As part of the weekly seminar series within the ACRPS, the Center's Program for the Study of Arab Democratization hosted Ibrahim Fraihat, a Doha-based scholar, to discuss his book Unifinished Revolutions: Yemen, Libya and Tunisia after the Arab Spring (Yale University Press, 2016). The seminar, held on 1 December, included a number of panelists in open discussion with the author and the audience. Fraihat's book offered a comparative study of the three countries considered and was based on his own extensive field work in the region, including interviews with hundreds of government officials, political party representatives and civil society leaders. Alongside Fraihat himself and the ACRPS' Haider Saeed, the seminar the seminar was also addressed Izzeldine Abdel Mawla (Al Jazeera Center for Studies), Marwa Fikri (Cairo University) and Abdou Mousa (ACRPS).
Fraihat began the seminar with an explanation of how his own research work in the field of conflict studies around the world informed his interest in questions of democratic transition. The main argument made in Fraihat's book, explained the author, was that the success of a peaceful democratic transition in the three states covered in the volume, and which were presented in a comparative fashion, was tied to the initiation of a comprehensive national reconciliation process which took in all parts of the political spectrum. Fraihat also emphasized the importance of restitution for those who suffer the consequences of tyranny, as well as the contingency of the success of transition processes on the involvement of women, civil society organizations and tribal leaders.
The three other speakers offered their own critiques of the book as well as the overarching context of the talk, specifically the increased polarization of post-revolutionary Arab societies and the missed opportunities for large-scale national reconciliations. In this regard, Abdel Mawla decried a "culture of dominance" and the ever-present foreign intervention which, in the case of the Arab Spring states, seemed to always enflame internal tensions further. Abdel Mawla also pointed to Tunisia as a contrast to the cases of Libya and Yemen, in which revolutionary momentum failed to mature into democracy. According to Abdel Mawla, Tunisia's exceptional success was due to the existence of the Higher Authority for the Objectives of the Revolution and Political Reform.
For her part, Egyptian researcher Marwa Fikri made clear that only by understanding the underlying factors which drove rebellion would the Arab states be able to reconcile their competing political groups. Fikri also picked up on a point which Fraihat addressed in his book, and specifically the questions of disarmament, the power of the deep state and the ability of existing regimes to wage a counter-revolutionary effort. Fikri offered that perhaps the Achille's heel of the Arab Spring was that it lacked a clear political leadership; unlike the case of South Africa, where the specter of communal and political violence was avoided due to the determination of an authoritative leadership—both Mandela and De Klark—to bring their communities to the peace table.
Finally, ACRPS Researcher Moussa offered a definite set of mistakes which he attributed to the Arab ruling elites and to which he attributed the prevention of democracy. These included the failure of directing and managing grassroots anger and the failure to build sustainable political alliances which could display a modicum of democracy. Moussa closed with the suggestion that the Arab political elites could be better served by adopting a "multi-stage" game theory approach to solving their internal political disputes.
