How did social movements of the Arab Spring, social media, and institutional development contribute to democratisation in Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria?By: Lazuardi Fachrul Nizar (u5867510)

The Arab Spring was a revolutionary protest in the Middle-East and North Africa, both

non-violent and violent, in favour of democracy over authoritarianism (Moghadam 2013, p.393). It originated when the incident of self-immolation by

Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi (Fahim 2011; Rifai 2011) triggered the idea of revolution

that then spread rapidly throughout the region, including Egypt and Syria. The uprisings

led to different political outcomes, from successful democratic transition in Tunisia, the

revival of authoritarianism in post-revolution Egypt, and the collapse of state

institutions in Syria (Shehata 2014, p.90). This essay analyses the contribution of social

movements, social media, and institutional development in the success and the failure of

transitions toward democratic institutions of the three countries using a comparative

method. The essay argues that social movements in Tunisia and Egypt managed to

overthrow autocratic regimes due to the application of new social movements (NSMs)

and widespread use of social media, but they failed in Syria because of the harsh

responses from the Assad government. In addition, while Tunisia enjoyed a strong

political society that led to its successful of transition to democratic institutions,

political distrust between competing parties in Egypt has undermined their

democratisation process. Furthermore, Syria has experienced a worst-case scenario due

to the sectarian nature of its domestic institutions, escalating into a protracted civil war.

New social movements

Unlike the traditional version of social movements, Arab uprisings introduced new

social movements – NSMs. While the old perspective of social movements considers

that democratisation process is ideological, formal, driven by elites, and ignores the role

of civil society (della Porta 2013, p.126), the Arab Spring was driven by a desire for

democratisation that is non-ideological, leaderless, informal, horizontally organised,

self-generated, and emphasises the role of civil society, enabling the mobilisation of

collective action (Durac 2015, p.245). The movements also focus on identity, meaning,

and action (Bayat 1997). These NSM’s characters inside Arab movements reflect

democratisation from below, developing ‘grass-roots’ conception of mobilisation (della

Porta 2013, p.144).

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The success of the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings to overthrow President Ben Ali and

Hosni Mubarak (BBC News 2011a; 2011b) depended on the coming together of the

same identity through grass-roots coalitions that involved youth, professional, labour,

Islamist and liberal elements (Shehata 2011). The events in Syria, however, showed the

limitations of such NSMs. Such attempts failed to topple the hard-headed regime of

Bashar Assad, dragging the country into civil war (Mansfield & Snyder 2012, p.725).

Assad used a harsh military crackdown and massive kidnapping to suppress the

demonstrations (Shehata 2014, p.89). These heavy-handed responses from the Syrian

regime helped by Shiite militias created resistance from the Sunni opposition who then

established the Free Syrian Army, turning peaceful civic unrest into full-scale combat

(Atkinson et al. 2012).

Social Media

An interesting feature of the Arab Spring was the effective use of new communication

network of social media. It was utilised as a tool for mobilitation, communication, and

coordination of civil resistance (Howard et al. 2011). There were three ways new media

played a key role during the movements: Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook,

Twitter, and YouTube, camera-enabled mobile phones, and satellite television, mainly

Aljazeera (Khondker 2011, p.677).

Two theories attribute to the role of social media in the Arab uprisings, i.e. ‘cyber-

enthusiasts’ and ‘cyber-sceptics’ (Wolfsfeld et al. 2013, p.117). The former argue that

such instruments provided low-cost communication between the protestors, allowing

the dissemination of information in real-time. Furthermore, social media, through such

coordination, develops shared awareness and creates new forms of ‘imagined

community’ and ‘network society’ (Barrons 2012, p.57; Castells 2009). Conversely, the

sceptics do not support the notion of power that online media has for democratising the

Arab world because not all people in this region had mobile phones and internet access

(Comunello & Anzerra 2012, p.453). Moreover, they believe that digital technology

only creates weak networks with loosely bound members and has no clear objectives

and authority lines, so is unsuitable to high-risks revolutions (Gladwell 2010).

The cyber-enthusiasts view is relevant to Tunisia and Egypt where activists effectively

utilised Facebook to invite people to join the scheduled protests, Twitter to organise

movements, and YouTube to visualise the revolts internationally (Karagiannopoulos

2012, p.160). Although the government responded by disabling broadband 2

infrastructure and arresting many cyber-activists (Howard & Hussain 2011, p.39), the

protesters, who were mainly tech-savvy youth, were able to find ways to connect to

internet services in neighbouring countries or setup ‘file transfer protocol’ accounts to

transmit videos internationally (Ishani 2011; Sigal 2011). After the ousting of Mubarak,

Google Executive Wael Ghonim said: ’If you want to free a society, just give them

Internet access’ (Khamis & Vaughn 2011).

However, the cyber-sceptics perspective is relevant to what happened in Syria. Both

government and opposition sides tried to use media to create propaganda by framing

their enemy with negative labels and presenting false evidence (Shelton 2012).

Moreover, as the internet and telephones were being sabotaged by the Syrian

government, social media was more useful for the regime, since they could uncover

activists’ strategies (Comunello & Anzerra 2012, p.453). Reporting the Syrian war was

also dangerous as journalists were being attacked, detained, and tortured (Committee to

Protect Journalists 2012). Thus, regime officials won the cat-and-mouse technology

games with the activists and journalists.

Institutional development

A healthy institutional development has become one of the determinant factors in

building strong democratic institutions during post-revolution period. It includes

constitutional reforms, legitimate leadership, a compliance to compromise, free and fair

elections, liberty of speech and the press, respect for human rights, a robust civil

society, and strong political institutions (Mirkin 2013). These conditions emerged in

Tunisia, allowing them to enjoy a better legacy of the revolution. Tunisia is also

ethnically, religiously and linguistically unified, making it less likely to see the sectarian

divides and competing power centers (Keating 2015). The Islamist and secular-liberal

parties built trust to develop a political society, where any party which wins an election

is not likely to bring back authoritarianism as the instrument of public governance

(Stepan & Linz 2013, p.23).

Unlike Tunisia, post-revolution Egypt has been characterised by the absence of political

toleration, resulting in an inability to generate and sustain democratic self-government

(Masoud 2015, p.81). There has been a lack of trust and compromise in the political

atmosphere between Muslim Brotherhood (MB), the liberal party, and the military

(ibid). Although Morsi from the MB was elected as President in a democratic election,

he was unable to build trust with the liberals and the military and was accused of 3

pursuing the establishment of an Islamic state (Sarquis 2012, p.889). This allowed the

military, which has a long tradition of involvement in Egypt’s politics, to overthrow the

leadership in a coup (Engel et al. 2013), driving Egypt into a new chapter of

authoritarianism.

In Syria’s case, the situation was worse. A heterogeneous population, strong primary

loyalties, and weak political institutions contributed to the failure of democratic

transitions. In addition, the sectarian-in-nature civil societies were reluctant to unite,

deepening the existing conflicts and civil wars between Sunni, Shia, and Kurds

(Salamey 2015, p.125-126). Thus, the establishment of democratic institutions is less

likely to occur.

In conclusion, this essay shows that the application of new social movements and

effective utilisation of social media contributed to the success of democratic transitions

in Tunisia and Egypt, although such attempts failed in Syria because of heavy-handed

responses of the Syrian regime to restore the government instead of allowing change. In

post-revolution period, while Tunisia has become a lone democratic success story as it

enjoys a strong political society, Egypt has suffered political distrust between Islamist,

liberals, and the military that has undermined their democratisation process. Political

situation in Syria is getting out-of-control as sectarian civil society between Sunni, Shia,

and Kurds are in conflicted with each other, driving the country into civil war. In the

future, democracy in this region is seems far from reaching.

Word count: 1309

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