Abstract
This memo was prepared for " The Arab Thermidor: The Resurgence of the Security State " workshop held at the London School of Economics and Political Science Middle East Centre, October 10, 2014. • http://pomeps.org/2014/12/19/a-historical-sociology-approach-to-authoritarian-resilience. What explains the failure of the Arab Uprising to lead, as its protagonists expected, to democratization? Neither democratization theory (DT) or post-democracy (PDT) approaches, such as authoritarian upgrading, got the Arab Uprising right: Several authoritarian rulers were removed but rather than democracy, the dominant outcome has been some variant of civil war or authoritarian restoration. Historical sociology (HS) has key advantages in understanding this outcome. It can subsume the contributions of DT regarding the forces pushing for democratization and the insights of PDT on how these have been managed, while overcoming their tendency to teleology and dichotomization and bringing in depth from history and political economy. Its approach is one of path dependency over the teleology inherit in DT.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages | 1-4 |
| Number of pages | 4 |
| Volume | The Arab Thermidor: The Resurgence of the Security State” |
| Specialist publication | Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) |
| Publication status | Published - 19 Dec 2014 |
Keywords
- Authoritarianism
- Authoritarian resilence
- security state
- historical sociology
