Conclusions

Abstract

More than four years after the spectacular overthrow of long-time Presidents Ben Ali and Mubarak, the Arab Spring has indeed given way to an ‘Arab Winter’ of continued authoritarian rule and increased instability in many parts of the Middle East and North Africa. Nevertheless, the Arab Spring challenged the persistence of authoritarianism and the routine of international democracy promotion in the Middle East and North Africa in both theory and practice. The initial introspection into an overall failure to predict this turn of events (Cause III 2011; Goodwin 2011) quickly led to a flourish of writings on the causes and impact of the Arab uprisings and their implications for long-held beliefs in various fields of the social sciences (Volpi 2012). This book contributes to these debates by linking the study of international democracy promotion efforts with the study of authoritarianism and regime dynamics in the analysis of Euro-Mediterranean cooperation on democracy and human rights since the early 1990s.

If 2011 was the year of the Arab Spring, the most popular metaphor in 2012 was the Arab Winter. After all those hopes of freedom and democracy, not much has gone right.

(Spencer 2012)