5 - How Coup-Proofing Structured Military Response to Protest in Tunisia and Libya

Summary

This chapter is meant for comparative purposes to test my hypotheses outside Egypt and Syria, my two major case studies. Tunisian autocrats Habib Bourguiba and Zein al-ʿAbidin Ben ʿAli strengthened the police and the ruling party as a counterweight to the armed forces – in other words, they centered their coup-proofing strategy on counterbalancing. In Libya, Muʿammar al-Qaddhafi crafted a complex coup-proofing system mixing divide-and-rule tactics with counterbalancing and ethnic stacking. I study the evolution of coup-proofing in both countries and show that divergent military behavior in 2011 – i.e., splintering of the armed forces in Libya vs cohesiveness in Tunisia; defection in Tunis vs loyalty in Tripoli – reflects the institutional legacies previously established by various coup-proofing tactics. Just as I did for Egypt and Syria, I put several other hypotheses previously posited to the test in this chapter.