Resistance to democratic reform

The MENA region's general resistance to democratic reform can be interpreted from two not-entirely-independent perspectives: popular unwillingness/inability and elite unwillingness. From a popular point of view, democracy runs counter to the philosophy of corporatism as expressed by Richards and Waterbury, making it an infeasible form of government for those who believe in the merit of corporatism. The propagated post-independence dichotomy between foreign imperial powers (democratic nations) and the domestic state as the protector certainly supports the notion of non-democratic political systems. Also according to Richards and Waterbury, electoral laws have changed so frequently in a number of countries that perhaps their populaces have lost faith in the ability of democratic elections to produce valid and meaningful results. Economic reform and structural adjustment, which may be financed and advised by foreign countries and organizations and may be predicated on political reform, have necessarily benefited all classes (Bayat). If people in MENA countries view political liberalization with being somehow related to a stagnant or declining personal financial situation they may be unwilling to endorse democratization. Finally, patronage and corruption show people that they can achieve a financially satisfactory life for themselves, friends and/or relatives without the utilization of democratic principles such as meritocracy and rule of law, creating, in theory, a mentality of "why fix it if it's not broken." Bayat's theory of 'quiet encroachment' as a viable strategy for the poor to influence state policy (such influence being absent given a lack of democracy) also falls into this notion that a relatively "good" (for lack of a better word) life can be obtained without a system of democracy. From an elite/government perspective, vested interests in protecting authoritarian gains via economics leave little reason for those in power to support democratic transition (Owen). This is especially true for rentier states which lack a social contract with their citizenry to necessitate representing them in state-level policymaking. Demmelhuber's enumeration of Egyptian rents - natural resource revenues, tourism, state-owned economic areas, foreign remittances, and external aid - also exist to some extent in other MENA countries. 

Bellin argues that democratic transition can only be successful in those countries where the coercive apparatus lacks the will and ability to crush it and that the existence of this will and ability is what has made authoritarianism so robust in MENA countries. She also states that "Nowhere in the region do you see mammoth, cross-class coalitions mobilizing on the streets to push for reform as in South Korea" - an assertion that couldn't be farther from the truth given the Arab Revolts of 2011. Finances allowed for robust regimes but didn't stop mass protests from causing the demise of regimes. Rents certainly don't appear to have propped up at least the Libyan and Egyptian governments in 2011. Bellin also believes that patrimonialism, which supports authoritarianism via favoritism and patronage to demobilize the opposition, is part of the reason for authoritarian prevalence. Given the fact that corruption was a main grievance underlying Arab Spring protests which led to regime change, patrimonialism was not enough to stem the tide of reform in a number of countries. International support - another pillar of Bellin's argument about the robustness of authoritarian regimes in the region - played a supportive role in Bahrain, a destabilizing one in the case of Syria, and doesn't seem to have had much of an effect in other Arab Spring cases. I would argue that Bellin was wrong about high costs of dissent incurred on citizens and the robustness of authoritarianism. Additionally, her argument that coercive apparatuses will be more willing to accept transition if they are institutionalized is difficult to evaluate because we cannot be sure of the apparatuses' perception of their security without further investigation of the topic. With these points in mind, it does appear she was correct in asserting that "in the absence of effective state institutions, removing an oppressive coercive apparatus will not spell democracy but rather the rise of authoritarianism of a different stripe or, worse, chaos." Yemen, Syria and Libya have all experienced the demise of the preexisting authoritarian entity but have not transitioned into stable democracies. Egypt encountered democratic reform but both its citizenry acted in undemocratic fashion when removing the president in 2013.  In every case except Tunisia, coercion seems to have made way for relative chaos.