Yemen's Arab Spring – Democratic Opening or Regime Maintenance?

Abstract

Yemen's revolt of 2011, like its counterparts in Tunisia and Egypt, raises many questions about recent analysis of authoritarianism in the Arab world. The long-standing regime of Ali Abdullah al-Saleh and his General People's Congress (GPC) party seemed to represent a classic case of authoritarian upgrading. The surprisingly open political system in Yemen, which followed the emergence of the new state in 1990, masked the extent to which the president exerted control through a network of informal alliances and, in recent years, external support and patronage. The widespread and persistent protests against the regime which led ultimately to a handover of power to Saleh's vice-president and the formation of a government of national unity between the GPC and the opposition, seem to constitute yet another set of challenges to the theses of authoritarian upgrading and Arab hostility to democracy. However, the narrative of popular protest leading to the demise of a reviled authoritarian regime received a setback as the Yemeni situation developed. The protest movement, which emerged, in the first instance, from outside established centres of political activity, was quickly overtaken and marginalized both by the established parties of opposition and by tribal actors. While Saleh's exit from office represents a major rupture in Yemeni political life, the future is best read in terms of the reassertion of pre-existing political dynamics, both domestic and international rather than in hopeful but unfounded expectations of democratic transformation.