- defined as the difference in policy preferences along the salient axis of political competition -- among non-regime elite actors has important consequences for successful democratic consolidation during authoritarian transitions. In contingent theories of democratization, higher levels of polarization are less likely to facilitate the elite cooperation and compromise crucial to initial transition periods, and empirical evidence from potential democratic transitions following the ‘Arab Spring’ and other uprisings in comparative cases support these theories. Yet existing studies leave undertheorized why elites emerge more or less polarized from an authoritarian regime. In this paper, I present an original theory of how the repression of formal political opposition that defines authoritarian regimes affects processes of polarization in these systems. The theory builds on social psychology findings about the causes and consequences of group identification to hypothesize that the nature of repression -- whether it targets a specific group or is more widespread -- alters individual opposition groups’ levels of in-group identification, in turn altering levels of polarization in political preferences among these groups. I test the theory through case studies of Egypt and Tunisia, relying on original evidence drawn from extensive interviews, political memoirs, party platforms, and internal party documents. First, I detail how repression differed under successive authoritarian regimes in Egypt (a targeted repressive environment) and Tunisia (a widespread repressive environment). I then analyze how the different repressive environments altered both the nature and level of group identification within/among opposition groups over time, and resulted in different levels of political polarization within each political system. I also show how understanding polarization as the product of authoritarian repressive legacies has significant explanatory value for why elite actors converged on similar policy preferences and compromised in Tunisia, but failed to do so in Egypt following 2011 “Arab Spring” uprisings. The paper advances a different approach to elite polarization, focusing on the political psychology of elites rather than employing a rational actor model to explain preferences and behaviors. In addition, it rethinks dominant regime-repression models, in considering repression’s long term effects after regime transitions and on the identities, rather than the tactics, of those groups targeted. Finally, my findings challenge current understandings of authoritarian politics in the Middle East as well as comparative transitology theories, in considering the psychological and political legacies of authoritarian repression on subsequent political developments.

This paper analyzes temporal, geographic, and sectoral patterns of protest policing in Tunisia and Morocco, asking in particular how democratizing revolutions (“successful” or otherwise) shift the logic of repressive response to mobilization. Departing from the question of repressive intervention during revolutionary moments of mass mobilization, this project aims to shed light on longer-term patterns of state response to diffuse and recurrent public protests over a period of ten years (2006 - 2016). I argue that the presence and severity of physical repression at contentious events tracks both the individual-level characteristics of protests (types of demands, protest tactics, organizations involved or lack thereof) and corresponds, in aggregate, to broader political and legal transformations. Security forces, like protesters, respond to a “political opportunity structure” that provides greater latitude for repression at certain times and within certain geographic and social spaces. Empirically, I draw on a database of select protests and sit-ins collected from local mainstream and “opposition” media sources, situating the logic of repressive response within a broader range of "demobilizing" tactics including concessions, negotiations, and "ignorance." I use two analytic approaches: 1) individual-level modeling of physical repression, taking into account the mobilizational characteristics listed above, and 2) process-tracing of broader temporal trends in state response, embedding protest “cycles” within a broader account of political rupture and reconfiguration during this period. I supplement the macro data through interview-based evidence drawn from case studies of popular mobilization and police response in phosphate mining towns.

Six years after the revolution, the Tunisian government has embarked on a large-scale political decentralization program that aims to cover the entire territory with elected local governments. This paper asks what do ‘municipal encounters’, the everyday encounters between citizens and municipal officials, make visible about experiences of the post-revolution state? What labor goes into claims-making at the municipal level, and what are its consequences? Departing from the existing literature on municipalities in the Arab world which frames them as inefficient and often corrupt administrative entities bound to elite capture, and on decentralization that focuses either on the incentives of politicians to decentralize or the effects of decentralization post-fact, this paper argues that ‘municipal encounters’ make visible a mode of statecraft ruled by expectation. Citizens except the municipality to provide services while simultaneously accusing it of being incapable of service provision. In that sense, municipalities are not pre-constituted categories of territorial organization; rather they are continuously produced through the expectation of service delivery. The result is a new mode of politics the material basis of which is a new mode of territorial organization that breaks away from the confines of the ‘police state’. To make this argument, I rely on participant observation of 25 participatory planning sessions across the Tunisian territory, 20 interviews with secretary generals and presidents of municipal councils as well as a chronicling of the changes at the municipal level since the 2011.