Dilemma and Cascades in the Armed Forces - The Tunisian Revolution

Abstract

ABSTRACTSoldiers and policemen make or break revolutions. Yet we know little about why they betray a dictator or stay loyal in the face of mass protests. I investigate the dynamics of the mutiny that overthrew Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali on 14 January 2011, turning the Tunisian uprising into a regional wave of Arab unrest. Drawing from rich archival and interview data, I trace the likelihood of mutiny to the moment when reserve forces face the imminent prospect of using large-scale lethal violence against civilians. The moment represents a critical decision, manifested in collective doubt and uncertainty. This makes the armed forces susceptible to cascades, which are driven by expectations rather than preferences, positional interests or institutional rules. Hence the stance of the armed forces as a whole is highly sensitive to small events that shape officers’ beliefs regarding their colleagues’ likely behavior. The initiative of a handful of driven officers can tilt the institution as a whole. Flows of information prove to be decisive. The argument implies that accounting for the variation in outcomes of mass uprisings requires shifting the explanatory focus toward endogenous, locally proximate causes. It has implications for the study of revolutions, authoritarian breakdown, civil-military relations, and nonviolence.