Eva Bellin's The Robustness Of Authoritarianism

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In Eva Bellin’s “The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective” she argues that the inability of the Middle Eastern countries to catch up on the wave of democratization may be associated to the robustness of the coercive apparatus in multiple states of the area and their will and capacity to crush any form of democratic initiative. She makes a valid point by first acknowledging the fact that even though the majority of these states have failed to meet the prerequisites for democracy there are multiple countries around the world that have been able to establish democratic regimes in the absence of many of these conditions. However, she also recognizes that the lack of them may have strengthen

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