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Posts tagged ‘Libya’

May 10

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Friday Puzzler: Why Lie About Benghazi?

By Barbara F. Walter

It’s now increasingly clear that Obama knew as early as the evening of September 11, 2012 that the attack on the US embassy in Benghazi was the work of al Qaida-affiliated terrorists. Gregory Hicks (the deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Tripoli) said he knew immediately. Susan Rice certainly knew five days later when she went on all the Sunday talk shows insisting the attack was the result of a spontaneous reaction to a YouTube video. If Obama knew the attack was the work of terrorists, and he knew that everyone at the embassies in Libya knew it was a terrorist attack, why did he try to hide this from the American people? Obama must have known that the information would quickly leak out, and that this revelation would make him and his administration look even worse.

So today’s puzzler is this: Why did Obama lie to the American public about the nature of the Benghazi attack?

Last week’s puzzler asked why the garment-factory tragedy in Bangladesh uncharacteristically caused Western retailers to rethink operations in that country. I think there are three possible answers to this question. The first is that retailers were simply engaged in a PR game and had no intention of moving operations elsewhere. As Taylor Marvin pointed out “the newsworthy, singular character of the collapse” made it impossible for retailers operating in Bangladesh to ignore the tragedy. They had to offer some response and verbal statements to the press were easy and costless.

The second is that retailers were sincere in their concern about working conditions in Bangladesh, and their threats to leave the country were real. If this was the case, the question is why now and why Bangladesh? I think retailers are willing to pull out of Bangladesh because (a) there are so many other cheap places to manufacture clothes, and (b) Bangladesh represents the bottom of the barrel in terms of working and operating conditions. It’s easy to pull out of Bangladesh if there are numerous better places to go.

But there’s a third, more hopeful reason. An article yesterday by Stephanie Clifford reveals that American consumers are increasingly interested in the origins of their clothing and are willing to pay more for a t-shirt that isn’t made in a sweat shop. If consumers demand to know where and how their clothing is made, operating in the current conditions in Bangladesh becomes a losing business proposition.

Which do I think is the best answer? # 2. I’m not holding my breath that clothing manufacturing will come back to New England anytime soon. Still, it’s nice to know that consumers are beginning to care. Artisanal t-shirts anyone?

Oct 19

8 Comments

Friday Puzzler: Why Take Credit for Shooting a Girl?

Image via the official Malala Yousafzai Facebook page.

By Barbara F. Walter

There are two blatant puzzles associated with the shooting of 14 year old Malala Yousafzai by the Taliban in Pakistan Tuesday. The first is the motive: what benefit could any organization, especially one that eventually hopes to lead the Pakistani population, gain from killing a young girl? The second has to do with strategy. Why would any organization ever publicly take credit for the shooting, especially after observing the worldwide outrage that resulted? Yet that’s exactly what the Pakistani Taliban did when it proudly took responsibility for the act.

So today’s puzzle is this: why is the Taliban so intent on killing this little girl? And why have they been so brazen as to claim responsibility, going so far to say that they will not stop until she is dead? Could any single child be that important?

***

Answer to last week’s puzzler

Last week we asked why the governments of Libya and Egypt reacted so differently to the attacks on US diplomatic facilities in their respective countries. Commenter Scott Monje suggested that the US “appears to be much more popular in Libya than in Egypt,” encouraging the Libyan government to quickly apologize for the attack. Daniel Rio Tinto added that the Libyan government was more dependent on the US because it came to power “with the aid of NATO intervention” which made them “much more careful on how to engage with the US and the West as a whole.” Both are true. The real question, however, is why the US enjoys greater popularity in Tripoli than Cairo despite the substantial aid both countries receive from the US. I believe the answer has more to do with domestic politics than anything the US does or does not do.

Both the current regimes in Egypt and Libya are in the midsts of domestic power struggles: Egyptian President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are in a heated competition with the extreme but still popular Salafists for public support. In Libya the power struggle is much less severe, as it is between the newly elected president and legislature and the far less popular Al Qaida faction, but could still cause problems.

The govenrment in Libya had the luxury to quickly and immediately condemn the attacks because the perpetrators of the attacks — a wing of Al Qaida — are not popular in Libya and thus pose no threat to the regime. The attackers’ goal was not to undercut popular support for the existing regime — which they have no ability to do — but to convince the regime’s main supporter, the United States, to leave the country.

President Morsi is in an entirely different position. His Muslim Brotherhood won the most recent election, but faces a strong competitor from more extreme Salafists, who were behind the attacks in Egypt. The Salafists goal was not to convince the United States to leave — something that they will not be able to do — but to convince Egyptian voters that the Muslim Brotherhood is “in bed” with the US and thus not worthy of their support. Given this game, in the aftermath of the attack Morsi was in a difficult position. He could not immediately condemn the attackers and come out in support of the US, since this would signal to Egyptians where his allegiance lay. But he could not unequivocably support the attackers since the regime depends on continued US aid. Morsi, thus, behaved quite strategically when he initially condemned the video and its author, demanding an apology, but then a few days later quietly shut down further demonstrations.

Oct 12

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Friday Puzzler: Why Did the Governments in Egypt and Libya Respond So Differently to the Embassy Attacks?

By Barbara F. Walter

Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton honor those killed in the Benghazi attack on September 11, 2012. US State Department Photo.

On September 11, 2012, US embassies in Egypt and Libya were attacked. While the world watched videos of youths scaling embassy walls and burning American flags, the governments of Egypt and Libya chose to respond in quite different ways. The first response of the govenrment of Egypt, led by President Mohamed Morsi, was to denounce the anti-Muslim film produced in the United States and call for the United States to prosecute the filmmaker. In contrast, the first response of the government of Libya, led by the General National Council, was to unequivacably condemn the attackers of the embassy.

The puzzle is this: why did the governments react in such different ways?

Answers to our last Puzzler:

Our last puzzler asked why the United States bothers with presidential debates, given that they have little effect on elections’ outcomes. Reader kerokan suggested that debates persist because incompetent candidates likely to perform poorly cannot back out of them because declining to debate would be an even stronger signal of their low quality; competent candidates see the debates as an opportunity to demonstrate their high quality. Roderick focused on the legitimizing effect of the debates, arguing they “give a form and appearance of legitimacy to democratic governance.”

Oct 1

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Libyan Counter-Protests: An Everyday Affair?

By Oliver Kaplan

Libyans peacefully celebrate in Msallata, Libya. UN photo by Iason Foounten.

When Libyan protestors channeled their anger against the violent extremist militias deemed responsible for killing the US Ambassador last week, it was surprising but hardly unique. As was widely reported, demanding greater security and rule of law, Libyans massed around the compound of Ansar al-Shariah and then stormed it, burning cars and forcing the militia members to flee. More than a simple “peace protest,” they directly denied aggressors the means to use violence. Rare, right?

Wrong. It turns out that these kinds of events are pretty common. We just don’t see them very often because of underreporting, and because they are so hard to classify.

Around the globe, civilians seem to universally detest violence, so the preference to counter violent groups exist. In Libya, a recent Gallup poll shows 95 percent of Libyans want the militias dissolved. The challenge is how to muster the reassurance it takes to overcome fear and actually unite to act against extremists.

This reassurance also exists more frequently than you might think. As I have found in my research, in instances from Colombia, Afghanistan, Mexico, Pakistan, Sudan and beyond, pre-existing networks are a big help. The Libyan protestors certainly had those — the public cohesion they derived from their prior pro-democracy cooperation to oust Gadaffi set them up for robust collective action for security. So, when these Libyan protests are situated among other cases, it becomes clear that movements against violence are not culturally bounded. I’ll offer four observations:

  • Anti-violence protests can sometimes get out of hand too. The line between protest and violent vigilantism is thin. In cases from Mexico, Guatemala, and other countries, all too frequently protests for security devolve into violence. Most recently I blogged about how Honduran Indians upset about a botched drug raid took out their frustrations on neighbors who had ties to the drug cartels. While not killing anyone or clearly intending harm, the strong signal sent by the burning-down of their houses bordered on vigilantism.
  • Direct action against violent groups by civilians may be rarer in cities, which are usually better controlled and less lawless (i.e., it is less common to find rebel groups in cities compared with the countryside). However, when illegal armed actors do exist in cities, they tend to be heavily armed. For instance, when protestors stormed the second Rufallah al-Sihati brigade militia, four people were killed in the ensuing firefight.
  • Civilians tend to brave risks, stand up for themselves, and repudiate violence when their own community members are affected. But they’re less likely to take such risks on behalf of “outsiders.” What’s striking in this case is that protestors stood up for the American ambassador, the bilateral relationship, and the related development opportunities that he represented. This evokes examples of Afghan villages providing safe-haven to injured US soldiers as part of Pashtunwali codes.
  • One can hope the counter-protests are a credible signal to Americans that not all Libyans are anti-American. They could also serve as a calming signal to observers in the Muslim world — that misdirected rage at America and its representatives is not widely condoned. Unfortunately, for the moment, the signal that not all Muslims are violent may be more muddled and the events may be less helpful for countering that negative stereotype.

These anti-extremist protest movements represent tantalizing opportunities. Governments might seek to better understand how such anti-extremist protest movements begin, how they can be nurtured so they are not co-opted by thugs, and how to transition to sustainable stability. For the moment, the Libyan government seems to be “pulling an Awakening” and bandwagoning on the protest with its ultimatum that the militias disband. If it’s serious about doing so, research suggests the Libyan government should strengthen local neighborhood and community institutions. Whether the actor of the day be protestors, (government-allied) militias, or the military, this will hopefully facilitate closer links and accountability to the “pacifist” majority. Regardless, the fact that the government is responding to popular pressures from anti-extremists instead of extremists is a hopeful sign indeed.

Sep 27

Moderates of the World, Unite!

Guest post by Lindsay Heger and Roberta Spivak

Image via Buzzfeed.

When they released their short “film”, the filmmakers behind “The Innocence of Muslims” scored a victory not only for themselves, but also their purported enemy. For extremists, this year’s September 11 anniversary was a win-win — Americans produced a film so poorly crafted that it would be viewed in America as a joke, but one that would also serve to incite Muslim extremists abroad. The tragic events that unfolded highlight how the most intolerant segments of two societies — those who at least rhetorically consider themselves enemies — can in essence further their goals through a brief series of interactions. By provoking a violent response to their film, the American producers could “prove” their point that Islam is a violent religion, and by the same token extremists in Libya, Egypt, and Yemen could show their followers that Americans really are as hateful as some clerics profess.

Extremists gain power by manipulating moderates’ perceptions about the righteousness of their cause. This strategy is more likely to work when the actions of the other side give the moderates real reasons to believe the extremists’ narrative. In the wake of recent events, we should ask ourselves what can be done to legitimize the perception that extremists on both sides are wrong. Can ordinary Americans realize that the majority of Libyans are equally aghast at the murder of the four innocent embassy staff as we are? Can we convince Muslims throughout the world that America is not a homogeneous society coalescing around anti-Muslim sentiment? Where are the gatekeepers? Who is responsible to protect the normal, average citizen from this attempt to bias them?

One obvious option is government officials. But on both sides government officials have been unable to correct these rampant misperceptions. Following the murders of American diplomats in Libya, President Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Libyan interim President Mohammed el-Megarif, and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen all expressed sympathy for those hurt by the killings and pleaded for nonviolent responses to the film. Yet, in the days that followed violent protests quickly spread across borders. Initial pleas for peace proved ineffective. One reason for this lies in the fact the message, as received by many Muslims living with state-controlled media, was mixed — the film and recent publication of anti-Islamic cartoons in France sent a message of hate and disrespect. Calls for peace, thus, could easily be perceived as a mixed message.

Another possibility lies in the fact that many leaders in the Muslim world stoked the flames of rage. Initially the loudest voices from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Palestine all vehemently condemned the film, yet remained largely silent on the issue of the murderous reprisal in Benghazi. In Iran Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami went so far as to urge his supporters to turn their holy rage into a “hurricane or a tsunami against the US” and make America “pay a steep price” for the film. Pakistani Railway Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour offered $100,000 reward for the killing of the film’s makers.

For Westerners, these calls to arms and the perception relative ambivalence in the Muslim world about bringing the killers in Benghazi to justice cements some Americans’ negative perceptions Islam. Unfortunately evidence suggests these perceptions may be pervasive. In a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution in 2011, nearly half of Americans believe that Islam is “at odds with American values and way of life”. More troubling is the finding that while more than 80 percent of Americans view the perpetrators of violence in the name of Christianity as non-Christians, only 48 percent of Americans attribute violence in the name of Islam to non-Muslims. The last week has probably only increased American Islamophobia.

But Americans themselves have done little to correct the vision that America is at war with the Muslim world. Utter disgust with the film among Americans, while widespread, may not be enough. Because the American legal system protects the right to freedom of (even at times repugnant) expression, legal options to prosecute or criminalize the film’s makers are largely non-existent (as they probably should be).

It is time to start considering how actors other than just government officials can stop this spiral of misperception. Government officials have failed to communicate the true state of moderate public opinion on both sides, but some civilian organizations and other non-state actors have diligently worked to communicate with the other side. The day after American diplomats were murdered in Libya, buried behind the pictures of American flags on fire and protestors destroying Western embassies, images surfaced of peaceful Libyan demonstrators holding signs indicating empathy towards America’s loss. One sign (corrected for spelling) read, “Sorry People of America, This [is] Not The Behavior of Islam or the Prophet.” These protesters’ message should not be buried. It should be front page material; these protestors have enormous potential to demonstrate that moderation and empathy exists between the Muslims and the West. On the same token signals of American moderation are also probably necessary to curtail the spiral fueled by extremists. Given the “The Innocence of Muslims” laughable quality and American perceptions of its obviously extreme message, it may not occur to Americans to voice opposition. But a demonstration of American disgust with the film cuts against Islamic extremists’ accounts and could provide strong evidence that Americans, like many Muslims, find the current spiral downward distressing. To this end, we are cautiously optimistic about recent events. Efforts in Pakistan to show anti-film advertising on TV and massive protests calling for militias in Libya to disarm seem like promising steps toward ensuring average citizens’ perceptions do not tend further toward the extremes. In reality, however, it is likely that more sustained signals of moderation on both sides will be necessary to bring the current spiral to an end.

Sep 17

5 Comments

Spoiler Alert

By Andrew Kydd

Screencap from ‘Innocence of Muslims’, via YouTube.

To Western eyes, the short film that has caused a new wave of violence in the Middle East is bad, very bad, so bad as to be funny, but not quite bad enough to be good, in the sense that say the US propaganda films excerpted in Atomic Café are brilliant in a way they do not intend to be. However, it is not so bad as to be worth killing someone over. It comes across as a dumb joke, told by a belligerent know-nothing with a chip on his shoulder who wants to express some hostility and see if anyone wants to make something of it.

As such, the movie seems to fall under the heading of what students of civil war call spoiling. Spoiling has various definitions, but to me it consists of efforts by extremist groups to encourage conflict between more moderate representatives of two different camps. Hamas acted as a spoiler between the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s, by launching terrorist attacks to derail the Oslo accords. Subsequently, Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in 2000 in the wake of the failed Camp David negotiations set off the second intifada, which returned the two sides to conflict.

The makers of the movie appear to have intended for it to provoke violence. The Associate Press quotes Steve Klein, one of the figures behind the movie, as saying “we went into this knowing this was probably going to happen.” He also apparently told the film’s director he would be the “next Theo Van Gogh”, the Dutch director murdered in 2004 for producing a movie criticizing the treatment of women in Islamic countries. This comparison is both unduly pessimistic — he has not been killed — and unduly flattering, as Van Gogh seems to have been motivated more by concern for the victims of fundamentalism than by the kind of generic Islamophobia that suffuses Klein’s movie. Realizing how bad his statements must sound, Klein has subsequently has backtracked and claimed not to have expected violence.But the earlier admission is probably nearer the mark.

Spoiling fails when it is ignored. It works at the first level when it provokes a violent reaction from the other side. But the real question is whether it affects the behavior of more responsible representatives of the two sides. Spoiling works when it sows mistrust and prevents cooperation between these much more important actors. On this score the jury is still out and the effects may differ across countries. So far the US-Libyan relationship seems unshaken, despite the death of our Ambassador and other diplomatic staff. The relationship with Egypt seems a bit rockier, with President Morsi appeasing domestic anti-western sentiment before belatedly condemning the violence and reassuring the US. Spoiling can help bring conflicts into the open that leaders would prefer to finesse and force them to take stands when ambiguity would be their first choice. To borrow a line from a British mystery show, when a bomb disposal officer goes to confront a violent war time racketeer and is asked what he is going to do, he replies “what I do best, keep my nerves”.*  Good advice for defusing bombs and dealing with spoilers.

*Spoiler alert: He gets killed by the mobsters, but he takes them down with him by booby trapping the suitcase with the cash. Foyle’s War. Check it out.

Sep 12

3 Comments

Thoughts on the Violence in Libya

By Erica Chenoweth

“There is absolutely no justification for this type of senseless violence. None.”

-Barack Obama, Remarks on September 12, 2012, following attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya

Violence takes numerous forms. Some violence is instrumental. There is a political goal behind it. The violence is calculated, deliberate, meant to get the message across to a variety of audiences to achieve that goal — even if the targets don’t fully understand the message. Perpetrators choose violence because they see it as the most efficient way of achieving the goal. Regardless, violence ends when the perpetrators achieve their aims, or otherwise give up on the struggle.

Then there is demonstrative violence. This isn’t necessarily trying to achieve any particular goal. Instead, it is entirely expressive. People are angry, and they want others to know it. Such violence is often reactive and spontaneous and is much less predictable than instrumental violence.

We do not yet know whether the fatal attacks of four American diplomatic officials in Benghazi are instrumental or demonstrative. The distinction is important, because different types of violence demand different policy responses.

If reports are true that the violence was planned, deliberate, and meant to punish the United States for recent attacks against Al Qaeda, then we could consider it instrumental. In theory, instrumental violence can be diminished by altering the perceived costs of the violence relative to the benefits it yields. Use offensive postures to make violence extremely costly and defensive measures to give violence few expected gains, and violence will go down.

But demonstrative violence is another story. If the attacks were more or less perpetrated by heavily-armed (and uncontrolled) fundamentalist militias seeking to express their discontentment, then offensive postures may not change the level of violence. In fact, further perceived offenses may backfire, adding even more fuel to the fire. With demonstrative violence, the best course is to strengthen defenses and wait for the fury to subside.

More will be revealed, as the story develops, as to which type of violence claimed the lives of these four public servants — and which course to pursue to prevent future assaults.

Jun 13

1 Comment

Will the Middle East and North Africa Democratize? Part II

By Erica Chenoweth

Protest in Bahrain, 2011. Photo by Bahrain in Pictures, via Wikimedia.

Following up on Part I from last week, two things.

First, check out Page Fortna’s response, wherein she corrects a few of the erroneous inferences I drew from her piece with Reyko Huang. Mea culpa.

Second, I want to share my own take about how I see the Arab Spring cases playing out.

It’ll take some time, but my hunch is that the dictatorships that faced nonviolent or “people power” revolutions (e.g., Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain) will be quicker to transition to (or make progress toward) democracy than the dictatorships facing violent uprisings (e.g., Libya) or those facing no sustained challenges at all (e.g., Algeria, Saudi Arabia). Campaigns relying on a fairly even mix of nonviolent and violent methods (e.g. Yemen, Syria) are crapshoots but will probably remain autocratic.

This suspicion is based on the simple idea that the method of mobilization matters. In a recent book with Maria Stephan, she and I find that movements tend to rule using the same methods they used to win. If the campaign has succeeded using violence, it typically rules with violence. Likewise, mixed campaigns will probably rely on a mix of nonviolent and violent strategies to rule. But if the campaign succeeds using civil resistance, it is much more likely to ultimately embrace and institutionalize nonviolent forms of political contestation and conflict resolution. The new leadership is aware of the need to maintain legitimacy among a civilian population experienced in taking risks to remove oppressive or unjust systems. They become more responsive. Civil resistance is like social capital on steroids. Just ask Lech Walesa, who had to deal with way more protests during his first term as the president of a free Poland than Solidarity had organized during the anti-Communist campaign.

OK, some readers are thinking, “Well, duh. The dictatorships that have nonviolent movements are the ones that allow space for organizing already. So they already have some democratic features, are already open to reform, and are probably already democratizing before the nonviolent movement even emerges.”

You would think so, and this may be true some of the time. But in practice, this is not always the case.

A 2005 Freedom House study looked at dozens of transitions to democracy since 1960. The study found that bottom-up civic disruption was a primary driver of these transitions—more so even than top-down, elite-led reforms—and often in spite of extremely “closed” systems. In a follow-up study, Freedom House found that this civic disruption was bottom-up, generated by ordinary civilians who were actively organizing and creating opportunities for change, rather than by the economic or social conditions we typically associate with democratization. Maria and I also find little support for the endogeneity argument in our book. For example, nonviolent campaigns such as the First Palestinian Intifada, the People Power movement in the Philippines, Serbia, and Poland emerged in spite of highly restrictive and repressive conditions, seized what power they could get, and then began to expand that power, creating the opportunities they needed to produce high-level change. As Frederick Douglass aptly noted, “Power concedes nothing without a demand” (h/t to Jack DuVall). No one ever gave these people political space to rise up. Every inch of political space was hard fought, and hard won, by these movements. And although there are important exceptions, in most cases, nonviolent campaigns lead to more peaceful, stable, democratic conditions.

Some of you are thinking: “Well, the violent campaigns use violence because they face particularly brutal regimes and are therefore forced to use arms.” Don’t get me started. That’s another post altogether.

American officials have had a difficult time developing a coherent strategy to responding to the Arab uprisings, perhaps because of reservations about the outcomes of popular uprisings. They are often unsure of whom they should support in ongoing conflicts around the world. Here’s the deal. Supporting armed rebels probably helps them to succeed, but we find that victorious armed rebellions rarely lead to democracy. They usually lead to the opposite.

Supporting nonviolent movements with pro-democracy aims through civilian and diplomatic instruments may or may not help them to succeed. But if the U.S. is really interested in promoting democracy, it’s time to get more creative about supporting unarmed campaigns rather than armed ones.

Jun 11

3 Comments

Will the Arab Spring Democratize the Mideast? (Or, We Didn’t Say It Wouldn’t)

By Page Fortna

I’m tickled pink to have my research with Reyko Huang discussed by Erica Chenoweth in one of the first posts on Political Violence @ a Glance – thanks Erica!

But here’s the thing, I don’t think our research says what she says it says.

Chenoweth’s take is that our piece suggests “the Arab Spring uprisings will have little or no effect on democratization. Instead, the countries that were already democratizing will continue to do so, whereas the status quo will prevail in the others.”

But our research doesn’t support that conclusion for two reasons: 1) our research is on democratization after civil wars, not after the types of mass uprisings that characterize the Arab Spring; and 2) while we find that aspects of the war, such as its outcome, don’t affect the prospects for democracy much, that’s different from saying the fact of the conflict as a whole will have no effect.

I actually think the Arab Spring probably will lead to at least some democratization in at least some parts of the Mideast and North Africa. Allow me to elaborate.

The first reason our research doesn’t lead to the “no democratization” conclusion is that we look at democratization after civil wars, which are not the same as the popular uprisings that have characterized most of the Arab Spring.  Our research applies to the prospects for democracy in Libya, where the uprisings at the beginning turned into a civil war, and probably in Syria, where things seem headed in that direction if they’re not there already (see Barbara F. Walter’s post on this); but not in Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, or most of the other countries that have been affected by the wave of popular protests that have swept the region.

The dynamics of armed rebellion and insurgency are very different from those of mass demonstrations. So extending our research to these cases isn’t just extending them “out of sample” but to a different kettle of fish. And for reasons I’ll come back to below, there are good reasons to think that mass uprisings are (even) better for democracy than are civil wars.

The second reason is that even if the conflicts that make up the Arab Spring consisted of civil wars rather than mass uprisings, one shouldn’t conclude from our research, as Chenoweth does, “that the countries that become democratic after civil wars were on their way to democracy anyway—the civil war was a hiccup during the democratization process rather than a catalyst or an inhibitor.”

Determining whether civil wars are “hiccups,” “catalysts,” or “inhibitors” on the road to democracy would require comparing democratization in countries that experience civil wars with those that don’t, something we don’t do. Rather we look only at states that emerge from civil war and ask why some democratize while others don’t. A rather different question. For what it’s worth, we find that an awful lot of states emerging from civil wars do democratize, which suggests that civil war is often a catalyst for democracy. It shakes up entrenched systems, and in a region as autocratic as the Middle East, my guess is that such upheaval is bound to nudge societies closer to democracy. But that’s my guess, not something I’ve done concrete research to support.

So it’s true that we find that the kinds of things that tend to foster democratization in other settings, like economic development and not having too much oil, are the best predictors of democratization after civil war. And it’s true that we find that attributes of the war itself, particularly its outcome – who wins or whether there’s a negotiated settlement – have surprisingly little effect on which states emerging from civil war will democratize. (One might think that negotiated settlements between warring sides might lead to more inclusive and democratic politics, but that turns out not to be so.) But that is different from saying the war as a whole doesn’t affect democratization. That is, having experienced civil war might lead countries to democratize, even if it doesn’t matter much how that war ends.

So what can we conclude about the effect of the Arab Spring on democracy?

If we wanted to apply the implications of our research not just to post-civil war cases but also to societies emerging from other types of conflicts (which is a stretch, so this should be taken with a big ol’ grain of salt), we might predict that of those Middle Eastern countries experiencing the upheavals of the Arab Spring, the ones most likely to end up moving toward democracy are those where economic and other factors tend to promote democratization. That is, the oil rich states are less likely to democratize, and of those not blessed/cursed with oil, the relatively more economically developed countries will have an easier time moving toward democracy than their poorer neighbors. So states like Tunisia and Jordan (little or no oil exports, relatively high GDP)  have better democracy prospects than those like Libya or Yemen (high dependence on oil exports and low GDP).

There are also several reasons to think that the Arab Spring as a whole will lead to democratization precisely because it has not consisted primarily of civil wars, but rather of mass-based peaceful protest (even if this has been met with violence by the state).

My co-author, Reyko Huang’s recently completed dissertation shows convincingly that the more rebels rely on civilians, the more likely is democratization after civil war. Mass uprisings by definition rely on mobilizing large segments of society. So to the extent we can extrapolate from civil wars to mass protests (again, this is more than just “out of sample” extrapolation, so keep your salt shaker handy), my strong suspicion is that the uprisings of the Arab Spring will be more likely to lead to democratization in the long run than would revolutions that rely on armed insurgency, and that therefore mobilize narrower segments of the population.

Interestingly, in Huang’s research this pattern holds true even if the rebels lose the war. It’s not that more democratically minded rebels mobilize civilians, and if they win they implement democracy. It’s that the process of mobilizing people raises their expectations, and makes post-war elites (whether they be victorious rebels, the incumbent regime, or some power-sharing mix of the two) more accountable to the public.

Erica Chenoweth’s own research shows that non-violent protest can be more effective in achieving demands (in this case for democracy) than violence.

So will the Arab Spring democratize the Middle East? Maybe not, and almost certainly not fully, but I’m optimistic. The upheaval of civil war often opens the door to democracy; mass uprisings are probably even more likely to lead to democracy than civil wars (perhaps even if they fail to topple the government); and peaceful protests have an even better track record than violence. Add that all up, and the prospects for at least some democratization start to look pretty good.

I hesitate to make predictions, especially about the future (as Bohr, Twain, Berra, or possibly someone else put it). But if I had to do so, I would say that the Arab Spring will almost surely be a catalyst for democracy in the region.

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