Democratic disillusionment? Desire for democracy after the Arab uprisings
| Author | Niels Spierings |
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0192512119867011 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512119867011
International Political Science Review
2020, Vol. 41(4) 522 –537
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512119867011
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Democratic disillusionment?
Desire for democracy after the
Arab uprisings
Niels Spierings
Radboud University, The Netherlands
Abstract
Have the Arab uprisings influenced the desire for democracy in the Middle East and North Africa? This study
presents a systematic explanation of the different impact the uprisings had on people’s desire for democracy
across the region. It applies the relatively new consequence-based theory of democratic attitudes, and
integrates the notion of deprivation into it. The expectations derived from this framework are tested
empirically by examining data from 45 public opinion surveys in 11 Middle East and North Africa countries
(2001–2014) and combining them with a systematic country-level case comparison. The study shows that
the desire for democracy drops mainly in countries of major protest and initial political liberalization, but no
substantial democratization (e.g. Egypt, Morocco) indeed, and that a lack of major protest or initial reform
(e.g. Algeria, Yemen) ‘prevents’ disillusionment. The seemingly exceptional Lebanese and Tunisian cases also
show the mechanism holds for specific groups in society: Lebanese Sunnis and the poorest Tunisians.
Keywords
Democratic attitudes, Arab Spring, public opinion, Middle East, reform
Introduction
From early 2011 onwards, mass protests swept the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) calling
for more democracy, but not really getting it. I focus on these events to gain a better understanding
of the impact of mass protest and political liberalization on the public’s desire for democracy.
Doing so contributes to a better understanding of macro-level events’ impact on the development
of democratic attitudes.
The current lack of attention is surprising, because a citizenry’s desire for democracy is gener-
ally seen as fundamental to stable, lasting democracies (Geddes, 2011; Hinnebusch, 2006; Welzel
and Inglehart, 2009). Moreover, the literature on Arab exceptionalism and MENA authoritarian
Corresponding author:
Niels Spierings, Department of Sociology, Radboud Social Cultural Research, Radboud University, Nijmegen, 6525 HR,
The Netherlands.
Email: n.spierings@ru.nl
867011IPS0010.1177/0192512119867011International Political Science ReviewSpierings
research-article2019
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Spierings 523
consolidation draws attention to the popular demands (see Anderson, 2006; Bellin, 2012;
Hinnebusch, 2006; Posusney, 2004; Szmolka, 2017; Teti et al., 2019), but only as a cause of elite
responses, overlooking that societal-level desire for democracy might also be influenced by soci-
etal-level events and their aftermath. Finally, the post-uprising MENA literature on democratic
attitudes still lacks a systematic assessment of the uprisings’ impact on the desire for democracy
(e.g. Hassan and Shalaby, 2018; Teti et al., 2019; cf. Mazaheri and Monroe, 2018; Robbins, 2015).
This study creates a better understanding of how certain protests and elite responses influence
citizenries’ desire for democracy. Theoretically, I deduce from several recent studies (see Benstead,
2015, Ciftci and Bernick, 2015; Spierings, 2014) a new approach to explaining democratic atti-
tudes, which is in contrast to the dominant cultural–modernization perspective. The latter focuses
on long-term economic processes and religio-cultural worldviews (e.g. Inglehart, 1997; Spierings,
2014) and cannot accommodate the punctuating impact of the uprisings. The new ‘consequence-
based theory’, however, acknowledges democracy as instrumental to other goals and argues that
people’s desire for democracy is (partly) a function of the (perceived) consequences of having
democracy (see Benstead, 2015: 1187–8; Spierings, 2014: 716).
I apply this model to the impact of the uprisings and use the concept of deprivation to theorize
how protest and political reform might change people’s assessment of the consequences of democ-
racy. In short, I argue that if mass protest in combination with initial political liberalization does
not result in substantial democratization this leads to democratic disillusionment that is directed
not only at the political actors, but also taints democracy as a system.
Empirically, I combine surveys from the Arab Barometer (AB) and the World Value Surveys
(WVS). These data provide information on 45 country–year combinations from before and after
the uprisings (11 countries; 2001–2014) and allow me to assess whether changes in the desire for
democracy are part of a larger trend or specific to the events’ time window and how developments
vary across 11 different MENA countries. The data will be embedded in a comparative qualitative
design drawing on case knowledge.
Theoretical background
Consequence-based theory
The extensive (MENA) literature on democratic attitudes is dominated by research on how socio-
economic progress increases a desire for democracy (e.g. Ciftci and Bernick, 2015; Inglehart,
1997) and particularly whether an Islam-based culture and individual religiosity have a (negative)
impact on the desire for democracy (e.g. Spierings, 2014). These debates, however, shed little light
on the impact of macro-level political events, because the underlying mechanism of these theories
focuses on slowly changing socio-economic and demographic factors.
A newer approach in the MENA literature on democratic attitudes seems more promising in
explaining the impact of macro-level political events. While different studies use different labels,
for example ‘consequence-based’ (Benstead, 2015), ‘utilitarian’ (Ciftci and Bernick, 2015), ‘instru-
mental’ (Spierings, 2014), all present a similar core mechanism, hereinafter called ‘consequence-
based’. Democracy is valued, based on individuals’ ‘assessment of the security, economic, or
cultural impacts of democracy’ (Benstead, 2015: 1187), as ‘an instrument [. . .] used to gain power’
(Spierings, 2014: 711) in order ‘to achieve personal goals’ (Ciftci and Bernick, 2015: 1163).
Democracy is thus not a goal in itself, but an instrument which is (consciously or unconsciously)
assessed based on its impact on people’s personal well-being.
Applying a similar underlying logic, Robbins (2015) explores how some MENA citizenries’
civic attitudes changed after the uprisings and concludes that ‘people still want democracy’ because
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