Sammendrag
The article compares the survival of old regime elites in Tunisia and Egypt
after the 2011 uprisings and analyses its enabling factors. Although democracy
progressed in Tunisia and collapsed in Egypt, the countries show similarities
in the old elite’s ability to survive the Arab Spring. In both cases, the popular
uprisings resulted in the type of elite circulation that John Higley and György
Lengyel refer to as ‘quasi-replacement circulation’, which is sudden and coerced,
but narrow and shallow. To account for this converging outcome, the chapter
foregrounds the instability, economic decline and information uncertainty in
the countries post-uprising and the navigating resources, which the old elites
possessed. The roots of the quasi-replacement circulation are traced to the old
elites’ privileged access to money, network, the media and, for Egypt, external
support. Only parts of the structures of authority in a political regime are formal.
The findings show the importance of evaluating regime change in a broader
view than the formal institutional set-up. In Tunisia and Egypt, the informal
structures of the anciens régimes survived – so did the old regime elites.
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