Reflections on Political Change Processes after the Arab Uprisings: Representation, Opposition and Authoritarian Resilience

This paper analyses MENA political change processes in order to determine how party dynamics influence political change and authoritarian resilience from a comparative perspective. The Arab uprisings were a transformative political event that affects political regimes and party systems structure. Some elements of party systems and representation structures are closely linked to developing authoritarian practices that hinder democracy and political competition. To that effect, MENA regimes that fit into multiparty systems category was moving between the typologies of electoral authoritarianism, competitive authoritarianism and defective democracy. The characteristics of party systems influence the functioning of political systems and parties fulfil different functions according to the regime in which they operate. Political parties in non- democratic context have more than representative functions, acting as mechanisms that reinforce or weak the authoritarian rule. According to this hypothesis, this paper explores how analyse political change processes occurred after the Arab Uprisings; how classify political change processes according to their main dimensions; how political change processes react to party system nature and in what extent parties are a condition for political change.