Heavy Lies the Crown: The Survival of Arab Monarchies, 10 Years After the Arab Spring
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on Order from Chaos
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Ten years ago, the Arab uprisings unseated four “presidents for life” in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Yemen. The Middle East and North Africa’s (MENA) eight monarchs were spared, although many of their countries experienced moderate or significant unrest, including Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Jordan, and Morocco. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar faced the least contestation of the monarchies.
Since then, scholars have asked what it means that no monarch was overthrown and whether Arab monarchy matters to the outcome of regime survival. Various experts have linked the latter to monarchs’ legitimacy, external support, and resource wealth. Though there is no consensus, it is clear that monarchs have repeatedly and successfully contained different types of opposition threats for decades prior to the Arab Spring and continue to do so 10 years later.