Revisiting the Politics of Discontent in the Arab World

• In Event: Pro-Democracy Protests

Abstract

The Arab Spring protests of 2011 and the more recent protests of 2019 have been recognized for their intensity, scale, and dramatic impact on the political economy of affected countries. Less known are the smaller and more contained protests that took place in between these large events in many Arab countries throughout the last decade. In all cases, however, the discontent played out differently in the public space in terms of popular demands and regime response.

Despite the diversity in protest dynamics, the vast majority of theoretical and empirical research has studied them through the lens of democratization or regime change. There is a strong focus on grievances - typically resulting from political and/or economic policy shortcomings - that is presumed to lead citizens to take to the streets in the hopes of achieving systemic change. It is often assumed that authoritarian governments like those in the Arab world respond primarily with violence when faced with the threat of unrest. Thus, much of the research understands protests as social movements and examines which factors contribute to their success or failure. As a result, the protesters themselves generally receive little attention.

In reality, this is a misunderstanding of protest movements in authoritarian settings. Just as it is costly for protesters to challenge governments, suppressing protests is a costly action for authoritarians. Rarely do governments call in the army at the first sign of unrest. Instead, there are often rules to the game that are best understood through the prism of the politics of discontent. Across many Arab countries, most protests end relatively peacefully. Protesters do not call for regime change, and governments give space to protesters to blow off steam, to understand the issues that need resolution, and to decide where to make policy concessions.

In this proposed paper, we seek to understand who is most likely to take part in protests regardless of whether their actions succeed or fail. We expect to find similarities between protesters in Arab countries and elsewhere in the world regardless of regime type. In fact, those who trust the regime are more likely to take part in such activities than those who do not, and those who are politically engaged are also more likely to take to the streets than those disinterested in politics. In other words, the typical protester is not a dissident looking to bring down the broader system. Instead, they are trying to influence outcomes within the system. Instead of revolution, evidence suggests that the average protester is looking for reforms that affect their wellbeing.

The paper will first critically review the existing literature on the nature of protests in both authoritarian and democratic settings. This will serve to develop hypotheses which can be tested using existing public opinion data from the Arab Barometer. We then deploy empirical analysis to identify the predictors of engaging in protest as a means of testing the hypotheses. Finally, we reflect on the policy implications of the results for understanding protests and policy change.

In this paper we use data from the fifth wave of the Arab Barometer. The surveys were conducted in 2018-19 and preceded the recent spike in protest activity across the Arab region. This timing offers a unique perspective of the types of citizens who are taking to the streets during relatively low periods of protest. The surveys are nationally representative and include twelve Arab countries.

Our analysis tests several key hypotheses related to protests, including the economic grievance hypothesis and the political grievance hypothesis which predominate the literature on protests in non-democratic regimes. We incorporate economic vulnerability indicators, socioeconomic policy preferences, and views about the role of the state in society. We also test several hypotheses related to political participation and civic engagement, which are strong predictors of taking part in protests in democratic contexts.

To test the hypotheses, we use a fixed effects logistic regression model applied to cross-sectional data from the Arab Barometer. This approach pools the survey results from twelve countries with the unit fixed effect applied to countries. We conduct robustness checks covering multiple model specifications and report the changes in predicted probabilities of engaging in protest.

Authors

• Michael Robbins, Princeton University

• Tarik M. Yousef, Georgetown University