Chapter 8 evaluates the argument that ruling monarchs are more effective than other types of autocrats at avoiding blame through delegation. It does so by drawing on cross-national data from around the world in addition to more specific comparisons of monarchies and republics in the Middle East. First, the chapter establishes that ruling monarchs tend to share power more credibly than presidential autocrats both in the Middle East and beyond, and it shows that this difference is recognized by people living in these regimes. Next, the chapter draws on an original survey experiment administered in Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, and Tunisia, in addition to data on constitutions, to demonstrate that monarchs benefit from reduced expectations that they will govern and be held responsible for policy outcomes. These expectations imply that delegation by ruling monarchs will be more in line with how the public expects responsibility to function in the political system. The chapter concludes by tracing patterns of opposition during the Arab Spring and analyzing cross-national protest data to show that monarchs are less likely than other dictators to be targeted by mass opposition when the public is dissatisfied, suggesting their advantages in avoiding blame contribute to their resiliency.

Even after the Arab Spring, it has been thought that Arab youth are not deeply invested in the political parties of North Africa. In fact, quite a few are affiliated with various parties but the reasons for their choices and the means by which the parties seek to attract them have been little explored. In this chapter, we look at the choices both male and female youngsters make in deciding whether to affiliate with one or another of the Moroccan political parties. Often, we see, it is less a matter of ideological attachment than social connection, less a way of showing philosophic solidarity than exploring personal identity. The repercussions of this, especially for the more fundamentalist parties and for the monarchy’s approach to them, demonstrate that the encounter with organized political attachment is often more subtle than the overt programs of the parties would seem to indicate.

This chapter explores how autocrats use propaganda to explicitly threaten repression, which often occurs via codewords. Threats of repression remind citizens of the consequences of dissent, but they are costly. When propaganda apparatuses seek credibility, threatening repression makes persuading citizens of regime merits more difficult. Threats of repression also endow sensitive moments with even more significance to citizens. We show that propaganda-based threats of repression are more common where electoral constraints are non-binding. Even as Ben Ali was losing power in Tunisia, for instance, his propaganda apparatus chose to concede citizen frustrations and emphasize the government’s determination to do better, rather than advertise the military’s loyalty and training, both routinely cited during the succession crisis in Uzbekistan. We find that Cameroon’s Paul Biya issues threats in English, but not in French; his political in-group is francophone, his out-group anglophone. We find that the CCP is far more likely to explicitly threaten repression in the Xinjiang Daily, which targets the ethnic Uyghur out-group, and on the anniversaries of ethnic separatist movements.

Hybrid warfare is a widely interpreted and highly contested concept and also a label for opponents and targets in conflict or competition in international relations. It is often projected as being something underhand undertaken by the other, however, this chapter examines the conceptual and operational history of Western hybrid warfare. This refers to creating suitable environmental conditions in the information and cognitive domain as a means to subvert a target government and bring about regime change.

Corruption in the Middle East and North Africa is both widely prevalent and a puzzle because it is so resistant to reform. This book will engage with democratic transitions in Egypt and Tunisia to better understand why these countries saw so little change in terms of cronyist relations between businesses and the state.

This final chapter briefly summarizes the book’s central argument and evidence. The chapter then discusses some implications of the book’s two key independent variables: rents and conquest. The former is situated in a broader discussion of economic and political development. This discussion introduces the concept of a political transfer problem. For the latter variable, the chapter discusses the muted possibility of political and economic liberalization in Muslim societies that experienced conquest.

Shari’a jurisdiction among the Palestinian minority in Israel is one of long standing. Its goes back to the Ottoman millet system. However, in light of the geo-constitutional context of the state of Israel as a Jewish nation state, sustaining Shari’a jurisdiction was subjected to various policies emanating from state institutions as well as Palestinian internal organizations. To understand this reality, it is essential to understand not only the historical origins of this jurisdictional authority but the constitutional and political forces that define Israel of today.

The Lebanese family law system characterized by legal and judicial pluralism controls major aspects of a woman’s rights such as marital, child custody and social rights. While issues of personal status are exclusively left to religious courts and sectarian legislation, it is undeniable that women in Lebanon, are left at the whim of not only an entrenched religious establishment but also cultural norms of patriarchy. Historical practices of Islamic family law issues find little premise in shari’a but rather in the interpretation and implementation thereof. Thus, opening the door to activism and Islamic jurisprudential approach could bring change on religiously delicate issues. In pursuit of gender equality, efforts to reform laws and break the status quo have in certain instances proved successful, yet the transition to a secular personal status law system at the image of Lebanon’s progressive civil society, is far from being reached.

This chapter offers an overview of the sustained reforms of Islamic family law that occurred in Tunisia from the 1950s to 2020. Organized historically, it traces developments during major time periods starting with the end of colonial rule in 1956 and ending with the aftermath of the 2010/11 Arab Spring that ushered a process of democratization in the last decade. Considering marriage, divorce and custody, we present the reforms that placed Tunisia at the vanguard of the Arab world in regard to liberalizing family law and women’s rights. We argue that sustained reforms were possible because succeeding regimes found it in their best interests to pursue a reformist policy. Since most reforms were initiated by state builders and state actors, we refer to them as “politics from above” in contrast to the “politics from below” that started in earnest with women’s activism in the later periods.

The chapter addresses examples of learning from external failure, firstly ascertaining Chinese learning from the collapse of the Soviet Union. It then addresses case learning from three revolutions: the Orange Revolution and Euromaidan in Ukraine and the Arab Spring from across the North African and Middle East region. The three protests led to learning on the part of Belarus and Russia in particular. The Orange Revolution directly contributed to preventive counter-revolutions in Belarus and Russia. The collapse of authoritarian regimes across the Middle East and North Africa led to rapid learning from Belarus and Russia. The Euromaidan saw clear learning from Belarus and Russia, but also from Moldova. However, evidence of Moldovan learning is limited, and the chapter highlights that external learning is limited regarding Moldova and Ukraine.

This chapter recounts the cascade of problems that threated international liberalism and the Washington Consensus during the first part of the twenty-first century. The Global War on Terror launched under US leadership, the global financial crisis and the ensuring Great Recession, and the promise and dashed hopes of the Arab Spring all exposed the failure of the liberal internationalist system and the expanded international organizations to fulfill the hopes of the 1990s.

The present chapter studies two contemporary Algerian narratives retelling the medieval rebellion of the Zendj, Black Africans brought as slaves to the marshes of Lower Iraq, who revolted against the power of the Abbasid Caliphate. Considered as the greatest servile insurrection of the medieval Arab-Muslim world, Jamel Eddine Benchecikh’s novel Rose noire sans parfum (1998) and Tareq Teguia’s film Révolution Zenj (2013) revisit this evocative episode in the global history of slavery, merging racial and economic exploitation with religious conflict and the struggle for liberation in an age of empire. The chapter focuses on Benchecikh and Teguia’s creative responses to the silence to which the Zendj have been condemned by the Arabic sources of the time, pointing out the different stylistic paths they take to trace analogies between the Zendj Rebellion and the contemporary forms of oppression, racism, and sectarian strife they witness across Algeria, Iraq, Palestine, and Europe. Expressing the rage of the oppressed, their narratives denounce the inequalities and injustices of the postcolonial and globalized world, investigating their causes while inviting audiences within and outside the Arab World to join in the Zendj’s unconcluded struggle for liberation across the centuries.

Chapter 6 dissects the drivers of Tunisian immigration politics before, during and after the 2011 regime change, focusing on the reasons behind restrictive policy continuity in the face of international and civil society efforts to initiate a liberal reform. I show that while foreign policy interests, the role of national identity narratives, and the imperative to secure state power over immigration have remained constants in Tunisian immigration policymaking, the role and weight of domestic factors such as public opinion and civil society activism in public policymaking has fundamentally changed after 2011. Yet, instead of triggering liberal reform in line with the revolutionary spirit, democratization has compelled political elites to put ‘Tunisians first’ and to sideline issues of racism and immigration. Ultimately, the bottom-up and external pressures that emerged after 2011 only led to minor, mostly informal policy changes that have not affected the restrictive core of Tunisia’s immigration regime in the first decade of democratization.

Chapter 3 dives into the contrasting cases of Morocco and Tunisia. I introduce immigration policy developments in Morocco and Tunisia against the backdrop of both countries’ political regime dynamics. In particular, I provide concise accounts of Moroccan and Tunisian state formation trajectories and national identity narratives, as well as focused overviews of immigration and emigration patterns and policies from the early twentieth century until the end of 2020, including Morocco’s and Tunisia’s treatment of migrants during the first year of COVID-19. This offers the empirical backbone for the book.

I make two related claims: (1) assessments of stability made by political actors and analysts are largely hit or miss; and (2) that leader responses to fear of fragility or confidence in robustness are unpredictable in their consequences. Leader assessments are often made with respect to historical lessons derived from dramatic past events that appear relevant to the present. These lessons may or may not be based on good history and may or may not be relevant to the case at hand. Leaders and elites who believe their orders to be robust can help make their beliefs self-fulfilling. However, overconfidence can help make these orders fragile. I argue that leader and elite assessments of robustness and fragility are influenced by cognitive biases and also often highly motivated. Leaders and their advisors use information selectively and can confirm tautologically the lessons they apply.

Chapter 4 looks at the restitution of liberalism as a potential model for political change during the Arab Spring and then its inability to shape outcomes in Egypt and Syria due to structural, organizational, and international reasons. The chapter refutes the narrative that the Arab Spring was the result of a leaderless movement of an alienated youth and loose associations of activists. It asserts that this overall analysis ignores the years of liberal activism against the extant patterns of domination and authority in the region, and the fact that protestors rallied behind a set of ideas that were consistently different from the ones rallied behind in the 1950s–1960s.What is missed in most studies is the deep and consistent transformation and reformulation of the object of discontent. Millions confronted their States despite the threat of violence, and in so doing they showed that liberal notions were vibrantly hiding in plain sight.