The chapter focuses on the role of civil society as a determining factor in the Arab Spring uprisings and their outcomes in the seven country case studies. It begins by revisiting the literature on, and debates over, civil society and its relationship to the state and political change, distilling two approaches. In one, civil society is a separate and autonomous sphere essential to democracy; it protects individuals and groups and gives them voice vis-à-vis the power of the state and, in some interpretations, the market. The other more skeptical approach posits that civil society is either an extension of the state apparatus or a sphere that provides legitimacy to the status quo and thus helps to reproduce it; civil society may be able to compel the ruling elite to enact some reforms, but it has neither the capacity nor the will to produce large-scale systemic change. We argue that both have merit and that each is context-specific, and we distinguish civil society in advanced capitalist democracies from that in authoritarian settings. We examine the strength and capacity of civil society prior to, during, and after the uprisings in each of our cases, showing that the strongest were present in Tunisia and Morocco.

The chapter examines macro- and meso-level variation in the institutional and structural conditions that galvanized popular mobilization, it and maps their trajectory a decade following the uprisings. Although the protests were a culmination of an enduring struggle for political liberalization and democratization, years of stalled growth and high unemployment structured citizens’ grievances against their states. The chapter offers a mapping of regime type, institutions, and governance trends across the seven country cases. Although all seven countries were autocratic prior to the uprisings, variations in institutional development and capacity help explain why violence and repression prevailed in some cases and not others, why Morocco adopted the path of constitutional amendments, and why Tunisia embarked on a democratic transition. The chapter also shows that a decade after the uprisings, the Arab Spring’s socioeconomic grievances and demands remain unmet, leading to renewed protests in 2018–20.