Start Date
12-12-2018 12:30 PM
Description
The Arab Spring (2010-2012) highlighted the durability of Arab monarchies and the fragility of Arab republics. Each of the eight monarchies survived, and all but Bahrain experienced significantly lower levels of unrest than the Arab republics. To illustrate, republics such as Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen experienced tumultuous regime change; Libya experienced a civil war; the Arab monarchies experienced none of the above. This transpired within the broader context of a region that has a curiously high concentration of absolute or near-absolute monarchies in a world in which the vast majority of nations are governed by republics or constitutional monarchies. Many explanations have been proposed for this phenomenon. One of them is the cultural explanation. However, it has not been given serious consideration in the literature, whereas the other explanations have been routinely touched on. In this research proposal, I present a plan to empirically investigate the cultural explanation for the persistence of monarchy in the Arab world.
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Culture and the Persistence of Monarchy in the Arab World
The Arab Spring (2010-2012) highlighted the durability of Arab monarchies and the fragility of Arab republics. Each of the eight monarchies survived, and all but Bahrain experienced significantly lower levels of unrest than the Arab republics. To illustrate, republics such as Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen experienced tumultuous regime change; Libya experienced a civil war; the Arab monarchies experienced none of the above. This transpired within the broader context of a region that has a curiously high concentration of absolute or near-absolute monarchies in a world in which the vast majority of nations are governed by republics or constitutional monarchies. Many explanations have been proposed for this phenomenon. One of them is the cultural explanation. However, it has not been given serious consideration in the literature, whereas the other explanations have been routinely touched on. In this research proposal, I present a plan to empirically investigate the cultural explanation for the persistence of monarchy in the Arab world.
