Yaşar Şaşıoğlu

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The Anatomy of the Arab Spring: An Analysis with a Typology of Revolutions?

Despite the fact that revolutions are a sub-type of the broad subject of leadership change, the literature lacks a common framework to reveal the relationship between leadership changes, transformation of institutions and the type of revolutions and because of this deficiency the literature lacks a common analysis of the Arab Spring uprisings in terms of the revolutionary character of the cases. In this paper, I will address this puzzle by developing a typology of revolutions and applying it to the Arab Spring cases. After the January 25 protests in Egypt, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people” (Kessler, 2011). It was a fair assessment by Clinton when the stability is defined in terms of the absence of internal conflict/violence or the longevity of the authoritarian Arab regimes. However, the reality was vice versa as Ajami states “Yet beneath the surface stability, there was political misery and sterility. Arabs did not need 'a human development report' to tell them of their desolation” (2012, p. 58). A street vendor’s self-immolation after the harassment by local officials in Tunisia led to series of protests against corrupt, authoritarian regimes all over the Middle East and North African region in which March Lynch (2011) have appeared as the first scholar to define these waves of demonstrations as the 'Arab Spring'. After six years, authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya were toppled; Syria is in the midst of a bloody civil and sectarian war; Yemen is still a failed state despite peaceful resignation of Abdullah Saleh; Bahrain’s Shia uprising were to be suppressed only by the intervention of the Gulf states; and in other countries of regions series of reforms were introduced to contain the revolutionary fever. However, there is still an ongoing debate within the field about how to classify these demonstrations. The literature have not reached a consensus about whether the Arab Spring uprisings resemble true revolutionary character like the classical ones of Chinese, French and Russian; or they are something inherently different from these classical social revolutions. In this thesis I will develop a typology of revolutions and present an overview and analytical framework of three Arab Spring events: Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Based on this analysis, I argue that the Libyan case is a ‘social revolution’; Tunisia have been experiencing a ‘refolution’; and what Egypt experiences is a simple leadership change.

In this paper, I will initially give a brief review of literature about revolutions and the revolutionary character of the Arab Spring. Subsequently, I will present the research design alongside with how to measure revolutions and the typology of revolutions. Third, I will apply three Arab Spring cases to this typology by analyzing revolutionary outcomes and certain patterns during the revolutionary process. Ultimately, I will present my findings about these cases and concluding remarks.

1. The Literature Review

This chapter is going to briefly review the literature about causes and definitions revolutions, the revolutionary character of the Arab Spring cases and ultimately studies about typologies of revolution. Skocpol offers a state centered structural analysis to understand revolutions: the international and world historical context that would weaken a state vis-à-vis its international rivals; an occurrence of political crises in which elites can effectively oppose state apparatus; and subsequent rural mobilization (1979, p. 41). According to Goldstone, "declining state resources relative to expenses, and the resources of adversaries, increasing elite alienation and disunity, growing popular grievances and autonomy" are the main factors that increase the likelihood of a revolution (1991, p. 49). In another study he adds formation of cross-class coalitions and the international powers’ decision to stay out of conflict into the equation (2011, p. 8). Defronzo (1991) argues that the rise of nationalist and national liberation movement ideology would increase the success rate of revolutions. Eckstein follows a different path and describes both the factors working against and useful for revolution. He states that "The positive forces are produced by the inefficacy of elites (lack of cohesion and expected performance), disorienting social processes (de-legitimization), subversion (attempts deliberately to

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activate disorientation) and the facilities available to potential insurgents" (1965, p. 159-60). On the contrary, the negative factors are the facilities of incumbents, effective repression by the government, adjustive concessions and diversionary mechanisms to tempt revolutionaries to defect. Goodwin and Skocpol, while evaluating the revolutions in the modern third world, identify the best type of government for revolutionaries to face: "An exclusionary and repressive authoritarian regime that lacks strong control of its entire territory (or else suddenly loses such control)" (1994, p. 267). They furthermore claim that neo-patrimonial or sultanistic dictatorships and colonial regimes are the ones which are the most prone to the revolutionary challenge (1994, s. 268). The economic side of popular uprisings is also worth to mention. Rosa Luxemburg (2005[1906]) discusses that mass strike as an economic unrest cannot be separated from the politics and it can be a specific activity or triggering clause within the broader revolutionary process. Similar to this approach, Adam Hanieh speaks of the uprisings against Mubarak as "The nature of Mubarak's rule cannot be separated from these questions [concerns about justice and economic organizations], which is why the struggle against political despotism is inevitably intertwined with the dynamic of class struggle" (Zemni, De Smet, & Bogaert, 2013, p. 900).

Huntington (1968), Gurr (1970), Skocpol (1979), Walt (1996), Hassan (2012) and Colgan (2012) have very similar definition of revolution as they stress the importance of the abolishment of the political, economic, social and religious institutions and their transformation into new ones in line with the vision of victorious revolutionaries. Hermassi states that "unless a dramatic, large-scale change has swept away all existing institutions and resulted in a recasting of the social order from top to bottom, a given historical experience fails to qualify as a revolution" (1976, p. 211). On the other hand, Skocpol (1979) and Stinchcombe (1999) distinguishes classical social revolutions from political revolutions in which the change is limited to political institutions. Trimberger suggests another type of revolution, elite revolution, in which revolutionary leaders are part of the bureaucracy of the old regime and “revolutionary conflict and change were contained primarily within elite institutions and did not involve mass participation” (1972, p. 191). Ultimately, a new term of revolution, refolution, has become more popular after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (Ash, 1989; Taubman & Taubman, 1989) as well as the Arab Spring (Bayat, 2013; Bayat, 2013b). Asef Bayat argues that the meaning of revolution has been severely restricted in the contemporary world due to people’s distaste of revolution and its affiliation with communism and radical Islam. He asserts that the term of revolution starts to be affiliated with 'reform' or 'refolution' in which mass protests are aimed to force authoritarian regimes to reform, rather than implementing large scale of changes as he states “In place of socialism, state and revolution, came an intense interest in 'the individual', NGO's, public sphere, civil society, rational dialogue, non-violence and in a word 'reform'” (2013, p. 598).

There are also several studies with typologies of revolution to construct a more systematic understanding of revolution. Huntington (1962) identifies internal war, revolutionary coup, reform coup and palace revolution by degree of change and violence. Tanter and Midlarsky (1967) use similar concepts with different variables: mass participation, duration of struggle, casualties during struggle and insurgents’ goals. Johnson’s study (1964) has six types of revolution on the basis of targets, revolutionaries’ identity and ideology: jacquerie, millenarian rebellion, anarchistic rebellion, Jacobin/communist revolution, conspiratorial coup d’état and militarized mass insurrection. Freeman (1972), based on the scope of change, uses labels of revolutionary coup, reformist revolution and radical movement. The problems with these aforementioned studies are that some does not encompass all cases of revolutionary movements (i.e. Huntington, 1962; Tanter & Midlarsky, 1967; Freeman, 1972); or one case might correspond to more than one category in their typologies (i.e. Johnson, 1964). Such deficiencies raises the necessity of a new typology of revolutions in which every case of revolution will correspond to one and only one of the categories.

Ultimately, there are few studies that focus on the revolutionary character of the Arab Spring cases. Podeh (2011) claims that these uprisings are aimed to alter dynamics of political power and therefore political revolution; and Franklin (2014) & Beissinger (2013), because of revolutionaries’

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commitment to the democratic practices, civil and political freedoms, classify these as democratic revolutions. On the other hand, a good majority of scholars distinguishes the Arab Spring uprisings from classical social revolutions and argue that these events requires a new understanding of revolution. Lawson states that "the meaning and character of revolution itself has changed, becoming increasingly oriented around political representation rather than the reordering of society (2012, p. 16). Thus, he introduces a term called as negotiated revolution which is marked by demands for political justice rather than radical transformation of institutions and the absence of violence in the revolutionary process. Similar to Lawson, Bayat (2013 & 2013b) also emphasizes the emergence of a new type of revolutions as these Arab Spring cases are not sufficiently transformative to be social revolutions and same time they are not simple reform movements. Instead, "it may make sense to speak of 'refolutions': revolutions that aim to push for reforms in, and through, the institutions of the existing regimes" (2013b, p. 53) and this term of refolution is also echoed by other scholars (see Podeh (2011); Mustafa (2011); Kornetis (2013); Darwisheh (2014)). According to Goldstone, these cases are akin to the color revolutions of the post-Soviet republics, however, they might enjoy the same fate of the reversal to the authoritarian rule (2011, p. 461). Similarly, Springborg argues that prospects for democratization which was the main of the revolutionaries are very low and because of this the Arab Spring resembles failed revolutions of 1848 (2011, p. 12). As shown above, the literature about the revolutionary character of the Arab Spring is large yet there seems to be no consensus on how to classify these events. Furthermore, those available studies do not generate a common operationalization or typology of revolution to allow comparisons across cases.

2. The Research Design and the Typology

This section will clarify the research design and present the typology of revolutions. The Arab Spring uprisings clearly have affected the whole MENA region and the rest of the Arab World, toppled long standing authoritarian regimes, shattered the dynamics of the region and it has received very significant attention from the scholars. Despite this situation, there is very little attention from scholars to relate the Arab Spring with the revolution literature and to evaluate revolutionary character of these uprisings. This lack of attention might be explained by the failure of the literature to find a convenient and common operationalization of revolution or an accurate typology of revolutions. This article will define the revolution as 'the overthrowing of the old regime and leader (violent or non-violent; with or without mass participation), the abolishment of the previous political, societal and economical institutions and their radical transformation into new ones by the winning coalition of revolutionary forces' and following Yinger and Katz’s (2001) suggestion that revolution can occur partially therefore it must be scaled, I will distinguish different types of revolutions. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to construct a typology of revolutions and answer the question of ‘To what extent can we consider the Arab Spring uprisings as revolution’. After stating the research question, the universe of cases and selection of cases should be clarified. The universe of cases for this research question is easy to determine since the Arab Spring uprisings are regionally limited phenomenon that occurs in the Middle East, North Africa and rest of the Arab World. It is evident that for a revolution to take place, leader of previous regime must be toppled and replaced by revolutionaries. In this sense, Chiozza and Goemans’ (2011) concept of forcible removal from office which is about the post-fate of state leaders can be utilized to justify selection of cases. Chiozza and Goemans list three cases that can be considered as forcible removal from power: exile, imprisonment or getting killed (2011, p. 51) and those countries in which previous leaders are forcibly removed from power will be the selected cases of this paper. Among the countries that are affected by the Arab Spring, three cases fit to this criteria: in Tunisia, Ben Ali was sent to exile; in Egypt, Mubarak was sent to prison; and in Libya, Gaddafi was killed after a bloody civil war. Therefore, this paper will focus on analyzing the revolutionary character of these three cases. Additionally, it is crucial to highlight that this paper does not claim that there is a causal linkage or this typology has an explanatory power of the occurrence of revolutions, but rather this paper is a descriptive study. However, the typology developed here or findings from these three cases can be

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very beneficial for future scholarly work to develop causal mechanisms for different types of revolutions.

In the typology of revolutions, the variable of interest is the type of leadership change which can have ten different values, ranging from simple leadership change to social revolution. I will categorize these irregular leadership transitions as social revolution (Skocpol, 1979; Goodwin, 2001); elite revolution (Trimberger, 1972; Trimberger, 1978); refolution (Ash, 1989; Bayat, 2013; Bayat, 2013b); and political revolution (Skocpol, 1979). Two other main types of forcible removal from office are reform movements (top down, bottom up, mixed) and leadership change (simple, mass based, mixed). Following Tilly’s (1993) advice to distinguish between revolutionary situations and revolutionary outcomes and Glenn’s (1999) suggestion that studies of revolution should incorporate structural and agency explanations together, I propose the confluence of four distinct structural-agency based variables to construct a typology of revolutions.

Mass Protest: Lenin explains how revolutionary processes occur by these words: “Only when the lower classes do not want the old way and the upper classes cannot carry on in the old way—only then revolution can triumph” (Dunn, 2008, p. 20). This famous phrase has been echoed by many scholars of revolution since then and the mobilization of masses through cross-class alliances is one of the most significant features of revolutions since its believed that participation of masses indicates high level of mobilization from below and it would eventually pave the way for more inclusive regimes than priori ones (Skocpol, 1979; Skocpol, 1988; Goodwin, 2001; Carter, Bernhard, & Palmer, 2011). For instance, according to Goodwin and Skocpol (1994), in the case of closed authoritarian regimes, cross-class formation of middle and lower classes are essential to the success of revolutionaries since the former is excluded from power and the latter is severely oppressed. In the case of Iranian revolution, cross-class coalitions were the decisive force behind the fueling of revolutionary fever and toppling of Shah (Moghadam, 1989; Foran, 1994). In addition to cross-class coalitions, a powerful and organized mobilization of masses would fuel revolutionary outbreaks as it can be observed in the cases of Russian and Chinese revolutions through rural peasant mobilization (Skocpol, 1979). The main mechanism this variable operates is that those masses and classes who are excluded from political means of power would topple previous regime and then appear as a power holder in the post-revolutionary regime. The elites of revolutionary regime, theoretically, have to pay special attention to the demands of these masses and the degree and direction of post-revolutionary change must satisfy to avoid their alienation and grievances. To operationalize this variable, the NAVCO dataset’s (Chenoweth & Lewis, 2013) classification criteria can be utilized. According to the NAVCO, the mass protests are those organized demonstrations with at least 1000 observed participants and which have “maximalist goals of overthrowing existing regime, expelling foreign occupations, or achieving self-determination at some point during the campaign” (Chenoweth & Lewis, 2013b, p. 416).

Change in Institutions: This structural variable reflects whether a country after leadership change had experienced transformation in any of its political (executive power), social (gender-ethnicity), economic (property ownership) or religious (state-religion relationship) institutions. Higher number of change in these different areas’ of institutions would indicate greater transformative nature of the leadership change. This variable is derived from Colgan’s novel operationalization of revolution (2012) and a dataset of revolutionary leaders/states for the period of 1945 to 2002. Although the temporal period of Colgan does not fit to the purpose of this paper, his new operationalization of revolution is easily applicable and therefore it does not pose any problems to this paper. Colgan identifies these areas of change by studying well known revolutions in the post-WWII period: Chinese in 1949, Cuban in 1959, Ethiopian in 1974, Nicaraguan in 1979 and Iranian in 1979 (2010, p. 675). Another important remark must be highlighted in this operationalization: “In all cases, change is measured relative to the relevant prior government, rather than some external standard" (Colgan, 2012, p. 455). This is a

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categorical variable and can take value of ‘0’, ‘1’ or ‘at least 2’ which illustrate the number of areas in which institutional change took place.

Ideology: The third variable is the presence of ideology during post-revolutionary period. One of the main significance of ideology is that it reduces enforcement costs and pushes people to take such highly risks to revolt against relatively superior state apparatus as ideology serves “to energize groups to behave contrary to a simple, hedonistic individual calculus of costs and benefits… since neither maintenance of the existing order nor its overthrow is possible without such behavior” (North, 1981, p. 53-54). According to Walt, mass revolution and revolutionary change cannot occur without ideology and the presence of ideology achieves this outcome in revolutions by strong emphasis on three key themes: enemies are evil and incapable of reform; victory is ours and inevitable; and our revolution has universal, superior meaning (1992, p. 337-40). By these themes, conciliation between competing powers become more difficult as the relationship between revolutionaries and previous regime is placed on evil vs. good axis. For instance, for the French revolution, Sewell states “once the crisis had begun, ideological contradictions contributed mightily to the deepening of the crisis into the revolution” (1985, p. 66-67). Another important attribute of ideology can be observed in the post-revolutionary politics as ideology provides a guiding framework for revolutionary change and in this way it dictates the scope and direction of revolutionary change (Sewell, 1985; Philip, 1994). On the other hand, Skocpol in her earlier works, had argued that ideology cannot be used to predict or explain revolutionary outcomes simply because structural conditions and crises dominates the ideological explanations (1979, p. 78, 114-15 & 170). However, after the Iranian revolution, Skocpol incorporates the role of ideology into her famous definition of social revolutions: “rapid, basic transformation of a country’s state and class structure, and of its dominant ideology” and in this sense revolution “was deliberately and coherently made” (1982, p. 265 & 267). Hence, ideology is an inherent character of revolutionary outbreaks as it can be used as tool for mobilizing masses as well as guiding post-revolutionary change and therefore it needs to be incorporated into the studies of revolutions. This variable is dichotomous and coded as 1 if there is any kind of ideology (i.e. fascism, communism, Islamist or any local ideology).

Elite’s Role in the Previous Tenure: The last variable for the typology is the role that elites had played in pre-revolutionary regime or society. As stated by Lenin above, the participation of upper classes is also a necessary condition for the occurrence of revolutionary outbreaks. These new elites’ ideologies and beliefs will shape the scope and direction of the post-revolutionary transformation of institutions. In order to understand the role that elites play in the outbreak of revolution and transformation of institutions, I will use Eisenstadt’s (1978) distinction of isolated and solidary elites. According to Eisenstadt, the successful revolutionary elites who had solidary ties to the previous regime tend to be less likely to destroy the previous regime’s institutions, less coercive and more inclusive (Goldstone, 1980, p. 447). On the other hand, isolated elites are the ones who are sidelined and severely oppressed under their previous ruler and therefore they have to attain the post-revolutionary office through hard and dedicated work against the corrupt and evil regime. After such a revolutionary takeover, they will be more likely to abolish the remnants of old regime and build new institutions in line with their ideological understanding to avoid probability of counter-revolutionary revenge. However, the ownership of the means of power should not be limited to the previous regime. Potential elites, although sidelined and isolated in the previous regime, might occupy strong ethnic, religious or economic ties to the society and this situation would make them suitable to own means of power to challenge their regime. Therefore, the role that elites had played in the previous regime or society can be a good determinant of revolutionary change and type of revolution that is to come. This variable can take two values as suggested by Eisenstadt: isolated elites and solidary elites. The Archigos dataset (Goemans, Gleditsch, & Chiozza, 2009) provides information about state leaders and it is very suitable

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for the purpose of identifying the roles that elites played in the previous regime or society. If a revolutionary leader had a rather distinct and minor status in previous regime or society and did not hold a position that can control means of political, economic, military, societal or religious power, this leader will be considered as an isolated elite. In the case of greater affiliation with the power apparatus of previous tenure, this type of leaders will be considered as solidary elites, entrenched part of their previous regime.

Therefore, these four variables will be used to construct the typology of revolutions. Apparently, this typology will encompass revolutionary outcomes as well as certain traits of revolutionary process to distinguish different types of revolution and in this sense it follows the common wisdom in the literature (i.e. Skocpol (1988); Tilly (1993); Foran (1994); Goldstone (1998); Goodwin (2001); Colgan (2012); and Bayat (2013b)). Based on these variables, there can be twenty four different combination (2*2*3*2=24) in the typology and all possibilities and corresponding type of leadership change is listed in the Table I. It is equally important to stress that there are six cells which is not socially possible to exist. Therefore, this leaves the typology with eighteen cells and ten different type of leadership change in which four of them is a sub-type of revolution: social revolution (Skocpol, 1979; Goodwin, 2001); elite revolution (Trimberger, 1972; Trimberger, 1978); refolution (Ash, 1989; Bayat, 2013; Bayat, 2013b); and political revolution (Skocpol, 1979; Stinchcombe, 1999).

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Mass P-rotest Change in Institutions

Ideology Elite’s Role Type of Leadership Change

Sample

Absent 0 No Ideology Isolated Elites Simple Change Possible Cell

Absent 0 No Ideology Solidary Ties Simple Change Guatemala-1970

Absent 0 Present Isolated Elites Empty Cell -

Absent 0 Present Solidary Ties Empty Cell -

Absent 1 No Ideology Isolated Elites Mixed Reform Possible Cell

Absent 1 No Ideology Solidary Ties Political Revolution

Turkey-1980

Absent 1 Present Isolated Elites Empty Cell -

Absent 1 Present Solidary Ties Political Revolution

Turkey-1960

Absent At least 2 No Ideology Isolated Elites Mixed Reform Possible Cell

Absent At least 2 No Ideology Solidary Ties Top down Reform

Panama-1968

Absent At least 2 Present Isolated Elites Empty Cell -

Absent At least 2 Present Solidary Ties Elite Revolution

Turkey-1922

Protest 0 No Ideology Isolated Elites Mass Based Change

Chad-1979

Protest 0 No Ideology Solidary Ties Mixed Change Mali-1991

Protest 0 Present Isolated Elites Mass Based Change

Thailand-1973

Protest 0 Present Solidary Ties Mixed Change Czechoslovakia-1993 Egypt-2011

Protest 1 No Ideology Isolated Elites Bottom up Reform

Philippines-1986

Protest 1 No Ideology Solidary Ties Ambiguous Reform

Bolivia-1982

Protest 1 Present Isolated Elites Refolution Tunisia-2011

Protest 1 Present Solidary Ties Refolution Poland-1989

Protest At least 2 No Ideology Isolated Elites Empty Cell -

Protest At least 2 No Ideology Solidary Ties Empty Cell -

Protest At least 2 Present Isolated Elites Social Revolution

Cuba-1959

Protest At least 2 Present Solidary Ties Social Revolution

Iran-1979 Libya-2011

Table I: Typology of Leadership Change & Revolution

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3. Three Selected Cases: Tunisia, Egypt and Libya

After having clarified the research design and presenting the typology of revolutions, this paper will now turn its attention to three selected cases of the Arab Spring and their analysis of what kind of revolution they have been experiencing.

a) Tunisia

Although the timing of the Tunisian uprising is out of the scope of the NAVCO dataset, the simple criteria of this dataset enable me to see whether the Tunisian case satisfies these criteria or not. According to the criteria, there must be at least 1000 participants with the maximalist goal of changing the political structure of a regime. In a survey, Doherty and Schraeder find that 18.8 % of respondents have attended to the protests which is almost as identical as the Arab Barometer’s (17.2%) finding (2014, p. 13). Such a high figure would correspond to almost 1.5 million of people during the twenty five days of struggle against the regime of Ben Ali. Additionally, Dupont and Passy (2011) argue that there are thousands of protestors in the streets at the height of demonstrations. Clearly, such high figures transcend the criteria of the NAVCO dataset. In addition to this, urban based cross-class coalitions were also a decisive factor in the success of this revolutionary movement (Joshi, 2011; Goldstone, 2011).

Second, after the departure of Ben Ali, there were some institutional changes in Tunisia. Initially, power and selection of national executive have undergone considerable change in the post-Ben Ali period. During his rule, Ben Ali was an authoritarian leader with extrajudicial powers ranging from nominating the government, choosing prime minister, dismissing government as well as dissolving parliament (Yüksel & Bingöl, 2013, p. 318). He was almost controlling all aspects of political institutions which enabled him to extend the presidential term and lift age limit to renew his presidency (Zguric, 2012, p. 426); to organize electoral frauds to ensure his power at the expense of democracy (Fuentes, 2010, p. 531-33); and to a great extent restrict most of the political rights and civil liberties (Anbarani, 2013). As a result, the parliamentary was nothing but a tool for Ben Ali's rule as parliamentarians throughout his rule “had little effect on policy making, they did not threaten to unseat the regime, and it was mostly loyal opposition that was allowed to run" (Zguric, 2012, p. 426). However, this tragedy have started to change after Ben Ali’s departure and establishment of the interim government. To increase political participation and to ensure inclusiveness of Tunisian politics, broader freedom of speech and freedom of media was granted, all banned political parties were legitimized, and the interim government was granted the power to legislate and amend all laws contradictory to basic human rights and democratic principles (Driss, 2012, p. 26-27). Only those who had occupied an official position in the Ben Ali’s party were banned from participating in political participation and elections (Kienle, 2012, p. 539). The first elections after the departure of Ben Ali was praised by many international observers as free and fair with high level of participation and only minor attempts for fraudulence (Masetti et al., 2013; Duran & Özdemir, 2013; Karčić, 2014). Therefore, it is safe to state that Tunisia has experienced a dramatic change in the selection and power of the national executive as a more democratic regime that is responsible to the people was established. On the other hand, the Tunisian case have failed to experience any other change in the economic, social and religious institutions. There were no changes in property ownership or changes in economy type which is evident by Tunisia’s decision to reach an agreement with the IMF for loans and neo-liberal based road map for the Tunisia economy (Bond, 2011) and that (neo-liberal economy) was the exact approach during the Ben Ali’s reign (Cavatorta & Haugbølle, 2012; Kaboub, 2012). The institutionalized status of ethnicity and gender also did not experience any major setbacks after the Arab Spring. Tunisia under Ben Ali was a homogenous state in terms of ethnicity, linguistics and religion and the Tunisian women have enjoyed considerable improved status vis-à-vis their counterparts in other MENA states. This situation have not changed, so far, in the post-Ben Ali period and therefore the Tunisian case fails to satisfy this condition as well. Ultimately, in the Tunisian case one cannot see any constitutional

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adoption/removal of religion or adoption of a religion in the official state name. The pre-Arab Spring constitution of Tunisia states that Tunisia is a secular country with the religion of state as Islam (Yüksel & Bingöl, 2013; Karčić, 2014). In the 2013 draft constitution, the statement that denotes Islam as the religion of state remain unaltered and there are five other references to Islam which are generally emphasizing the Islamic-Arab identity of the society (Karčić, p. 410-11). To sum up, Tunisia have experienced change only in political institutions as power and selection of the national executive have undergone dramatic changes.

As for the presence of ideology, it is appropriate to claim that the Tunisian revolution is about democracy and promotion of human rights against the totalitarian regime of Ben Ali. Tudoroiu (2014) contends that the main motivation of protestors was to establish a Western style liberal democracy which respects civil and political freedoms. Feldman (2011) defines the ideology of the Arab Spring as democracy and Dodge argues that two factors that united people to revolt were "the demands for full citizenship and the recognition of individual political rights" (Dodge, 2012, p. 64). These statements are also supported by the Arab Barometer survey as 47 % of protestors identify civil and political freedoms as their primary or secondary motivation to participate in the demonstrations (Beissinger, Jamal, & Mazur, 2013).

Ultimately, the role of revolutionary elites during the tenure of Ben Ali must be highlighted. The main victorious party (almost 41 % of votes) in the first free and fair elections in the history of independent Tunisia is Ghannouchi’s Ennahda Movement which can be considered as a moderate Islamist group (Vogel, 2011; Feldman, 2011). Ghannouchi has been a long-time intellectual leader of the Ennahda party, yet he had been living in exile in Europe since 1987 and from 1992 to 2011 and “Ennahda was almost completely absent from Tunisia and it played no part in the overthrow of the authoritarian regime that had stifled any serious opposition” (Basly, 2011). Lynch (2011) asserts that there was even no formal organizational institution of Ennahda before the revolution. Hence, the victorious party of the Tunisian elections did not have any solidary ties to the previous regime, yet thanks to the emerging democratic features in the Tunisian political arena, the Ennahda movement had a considerable victory in free and fair elections.

b) Egypt

The second case is the Egypt after Mubarak’s reign. According to Josua and Edel, the number of people in Cairo streets during protests against Mubarak reach as much as two million (2014, p. 12). Salam Kawakibi further increases this number as he asks “Why don't we want to recognize it as an Egyptian revolution, when in the heyday of protests 12 million people took to the streets” (Hassan, 2012, p. 233). Additionally, according to Arab Barometer survey, 92 % of Egyptians did not participate in the protests that toppled Mubarak (Soltan, Qamha, & Asilah, 2012). Although it is very significant number, the remaining 8 % more or less corresponds to six million people that participated in the uprising phase and therefore it is evident that mass protests are an inherent part of the Egyptian case and satisfy the criteria. Furthermore, a large segment of the Egyptian society have protested against the corrupt regime of Mubarak as these protestors “include not only the most impoverished of Egypt's urban slums and rural farmers and peasants. They also include the educated, the middle classes, even many of wealthy, all finally saying no to the paucity dignity and freedom of their lives” (Bennis, 2011). To sum up, the Egyptian case constitutes a mass participation in which millions of people attended the protests. Furthermore, a broad alliance of different segments of society was formed to stand up as one against Mubarak's dictatorship. Therefore, the Egyptian case meets the benchmark of mass participation.

Despite participation of masses against the Mubarak regime, the Egyptian uprising have failed to generate any desired change in political, economic, social or religious institutions. During the Mubarak’s rule, political rights and civil liberties were extensively restricted as the emergency law was

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in effect since 1981 (Pratt, 2007); and until 2005, no other candidate was allowed to run for presidential elections (Besada, 2007). After 2005, candidates other than Mubarak’s party were allowed to run for seats in the political arena, nevertheless, "the dominance of ruling party has never been threatened, proving that the legal measures taken to ensure the 'representative' nature of Egyptian politics were really designed to protect Mubarak's regime" (Perkins, 2010, p. 44). After Mubarak’s resignation, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) had assumed the responsibility of acting like an interim government until elections took place. However, under the rule of the SCAF nothing has changed when compared to Mubarak’s rule as "the deep or shadow state returned with vengeance" (Kienle, 2012, p. 536) and "remnants of the old regime-most notably the army and previous ruling elites- show few signs of receding from power" (Mirza, 2011). After the presidential elections, the SCAF had to concede power to the winning candidate, Morsi from the Muslim Brotherhood. However, this transfer of power basically did not change anything as the authoritarian tendencies of Morsi had appeared on the surface. In November 2012, Morsi issued a degree which is aimed to centralize the power and strengthen the power of presidency office beyond the 1971 constitution, granting himself even more power than Mubarak's presidency at its peak (Kienle, 2012, p. 537). These powers include rejection of judiciary intervention to draft constitution (Ishay, 2013); immunity of himself against judicial review (Nossett, 2014); and attempt to retire many judges to replace them with pro-Muslim Brotherhood candidates (Khosrokhavar, 2014). Feeling betrayed by the Muslim Brotherhood, many revolutionaries again went to streets to express their discontent which eventually paved the way for the army to organize a coup d’état to remove Morsi from presidency, abolish the new constitution and form another transitional government exclusively constituted by the senior army leaders (Nossett, 2014, p. 1654). The armed forces chief Sisi becomes the new president as a new constitution which contains more dominant references to Islam, more limited political rights and civil liberties were ratified (Çubukcu, 2014, p. 210). Warkotsch argues that this political outlook under Sisi is very similar to its pre-revolutionary version and Egypt have experienced only a leadership change (2012, p. 28) and Malik interprets this new period as the continuation of the army’s ruling of Egypt (2014, p. 12). Furthermore, this inability of revolutionaries to change the political outlook of Egypt has also led to failure of implementing radical changes in other institutions as well. For the economic aspect of institutional change, the post-Mubarak Egypt still relies on neo-liberal policies of the capitalist system as no alternatives coming from leftist groups were able to achieve considerable solidarity from the people (Hassan B. , 2011). Therefore, despite persisting devastations caused by neoliberal policies, the Egyptian people, so far, have not experienced any change neither in their economic system nor the structure of property ownership simply because the fate of neo-liberalization in Egypt is depending on the military ruler (Joya, 2011). Additionally, although there were provisions stating that Egypt respects equality of ethnicity and gender, the practice was vice versa as women and different ethnic groups suffer from oppression and inequality (Sika, 2012; Tadros, 2014). Similar legal provisions as well as discriminatory practices persist in the post-Mubarak Egypt. For the case of religion, the 1971 constitution declares Islam as the religion of state and Islamic law as the principal source of legislation (Karčić, 2014, p. 413). Despite the fact that different groups were ruling the country, little has changed over the course of this different ruling groups in terms of the relationship between state and religion. After Mubarak's fall, Islam is still the religion of the state and Islamic law is the principle source of legislation (Çubukcu, 2014).

Third, similar to the Tunisian case, there was also a political ideology of revolutionaries that is to establish a liberal democratic order. As Tudoroiu (2014) argues, the Egyptian uprising was also a plea for a democratic regime that respects human rights and political liberties. Although, because of the army’s forceful intervention, the revolutionaries have failed to achieve this outcome so far, it is safe to assume that the Egyptian case have a clear political ideology and therefore satisfies this criteria, regardless of their failure to establish such an order.

Ultimately, the role of present ruling strata played in the previous regime must be discussed. As argued in previous paragraphs, Egypt is now being ruled by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, formed armed

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forces chief, and the Egyptian army still play a major role in Egypt as it dictates the politics through close affiliation with the political leaders. These remnants of old regime have betrayed the revolutionaries and what the Egyptian people now experiences is no different than the reign of Mubarak. This situation also explains why the transformation of institutions’ process have failed at Egypt. Hence, it is apparent that current ruling cadres of the Egyptian state had very close ties and hold prominent positions in the Mubarak’s Egypt and thus qualifies as elites having solidary ties to the previous regime. I believe that the Egyptian case demonstrates that elites which have solidary ties to previous regime are similar to a double-edged knife as they have possibility of ensuring constructive, stable transformation of institutions; however, at the same time they pose the danger of counter-revolution as in the end the reversal to the old order is a major concern.

c) Libya

As the protests spread to Libya, Gaddafi immediately assumed an aggressive position and refused to leave the office and indicated that he will fight till the end. "During the early days of the uprising in February, Gaddafi launched a wild and desperate TV tirade against the 'rats' and 'cockroaches' conspiring against him" (Rojas, 2011). These early protests are reportedly involve 15000 protestors in Benghazi (Shadid, 2011). Here, the opposition forces took the advantage of Libya being a giant country in which major cities were separated by hundreds of miles of desert. The opposition was centered on Benghazi and this distance with capital enabled them to mobilize nationwide and invade almost half of country (Bhardwaj, 2012, p. 82). Another important point is the tribal division of Libya. For instance, the Warfalla tribe, which almost constituted a million members, 15 % of population, was part of the opposition coalition (Pelham, 2011, p. 4). The magnitude of participants in the Libyan civil war can also be demonstrated by the figure of 148000 people who had registered for the reintegration programme after Gaddafi’s death (Zoubir & Rozsa, 2012, p. 1279). In summary, the Libyan case, with thousands of protestors participating in the uprising phase, clearly satisfy the criteria of the NAVCO’s mass demonstration.

Second, Libya has experienced dramatic changes in numerous political, economic, social and religious institutions. Gaddafi had a very unique system, the Jamahiriya, in which the regime was a direct democracy as he considers formal representative democracy as false democracy due to the possibility of tyranny of majority (Gaddafi, 2007, p. 1). Therefore, the true democracy can only be achieved by "a direct rule of citizens, without the intervention of institutionalized political or administrative intermediaries" (Toktamış, 2014, p. 131) as every citizen is supposed to contribute the political arena and decision making through local people's congresses (International Crisis Group, 2011). After the civil war, the idiosyncratic Jamahiriya system was abandoned and the National Transitional Council (NTC) called for elections to establish a political system based on pluralism and representative democracy (Sawani, 2012). This elections marks the first peaceful transfer of power in the modern Libya as the NTC transferred power to the coalition government consisting of different segments of the society (Vandewalle, 2012; Clark, 2013; Lesch, 2014). Despite these positive developments, the internal violence spread all over the country because of the government’s failure to monopolize use of force. Dalacoura describes the situation in Libya by stating “The government's failure to monopolize violence has encouraged armed groups to provide security and services for their local populations, which has in turn further undermined central government” (2013, s. 79). Now the ISIS is posing a serious threat to the territorial integrity of Libya and Libya is almost a failed state, divided into two parts and at least three contending factions (Walsh, 2016). However, it would still be safe to contend that Libya has achieved considerable degree of change in the power and selection of national executive which is evident by the elections and first peaceful transition of power in the modern Libya. For the economic aspect, Gaddafi’s unique regime was based on natural socialism in which private property was abolished as every subject of state has right to have a claim on nation’s land and economic activity was allowed only to satisfy basic needs, rather than accumulation of

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surpluses (Gaddafi, 2007, p. 15-16). In order to harmonize the economic structure with Gaddafi's ideology, a set of policies which includes "confiscated and destroyed property, nationalized oil and land, and asserted monopoly on imports and exports" were enacted (Carlisle, 2014, p. 101). However, after Gaddafi was toppled, this system was to be changed. Interim constitutional declaration involves two articles stating that protecting individual and private property is under state’s obligation which clearly shows the new institutionalized status of private property. Therefore, the property ownership in Libya have experienced very radical changes after the Libyan Arab Spring. For social institutions, during the Gaddafi’s rule, it is declared that women and men are equal human beings (Gaddafi, 2007) as polygamy was banned (Langhi, 2014); tribes’ discrimination against women were reduced (van Genugten, 2011); and women were granted certain egalitarian rights in civil code (2011). However, similar to other Arab countries, the institutionalized status does not necessarily translate into equality in practices and reality as the women suffers from "poor access to education, lack of career opportunities, domestic and external violence, forced marriage, restricted participation in public life and unequal inheritance rights" (Wing, 2011, p. 454). These concerns are still persisting and remain unaddressed in Libya, due to women's absence from the decision making process (Langhi, 2014); lack of law enforcement and absence of central authority (Langhi, 2014; Moghadam, 2014); government's failure to listen the demands of women as well as sexual harassment towards politically active women (Johansson-Nogués, 2013). Thus, nothing in the institutionalized status or in practice has changed for the Libyan women so far yet the ongoing internal turmoil and danger of Islamist extremism might have serious ramifications for the future of women’s rights. For the area of religion, Gaddafi’s regime was based on socialism and Islam. Under Gaddafi’s rule, the religion of state was declared as Islam, laws were based on the Shari’a and Holy Koran was declared as the constitution of Libya (Karčić, 2014, p. 411-12). This institutionalized, legal status of religion in the Libyan politics and constitution remain unchanged so far as the interim constitutional declaration announced Islam as the religion of state and Islamic precedence as the primary source of legislation (Sawani, 2012, p. 10), albeit a lower scale (Karčić, 2014, p. 415). However, this trajectory might be completely reversed in the near future, depending on the ongoing internal turmoil, yet at the time of this writing, it appears that Libya, have not experienced any radical change in terms of the relationship between state and religion.

Third, similar to earlier two cases, the ideology played a certain role in the Libyan uprisings as well. A good majority of protestors have raised their voices against the undemocratic, authoritarian rule of Gaddafi and expressed their desire to establish a democratic regime based on popular sovereignty and respect of human rights and freedoms (Bhardwaj, 2012; Poljarevic, 2012). Similarly, Brahimi echoes democratic aspects of the Libyan case, distinguishes this ideology from the grand ideologies of great social revolutions and identifies the demands of protestors as post-ideological by stating “Rather than being about the politics of Left or Right, socialism or Islamism, the protests centered on basic notions of ‘freedom’ and ‘human dignity’" (2011, p. 606). Hence, the Libyan case satisfies this criteria of ideology as well.

During the civil war, the National Transitional Council was formed to unify, control and organize anti-Gaddafi coalition. In March 2011, the NTC declared that it is “the only legitimate body representing the people of Libya and the Libyan state” (Stephen, Derhally, & Krause-Jackson, 2011); which was later internationally recognized as the legitimate Libyan authority (Al-Jazeera, 2011). Furthermore, the NTC was also the commanding cadres of the fight against Gaddafi as well as it assumed the role of interim government after Gaddafi was killed and acted like a revolutionary council before the elections took place. Therefore, it would be appropriate to call the members of the NTC as leading figures and elites of the revolutionary cadres. The members of the NTC involves top officials defecting from the Gaddafi’s regime such as interior minister al-Abidi, minister of justice Abdel Jalik, foreign minister Koussa, senior military officers and high number of ambassadors, academicians and tribal leaders (BBC, 2011; Davis, 2011; Murphy, 2011). It is obvious that such top officials were holding key positions in the previous regime as they own means of power and influence. Therefore, it would

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be reasonable to argue that revolutionary elites in the Libyan case have solidary ties to the previous regime as they occupy significant positions in the Gaddafi’s government.

4. Findings and Conclusion

Based on the analysis of these three cases, two findings appear to be striking: the revolutionary character of these three cases, and the status of democracy after the Arab Spring. Initially, after the analysis in the previous chapter, I will talk about the revolutionary character of each case and which type of revolution they have experienced. In Tunisia, masses were decisive to topple Ben Ali’s regime, there was radical change in the power and selection of national executive, there was a clear political ideology and revolutionary elites had isolated ties to the previous regime. Based on this and typology developed above, Tunisian revolution is a refolution in which "the revolutionary movements… aimed to compel the tyrannical incumbent states to reform themselves on behalf of the revolutionaries" (Bayat, 2013, p. 597). In such kind of revolutions, mass protest does not translate into full scale transformation of institutions to avoid complete breakdown of state authority, rather masses focus on reforming within existing political arrangements. In the Egyptian case, mass protest was present, there was a political ideology, post-revolutionary elites have solidary ties to the previous regime yet there was no institutional transformation. Hence, one cannot speak of Egypt as revolution simply because it lacks any post-revolutionary change and it is a mixed leadership change which was triggered by mass protest and elites’ initiatives. The Egyptian case demonstrates the importance of dealing with the remnants of the old regime as they pose threat of counter-revolution. Failure to do so, such as in the case of the Egyptian revolution, might reverse the revolutionary process and a return to old authoritarian order might be inevitable. The Egyptian case fails to realize this crucial point and the new regime appears to be very similar to the pre-Arab Spring period as Malik interprets this new period as "continuing Egypt's ruling trend of the last 62 years" (2014, p. 12). The last case is Libya in which masses were protesting against Gaddafi with a clear political ideology of democracy promotion, elites’ that had solidary ties to the Gaddafi regime were contributing to masses’ cause which eventually have led to changes in the political and economic institutions. Based on this, the Libyan case is a social revolution in which greater number of institutional changes in different areas of interest were accomplished. It must be noted here that, part of this accomplishment is due to idiosyncratic and unique character of the Gaddafi’s Jamahiriya system simply because change is measured by comparing to the previous regime. Since Gaddafi's regime was quite extraordinary and different from modern counterparts, the transformation of it and establishing new institutions in line with contemporary practices have to be radical and revolutionary. Because of this situation the trajectory of change in Libya had to be as radical as possible. However, Libya, nowadays, is in the midst of another internal turmoil as the interim government failed to contain ongoing insurgencies and there are rival contending claims to power in Libya now. On the contrary to the Egyptian case, there were no remnants or institutions of the old regime, so Libya had a blank sheet to start from. However, this does not necessarily promise an optimistic outlook, the prime-minister Ali Zeidan states “No police, no army, no institutions and no system. This is a legacy of 42 years of destruction” (Lesch, 2014, p. 71). This situation did not help Libya as it failed to ensure a smooth, peaceful transition after the civil war. Thus, the Libyan case demonstrates the importance of completely destroying institutions of previous regime as there is the danger of falling back into chaos and anarchy because of the inability of the revolutionary groups to secure peace and tranquility. Based on these three cases, it would be safe to contend that completely destroying all institutions or keeping almost all of old regime intact might have serious ramifications for the fate of revolution as they might fall into chaos and anarchy or a counter-revolutionary takeover might be on the cards. In this sense, although Libya is the most successful in terms of the revolutionary character and change, the Tunisian case appears as the safe bet to start with to avoid further dangerous problems.

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Second, the status of democracy after the Arab Spring and whether the usage of the ‘spring’ metaphor is appropriate or not should be discussed. This spring metaphor, which was also used for the post-Soviet Eastern European republics is a term to denote that the transition from authoritarian regimes to liberal democracies. According to Tudoroiu (2014), the ideology of these uprisings are to construct a Western model liberal democracy, however to what extent this aim is realized is very open to debate. Tunisia appears to be a successful case of transition to democracy after mass demonstrations (Springborg, 2011; Kienle, 2012; Stepan & Linz, 2013; Harrelson-Stephens & Callaway, 2014). On the other hand, for the case of Libya and Egypt the snapshot is much more pessimistic and a transition to Western style democracy is unlikely as the former is still trying to figure out how to resolve ongoing civil war. For the latter, Sorenson (2011), Zguric (2012), Weyland (2012) and Çubukcu (2014) argue that Egypt have been experiencing a counter-revolution by the army due to its sabotaging the transition to democracy. As argued above, democratically elected Morsi have failed to fulfill the demands of the larger segments of the Egyptian society which eventually paved the way for a coup d’état and the fate of democracy in Egypt seems to be very pessimistic as Weyland states:

Their revolution has been throttled by the military, mainstay of the old regime; moreover, unorganized and inexperienced in electoral politics, and without connections to the popular masses, they have been trounced by Islamist forces, whose true commitments to political pluralism, civic tolerance and democracy remains questionable (2012, s. 918).

Here, a closer look at a couple of descriptive statistics can elaborate this issue more precisely. The democracy index scores of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya derived from the Economist Intelligence Unit (2015) can be useful to assess whether democratic ideals of revolutionaries have been realized or not. This study measures the level of democracy by inquiring the presence of five democracy-related factors: electoral process, functioning of government, political participation, political culture and civil liberties. These indicators range from 0 to 10 in which 0 represents the worse and 10, the best. The Figure I presents the average democracy index scores of the selected cases from 2008 to 2015. As shown in the chart, Tunisia is showing a continuous upward trend and have moved from an authoritarian regime to hybrid regime since 2013. However, the situation for Libya and Egypt is much more pessimistic as their upward trend in the early years of the Arab Spring have reverted back and latest score of democracy in both countries are almost identical to the pre-Arab Spring period.

Figure I: Democracy Index Score for Three Selected Cases (2008-2015)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

2008 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

Tunisia

Egypt

Libya

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Similar results can also be observed in Freedom House’s Freedom in the World study. Overall freedom ratings are determined by scores of political rights and civil liberties alongside the spectrum of 1 to 7 in which for a country to be considered as free, partly free and not free, the freedom rating must be respectively in between 1.0 to 2.5, 3.0 to 5.0 and 5.0 to 7.0 (Freedom House, 2016, p.2). The overall scores for the period of 2009 to 2016 is presented in the Figure II, in which the trends of change is almost identical to the Democracy Index Scores. Tunisia has dramatically improved in terms of political rights and civil liberties since the start of the Arab Spring and in 2015 Tunisia become the first Arab country to achieve status of free in last 40 years (Freedom House, 2015, p.1). On the other hand, Egypt and Libya are not free countries and their overall ratings are very similar to the pre-uprising scores.

Figure II: Freedom Ratings for Three Selected Cases (2009-2016)

These findings show that the link between democracy and revolution is rather confusing and

complex. As argued in the previous chapter, Libya is the most revolutionary country in terms of the changes in institutions yet at the same time Libya appears to be the least democratic country among these three. Therefore, contemporary scholars of revolutions or admirers of social movements should not be hastened to confuse revolution with a transition to democracy. It is true that a revolutionary overthrow of an authoritarian ruler might lead to a democratic rule, nevertheless for the Arab Spring cases, the success of Libya in terms of its revolutionary character does not imply that it will turn into a full-fledged democracy as Bayat states that:

It is necessary to highlight the fact that the revolutionary overthrow of a repressive regime does not in itself guarantee a more just and inclusive order. Indeed, radical ideological revolutions may carry in themselves the seeds of authoritarian rule, for the overhaul of the state and the elimination of dissent may leave little space for pluralism and broad political competition (2013b, s. 59).

This complex relation between the Arab uprisings and the fate of democracy brings the metaphor of ‘Spring’ to denote these events as democratic revolutions. The ‘Spring’ metaphor has been widely used

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Tunisia

Egypt

Libya

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to indicate a change from authoritarian rule to the democracy in the European revolutions of 1848 (Massad, 2012); 1966-68 uprising against the communist order in Czechoslovakia (Williams, 1997); and after the dissolution of Soviet Union (Ash, 1989; Taubman & Taubman, 1989). March Lynch (2011) was one of the first to use this same metaphor for the Arab uprisings of 2010 and 2011. However, as the things got worsen several criticisms have raised against this metaphor. Wiarda (2012) suggests using of ‘Arab Fall’ or ‘Arab Winter’; Phillips (2012) uses the term of 'Islamist Winter' due to the electoral success of Islamist parties and their so-called hidden agenda to establish an Islamic state at the expense of democratic principles; and Richard Sale (2012) labeled his article as 'A Cold Chill Comes Over the Arab Spring' to reflect the failure of democratic expectations in the MENA region. When it comes to the appropriateness of using the ‘spring’ metaphor, I completely agree with these aforementioned studies as first these cases do not experience same level of revolutionary activity; and second they do not show alike commitment to the democratic principles and rule of law and only one country appears to be successful in its transition to democracy. Therefore, I highly doubt about the convenience of the usage of the spring metaphor and it must be something that scholars of international relations should address.

To conclude, in this paper I construct a typology of revolution based on the variables of mass protest, change in institutions, the presence of ideology and the role that revolutionary elites have played in the previous regime. Subsequently, I analyze three cases of the Arab Spring uprisings according to this typology. Based on this analysis, it is found that each three cases have their own peculiar character as Tunisia is a refolution, in Egypt it is a mixed leadership change which was ensured by mass protest and at the same time presence of elites holding prominent positions, and ultimately Libya experiences a social revolution. Other than this, one of the main findings is that revolutions in the contemporary era should not be automatically confused with democratic and more inclusive regimes. As it is demonstrated above, the most revolutionary state, Libya, is at the same time the least democratic among these three cases whereas the Tunisian case which experiences a moderate level of change is the most successful case in terms of democracy. Although this paper is descriptive and does not claim any causal mechanism, the typology developed here provides a good ground for future scholarly work to develop causal linkages to better understand the phenomenon of different types of revolution.

This article aims to develop a typology of revolutions based on the factors affiliated to the revolutionary process as well as revolutionary outcomes and subsequently the three cases of forceful leadership changes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya is analyzed to determine the revolutionary character of these uprisings. Based on this analysis, I find that the Libyan case is a ‘social revolution’; Tunisia have been experiencing a ‘refolution’; and what Egypt experiences is not a revolution of any kind but a simple leadership change. Another important finding is that despite earlier optimism, revolutions in the contemporary era should not be automatically confused with democratic and more inclusive regimes. The most revolutionary state, Libya, is at the same time the least democratic among these three cases whereas the Tunisian case which experiences a moderate level of change is the most successful case in terms of democracy.

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