Legitimation, regime survival, and shifting alliances in the Arab League: Explaining sanction politics during the Arab Spring

Abstract

The Arab Spring marks a puzzling shift in the sanction politics of the Arab League: for the first time, the Arab League suspended member states for matters of internal affairs by majority vote. This article argues that survival politics can explain the changing sanction politics of the Arab League. To re-legitimize rule during this unprecedented moment, member states selectively supported some protest movements to signal their understanding of public demands for change without committing to domestic reform. Contrasting case studies of the Arab League’s suspension of Libya and Syria and its simultaneous support for military intervention against protestors in Bahrain illustrate how concerns for regime legitimation and a short-lived alliance between Saudi Arabia and Qatar contributed to the sanctioning decisions. The Arab League can thus be considered a case of negative democracy protection, where regional sanctions are employed to selectively preserve authoritarian rule.

Regional sanctions and the struggle for democracy: Introduction to the special issue

“…We do so by acknowledging and critically scrutinising the diversity of regional approaches to democracy protection through sanctions. Six articles focus on specific ROs: ROs in the Americas (Palestini, 2020), the AU (Hellquist, 2020), the European Union (EU) (Closa, 2020), the CoE (Soyaltin-Colella, 2020), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (Schembera, 2020), and LAS (Debre, 2020). A seventh contribution (Whitehead, 2020) has a comparative and cross-regional perspective.…”

Clubs of autocrats: Regional organizations and authoritarian survival

“…Second, and relatedly, the findings speak to research highlighting the potential dark sides of international cooperation (Ferry et al, 2020;Hafner-Burton & Schneider, 2019;Debre 2020Debre , 2021. By explicitly theorizing and testing reverse effects that ROs can have on domestic politics outside of Europe and the democratization paradigm, the paper elucidates the conditions under which international institutions can produce democracy or strengthen authoritarian rule.…”

“…The article ties in with recent scholarship that investigates if and how international cooperation between authoritarian regimes helps autocratic incumbents resist democratization (Debre 2021;Tansey, 2016a;von Soest, 2015). Scholars highlight that autocratic regimes exploit ROs for "regime-boosting" (Söderbaum, 2004), that is, to strengthen regime stability by consolidating national sovereignty (Acharya, 2016;Acharya & Johnston, 2007), legitimizing regimes domestically (Debre, 2020;Libman & Obydenkova, 2018;Yom, 2014), engaging in rent-seeking activities to buy the loyalty of crony elites (Herbst, 2007) or to pursue cross-border policing (Cooley & Heathershaw, 2017). Findings from anti-corruption research also show that the company states keep is highly consequential, with institutions made up of mostly corrupt donors being much less likely to enforce anti-corruption mandates, even though they might adopt them in the first place to conform to global norms of good governance (Ferry et al 2020;Hafner-Burton & Schneider, 2019).…”

“…Additionally, ROs often represent ideational communities with common value systems such as Eurasianism in the post-Soviet space (Laruelle, 2008), the "ASEAN Way" in Southeast Asia (Acharya, 2003), pan-Arabism in the Middle East (Korany, 1986), or the Shanghai Spirit in Central Asia (Ambrosio, 2008). By drawing on those regional values and identities, autocratic incumbents strengthen alternative domestic legitimation narratives while critical actors are cast as part of an illegitimate out-group (Hellquist, 2015, Debre, 2020.…”

“…However, much of the literature on the dark side of regional cooperation still lacks sufficient theorization on the conditions under which RO membership benefits autocratic regime survival, as well as systematic quantitative cross-case analysis on domestic effects of RO membership. Instead, much of the work on autocratic regime-boosting focuses on single case studies of regimes or regions (Allison, 2008;Debre, 2020;Barnett & Solingen, 2007;Börzel & van Hüllen, 2015;Collins, 2009;Herbst, 2007). While these qualitative works are important contributions that identify underlying mechanisms, this contribution provides generalizable evidence to show under which conditions RO membership is beneficial for autocratic regime survival.…”