The Interplay of Regime Survival Strategy and Political Reform in Jordan and Morocco after the Arab Spring

Abstract

The phenomenon of the Arab Spring divided both experts and politicians. On the one hand many European and American decision-makers called the Arab Spring as the fourth wave of worldwide democratization pointing to the potentially positive outcome of the on-going transition process in Egypt or Tunisia.2 On the other hand, the majority of scholars changed the vocabulary of analyzing the political process in the Arab political regimes. Among those experts is Raymond Hinnebusch who has begun to describe recent political changes in the framework of the “post-democratization” discourse drawing attention to the vicious circle of political liberalization and deliberalization.3 International organizations as well as Western states dropped the term of democracy and democratization from the agenda as the limited political liberalization in the Arab republics during the 1990s failed to succeed in liberal democracies. Political reforms were seen as a tool of regimes survival strategy in the hands of autocrats. The pre-Arab Spring authoritarian stability has not challenged the status quo, which was beneficial for Western states providing security and stability in the Middle Eastern region.4 However, the Arab Spring challenged the status quo in an unpredictable way that was not in favour of the West. According to the author’s hypothesis the outcome of the political transformation process in the affected Arab republics is the evolution of a neo-authoritarian political structure in which the old political players (armed forces) share the political space with the new players (Islamist parties). These new players are not completely new as it is the case with Islamist parties, which were part of the legal (Jordan), illegal (Syria) or semi-legal opposition (Egypt) in the pre-Arab Spring era. It is important to emphasize the differences among the national differences among the states involved in the Arab Spring. The historical and societal context of Egypt differs from the mainly tribally affiliated Libya.