From the Arab Spring to the Chinese Winter: The institutional sources of authoritarian vulnerability and resilience in Egypt, Tunisia, and China

In: International political science review: the journal of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) = Revue internationale de science politique, Band 34, Heft 3, S. 254-272

Abstract

Following the collapse of long-lived dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt in early 2011, many analysts have turned their attention to China to identify possible stirrings of revolution. Of course, whereas efforts spiraled into revolutionary outcomes in the Middle East and North Africa, the Chinese Jasmine Revolution stimulated little domestic interest and failed to materialize into a popular movement. Beginning with the cases of Egypt and Tunisia, this article critically examines recent literature identifying the causes of the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions to develop several hypotheses on the sources of regime vulnerability in these countries and considers their applicability in explaining the exceptional resilience of single-party rule in China.