Some Unfinished Business in North Africa

Abstract

When work on this book started, North Africa was a quintessential example of the nonexistence of democracy. Studies of Democratization in North Africa and the Middle East in general sought to explain what it was intrinsic about North African states and societies that made democratization improbable. In the midst of this study, the Tunisia’s Jasmin Revolution set off what has been named the “Arab Spring” unleashing a string of events that are of great interest to the study of civil society and democratization. The Arab Spring’s many letdowns and its only successful transition towards democracy, Egypt and Tunisia, respectively, provide an immense opportunity to study what role civil society played before, during, and after the transitions. Like the other case studies in the book, the two countries provide multiple examples of transition and regression. The two case studies have a similar history with the Sub-Saharan sample states in that they have gone through colonialism, independence, the cold war, neocolonialism, and dictatorship. However, the two also provide a unique factor in that they are Muslim majority countries in which Islamist movements have a stronger influence.