Dylan Schaffer

April 22, 2015

Week 13 The Arab Spring
Assumptions and Causal Ambiguity in
Brownlee, Masoud, and Reynolds Why The Modest Harvest?


Brownlee, Masoud, and Reynolds present a parsimonious framework for explaining the
collapse of certain regimes (and the resistance of others) through the so-called Arab Spring.
They focus on combining the causal mechanisms of oil wealth combined with regime type,
showing that the regimes that were successfully toppled by domestic movements all fall into the
category of non-oil-producing and non-hereditary nations. They start by dismissing several
claims made by other scholars like Eva Bellin regarding the role of military decision-making and
others regarding protest movement organization through Internet technologies, with claims such
as:
[T]he narrative of youthful pluck and technological savvy only goes so far.
Activists from Rabat to Riyadh had access to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube,
and yet the story of most democratic activists in the Arab world remains one of
disappointment and defeat. (Brownlee, 31)

I feel that both of these dismissals miss crucial elements of the story for explaining successful
regime change. In their dismissal of Bellins points, they argue that it would be difficult to
predict that the Egyptian military would have defected from the regime that they appeared so
close to before the uprising. While this particular case might have been difficult to predict,
Bellins emphasis on the difficult choice that military leaders face between loyalty and defection
based on their guiding principles provides a useful means of illuminating some of the factors that
might contribute to that decision factors that Brownlee et al. tend to ignore (Bellin, 131). For
instance, the authors state that oil wealth allows the regime to buy off opponents and patronize
the military, which is based on the long-held principle of rentierism that states oil rents obviate
the need to tax the citizenry (32). They also state that oil wealth will reduce civil society (32).

These arguments, along with the one that per capita military spending results in more resilient
regimes, are all difficult to prove, especially given the unusually low sample size of fourteen
Arab states and four successful uprisings. These arguments ignore the difficult-to-measure
factors of information and communication technologies (ICTs) influence on building civil
society despite a lack of taxation and face-to-face social organization, as well as the evaluations
made by military elites on the ground when decided whether to defect or not a decision that
could be influenced by the perception of protesters as representing the true voice of the people,
or the overwhelming nature of the protests.

The authors claims regarding dynasticism are more causally sound given the empirical

evidence, it seems logical that hereditary regimes, with their clear delineation of leadership, have
a more stable hold on the coercive apparatus and control of the state, as shown by Herb and other
scholars. Still, in excluding Irans system of diffusion of power and resistance to popular
uprising from their analysis, the authors miss the point that dynasticism, as well as institutional
diffusion of power, both lend themselves to flexibility and adaptability, which are the more
important causal mechanisms in the resilience of authoritarian regimes.

Lastly, the authors make some generalizations that are problematic in getting to the root

of potential application of their theory. Despite the low number of cases, their dismissal of Libya
as a possible case of regime change for the counterfactual of no international intervention seems
pessimistic, especially given the persistent instability of the Assad regime in Syria under similar
circumstances. Also, the treatment of protest movements as static is problematic; they do not
investigate the actual difference in terms of demographic, geographic, and organizational make-
up of protest movements, which according to several scholars (especially those of ICT use in

protest movements) believe might be the key to understanding why not all protest movements are
created equal in their ability to affect change.

Overall, Brownlee, Masoud, and Reynolds present several key factors for understanding

causality of regime change during the Arab Spring. Their dismissal and generalization of other
factors, though, leaves this article missing some crucial details as well as some underlying
themes that might provide a more comprehensive view of the movement.








Works Cited

Bellin, Eva. Reconsidering the Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: lessons from
the Arab Spring. Comparative Politics 44.2 (2012): 127-149.
Brownlee, Jason, Tarek Masoud, and Andrew Reynolds. Why The Modest Harvest? Journal of
Democracy 24.4 (2013): 29-44.
Herbe, Michael. Monarachism Matters. Foreign Policy (November 26, 2012).