Bringing the state back in: Ruling parties and regime collapse during the Arab Uprisings
| Published date | 01 November 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02633957241245896 |
| Author | Anne Wolf |
| Date | 01 November 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Article - States and Social Revolutions at 40: A Symposium |
https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957241245896
Politics
2024, Vol. 44(4) 554 –562
© The Author(s) 2024
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DOI: 10.1177/02633957241245896
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Bringing the state back in:
Ruling parties and regime
collapse during the Arab
Uprisings
Anne Wolf
University of Oxford, UK
Abstract
Scholars have mostly investigated the fall of dictatorships during the Arab Uprisings through the
lens of contentious politics, uncovering new information about the protest dynamics and how they
spread both within countries and throughout the wider region. However, the longer structural
vulnerabilities within regimes have received little attention; yet such factors internal to states and
their regimes proved paramount to the social revolutions investigated by Theda Skocpol. Focusing
on the case of Tunisia, the author shows how the economic downturn and a succession crisis
contributed to the decay of the Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali regime starting in the 2000s. Importantly,
they heightened internecine conflicts within the regime and, in particular, within the longtime
ruling party, the Constitutional Democratic Rally. It is through this backdrop that the events of the
2010–2011 Tunisian revolution must be understood: far from supporting the regime in times of
crisis, members of Ben Ali’s ruling party engaged in contentious activities against him, thus crucially
weakening the regime from within.
Keywords
revolutions, Skocpol, states, ruling parties, Tunisia, Constitutional Democratic Rally,
Arab Uprisings
Received: 28th February 2024; Accepted: 8th April 2024
Introduction
Why did long-standing authoritarian regimes collapse so quickly during the Arab
Uprisings? The literature has focused on mass mobilisation, civil society, and the politi-
cal opposition as reasons behind the sudden destabilisation and fall of regimes (Diamond
and Plattner, 2014; Hale, 2013; Ketchley, 2017; Steinert-Threlkeld, 2017; Tripp, 2013;
Wolf, 2017). However, as Theda Skocpol (1979: 17) established over 40 years ago in her
Corresponding author:
Anne Wolf, All Souls College, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 4AL, UK.
Email: anne-margret.wolf@all-souls.ox.ac.uk
1245896POL0010.1177/02633957241245896PoliticsWolf
research-article2024
Special Issue Article - States and Social
Revolutions at 40: A Symposium
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