The Success and Failure of the Arab Spring in Producing Regime Change: Religion and the Unusual Case of Bahrain

THE SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF THE ARAB SPRING IN PRODUCING REGIME CHANGE: RELIGION AND THE UNUSUAL CASE OF BAHRAIN

Rashmi Kumar

May, 2015

UNI: rk2824

Economic Transformations in New Democracies

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It has been almost five years since the first outbreak of the Arab uprisings in Tunisia, yet democracy remains more elusive than ever. Not a single state amongst the Arab nations affected by the uprisings has been able to make a transition towards democracy. Earlier scholars under theorized the importance of religion in the third wave of democratization in scholarly writings (Stephen & Linz, 2013) (conflicts of religion did not fare prominently in both the success and failure of the third wave of democratization attempts), however the hegemony that religion surmises in the Middle East has brought forward the need to rethink religion as a prominent source affecting democratic attempts especially in the context of the unprecedented uprisings of 2011 in the Arab world. While this is not the scope of this research, I will attempt to bridge the gap that religion plays as a powerful variable in influencing the political environment and regime instability towards pro-democratic sentiments with the spotlight on Bahrain’s peculiar case.

Bahrain was the only outlier among the MENA states to have experienced a significant impact from the Arab uprisings despite having the resources (oil wealth) and ‘dynasticism’ or hereditary succession (which led similar monarchies to shake off civil unrest almost infallibly) at its disposal, yet they were unsuccessful in staging off protests without foreign intervention; protests that were turning pro-democratic (Louër , 2008) with the potential to greatly threaten the very existence of the monarchial Gulf states and indirectly the international oil market. We will observe that religion played an extraordinary role in Bahrain being unable to individually repress and suppress the mass civil protests of 2011.

In what follows, we will begin with the basics of the Arab uprisings of 2011, followed by the variables that typically affect regime strength, and finally the role of religion and sectarian divide as an additional variable affecting the course of political transformations and regime durability in Bahrain.

Why and how did the Arab Spring come into being?

In recounting the events that propelled the Arab uprisings as well as those that sustained and spread its success transnationally, one can draw comparisons with the reformations of 1989. The scale of both uprisings was so massive and surprising that it took most regimes completely off guard. The protests spread across and unhinged regimes that most observers considered exceptionally stable. The contagion effect of demonstrations in nearby countries in producing regime crises inspired and mobilized the masses to take to the streets to protest their discontent (Way, 2011). Although the momentum and intensity of the revolts varied from one country to another, the domino effect spurred on by commonalities in the region, did not spare a single Arab nation from being affected by the uprisings.