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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract The question of whether and how authoritarian regimes may use gender politics to preserve their rule has attracted insufficient academic attention so far. Research on state femi-nism shows that non-democratic regimes often enact women-friendly policies for the purpose of maintaining power. However, this finding has not been linked to the broader research on authoritarian resilience. To address this research gap, we connect recent debates on authoritarian resilience to the research on state feminism. Subsequently, we engage in a cross-regional comparison of the use of gender politics by the authoritarian regimes of Alge-ria and Mozambique in order to enrich both sets of theory on the basis of empirical findings. Specifically, we ask what strategies the two authoritarian regimes employ in the areas of women's rights and gender and how these might contribute to regime resilience, focusing on the interactions between these regimes and civil society organisations (CSOs). Jasmin Lorch, Dipl. Pol. is a research fellow at the GIGA Institute of Middle East Studies and an associate research fellow at the GIGA Institute of Asian Studies, Hamburg. Her soon-to-be-published doctoral thesis focuses on the impact of state weakness on civil society in Bangladesh and the Philippines. Bettina Bunk, MA is an associate research fellow at the GIGA Institute of African Affairs and a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Potsdam. Her doctoral thesis (submitted July 2016) focuses on governance and the politics of local economic development in South Africa and Mozambique. GIGA Working Papers

This article analyses why the political transformations following the Arab Spring took different paths in Egypt and Tunisia. Based on data from field interviews conducted between 2012 and 2018 as well as press analyses, we argue that a strong factor why Tunisia was more successful in establishing democracy is that it had a higher level of inter-elite trust. Moreover, we show that the establishment of inter-elite trust depends on the presence of functioning trust-building arenas during the transition and the early democratic consolidation period. To investigate the role of inter-elite trust, we develop a theoretical-analytical framework, drawing on Arab Spring literature, transition theory, scholarship on democratic consolidation, and research on trust.

Civil society in the context of authoritarianism and state weakness: some theoretical reflections Civil society under authoritarian ruleAccording to normative definitions, the sphere of civil society is characterised by its extensive autonomy from the State and the market, and by voluntary participation, tolerance, discursive procedures of decision making and horizontal networks. Correspondingly, it is assumed to generate trust and democratic values and to consequently promote democracy. 7 In order to identify and understand civil-society developments in authoritarian Burma/Myanmar, such normatively highly loaded concepts are not very useful. Compared with the theoretical ideal type, Burma/Myanmar's civil society is still embryonic in nature (Lorch 2006). This study therefore relies on a broad, empirical definition of the term:Civil society refers to the arena of uncoerced collective action around shared interests, purposes and values. In theory, its institutional forms are distinct from those of the state, family and market, though in practice, the boundaries between state, civil society, family and market are often complex, blurred and negotiated. Civil society commonly embraces a diversity of spaces, actors and institutional forms, varying in their degree of formality, autonomy and power. Civil societies are often populated by organisations such as registered charities, development non-governmental organisations, community groups, women's organisations, faith-based organisations, professional associations, trades unions, self-help groups, social movements, business associations, coalitions and advocacy groups.

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