Allinson, Jamie. "Class forces, transition and the Arab uprisings: a comparison of Tunisia, Egypt and Syria". Democratization, Vol.22, No.2 (2015): 294-314.

Allinson, Jamie. "Class forces, transition and the Arab uprisings: a comparison of Tunisia, Egypt and Syria". Democratization, Vol.22, No.2 (2015): 294-314.

• Most contemporary scholarly work on the Arab Spring focuses on cultural factors or institutional structures in explaining the failure of these states to democratize following revolutions. This ignores the critical importance of labor and working class movements in securing or destroying democratic transition in favor of, often less salient, divides between secular and islamist factions of elites (295, 297).
• Most scholars on democratization assume that elite politics are a necessary component of a transition to liberal democracy, with mass action having a place during the collapse of the old autocratic regime, but not during the consolidation of democracy. They blame failed democratization in Egypt on the failure of elite negotiations and a continued dependence on mass politics (296).
• Some critiques exist of this model, but they mainly concentrate on the consistent failure of many states to transition, and that hybrid regimes may be an endpoint in themselves. Few scholars critique the implicit assumption that the disempowerment of middle class 'secular liberals' is to blame for non-democracy (297).
• The author proposes a new conception of democratization during the Arab Spring based on the social conditions for democracy, which depend on class coalitions, the strength of civil society, and the autarky of the state. These studies found that the urban working-class, joined by peasant smallholders, were the groups most likely to support democracy, not the middle-class (298).
• This theory demonstrates that, contrary to the expectations of the transition model, democracy is not encouraged by capitalist bourgeoise. Instead, capitalism empowers pro-democratic laborers and disempowers anti-democratic landowners, ultimately producing more democratic conditions (298-299).
• Class identities are not always salient during revolution, and it appears that in many cases in the Arab Spring they have been ignored in favor of cross-class identities. However, the structural factor of class is still critical in explaining the outcome of the Arab Spring (299-300).
• Tunisia lacked the large landowning class which suppressed democracy in Europe and Latin America, as the, mainly French, groups which dominated land and industry had been broken during the 1950s and 1960s through redistribution and nationalization by military governments attempting to destroy colonial power structures (300-301).
• By the 1980s, especially after restructure was required by an IMF bailout in 1987, the government of Zine Abidine Ben Ali had become fully neoliberal. A small number of elites, including President Ben Ali's immediate family, became very wealthy as a result of privatization, whereas the rest of the population saw social services shrink (301).
• The Arab Spring in Tunisia was sparked by a coalition of petty bourgeois, labor unions organized under the Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail [UGTT], and islamists. All these groups had been prevented from benefitting from neoliberal reforms, and the strikes organized by the UGTT threatened to collapse the economy, causing the military and a number of insiders to back the revolution instead of the President Ben Ali (301).
• The UGTT had always played a major role in Tunisian politics, beginning with it acting as the primary force in the independence struggle against France. Although it supported the Bourguiba administration, it retained autonomy and remained active throughout the 1980s. The UGTT was responsible for coordinating a wave of strikes and spreading the revolution outside of major cities, ultimately forcing the collapse of the Ben Ali government (302).
• The UGTT remained a dominant force in politics following the revolution, particularly in demanding a thorough purge of the Tunisian government and ruling party. It mobilized around a social democratic party, and continued to organize strikes in opposition to adverse economic conditions and anti-leftist violence by radical islamists, fomenting significant opposition to islamist rule (302-303).
• Egypt lacked a dominant landowner class by the 21st Century, with class conflict instead concentrated in major urban areas and industry. Both the political elite and the military -- which controlled between 10% and 40% of the economy -- had strong commercial and industrial interests, while the Muslim Brotherhood formed networks among petty bourgeois excluded by regime patronage and developed its own charitable services to appeal to the poor (303-304).
• Organized labor did not appear as a major player in the Egyptian revolution. Initial discontent at the corrupt practices of the Mubarak government led to a wave of strikes threatening the industrial interests of all major actors, and leading to a military coup against President Mubarak. The military and islamists originally worked together to persecute the crony capitalists loyal to President Mubarak, but the military later rejected the islamists from government entirely (304).
• Egyptian unions are state controlled, a factor which did not prevent them from opposing the Mubarak government, but did limit their political organization. Independent unions failed to attract popular support, as they lacked the pension and benefits funds available to state-run unions. Moreover, their membership does not include the vast majority of Egyptian workers, who are employed in the informal sector or in temporary work (305).
• Both the Muslim Brotherhood and the military received foreign assistance and support, the former from Qatar and the later from a coalition of Arab states opposed to Qatari influence. The organized labor movement did not receive any foreign support, leaving it at a relative disadvantage compared to other actors and preventing it from establishing political support following the revolution as the military and Muslim Brotherhood did (304-305).
• Like Tunisia and Egypt, Syria dispossessed major landowners and industrialists during the 1960s under a nationalist government drawing support from both the rural and urban poor. The retreat of the state and the introduction of neoliberalism in Syria, however, did not occur until the 21st Century under President Bashar al-Assad. These reforms created a wealthy capitalist class primarily composed of Alawites, which supported the Assad administration and received enormous and unfair gains during the privatization program (306-307).
• Among the observed cases, Syria demonstrated the closest connections between capital and the ruling family. Almost all successful businessmen in Syria depended on good relations with the state, and the state distributed economic benefits to its supporters. All major businesses supported the regime (307).
• The dynamics of conflict in Syria became heavily influenced by international involvement, with Russia, Iran, and Iraq backing the Assad government, while the Gulf States, Turkey, and the West supported different elements of the Sunni opposition. Little support was given to secular or liberal movements, and labor unions remained weak and dependent on the state (308).
• Syria fractured along class lines, with the most impoverished regions of the countryside, which had suffered from a major drought, becoming the heartland for the opposition, which also captured territory in the poor peripheries of cities. Without national coordination for the Syrian poor, however, the revolutionary forces fractured into local organizations unable to mount an effective alternative to the Assad government (308-309).
• The divergent successfulness of revolution across Syria, Tunisia, and Egypt demonstrate the importance of class forces in determining the outcome of revolutions. Organized and autonomous labor unions are important for securing democratization, while democratization becomes less likely when the regime and capital have a close relationship (309).