The COVID-19 pandemic and authoritarian consolidation in North Africa

Abstract

Since the Arab Spring, North Africa has witnessed increased levels of authoritarianism and a general decline in human rights as authoritarian regimes have consolidated power. During the COVID-19 pandemic, regimes across the region have instituted greater restrictions on public gatherings in order to curb the spread of the virus, and some have used the pandemic to enhance powers and crush dissent. This article will investigate if these two phenomena are connected. Is the expansion of emergency powers and surveillance designed to primarily support public health, or is this emergency legislation designed to provide greater authoritarian power for regimes under the guise of fighting the pandemic? We find that considerable actions taken by these regimes were not solely designed to support public health, and instead have been exploited to curb dissent. The potential detrimental impact this expansion could have on human rights across the region could be severe. We compare emergency legislation in Morocco and Egypt since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis provides systematic insight into how authoritarian regimes respond to public health crises and details how these crises can be used by regimes facing contentious political action to quell dissent.

Notes

Notes

1 We do not include an analysis of Algeria, which experienced a revolution in 2019; Tunisia, North Africa’s only liberal democracy; or Libya, which is in a civil war.

2 For Freedom House Rankings, see Freedom House (2020); For COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 population, see Johns Hopkins University and Medicine (2020).

3 This work was supported by the American University of Sharjah Sir Easa Saleh Al-Gurg Honorarium.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sammy Badran

Sammy Z. Badran’s research focuses on Middle East and North African (MENA) politics. He has published articles in the British Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of North African Studies, and the Journal of International Women’s Studies. Badran’s book, Killing Contention Demobilization in Morocco during the Arab Spring (2022), investigates the impact of the 2011 constitutional reforms, parliamentary elections, and ideological cleavages on protest levels in Morocco. He an assistant professor of international studies at the American University of Sharjah, UAE.

Brian Turnbull

Brian Turnbull is an assistant professor of instruction in the Department of Sociology with interdisciplinary interests in social change, political sociology, and qualitative methodology. Based on his research, he is working on a book proposal titled, Evading Gender Quotas: Reservations and Proxies in India, which uses these interview narratives to assess the phenomenon of men who have sidelined and essentially proxied the women elected to gender-reserved seats and restricted the ability of the quota to establish substantive representation for women. His work has appeared in Politics and Gender and Qualitative Research.