64 Conclusion : the Middle East After the Arab Spring

The title of this report, ‘After the Arab Spring: Power Shift in the Middle East?’, deliberately ends with a question mark. The events over the year and a half since the death of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia, have left the politics of the Middle East in tumult. The Arab Spring has certainly resulted in a change of regime in Tunisia and then Egypt. The uprisings against Gaddafi’s regime triggered a military intervention by NATO that drove the Libyan leader and his entourage from power. Ali Abdullah Saleh finally relinquished his grip on power in Yemen. However, the ramifications of regime change for state-society relations in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya are still uncertain. Mubarak may be on trial, Gaddafi is dead and Ben Ali is currently enjoying the dubious pleasures of exile in Saudi Arabia. But the ruling elites they created, the state structures they built, the powerful secret services and crony capitalists they nurtured did not disappear when the despots were deposed. The post-revolutionary transitions in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya are unlikely to deliver on the hopes that united the courageous protestors in their struggle. As Ewan Stein argues in this report, ‘the utopian vision of Tahrir was soon tarnished’.