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Political Elites and Regime Change in the Middle East and North Africa: Accommodation or Exclusion?

Project description

A closer look at regime change and elite preferences

Elite compromise is associated with the emergence of democracy, while elite conflict is likely to give rise to various forms of political rule. But what explains elite preferences for compromise or conflict? To answer this question, the ERC-funded MENA-PERC project will collect and analyse individual-level data on political elites in Egypt, Tunisia and Turkey from the late 19th century up to the present. In order to gain a better understanding of how patterns of elite conflict are linked to forms of regime change, this information will be embedded in a series of comparisons drawing on 12 regime spells in these three countries over more than a century. In-depth fieldwork, elite surveys and experimental work will provide evidence on causal mechanisms linking elite conflict to regime outcomes via elite preferences for compromise or conflict.

Objective

Whether political elites accommodate or exclude their rivals during regime crises can be a matter of life and death. Following the 2011 uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), elite compromise sustained a democratic transition in Tunisia, while elite conflict triggered a coup in Egypt. Tunisia has since seen three democratic elections, while thousands of Egyptians were jailed or killed by the new military regime. Why do elites in some cases pursue accommodation while they push for excluding their rivals in others?

MENA-PERC proposes an answer to this puzzle: the degrees of asymmetry and polarization between regime coalitions and their challengers shape elite preferences for accommodation or exclusion. These preferences, in turn, determine the type of regime emerging from crisis. Regime coalitions comprise elites who provide crucial links to social constituencies and whose collective support stabilizes the regime. The project theorizes the role of these actors, linking macrolevel outcomes in terms of regime types to evidence on the microlevel of individual elites.

The project draws on evidence on 12 regime spells in three MENA countries across more than a century. Regime coalitions are identified by focusing on members of parliament in Egypt (1882-present), Tunisia (1907-present), and Turkey (1908-present), observing processes of elite change empirically based on individual-level data on these elite members and leveraging these data in a mixed-methods design. Second, the project traces causal mechanism through elite surveys and in-depth fieldwork examining authoritarian consolidation in contemporary Egypt, democratization in Tunisia, and democratic backsliding in Turkey.

The project makes three contributions. It theorizes why elites accommodate or exclude during regime crises; it pioneers an innovative way of testing this model by observing elite change over time; and it traces the model’s causal mechanisms in ongoing processes of regime change.

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HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2021-COG

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Host institution

SCUOLA SUPERIORE DI STUDI UNIVERSITARI E DI PERFEZIONAMENTO S ANNA
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 915 601,00
Address
PIAZZA MARTIRI DELLA LIBERTA 33
56127 Pisa
Italy

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Region
Centro (IT) Toscana Pisa
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 915 601,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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