Eva Bellin

This chapter explains how strategies and forms of authoritarian rule in the MENA have evolved greatly since the Arab uprisings. Sidestepping normative expectations for democracy and democratization, the chapter shows the primary pathways of change and persistence for many dictatorships. Many autocracies have become personalistic, bucking assumptions that rational leaders should protect themselves with hegemonic parties rather than cronies and sycophants. Most have become far more repressive since the uprisings, despite the costs of ramping up coercion. Others have catalyzed new modes of cultural domination that induce compliance through ideology. This chapter examines the shift in these different domestic practices, showing also at the external level how many regimes have also become imbricated in new networks of international support. These developments enrich prevailing theories about authoritarianism but also show how quickly regional events outpace them.

How might Arab countries build the foundations for rule of law in the wake of prolonged authoritarian rule? What specific challenges do they confront? Are there insights to be gained from comparative analysis beyond the region? Exploring these questions, the authors of Building Rule of Law in the Arab World provide a theoretically informed, empirically rich account of key issues facing the countries at the forefront of political change since the Arab Spring as governments seek to develop effective and responsible judiciaries, security sectors, and anticorruption agencies.

2011 was an extraordinarily eventful year in the world of Arab politics. Unprecedented levels of mass protest shook the foundations of authoritarian regimes across the region. The fall of three long-entrenched dictators in relatively quick succession1 fueled expectations that a regionwide domino effect might be in the making and that authoritarianism’s grip on the region might finally be pried open. The hope was that that the Arab world would, at last, catch the third wave of democratization, an ambition that had long eluded this part of the world.

Before exploring the political implications of the emerging middle class, best to begin by defining the term. The economists who herald the growth of the middle class in the developing world today largely construe the term solely as an income category. This is in stark contrast to Marx, who defined class in terms of a social group's relation to the means of production, and it is in stark contrast to Weber, who defined class in terms of a group's pattern of consumption. But even if economists agree to conceive of the middle class as an income category, they differ on how to define this category – whether in relative or absolute terms.3 Some, like Lester Thurow, define middle class relationally. People are middle class if their income falls between 75% and 125% of the median income in a given society. Others define middle class in absolute terms. In the case of Milanovic and Yitzhaki, the boundaries of the contemporary global middle class are set between the average income levels that currently prevail in Brazil and Italy (threshold and ceiling, respectively).4 Still others like Diana Farrell define middle class in terms of relative access to discretionary spending. For Farrell, the middle class is distinguished from the poor in that it does not live “hand to mouth.” Members of the middle class are defined as those who have roughly a third of their income left over for discretionary spending after covering the basic cost of food and shelter.