THE ARAB SPRING AND CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS: A PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT

Abstract

The ‘Arab Spring’ refers to the wave of civil unrest that covered countries
with predominant Moslem populations in North Africa, the Middle East and the
Arabian Peninsula, which started late 2010 in Tunisia. The unrests quickly spread
across the region, giving rise to the notion of a single inter-related event. However,
the results and outcome in each country have been different. This is because each
and every country had its own unique political system and unique institutions of
state with different relations between power elites. Two institutions of state had
prime importance in this political system. These were the executive and the military.
In each there was only one important person, the state leader be he president, king,
prime minister, emir or sheik or the chief of the armed forces. This article describes
that a major cause for the different results and outcomes in each country was
determined by the prevailing relations between them, i.e. the civil-military relations.