MENA political science research a decade after the Arab uprisings

Remy Maduit | Authors published

MENA Political Science Research a Decade after the Arab Uprisings
Facing the Facts on Tremulos Grounds

André Bank is a Senior Research Fellow at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Germany.
Jan Busse is a Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer in Global Politics and Conflict Studies at the Institute of Political Science
at the Universität der Bundeswehr München, Germany. 

Facing the facts on tremulous grounds

The Arab uprisings of late 2010 and 2011 initially seemed to mark an important turning point in the modern history of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). [1] While the countries south and east of the Mediterranean had not been strangers to social mobilization and street politics in earlier periods, be it during the heydays of Arab nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s, the ‘bread riots’ of the 1970s and 1980s, or the Islamist, leftist and liberal demonstrations of the 1990s and 2000s, ‘2011’ still seemed to signify a much more substantial transformation: In less than a year, region-wide mass protests combined with the (non-)intervention of powerful security agencies forced the heads of state of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen out of office. Except for the Iranian revolution in 1979, this was the only time in five decades that mass protests successfully undermined ruling authoritarian regimes in the MENA, raising hopes among many people in the region and beyond for increased social justice, inclusion, and even democratization.

A decade after the Arab uprisings, the initial optimistic view that many held in 2011 has largely been replaced by a rather pessimistic outlook: Except for the fragile democratic transition in Tunisia, authoritarianism has remained the modal regime form in most of the Arab countries of the region. In Egypt, the military coup of 2013 has contributed to a harsher form of dictatorship than before 2011, as has the rise of Muhammad bin Salman in Saudi Arabia since 2015. In the more liberalized authoritarian monarchies of Jordan, Morocco, and, less so, Kuwait and Oman, on-and-off protests have continued over the last decade, but they have taken place in more extensive and intensive repression by state security organs. In 2011/12, Libya, Syria, and Yemen quickly transformed into internationalized civil wars. The emergence of new anti-regime protests in Sudan, Algeria, Lebanon, and Iraq in 2019 raised hopes among some that an ‘Arab Spring 2.0’ might be on the horizon. [2] Despite the continued protests, many people in the MENA still view the current political dynamics and the prospects negatively.

At first sight, the scholarly debate among different subfields of political science on the Arab uprisings and their aftermath mirrors the publicly held narrative of a ‘rapid rise’ of hope in 2011 and then a ‘long fall’ or ‘gradual decline’ post-2011. In the short, optimistic ‘rise’ phase, many MENA political scientists argued that the spread of mass protests in 2011 and in particular the quick ousting of Ben Ali, Mubarak, Qadhdhafi, and Saleh (the latter two also because of NATO and GCC interventions, respectively) meant the long-held ‘Arab exceptionalism’ had finally ended. [3] In an early Special Issue of Mediterranean Politics devoted to the Arab uprisings, Michelle Pace and Francesco Cavatorta declared that ‘ the end product of the MENA peoples’ demands will be a more accountable political system’. [4] This view was strongly contested by other MENA scholars who held that across the region, regimes’ repressive capacities and willingness were still clearly present. [5] Steven Heydemann even suggested that Arab authoritarianism will be ‘darker, more repressive, more sectarian and even more deeply resistant to democratization than in the past’. [6] While the 2011/12 scholarly debate was a lot about ‘soul-searching’ and ‘who was right?’, ensuing political science research examined several new topics or revisited older themes considering the Arab uprisings. The phase after 2013 has seen a massive expansion and, a specification of political science research themes, empirical findings, and theorizations. [7]

This Special Issue (SI) builds on the aforementioned insights, but its main objective is broader and more ambitious: to take stock of political science research on the MENA a decade after the Arab uprisings. Given MENA-related political science publications since 2011, we have concentrated on three fields of study which we consider as having been relevant in capturing the politics of the Arab uprisings and their aftermath: social movement and protest research, comparative politics (CP) study on state and regime agencies and International Relations (IR) scholarship on regional order, including the increasing overlaps between crucial aspects of the three fields. Social movement and protest research systematically study the societal and mobilizational side of politics. As the Arab uprisings emerged from broad-based social mobilizations and mass protests, which quickly spread from Tunisia and Egypt to most other Arab countries, this is the first field we incorporate here. During 2011 and afterward, it was MENA states and regimes which have reacted in various ways and with various means to the political challenges posed by the Arab uprisings protests. These phenomena are the mainstay of CP, research on state agencies, and their interplay with societal actors. This is the second field we focus on in the SI. The ‘Arab’ in the Arab uprisings denotes a cross-border, regional, and transnational dimension of MENA politics. Questions around geopolitical shifts or the role of influential MENA and extra-regional actors are the field of IR, especially scholarship on regional order—the third focus we take in this SI. Importantly, rather than examining in great empirical detail, for instance, individual protest movements in Egypt, authoritarian regime strategies in Morocco, or the former regional or international embedment, this SI’s primary interest is to elaborate on and discuss the different ways how research has been done in the specific fields over the past decade. This entails analyzing how dominant research strands have evolved and changed over time, and what their promises and pitfalls have been. More precisely, such a perspective addresses the temporal question of ‘where we came from?’ (recent past), ‘where are we currently?’ (present) and ‘where might we be going?’. [8]

To ensure coherence among the SI’s contributions and to allow for drawing broader lessons, we have structured our stocktaking exercise around three cross-cutting key issues, formulated here as guiding questions:

2011 as a critical juncture: To what extent do the Arab uprisings of 2011 represent a critical juncture for the respective MENA research field under examination?

Revisiting the Area Studies Controversy: How does the relationship between generalizing political science and context-sensitive Middle East knowledge play out regarding the research theme understudy?

Implications of changing field access: What are the ethical and methodological implications for doing research not only on but in the countries east and south of the Mediterranean?

Earlier publications assessing the state-of-the-art have also examined the first question on the extent to which the Arab uprisings have made up a critical juncture with the MENA-related CP regime studies [9] or the application of IR theories to the region post-2011. [10] In contrast, this SI examines three cross-cutting issues from the longer perspective of a decade and without being limited to one specific sub-discipline. Importantly, the SI revisits the classical Area Studies Controversy [11] Considering the Arab uprisings, examining the relationship between political science discipline-oriented vs. more context-specific area knowledge production. Regarding the third question, the SI’s contributions also discuss access to the field in the MENA and the ethical and methodological challenges that have emerged since the Arab uprisings. [12] Each contribution to the SI addresses at least two of these cross-cutting issues, allowing the individual articles to speak to each other.

The rest of this article is structured as follows: Section 2 provides a spotlight on extant MENA research from the three fields that are most important for this SI: social movement and protest research, CP, and IR. Section 3 then further elaborates on the three guiding questions addressed in the SI: critical juncture, Area Studies Controversy, and field access. Against this background, section 4 introduces the SI’s six contributions and concludes.

A spotlight on MENA research after the Arab uprisings

Given the sheer breadth and depth of the political and scientific output on the Arab uprisings, we have been selective in our choice of thematic foci for this SI. Our selection is based on two criteria: First, we concentrate on those political science studies that aim to engage with and contribute to broader disciplinary debates, that is which aim to theorize their empirical findings, in part also beyond the MENA. More often than not, such studies describe themselves explicitly as comparative. They engage in cross-case, synchronic, or within-case, diachronic comparisons. The second criterion is topical: Rather than focusing on all or most possible research themes around the Arab uprisings, we focus on insights from the three aforementioned fields which are relevant to the post-2011 debate. This means that this SI cannot cover other prominent topics in MENA political science research post-2011, among them Islamism and Islamist politics, the situation of (forced) migrants and refugees or the role of natural resources, and, more broadly, the dynamics of political economy.

Without the intention to reify dichotomies between inside/outside or domestic/foreign which are constantly transcended, we still have adhered to a distinction between primarily inward-looking sub-disciplines, such as social movement and protest research or CP on the one hand, and variants of IR which assume rather an external, macro-perspective on regional dynamics on the other. We are aware of multiple attempts to overcome the artificial compartmentalization between the different (sub-)fields, and we consider them as ‘open and interconnected containers’, acknowledging the mutual entanglements between each. We often neglect such overlaps, as academic thinking is conditioned by a focus on sub-disciplinary containers.

While we will point to various important cross-fertilization, we have still opted to adhere to a sub-disciplinary structure below. This is the case because, first, we would like to make sure that the individual contributions of the SI can properly resonate within their respective sub-fields. Second, we contend that such a partition also reflects the empirical developments on the ground. In this sense, we argue that research and empirical reality are mutually constitutive. Broadly speaking, MENA’s research on the Arab uprisings responded to political developments. To be more precise, at first, in the aftermath of the events of 2010/11, we could witness a surge in social movement and protest research as an immediate reaction to widespread regional protests. Subsequently, given the diverse regime reactions in protest policing, societal repression, co-optation, etc., and especially in response to the 2013 military coup in Egypt, topics about CP gained more (at)traction. Later, in particular, foreign involvement in the civil wars in Syria, Libya, and Yemen, but also responding to transnational phenomena such as the rise of the radical-Islamist Islamic State (IS), triggered an increasing engagement of IR with MENA politics. Concomitantly, it is also in this light that we have chosen both the respective (sub-)fields and topics of this SI.

Social movement and protest research post-Arab uprisings: The multiplicity of mobilization

Given the scale, speed, and diversity of social mobilization during the Arab uprisings, the study of social movements and activism, in particular youth movements, has grown considerably. [13] Often drawing on concepts and methods from social movement studies, many researchers have analyzed the protest repertoires in different settings, resulting in blurred disciplinary boundaries of political science, sociology, anthropology, and Middle East studies (MES). Relatedly, the relationship between secularists and Islamists [14] as well as the differentiation between types of activists, ranging from labor organizations and unions [15] to political parties and the plethora of previously overlooked ‘non-movements’ [16], have become mainstays of research after 2011. In addition, the role of new social media in mobilization, such as Facebook and Twitter, has massively gained influence. [17] Connected to both activism and social media research are studies that draw on political geography and that focus on the spatiality of protests and the role of implicit knowledge and changed identities. [18]

Accounting for the cross-border, transnational dimension of social movements and protest behavior, comparative research has also studied diffusion processes in regional waves of contention. [19] The popular uprisings that quickly spread across many Arab countries in 2011 suggest that oppositional protest repertoires quickly diffused across national boundaries. Not only were slogans such as ‘the people want to fall of the regime’ (‘ash-sha’b yurid isqat an-nizam’) actively taken up by activists across the region, but core protest practices such as mass sit-ins in central squares could be observed from Cairo to Manama, and from Dar’a and Homs to Sana’a. In a similar vein, prominent scholars studying protest movements and their diffusion elsewhere included the cases of the Arab uprisings in their comparative designs. For example, Weyland [20] contrasted the ‘wave-like’ nature of the spread of anti-regime protests in the Middle East in 2011 with examples from Europe during the revolutions of 1848. Despite the obvious structural differences, he finds interesting similarities in the cognitive shortcuts that oppositional activists and ‘ordinary people’ took to make sense of the surprising ‘forerunner’—France in 1848, and Tunisia in 2011. One of Weyland’s core contentions is that opposition forces made a common cognitive mistake in both 1848 and 2011, overestimating their chances for success in high-risk anti-regime protests. This explains both the wave of protest initiation and the subsequent foundering of protest movements in many places. [21]

In sum, MENA-related social movement and protest research has massively expanded and diversified since the beginning of the Arab uprisings. While important pre-2011 protest actors, such as labor, parties, or non-movement, continued to receive scholarly attention, new focus areas revolve around youth, the role of social media, issues of spatiality, transnational diffusion, and learning. In particular the last, transnationally oriented topics from recent social movements and protest research provide important cross-fertilization with more outward-looking trends in both CP and IR scholarship.

Comparative politics post-Arab uprisings: The importance of repression, transnational diffusion, and learning

Given that the heads of state in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen were ousted, the question of regime survival and breakdown has remained a core concern since 2011. [22] The answers to this earlier hegemonic research focus have multiplied and diversified, allowing for a broadening of the CP research agenda on the MENA. One such new research focus studies repression. [23] Joshua and Edel distinguish between ‘constraining’ forms of repression, which provide checks on certain kinds of regime activities but permit others, and ‘incapacitating’ forms, which are deployed in political crises to arrest many engagements. [24]

It is hardly surprising that the Arab uprisings brought new attention to the largest and most powerful organization within the regimes: the armed forces. Civil-military relations had once been a major element in MES, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, when the region was one of the most coup-prone in global comparison. The Arab uprisings in 2011 served as a reminder of just how important the coercive apparatus of the Arab state was. Many studies have tried to explain the different tacks that militaries took about protesters. A key question is why some armies took part, actively or tacitly, in the ouster of authoritarian presidents, as in Tunisia and Egypt, while some took part in the violent repression of their citizens, as in Bahrain and Syria. With the ascent of General Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi in Egypt, a further question focuses on how the experience of political instability can provide opportunities for armies to forward their corporate interests. [25] Many of these studies circled back from the general trends in CP, showing how Arab militaries operated similarly to their counterparts in other weak and fragile regimes. [26] Recognition is growing of the need to look beyond the armies themselves. As with many other autocracies around the globe, Arab regimes sported multiple overlapping arms of secret services, police, gendarmerie, party-based paramilitaries, and state-sponsored militias, all of which played a role in defining trajectories of regime change. [27]

Standing out in the discussion of regime survival strategies is the striking durability of all eight authoritarian monarchies during the Arab uprisings. [28] Rather than suffering political ossification, these regimes proved more than capable of responding to internal challengers through co-optation or coercion, often by relying on outside powers to ensure geopolitical protection. [29] Studies derived from the Arab uprisings continue in this vein, showing how different arrays of family rule, external support, rent distribution, and formulas of legitimation have inculcated these regimes from unrest, with the partial exception of Bahrain. [30]

CP research since the beginning of the Arab uprisings also became more ‘outward-looking’ because it has systematically examined the trans- and international dimensions of authoritarian regime politics, both within the MENA region and beyond. One prominent concept is authoritarian diffusion, denoting the chronologically proximate emergence of similar non- or anti-democratic policies in different countries. Important examples of such uncoordinated diffusion processes are the cross-border spread of state restrictions on NGOs, online activism, or journalism. Another is the region-wide spread of anti-terrorism legislation and the more specific, intra-MENA diffusion of designating the moderate Islamist Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. [31] The concept of authoritarian learning is often closely related to diffusion, which has also played an important role in IR debates [32]; it exists when regime elites observe, adapt, and implement the political strategies of others, typically to prevent similar mistakes. For example, the Syrian regime learned from the failed Libyan counterinsurgency in 2011 that it should only gradually increase the levels of repression to avoid a potential international backlash akin to NATO’s military intervention following the UNSC resolution in 1973. [33]

Taken together, CP research on Arab uprisings has diversified in the last decade. Older topics such as the relevance of monarchical rule or the role of the military, have been rediscovered considering the post-2011 MENA developments. Other research themes have newly emerged, such as the disaggregating of non-army state repressive organs or the importance of cross-border diffusion and learning of authoritarian regimes. It is especially the latter aspect that links the CP agenda with the emerging, transnationally oriented research trends in social movement and protest research and more established IR perspectives.

IR research post-Arab uprisings: The missing link?

Despite the international and transnational nature of the Arab uprisings and their manifold impacts on the regional order in the MENA, IR scholarship has displayed a striking restraint in making sense of these dynamics. [34] As Lynch and Ryan [35] rightly observe: ‘Whereas the comparative-politics literature on the Arab uprisings and their aftermath shows theoretical progress with sophisticated empirical analysis, there has been significantly less theoretical engagement by international relations (IR) theorists.’ Rather, drivers of conceptual and theoretical advancement could be found elsewhere, which is why innovative IR scholarship can mainly be seen as the result of cross-fertilization with the neighboring fields of social movement and protest research and CP (Marc Lynch’s conclusion to this SI sheds further light on this matter). [36] Taking this neglect as the point of departure, several contributions have explicitly discussed the need to address the gap between IR and MES regarding the Arab uprisings from different angles. [37]

The past decade witnessed increasing attempts to problematize and overcome a Western hegemony of IR scholarship under the label of ‘Global IR’ (Acharya & Buzan, 2019; Tickner & Waever, 2008) which also affects IR research in the MENA; this, however, to a lesser degree than in other regions of the Global South. [38] Still, there is a growing debate about the need for MENA-related IR research which originates from within the region. Instead of IR theories of Western origin being bluntly applied to the research object of the MENA, the region itself can become the incubator for novel theoretical lenses, not only on regional phenomena but for overarching disciplinary debates on IR theorizing. [39] In line with a general interest in auto-ethnography within IR, there is also growing awareness of the ‘geopolitics of knowledge’, as Hazbun [40] has described the importance to consider the positionality and identity of the researcher observing the region. [41]

The self-described Beirut School of Critical Security Studies is a specific example of such knowledge production from within the region. [42] While highlighting its distinct, emancipatory character compared to existing (critical) security studies, the scholars adhere to the sub-disciplinary convention of defining a ‘school’, similar to the ones associated with Copenhagen, Aberystwyth, or Paris. Situating itself in the tradition of postcolonial critical security research, the Beirut School emphasizes the need to focus on the implications of insecurity for people affected by it. Closely connected, as Bilgin [43] points out, a multi-dimensional approach to security can lead to greater sensitivity for the grievances of the Arab populations that have challenged their rulers since 2011 as opposed to perspectives that privilege regime or regional security.

IR scholarship after 2011 also addressed changes in the MENA regional order from multiple perspectives. [44] This was especially the case concerning the struggle for regional hegemony [45] and the related political exploitation of sectarianism [46], the waning US influence and interest in the region, a greater role of non-state actors in regional geopolitics [47], the rise of new regional powers, such as Qatar, the UAE, and Turkey, as well as the (continued) decline of old ones, such as Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. [48]

Despite the importance of non-state transboundary dynamics in the Arab uprisings and the growing importance of international political sociology, IR scholarship in the wake of the Arab uprisings is still characterized by a persistent preoccupation with state-centric perspectives. It is therefore not a surprise that when the fourth edition of Louise Fawcett’s seminal volume The International Relations of the Middle East got extended by a chapter titled ‘The Arab Spring: The “People” in International Relations,’ the author was Larbi Sadiki who is not an IR scholar by training but specialized in CP of the region. [49] Several authors have, however, countered the dominant state-centrism in regional geopolitics after the Arab uprisings. Especially because of the temporary ascent of the IS as well as the key role of both Kurdish and Shia militias in Syria and Iraq, respectively, the importance of non-state actors in armed conflict has received greater attention. [50]

It was especially the IS’ temporary territorial control over considerable parts of Syria and Iraq that contributed to a reassessment of the role of inter-state borders in the regional order. Strikingly, while the interaction of critical geopolitics with IR on the one hand but also CP on the other, has yielded considerable conceptual innovations in the understanding of territoriality, borders, and geopolitics, these insights have hardly affected research on MENA geopolitics. Hence, in a rather implicit reflection of the literature on critical geopolitics, related research highlighted the interplay of borders and orders in the MENA. Several contributions revisited the claim of the artificial nature of borders in the region, and an alleged end of a regional order which had been dictated by Western imperial powers. [51] So, instead of reifying an obsession with the Sykes-Picot-Agreement, Fawcett [52], for instance, pointed out that despite the various challenges to regional order and a constant claim of the artificiality of borders in the region, inter-state borders have remained strikingly persistent. This has been so despite various secession attempts post-2011, ranging from Iraq and Syria to Libya and Yemen. [53]

To summarize, while IR scholarship on the Arab uprisings shows less diversity and theoretical sophistication compared to both social movement and protest research, as well as CP, advancements are identifiable in a variety of topics. The main difference, though, lies in the absence of a critical self-reflection in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings.

Cross-cutting key issues for MENA political science research on the Arab uprisings

Based on the selective review of scholarship from the fields of social movement and protest research, CP and IR, this section offers a detailed account of three cross-cutting key issues around which the SI is structured. First, whether ‘2011’ has been a critical juncture for MENA political science research; second, the Arab uprisings’ links with and lessons from the Area Studies Controversy; and third, the challenges and opportunities that research ethics, methodology, and field access have presented since 2011.

The Arab uprisings as a critical juncture in MENA scholarship?

Initially, the Arab uprisings, their dynamism, and the ensuing diverging trajectories have turned fundamental scholarly assumptions about MENA politics into question. Early on, the overall relevance of MENA-specific political science scholarship was questioned due to its alleged inability to predict the Arab uprisings, their timing, and dynamic transformations. [54] In 2011 and 2012, the uprisings thus shattered established beliefs, resulting in significant reconfigurations of research agendas following critical self-reflections among scholars doing research related to the region. [55] As a result, topics such as protest dynamics, the durability of authoritarian regimes, regional alliances, and competition for regional hegemony underwent substantial reassessments. While some scholarship after 2011 initially attempted to address broader disciplinary debates, especially in social movement and protest research or CP, neither did this trend persist nor did it lead to a comprehensive reconfiguration of the academic debate in these fields. [56]

The reasons for this alleged lack of rupture and thus the non-existence of a critical juncture in the years after 2011/12 are manifold. First of all, they might revolve around the very themes and topics to be examined: With Tunisia remaining the only Arab uprisings country to continue undergoing a fragile transition to democracy post-2013, researchers examining the ways authoritarian regimes survive crises, from Egypt to Syria, Bahrain to Jordan, might look back and get inspiration from conceptualizations and methodologies before 2011, the era in which MENA authoritarianism was most prominent as a CP research topic. [57] Second and relatedly, political science scholarship might have identified new research topics during and after the Arab uprisings, but analyzing these novel phenomena does not signify a break from the earlier mainstream in the respective field. Rather, researching, e.g., social media or new urban protest spaces might just extend the previous state-of-the-art in the respective field or, sometimes, reify earlier theories, concepts, and methodologies. Third, the view of what counts as ‘legitimate’ political science knowledge might be preoccupied with conventional North American or European scholarly debates, overlooking new ways of studying MENA politics. This calls for a necessary spatial differentiation in theme-specific knowledge production, especially between North America, Europe, and the MENA itself \. [58]

What this suggests is that to examine whether the Arab uprisings made up a critical juncture, i.e. a situation of uncertainty that then locks in a new mainstream, it is necessary to not only look at massive transformational changes in the research foci under study. Rather, scholars should be sensitive to more fine-grained shifts in the research themes that they examine in different fields. They should also trace similarities and differences over time: where do we stand now in the respective MENA research field? How have we gotten here, i.e. what have been the main research findings in the respective sub-field in the recent past? And finally, against this background, what are the important research avenues for the coming years related to the context addressed in the respective thematic focus?

Revisiting the Area Studies Controversy in the face of the Arab uprisings

While most scholarly engagements with the Arab uprisings have refrained from an explicit or implicit connection to the Area Studies Controversy (ASC), we contend that there is much to gain from a revisiting of this debate. Originally, the controversy addressed the alleged incompatibility of disciplinary-focused social sciences and area studies. [59] In this sense, some argued social science theorizing is often based on universalism that risks not properly considering existing cultural variations in specific regions. Area studies, such as MES, are preoccupied with a particularistic perspective that claims that the region under investigation is unique and thus not comparable to other regions in the world.

Originally, CP was crucial for the emergence of the ASC, while IR did not play a key role as, broadly speaking, it was more interested in overarching questions of international order than in regional peculiarities. By the turn of the millennium, this changed, though, with IR becoming more interested in CP-related topics which prepared the ground for a substantial IR contribution to the ASC. As a result, the subsequent advancements of the ASC were primarily rooted in area-sensitive IR scholarship. In this SI, while we do not deny the importance of CP for the ASC and vice versa, we have opted to primarily focus on a revisiting of the ASC from an IR perspective since this has been the predominant perspective in the ASC in the decade before the Arab uprisings of 2011. For instance, whereas Halliday [60] suggested the combination of analytical universalism and historic particularism to overcome the gap between (in his case) IR and MES, both camps have evolved considerably ever since the Area Studies Controversy. [61] As a result, there is a great deal of—especially postcolonial—IR scholarship accounting for regional particularities, while, area studies have increasingly incorporated sophisticated theoretical perspectives, without however explicitly relating to the Area Studies Controversy.

We consider it, therefore, a missed opportunity that while the Arab uprisings led to the questioning of fundamental scholarly assumptions, this did not occur during the Area Studies Controversy. Even though prominent CP scholars strongly challenged core pre-2011 understandings about the (alleged) durability of authoritarianism in the MENA, they did not frame their critique in terms of the Area Studies Controversy. One analytical lens that has been used instead to capture post-2011 MENA political dynamics has been the CP-specific ‘Comparative Area Studies’ (CAS). Akin to Halliday [62], CAS scholars advocate for a ‘middle ground’ between disciplinary theorization and area-related specification. [63] They further differentiate between three ideal types of comparisons: intra-regional, cross-regional, and inter-regional, with cross-regional comparisons, i.e. comparing cases from two world regions aiming at contextualized, bounded generalization, being considered as the gold standard of CAS research (idem.). However, as Ahram [64] and Bank [65] highlight, it has been intra-regional, i.e. intra-MENA comparisons which have dominated CP post-Arab uprisings research—with cross- and inter-regional comparisons remaining very exceptional. Despite its analytical promises, this renders the CAS perspective of only limited practical use for our SI since we aim to systematically discuss the intra-regionally oriented post-Arab uprisings, covering and bridging social movement and protest research, CP, and IR. Concerning IR, Valbjørn [66] highlights the particular problem that neither it question fundamental theoretical assumptions nor was it at the forefront of generating tangible theory-driven insights in response to the Arab uprisings. As a result, he stresses the need to revive the mutual dialogue which characterized the relationship before the Arab uprisings.

We thus contend that MENA scholarship could benefit from a revisiting of the ASC in a way that emphasizes the cross-fertilizing potential, which results from a mutual dialogue between disciplinary political science and area studies. [67] For this purpose, it is necessary to disaggregate the ASC. In this context, we first argue that there has never been a single ASC. Rather, the ASC is multi-dimensional, materializing differently in various social science disciplines. What matters, therefore, is not the question about how to ‘solve’ the ASC but reflecting on how the ASC plays out within different fields of research. For instance, the ASC may mean different things for researchers with a primary scholarly identity in IR or CP. Second and relatedly, the ASC might also translate into regional divisions. For instance, while there appears to be a considerable gap between the US and European IR scholarship towards the MENA, this is arguably much less the case with CP were more similarities between US and European research approaches seem to exist in the region (on this point, see also Marc Lynch’s concluding article). Third, a controversy is (ideally) always about dialogue. We see the SI also as an attempt to trigger a renewed debate about the ASC, as also attempted by Stephan Stetter’s SI contribution. Fourth, a revived ASC possesses emancipatory potential, which has so far been neglected. Thus far, the ASC treated MENA mainly as an object of study, while scholarly perspectives and contributions from the region have mostly been neglected. Finally, if the ‘Middle East is not an exception from the global condition, but an inseparable part of its developments’ [68], a renewed engagement with the ASC can also help to put MENA properly into a global context where it can be asked which trends are specific to the region and which are rather global. [69]

Ethical and practical implications for researching in/on the region

Epistemologically, while the first two key issues—2011 as a critical juncture and the Area Studies Controversy—are rather on a meta-level, the third one is on research ethics and field access in the MENA post-Arab uprisings is more tangible. Still, we consider it equally important to focus on implications for researching in and on the region as a crucial cross-cutting issue for our SI. This is the case as especially the positioning towards the different camps of the ASC potentially yields methodological implications, for instance, with a research design that is more prone to universality and generalization or particularity and context specificity or the combination of both. The specific local circumstances determine which research methods are ethically appropriate and practically applicable. The past decade has produced innovative methodological approaches as diverse as social media analysis, remote sensing studies, surveys, and focus group discussions. Compared to existing research on the topic, our SI differs where it links questions of research ethics with more conceptual and meta-theoretical considerations. Hence, while some studies only focus on research ethics, field access, and methods while neglecting broader (meta-)theoretical questions, or vice versa, our SI tries to address both dimensions. Therefore, taken together, we consider the third cross-cutting key issue of the same importance concerning the analysis of political dynamics in the MENA as the first two.

The political developments emanating from the Arab uprisings also confine researchers conducting fieldwork in the region. Repression and comprehensive surveillance have significantly limited the scope and topics that the interlocutor’s researchers can turn to. As a result, shrinking spaces of individual freedoms and political liberties affect the way academic research is undertaken in the region, potentially putting both local and foreign researchers’ safety at risk. While MENA-based researchers have been exposed to various forms of repression in authoritarian contexts, we assume researchers from outside the region possess greater freedoms, at least if they held Western passports. With the atrocious torture and murder of the Italian, Cambridge-based Ph.D. scholar Giulio Regeni in 2016 in Cairo, this turned out to be a misconception. Another case was the arrest and imprisonment of Matthew Hedges, a British Ph.D. scholar from Durham, in the UAE in 2018. In 2018, British-Australian scholar Kylie Moore-Gilbert was arrested in Iran after attending a conference and subsequently sentenced to ten years in prison for espionage; she was released in a ‘prisoner swap’ on 26 November 2020. Therefore, questions of the safety of both researchers and their interlocutors which previously have been neglected in both academic discussions and training of Ph.D. candidates need to be considered more seriously and systematically. Some recent publications make long overdue and invaluable contributions on that matter. [70] A key difference between these volumes and the approach of our SI, though, is that we explicitly combine an engagement with research ethics and field access, with discussions about implications for conceptual analysis and empirical findings. While all three volumes offer a nuanced account of either different instances of fieldwork[71], the distinctiveness of researching authoritarian contexts [72], or a focus on different methodological and ethical challenges for fieldwork [73], our SI does not offer an alternative approach but a complementary perspective which additionally considers the interplay of such methodological and ethical questions on the one hand and analytical implications on the other. In addition, the SI tries to reflect upon to what extent the past decade has emanated changes in research ethics and field access.

Beyond individual repression, these developments can have a fundamental impact on academic knowledge production regarding the MENA as a whole. While scholars with Western passports can simply be prevented from doing field research by withholding visas, it may deter researchers from the MENA from researching potentially controversial topics in order not to endanger themselves or their families. It cannot be excluded that security apparatuses of authoritarian regimes from the region attempt to intimidate MENA scholars who work at Western universities. While still ongoing, it is becoming clear that the COVID-19 pandemic has further restricted field research in the MENA. [74]

In the long run, we see two potential outcomes resulting from shrinking field access. On the one hand, research will probably focus on safe, apolitical topics and countries, such as Tunisia. Wherever direct field access is obstructed researchers need to explore alternative resources to avoid ending up with no empirically grounded research at all. [75] One promising example is crisis mapping to collect and map real-time data from various sources, using big data, satellite images, and crowdsourcing to provide information on political dynamics on the ground[76], such as the civil wars in Syria and Libya, or the protests in Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Sudan in 2019/20. Another important case is the work undertaken under the label of ‘forensic architecture’, which uses architectural techniques to investigate armed conflicts and human rights violations. [77]

Conclusion and outline of the special issue

The aim of this introductory article to the SI has been threefold. First, the article has undertaken a stocktaking of MENA political science research a decade after the Arab uprisings. We have focused on the three scholarly fields of social movement and protest research, CP and IR, to identify important scholarly developments in these areas. Second, this article has identified three cross-cutting key issues which we consider relevant for research related to the Arab uprisings. We highlighted the importance of the question of to what extent 2011 represented a critical juncture for knowledge production in MENA politics. Second, we emphasized the need to revisit the Area Studies Controversy in the face of the Arab uprisings, and finally, we stressed the need to pay closer attention to the ethical and practical implications of changing field access in the MENA. While these key issues guide the contributions to this SI, we also hope we can provoke a constructive debate on these issues that we consider relevant to multiple contexts, also beyond the study of the MENA region.

The contributions to this SI address at least two of these three key issues with different emphases, based on the respective research foci. In the final part of this article, we will briefly present the respective contributions to the SI and also highlight how they take these key issues into account. From the perspective of social movement and protest research, Irene Weipert-Fenner observes an increased interest in studying protests in the MENA so that the Arab uprisings triggered extensive and nuanced engagement with this topic. 2011 made a considerable difference and thus clearly marked a critical juncture. In this context, the contribution identifies three research trends: rationalist-structuralist approaches looking at both the emergence and success of protests, micro-level analyses of protests within the framework of social movement theory (SMT), and approaches focusing on political economy. On this basis, Weipert-Fenner suggests combining insights from a political economy with insights from SMT in a way that enables comparisons between different regions. Reflecting upon the ASC, she advocates against Middle East exceptionalism and instead stresses the importance of concepts that can be of use in different regional contexts, for instance, by drawing on insights on the ‘incorporation crisis’ from Latin America. Further, the article introduces potential ways around the challenge of more difficult research access to many parts of the MENA. In particular, besides the more common fieldwork methods, it innovatively discusses protest event datasets based on press analyses and social media sources, which become increasingly important.

Repression is a widespread response to protests, and the article by Maria Josua and Mirjam Edel, in CP research on authoritarianism, identifies rising levels of repression in the MENA ten years after the Arab uprisings. Given the previously widespread assumption that it was an unchangeable factor, systematic research on repression was rather rare pre-2011. 2011 represented a turning point where political science research became interested in the region with important results for CP theory development. Joshua and Edel not only point out that research on repression needs to account for its multiple variations, but they also offer a disaggregated account of these variations. In particular, Josua and Edel distinguish between forms, agents, targets, and justifications of repression and their digital and transnational dimensions. Concerning the ASC, they show the trends observed are not exclusive to the MENA but can rather be observed in other world regions as well, forming part of a global increase and differentiation of repression as a mode of political domination. Relatedly, and pointing to the third key issue, this leads to substantial difficulties in terms of field access in counterrevolutionary states, among them the Arab monarchies but also Egypt and Syria. Repression, therefore, affects scholars themselves. It further renders comparative research between countries with different levels of repression difficult. To overcome these challenges, Josua and Edel point to alternative, in part digital, sources of data and call for triangulation of research methods to cross-check the findings and mitigate potential weaknesses.

Morten Valbjørn’s contribution to the SI maps how sectarianism has been studied before and after 2011 in the MENA region. It distinguishes how sectarianism can be conceptualized and explained to answer whether the study of sectarianism has progressed in the past decade. As Valbjørn shows, 2011 represents a critical juncture where, while the overall debate has not yielded certainty or consensus, it has progressed to a much greater conceptual, methodological, and theoretical sophistication. In this sense, sectarianism research escapes a categorization according to the classic compartmentalization of the ASC but combines conceptual advancements with empirical refinement and case specification. As a result, the study of sectarianism overcomes the classic divide of the ASC and instead recognizes the growing need for cross-fertilization between political science generalists and area studies specialists. Resonating with the third key issue, Valbjørn highlights how sectarianism has been studied in the MENA and has evolved considerably, leading, for instance, to systematic, cross-case comparisons and introducing novel methodological approaches.

In IR, May Darwich’s article turns to MENA alliance politics and offers a thoughtful overview of the evolution of related research since 2011. Strikingly, Darwich stresses that, after 2011, the alliance research program has not yielded tangible insights in terms of theory development; seen in this way, the Arab uprisings did not make up a critical juncture for this sub-field of IR. About the ASC, Darwich’s contribution represents an attempt at the aforementioned cross-fertilization of a ‘dual exploration’ combining insights from IR theory and MES to explore how both camps can constructively enrich each other. Darwich engages with alliance cohesion and convincingly shows how the alliance politics of non-state armed groups, such as Hamas and the Syrian Kurds, pose a conceptual challenge to existing scholarship. Finally, she offers a brief critical assessment of the ethics of ‘desk research’ in alliance studies.

Equally rooted in IR, Stephan Stetter’s SI contribution advocates for a revisiting of the ASC by relying on theories of global modernity. Taking Halliday’s [78] distinction of analytic universalism and historic particularism as a point of departure, Stetter argues that the post-2011 MENA justifies a re-adjustment to this formula. Hence, he identifies 2011 as a critical juncture where it offers the chance to thoroughly revisit the ASC in response to both political developments and scholarly, theoretical innovations of the past decade. In terms of a rejuvenated debate about the relationship between disciplinary political science research and IR in particular, on the one hand, and area studies on the other, Stetter suggests distinguishing between ‘analytic polycentrism’ and ‘historic entanglements’ which can best be grasped drawing on insights from theories of global modernity. On this basis, Stetter introduces the concepts of emergence and evolution and differentiation and subjectivity to highlight the potential that theories of global modernity and world society can have for the understanding of Middle Eastern politics.

The concluding article by Marc Lynch offers comparative reflections on the SI as a whole. In terms of the importance of 2011, Lynch calls for more thoroughly differentiating between research fields for which the Arab uprisings signified a critical juncture, even a ‘rupture’, while for others 2011 might be better understood as a more modest ‘inflection point’. In terms of the ASC, Lynch highlights a kind of transatlantic gap: whereas the ASC continues to be important for European scholars of MENA politics, it has lost significance in North America over the last decade. In field access in the MENA post-2011, Lynch discusses the effects of increased repression, the targeting of foreign researchers, and the travel restrictions because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, he innovatively stresses several areas to which MENA political scientists should pay more attention in the future: the epistemological questions of scholars’ normative commitments and the adequate standpoint for analysis and thematic discussions about topics such as the ‘wall of fear’ or ‘civil war memory’.

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[1] Contrary to other publications which use terms such as ‘Arab spring’, ‘Arab revolts’, ‘thawra’ (Arabic for ‘revolution’) or ‘intifada’ (Arabic for ‘tremor’ or ‘shuddering’), we have opted for the relatively neutral term ‘Arab uprisings’ for this Special Issue. This will be done unless we aim to point to a specific aspect of the political dynamics in the MENA region in late 2010, early 2011 and their aftermath.

[2] Muasher, M. (2019). Is this the Arab Spring 2.0? Beirut, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 30 October. https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/10/30/is-this-arab-spring-2.0-pub–80220 

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[5] Bellin, E. (2012). Reconsidering the robustness of authoritarianism in the Middle East: Lessons from the Arab Spring. Comparative Politics, 36(2), 139–157. https://doi.org/10.2307/4150140 

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