ABSTRACT
The debate over the relative power of agency and structure is a perennial one in social science, reflected in IR, by that between realists who see states as trapped in unending anarchic patterns and those who accord more agency to states and movements to reshape structure. The Arab spring was widely celebrated as a triumph of agency over structure, of social movements spectacularly overthrowing long-entrenched dysfunctional structures. It was thought that democratization of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) could usher in a democratic peace, while the overthrow of client regimes could break the region’s debilitating dependency on the US (Freeman, 2011). However, three years into the Uprising, inherited structure—the “deep state,” historic identity cleavages, regional power balances, and enduring dependencies on the global “core”—appeared to have defeated the most powerful attempts in decades to transform regional politics. The longer term impact may turn out to be quite different, as revolutions often take many decades to play out; however, for the immediate term, the path dependency generated by structural residues looked set to sharply constrain agency. This chapter will analyze how the interaction of agents and structure shaped outcomes visible three years after the start of the Uprising.
