Rethinking the Arab Spring in the context of geohistorical transformations

Parameters of structural and functional analysis of the region

The Arab Spring did not become the final wave of democratization in the MENA region, nor did it become a “great transformation” of political systems. In many ways, most of the countries in which social movements have taken place have retained the political and regime characteristics of the system, having modified some social and political institutions. The civil wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen, the military coup in Egypt in 2013, the resolution of the conflict in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Iran, Iraq demonstrate not so much the failure of revolutionary events as the antagonism between modernization and post-colonialism. Those states that were able to carry out modernization in full or partially turned out to be more ready for social movements. The same states where, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, a policy of extrapolating the imperial order within the boundaries of a specific territory was carried out, were subjected to social movements.

In other words, the Arab Spring in the MENA region did not resolve the contradictions within the political system of specific states. Military regimes turned out to be stronger, as pointed out by Sami Zubaida (2012), as they managed to enlist the support of the majority of the population during the time of ambiguity in order to redistribute power. At the same time, informal and patrimonial social ties were preserved, an appeal to national unity and nationalism, the formation of a new ideological policy aimed at latent modernization, primarily of key institutions and structures that reproduce the political order. This was reflected in the partial and formal democratization of political Life: the dissolution of the parliament or the cabinet of ministers, amendments to the constitution, an increase in social assistance to the population, and the codification of the state's legal and regulatory system.

As for the political and regime characteristics, in the case of Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, with minimal changes, a hybrid political regime has survived, in which the positions of the military-bureaucratic apparatus have been strengthened. Alfred Stepan and Juan Linz (2013) note the fact that in most countries of the MENA region, one way or another, an authoritarian type of government (from weakly authoritarian to totalitarian) functioned. However, the Sultanist type, which has survived in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iran, seems interesting. Sultanism is the dominance of informal practices, tribal or clan relationships, the formation of a military-bureaucratic apparatus with a weak ideology of the state. Therefore, it seems that the revolutionary events did not so much reveal the features of such regimes, but helped these regimes find out their weak points, certain points of bifurcation, which were subsequently quickly and efficiently eliminated.

But, in my opinion, the most important thing is that the Arab Spring has intensified the regional confrontation between the former centers of the empire of Turkey and Iran, to which Saudi Arabia has also been added. Dehshiri and Shahmoradi (2020) write about this, pointing to the rivalry of three axes: the Iran-led Shiite, the Saudi-led Salafist, and the Turkish-led Brotherhood. Here we are speaking not just about confrontation, but about the formation of regional hegemony, which is woven into the geometry of geopolitical figures. The Arab Spring has become a platform for using tools of influence, as well as promoting their own interests in the region, using ideology, and power.

As we noted earlier, an empire is a geopolitical product, it depends on the factor of maintaining internal political stability and the factor of geopolitical ambitions. Both factors directly depend on the quantitative and qualitative measurement of the resources available to the empire. Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are not empires in their pure form, but some imperial characteristics are inherent in them: spatial expansion of interests, ersatz ideology, clear hierarchy of power relations, dominance of the military- bureaucratic apparatus of government, autarky (by which I mean controlled inclusiveness, the ability to penetrate to the empire and leave the empire).

Conclusion

It is impossible to say unequivocally that the Arab Spring was an inevitable process, however, it can be assumed that it became a world-system regularity of those geohistorical processes and transformations that have taken place in the MENA region over the past 500 years. First of all, this concerns the post-imperial space, which, as a rule, is rather unstable and inertial. Building an empire is always a gamble that requires a huge number of resources, both economic and political. The vital activity of the empire depends on (1) the collective action of the political elites on the one hand, and the ruler on the other, (2) maintaining a balance between geopolitical ambitions and the internal political situation, (3) the legitimacy of the imperial world, which is a projection of the imperial order. Therefore, the disintegration of an empire is a Long, situational, and unstable process, during which new political organizations are constituted in the emerging political vacuum and chaos.

If we talk about the imperial legacy and the reasons that served as a springboard for the emergence of social movements in the MENA region, then I propose to outline the following fundamental positions. First, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the process of privatization of the periphery by the military aristocracy began, which was accompanied by the formation of unstable and institutionally weak political regimes. Such political regimes were timocratic in their content, functionally and instrumentally limited, and resource dependent. The main condition for the viability of the political regime was the establishment of control over the limited political space and the regulation of the symbolic struggle between various social groups for access to (re)distribution of power.

Second, the existing problem of collective action by elites illustrates the coordinated action of small groups at the initial stage of the seizure and organization of power, and the inconsistency of actions during the collapse of a particular political regime. Researchers call such processes political instability, but I suppose that the metaphor of a nonlinear parabola is more appropriate here. Collective action by elites is a balance between strategic cooperation and potential costs. Power is strong with strategically adjusted interaction of social groups, which rely, as an option, on selective incentives to ensure the reproduction of power.

Thirdly, the impossibility of the former periphery to get out of the state of imperialism when the logic of imperial power is extrapolated to a specific territory-the state and its population. It is appropriate here to recall the idea of sovereignty as a kind of absolute power, limited geographically. In the case of imperial sovereignty, as a form of power relations, its attempts to transform into hegemony are visible, but strong social and political fragmentation and parceling of administrative control did not bring about a complete transition of sovereignty into hegemony (for example, Chalcraft 2021). In the created post-imperial states, sovereignty is designated in two directions: dependence on geopolitical configuration and instability of domestic political power.

Fourth, the use of nationalism as a justification for the right to exist in political, but not social, secularization has led to fragmentation in the system itself. Here it is necessary to point out the fact that the construction of the imperial world is always a process of subjectivation of social space, that is, self-awareness of one's place and role not in space, but in the imperial world as a whole. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire brought the population of the former periphery into a state of dichotomy, in which nationalism was opposed to imperialism, religion, but could not objectively explain the social and political state in which the rulers and the ruled are.

In other words, the Arab Spring was an attempt to restructure power, but strong military power, informal social relations, strong collective action by the elites, and the ideological content of the political space largely contributed to the failure of revolutionary movements. The same refers to the issue of democratization (see Mansfield & Snyder 2012), since the states of the MENA region are dominated by an authoritarian type of government (for example, Beilin 2012), which is a consistent continuation of the imperial logic of power. Any empire is authoritarian in the center, but the further the periphery is from the center, the greater the chance for the variability of the political regime is. The former periphery, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, chose the path that was optimal and acceptable for them-the path of extrapolating imperial power to the territory of an independent state.

This also explains the fact that after the collapse of the empire, a political vacuum always arises, that is, an unstable state of the political system, within which each structure or group can be considered as a potential bifurcation point. During a political vacuum, there is a tendency towards imperial inertia, that is, to the continuation of the policy of imperialism, which is reflected both inside the state (institutional design of the political system) and outside (tactics and strategies of the state's behavior in the geopolitical space). Such instability explains the coups d'йtat that took place in the 20th century on the territory of the states of the MENA region, for example, in Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Algeria, and Syria.

Also, the events of the Arab Spring became a set of mechanisms to destabilize the political landscape in the region. Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, which practically did not feel the revolutionary waves, resumed rivalry in the region for dominance, and, possibly, for political and ideological hegemony. As for Turkey and Iran, they managed to avoid social movements, also because they were the centers of former empires (retained the image of the empire and the imperial world), carried out successful modernizations after unsuccessful modernizations, formed a strong military-bureaucratic power based on ideology. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, did not have an imperial past, but managed to carry out successful modernization, as well as to combine political leadership with ideological power-a theocratic monarchy or a Sultanist political regime.

At the very end we should note that Turkey and Iran due to their historic empire past, modernization and strong ideology managed to work out the mechanisms of preventing social movements. At the same time, the former Ottoman empire chose the extensive way of development, that is the extrapolation of the empire order with minimal changes in structure and system. Besides, the axis Libya-Egypt-Syria-Iraq was opposed to the former centers of empires, which, in its turn, did not enable them to hold the successful modernization. Here I mean that any center of the empire, following the policy of modernization, can engage former peripheries. Due to the ideological and religious confrontation in the Middle East we have only one such example-Saudi Arabia that chose the road of modernization as a way to minimize threats from the Iraq side. Taking these factors into account I dare assume that Arabian Spring became a logical process for the post-imperial world. It is not that difficult to create an empire, one needs only strong army and a charismatic leader. It is much more difficult when an empire breaks down and, in this space, there appear a lot of political vacuums, which fill with past but unfortunately not with future.

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