Research

Book Project

Why Does God Save the King?

How Monarchies Endure and Evolve in the Middle East and North Africa

How did monarchies survive the Arab Spring and withstand the tide of revolutions, rebellions, civil wars, and military coups that preceded it? My book project investigates long-term regime endurance in Arab monarchies, some of the world’s most robust autocracies. Specifically, delving into dozens of upheavals, ranging from mass protests and uprisings to coup d’états and strikes, this study uses a range of methods to shed light on the role of monarchical regimes’ interactions with opposition actors and citizens in shaping their economic and political strategies during upheavals. I argue that monarchical regimes systematically respond to dissent in ways that further ingrain their rule by using a specific toolkit of strategies that de-escalates threat. My research advances empirical and theoretical contributions about the impact of threat perception, adaptive learning, and the interrelationship between regimes, opposition actors, and citizens on authoritarian endurance and autocratization.

This study is constructed around a three-part, in-depth explanatory case study: Its main theory is generated through a cross-country analysis of all monarchies, further developed and tested through a fine-grained comparison of different categories of monarchies, and confirmed through a study of collapsed regimes. Leveraging semi-structured interviews, primary and secondary sources from opposition actors, and dataset analysis, this study delves into dozens of opposition events and explores the process of adaptive authoritarian learning that leads Arab monarchies to de-escalate political and socioeconomic threats, contain opposition, and endure. Framed in a way that facilitates broader application, my research's fundamental components- regime behavior, regime-opposition interrelationships, and threat perception- have wider applicability to regime survival in other types of authoritarian systems within and beyond the MENA region.

Book Talk

Book Talk

Collaborative Research

What Drives Public Trust in the Military in Non-Democratic Contexts

This multi-phase project explores public trust in the military, focusing on the conditions that lead to heightened public trust in this institution in transitioning and authoritarian states. It analyzes public opinion data using econometrics to explore the impact of various factors on trust in the military, including those related to well-being, ideology, and trust in other institutions. It also considers how regime type, armed conflict, and external relations affect the drivers of trust in the military in different contexts. This project consists of three phases:

Phase 1: In-country analysis

The first published article empirically explores survey data collected between 2014 and 2019 in Libya, the evolution of public trust in an institution that played a key role in shaping the trajectory of events and was itself transformed by them. The main finding is that being older, male and from the East contribute the most positively to trust the military followed by personal safety, trust in government and interest in politics. On the negative side, an Islamist orientation, education, and income, in that order, lower the probability. This research encourages bottom-up theorizing about the crisis of democratization and increased support for authoritarian values during democratic backsliding.

Phase 2: Regional analysis

This second working paper investigates the conditions that drive trust in the military across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). We then select relevant variables that measure well-being, political ideology, and trust in other institutions that predominate the literature on institutional trust in non-democracies. Drawing on a theoretical framework of institutional trust, it employs a panel data methodology on nationally representative survey data. It then maps out the variables that positively and negatively correlate with trust in the military across the region and divides this data according to regime type. This makes it possible to determine the impact of civilian versus military rule on the drivers of public trust in the armed forces.

Phase 3: Transregional analysis

In its third phase, this project aims to explore the conditions that lead to heightened or decreased levels of trust in the military transregionally across Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the MENA region. 

Trust in the Military in MENA 2019

Trust in the Military across MENA 2019

How Variables Affect Trust in the Army: Libya Case Study

How Variables Affect Trust in the Army: Libya Case Study

Abouzzohour, Yasmina, and Tarik M. Yousef. "What drives public trust in the military in non-democracies: Evidence from Libya (2014-2019)." Journal of North African Studies. 28 (6), 2023. 

Journal Articles

  1. Abouzzohour, Yasmina, and Tarik M. Yousef. "What drives public trust in the military in non-democracies: Evidence from Libya (2014-2019)." Journal of North African Studies. 28 (6), 2023. 
  2. Abouzzohour, Yasmina. “How do liberalized autocracies repress dissent?” Middle East Journal. 75 (2) pp. 264-284, 2021.
  3. Abouzzohour, Yasmina, and Beatriz Tome-Alonso. “Moroccan Foreign Policy After the Arab Spring: A Turn for The Islamists or Persistence of Royal Leadership?” Journal of North African Studies. 24 (3) pp. 444-467, 2019.

Working Papers 

  1. Yasmina Abouzzohour, “Re-visiting Regime Persistence during Upheavals: Does Regime Type Matter?”
  2. Yasmina Abouzzohour, Tarik M. Yousef, & Michael Robbins, "Decoding Public Trust in the Military in the Middle East & North Africa.”

Ongoing Works

  1. Yasmina Abouzzohour, “Public Trust and Military-Society Relations Across Regime Type.”
  2. Yasmina Abouzzohour, “The Geopolitics of Renewable Energy: A New Theory of State-Society Relations.”
  3. Yasmina Abouzzohour & Tarik M. Yousef, "An Empirical Study of Polarization in Conflict States.”
  4. Yasmina Abouzzohour & Tarik M. Yousef, "The Drives of Trust in the Military: A Transregional Analysis.”
  5. Yasmina Abouzzohour & Safa Al-Saeedi, “Public Perception of Tax Reforms in Rentier States.”

Book Chapters

  1. Abouzzohour, Yasmina. “A New Chapter for Intraregional Relations? Cohesion, Crises, and Clashes In The Gulf Cooperation Council.” In The Gulf Cooperation Council at Forty: Risk and Opportunity in a Changing World, 1st ed. Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2022.
  2. Abouzzohour, Yasmina and Beatriz Tome-Alonso. “Moroccan Foreign Policy After the Arab Spring.” with Beatriz Tome-Alonso. In Foreign Policy in North Africa: Navigating Global, Regional and Domestic Transformations. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020.

Academic Essays

  1. Yasmina Abouzzohour, “The Amplification of Authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa,” in Project on Middle East Political Science Studies. 47, pp. 12-18, 2022.
  2. Yasmina Abouzzohour, "Coronavirus in the Maghreb: Responses and Impacts,” In Project on Middle East Political Science Studies. 39, pp. 51-55. 2020.
  3. Yasmina Abouzzohour, "The Persistent Rural Failure of Morocco’s Justice and Development Party," in Project on Middle East Political Science Studies. 27, pp. 12-19, 2017.

Other Publications (Refereed)

  1. Abouzzohour, Yasmina. “Heavy Lies the Crown: The survival of Arab monarchies, Ten Years after the Arab Spring,” Order from Chaos. 2021.
  2. Abouzzohour, Yasmina. “Libya’s peace process: What’s at stake for the Maghreb, 10 years after Gadhafi’s overthrow” Order from Chaos. 2021.
  3. Abouzzohour, Yasmina. “Oman, Ten Years After the Arab Spring: The Evolution of State-Society Relations,” Chatham House and the Arab Reform Initiative. 2021.
  4. Abouzzohour, Yasmina. “Breaking the impasse on Algeria’s political and economic crises,” World Politics Review. 2021.
  5. Abouzzohour, Yasmina. “Caught in transition: Tunisia’s protests and the threat of repression,” European Council on Foreign Relations. 2021.