Learning and the diffusion of regime contention in the Arab Spring

Abstract

The Arab Spring has become a prominent example of the spread of cross-national regime contention. It is widely accepted that successful regime contention (in Tunisia and Egypt) triggered protests in other countries. Both scholars and other observers have suggested that protesters learned from successful regime contention. Thus far, available evidence has been either anecdotal or qualitative. This article provides a quantitative analysis of the diffusion of regime contention in 20 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region between December 2010 and April 2011. Results show that protests that led to a regime change were much more likely to be imitated elsewhere, but especially in the first couple of weeks and without taking the specificity of the context into account. Our analysis thus suggests that regime contention diffused through bounded learning during the Arab Spring.