Transnational Authoritarian Learning in Morocco and Egypt during the Arab Uprisings in 2011

Authoritarian regimes under pressure can draw upon different strategies to respond to a challenge. Naturally, the magnitude of the threat to their authority and the type of the challenger influence the regime’s response (Josua and Edel 2014, 6–7; Franklin 2009; Davenport 2007). Furthermore, the regime type, traditional response patterns and the resources the dictator can deploy to contain contestation influence the response strategy (Geddes, Wright, and Frantz 2014; Svolik 2012; Barany 2013). However, the actions of authoritarian regimes under pressure cannot be looked at from a purely domestic perspective as they are also embedded in a regional and international context that influences regime decision-making as well as waves of contestation (Della Porta 2014; Hale 2013). Theoretically the paper engages with the emerging literature on AuthoritarianLearning and proposes an analytical framework that takes varying natures of threat perceptions and differing domestic decision-making structures into account. Building on semi-structured interviews with political elites in Egypt and Morocco I develop an actor account based approach to assess the effects of transnational learning on authoritarian elite decision-making during critical junctures (Capoccia and Kelemen 2007; Soifer 2012). Based on more than 50 elite interviews with government officials (former and current), party leaders, political consultants, journalists and academics in Morocco and Egypt the gathered data allows an insight into how the regime elite’s perceptions are influenced by what they observe abroad and how this influenced the domestic decision-making process in 2011.