Myths of military defection in Egypt and Tunisia

ABSTRACT

In this article, we challenge existing analyses of military behaviour during the Arab uprisings. Egypt and Tunisia are often presented as cases where the military formed an explicit or implicit alliance with the opposition and thereby ‘defected‘ from the regime. In contrast to this interpretation, we show that in Tunisia, insubordination took the form of a police mutiny rather than military defection, while in Egypt the military did not defect from, but rather preserved the regime. Finally, we challenge the arguments about Tunisia being a ’pacted’ transition, while in Egypt polarization led to calls for the military to intervene. We show that in Tunisia there were also calls for the military to intervene, and in Egypt the decline of support for Mursi did not directly translate into support for military intervention. The military’s popularity rating had in fact declined substantially since 2011. Misinterpreting military behaviour has led scholars to underestimate the level of regime cohesiveness and the significance of other security agencies in the overthrow of rulers. Finally, it has fed into the (false) belief that the military could mediate the transition to democracy.

KEYWORDS:

• Military behaviour
• defection
• Arab Spring
• Egypt
• Tunisia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We follow Grewal (2015) and others in operationalizing secularism by drawing on item q6052 in the Arab Barometer surveys. This item records agreement with the statement ‘The government and parliament should enact laws in accordance with Islamic law’.

2. Gilbert Achcar (2016) uses a similar division, although one defined in political terms.

3. Given Mohamed al-Baradei’s background it would have been preferable to use trust in Hamdeen Sabahi as a measure for third-way support. Unfortunately, the 2012 survey did not include a question asking for trust in Sabahi. We thus opted for greater comparability. The results for the 2013 model are almost identical with trust in Sabahi substituted for trust in al-Baradei, however.

4. We assume these two variables (trust in the military versus support for a military coup) are highly correlated, but we do not have the necessary data to formally illustrate this point.

5. In the Pew data, we use the following item to differentiate between secularists and Islamists (or rather Islamists and non-Islamists): ‘Which of the following statements comes closer to your view? 1) Laws should strictly follow the teachings of the Quran. 2) Laws should follow the values and principles of Islam but not strictly follow the teachings of the Quran. 3) Laws should not be influenced by the teachings of the Quran’ (Q39 in 2012, Q37 in 2013). Respondents replying 2 or 3 are coded as non-Islamist.

6. This point is also suggested by alternative approaches to operationalizing third-party candidates. We reproduced the 2013 model with a variable measuring support for Hamdeen Sabahi and the National Salvation Front, respectively. Neither of these alternative specifications reproduces this effect. Since the Pew data only contain the alternative variables for 2013 (but not for 2012 and 2014), we continue using the variable for el-Baradei in the models.