Reflections on Political Change Processes after the Arab Uprising: Representation, Opposition and Authoritarian Resilience – Reconsidering Theoretical Perspectives in the Analysis of Political Change Processes

The Arab uprisings were a profoundly transformative political event that affect regimes configuration. This proposal focuses on studying party systems transformations’ after Arab Uprisings though analysing political change and authoritarian resilience in the Arab world. Traditional literature has not considered political parties as an explanatory factor of political change. However, the trajectory of the MENA party systems seems intrinsically linked to political regimes’ evolution. The number of systematic investigations on parties in non-democratic regimes is limited and party systems in authoritarian regimes were reduced to a single category of hegemonic systems. In addition, proposals for classifying MENA regimes and party systems are based on liberal democracy standards. But in non-democratic regimes parties play different functions that they play in Western democracies. Having weakly structured party systems could be due to a limited degree of political competition and the lack of incentives for developing effective strategies in authoritarian regimes. Parties fulfil different functions according to the regime in which they operate, acting as pillars for reinforcing authoritarianism or facilitating political opposition roles’. Also, this research considers that authoritarian characteristics of some of MENA regimes make it impossible polarization. In some non-democratic regimes the main political parties moderate their discourse and compromise on their ideological positions in order to form governing coalitions. This indicates that – in such contexts – religious cleavage is not an explanatory factor. Although other MENA regimes, show high number of poles based on sectarian cleavages which could point out multipolar systems. Structures of representation could be considered systems of elite co-optation in authoritarian regimes, even in those where there is no party system or the opposition acts in a clandestine manner. Therefore, studying authoritarian tactics in structures of representation –such as Parliaments with or within parties- are also essential pieces of this research.