ABSTRACT
A core challenge to the study of democratic transitions is that countries increasingly follow very different paths of political reform. It is now a well-established observation that there is no standard or uniform template of democratisation. In recent years, the variation in reform experiences has become even more marked and self-evident. Revisiting transitions theory must involve a close look at this question of democratisation’s contrasting fates. As noted throughout this book, the analytical debate has shifted in the direction of questioning the significance of overarching patterns and of emphasising how states are subject to their own unique set of contingent political trends. The comparison between events in the 2010s in Ukraine and Egypt demonstrates in dramatic form such variation in transitions experiences; it also shows that divergent outcomes depend on a combination of mutually constitutive structural and agency factors. Since the popular protests that overthrew the regime of President Viktor Yanukovych early in 2014, Ukraine has begun implementing many democratic reforms. It is far from being a democracy of good quality and many vestiges of predatory and autocratic power dynamics remain within the country’s political system. Yet, Ukraine is more democratic than it was a few years ago and a freely elected coalition government came to power and committed formally to extending the reach of democratic norms. This stands in sharp contrast to the situation in Egypt. Egypt made a dramatic breakthrough in 2011 when a popular uprising removed President Hosni Mubarak from power. After many twists and turns, the country’s putative transition stands aborted. In many respects, Egypt has become more authoritarian than it was before 2011. How is it that two of the most inspiring and often cited democratic uprisings of recent years have ended up taking such different paths? At first sight, the overthrow of largely authoritarian regimes in Egypt and Ukraine appeared to be similar phenomena. Popular uprisings triggered brutal regime crackdowns before disgraced leaders ignominiously fled the scene. In both countries, largely free and fair democratic elections followed, in each case bringing key sectors of the erstwhile opposition to power. In each case, the newly-enfranchised administrations committed to democratic reforms and launched processes to reform the constitution. Yet, beyond these similarities the two experiences diverged. In Egypt, popular frustration with the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood
government grew to the point that the military intervened to take back power, with the support of a large part of the population. The military’s promise to follow a road map back to democracy was soon jettisoned and its authoritarian grip on power incrementally tightened. In Ukraine, powerful vested interests, political rivalries and conflict in the Donbas region combined to slow down promised reforms, but for now the country remains on a track of meaningful ‘transition’. In this chapter, we examine what broader lessons can be gleaned from comparing the cases of Ukraine and Egypt, and in particular their divergent paths after apparently promising regime removal in 2014 and 2011, respectively. We make this comparison here partly in an attempt to go beyond regionalist perspectives on political change that have dominated the study of transitions over the past two decades; by comparing these two cases we can ask whether there are patterns that extend beyond regional specificities.1 We focus on several factors that are pertinent to accounting for the two countries’ divergent reform paths. These include: the possibility or absence of lesson-learning from previous reform experiences; the different roles played by the army and security forces; the potential for consensus-building; the different ways in which incipient democratisation related to embedded liberal or illiberal social identities; differences in the post-revolution evolution of civic mobilisation; variations in political economy structures; and the contrasting influence of external factors. In tune with this book’s overarching theme, the chapter concludes that Ukraine and Egypt are two of the most high-profile cases calling for a reopening of transitions debates; we point to the need to conceptualise more deeply the variability of transition outcomes across geographic regions and moments of transition.
