UNIVERSITY OF PETROLEUM AND ENERGY STUDIES

COLLEGE OF LEGAL STUDIES

DEHRADUN

POLITICAL SCIENCE PROJECT

TRANSITIONAL PHASE OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL
REGIMES

Submitted to:

Submitted by:

Mr. Sam Babu K.C

Abhishek Chhabra

Asst. Prof.

500011974

COLS

B.A L.L.B
IIIrd SEM

INDEX

1. Political Regime
2. International regime
a. Proponents and critics
3. Regime Theory
a. Theoretical foundations
4. Regime theory in international political economy (IPE)
a. Liberal approaches to regime theory in IPE
b. Realist approaches to regime theory in IPE
c. Cognitivist knowledge-based approaches to regime theory in IPE
5. Arab Spring.
a. Background
Motivations
Recent history
Tunisian revolution
Egyptian revolution
Libyan civil war
Syrian uprising
Bahraini uprising
Impact of the Arab Spring
Arab Revolt
Berber Spring
International reactions
6. Conclusion
7. Bibliography
a. Websites
b. Books
Political Regime
A political regime is a set of political structures that make up a state. A political regime may
also be known as a form of government, a state system, or a political system. The term
political regime may also sometimes refer to a specific ruler or set of rulers within a political
system.
There are many different types of political regime in the modern world, and many more have
existed historically. These range from the directly-democratic political regime of Anarchism
to totalitarian regimes such as Military Dictatorships or Fascism.

The political regime that Americans are most familiar with is Representative Democracy.
This is a political regime in which representatives are directly elected by the citizenry, and
these representatives then make political decisions for the populace, with the assumption that
their decisions will reflect the general will of the Republic. This can be compared to a Direct
Democracy, in which the citizenry directly votes on all issues of importance.
The Republic is probably the most common form of political regime in the world, although it
takes many different forms. Republics are often denoted in the official name of the state, and
often include a modifier to convey some sort of philosophical ideal the political regime
holds. For example, Guyana is known as a Cooperative Republic, Vietnam is known as a
Socialist Republic, Sri Lanka is known as a Democratic Socialist Republic, China is known
as a Peoples Republic, and North Korea is known as a Democratic Peoples Republic.
There are a number of types of political regime that exist more in theory than anywhere in
the world. The strict Meritocracy, for example, where leaders are chosen based on their
ability to lead, not necessarily through election by a populace, but by some form of
standardized testing. Or a Corporatocracy, a popular political regime in science fiction, in
which corporations rule their own sovereign states.
Generally, for a political regime to survive, it needs to either have a strong mandate from its
people, or a strong military might to suppress dissent from its populace. Political regimes that
for whatever reason dont fulfill the populace, such as the Communist political regimes of
many Eastern Bloc countries, eventually give way to new political regimes. In the end, its
impossible to say if any one political regime is better or worse than another, and the rainbow
of political regimes seems to be constantly shifting and evolving.

International regime
International regimes are not subnational actors or non-governmental organizations. They are
international actors, and sometimes, when formally organized, many of them can be
considered intergovernmental organizations.
Stephen D. Krasner defined International Regimes as Implicit or explicit principles, norms,
rules and decision-making procedures around which actors expectations converge in a given

area of international relations in the journal International Organization in 1982. Regimes "are
more specialized arrangements that pertain to well-defined activities, resources, or
geographical areas and often involve only some subset of the members of international
society", according to Oran R. Young, in his 1989 book International Cooperation : Building
Regimes for Natural Resources and the Environment.
Proponents and Critics
Regimes serve crucial functional needs in international relations. Powerful regimes are
considered by some scholars as independent actors in international politics. Although
ultimately states create and sustain regimes, once institutionalized, regimes can exert
influence in world politics that is practically independent of state sovereignty. Insofar as they
are organized by means of treaties among countries, regimes provide an important source of
formal international law. Regimes themselves can also be subjects of international law.
Insofar as they shape the behavior of states, the most influential regimes can also be a source
of customary international law.
Critics of regimes deplore their influence as a source of additional conflict or inefficiency in
world politics. The security regime organized around the United Nations Security Council is
sometimes cited as a case in point. Some other scholars are also alarmed that regimes
represent a dilution of democratic control.

Regime Theory
Regime theory is a theory within international relations derived from the liberal tradition that
argues that international institutions or regimes affect the behavior of states (or other
international actors). It assumes that cooperation is possible in the anarchic system of states,
as regimes are by definition instances of international cooperation.
Theoretical foundations
While realism predicts that conflict should be the norm in international relations, regime
theorists say that there is cooperation despite anarchy. Often they cite cooperation in trade,

human rights and collective security among other issues. These instances of cooperation are
regimes. The most commonly cited definition of regimes comes from Stephen Krasner.
Krasner defines regimes as "institutions possessing norms, decision rules, and procedures
which facilitate a convergence of expectations.
Not all approaches to regime theory, however are liberal or neoliberal; some realist
scholars like Joseph Grieco have developed hybrid theories which take a realist based
approach to this fundamentally liberal theory. (Realists don't say cooperation never happens,
just that it's not the norm; it's a difference of degree).

Regime theory in international political economy (IPE)

As stated above, a regime is defined by Stephen D. Krasner as a set of explicit or implicit
"principles, norms, rules, and decision making procedures around which actor expectations
converge in a given issue-area. This definition is intentionally broad, and covers human
interaction ranging from formal organizations (i.e., OPEC) to informal groups (i.e., major
banks during the debt crisis). Note that a regime need not be composed of states.
Within IPE there are three main approaches to regime theory: the dominant, liberal-derived
interest-based approach; the realist critique of interest-based approaches, and finally
knowledge-based approaches that come from the cognitivist school of thought (Hasenclever,
1997). The first two are rationalist approaches while the third is sociological.
Although realism is arguably the dominant school of thought in the field of international
relations generally, within regime theory specifically, because regime theory is by definition
a theory that explains international cooperation (i.e. it's a traditionally liberal concept) liberal
approaches prevail within the literature.
Liberal approaches to regime theory in IPE
Liberal interest-based approaches to regime theory state that cooperation in anarchy is
possible without a hegemon because there exists a "convergence of expectations." Regimes
facilitate cooperation by establishing standards of behavior which signal to all other members
that individual states are in fact cooperating. When all states expect the other participants to
cooperate, the probability of sustaining cooperation increases dramatically.

Neoliberals believe that realists neglect the degree to which countries share interests and the
iterative nature of state relations.
In the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, the actors' behavior is determined by the following
assumptions:
1. States are rational, unitary, gain maximizing actors, living in anarchy and ridden by the
security dilemma.
2. There are future consequences for present actions. The prisoner's dilemma is not a oneshot event.
3. It is in the interest of states to cooperate in the present because, in the future, other
states will defect on them (Tit-for-Tat strategy).
4. The theory presupposes that states are concerned with absolute gains, that is, states do
not consider the gains or losses of other states in their utility analysis. In contrast neorealists
argue that states are concerned with relative gains. That is, states are concerned with the
advantages they gain versus the advantages of other states in the anarchic system.

Realist approaches to regime theory in IPE

Realists, such as Joseph Grieco, propose power-based theories of regimes using hegemonic
stability theory. Although sometimes regime theory functions as a counterweight to the
hegemonic stability theory (which is a concept borrowed from economics) realists also use it
within regime theory itself to explain how regimes change. When used in this way, realists
argue that the presence of a strong hegemon is what makes for a successful (i.e. "robust" and
"resilient") regime.
In summary then, within regime theory realists and liberals differ over the nature of
international cooperation and how much of a role international institutions play. Liberals
believe regimes (cooperation) comes about through a convergence of state interests, and that

international institutions help create that synthesis of interests, while realists believe that
regimes simply reflect the distribution of power in the international system. (Powerful states
create regimes to serve their security and economic interests. Regimes have no independent
power over states, particularly great powers. As such, regimes are simply intervening
variables between the real independent variable (power) and the observed outcome
(cooperation)).
Cognitivist knowledge-based approaches to regime theory in IPE
In contrast to the rationalist approaches above, cognitivists critique the rationalist theories on
the grounds that liberals and realists both use flawed assumptions such as that nation-states
are always and forever rational actors; that interests remain static, that different
interpretations of interests and power are not possible. The cognitivists also argue that even
when the rationalist theories employ iterated game theories where future consequences affect
present decisions, they ignore a major implication of such iteration: learning.
Consequences from an iterated game look backwards to the past as well as forward to the
future. So ones decisions today are not the same as ones decisions tomorrow, not only
because the actors is taking the future into account but because one is taking the past into
account as well. Finally cognitivists use a post-positivist methodology which does not
believe that social institutions or actors can be separated out of their surrounding sociopolitical context for analytical purposes.

Arab Spring
The Arab Spring, otherwise known as the Arab Awakening, is a revolutionary wave of
demonstrations and protests occurring in the Arab world that began on Saturday, 18
December 2010. To date, there have been revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt; a civil war in
Libya resulting in the fall of its government; civil uprisings in Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen, the
latter resulting in the resignation of the Yemeni prime minister; major protests in Algeria,
Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, and Oman; and minor protests in Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Saudi
Arabia, Sudan, and Western Sahara. Clashes at the borders of Israel in May 2011 have also
been inspired by the regional Arab Spring.

The series of protests and demonstrations across the Middle East and North Africa has
become known as the "Arab Spring", and sometimes as the "Arab Spring and Winter", "Arab
Awakening" or "Arab Uprisings" even though not all participants in protests are Arab. It was
sparked by the first protests that occurred in Tunisia on 18 December 2010 following
Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation in protest of police corruption and ill treatment. With
the success of the protests in Tunisia, a wave of unrest sparked by the Tunisian "Burning
Man" struck Algeria, Jordan, Egypt, and Yemen, then spread to other countries. The largest,
most organised demonstrations have often occurred on a "day of rage", usually Friday after
noon prayers. The protests have also triggered similar unrest outside the region.

Background
Motivations
Numerous factors have led to the protests, including issues such as dictatorship or
absolute monarchy, human rights violations, government corruption , economic decline,
unemployment, extreme poverty, and a number of demographic structural factors, such as a
large percentage of educated but dissatisfied youth within the population. Also, some[who?]
attribute the 2009 Iranian protests as one of the reasons behind the Arab Spring. The catalysts
for the revolts in all Northern African and Persian Gulf countries have been the concentration
of wealth in the hands of autocrats in power for decades, insufficient transparency of its
redistribution, corruption, and especially the refusal of the youth to accept the status quo.
Increasing food prices and global famine rates have also been a significant factor, as they
involve threats to food security worldwide and prices that approach levels of the 20072008
world food price crisis. Amnesty International singled out Wikileaks' release of US
diplomatic cables as a catalyst for the revolts.
Recent History
The current wave of protests is not an entirely new phenomenon, resulting in part from
the activities of dissident activists as well as members of a variety of social and union
organizations that have been active for years in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, and other countries
in the area, as well as in the territory of Western Sahara.

Tunisia experienced a series of conflicts over the past three years, the most notable
occurring in the mining area of Gafsa in 2008, where protests continued for many months.
These protest included rallies, sit-ins, and strikes, during which there were two fatalities, an
unspecified number of wounded, and dozens of arrests.
In Western Sahara, the Gdeim Izik protest camp was erected 12 km south-east of El
Aain by a group of young Sahrawis on 9 October 2010. Their intention was to demonstrate
against labor discrimination, unemployment, looting of resources, and human rights abuses.
The camp contained between 12,000 and 20,000 inhabitants, but on 8 November 2010 it was
destroyed and its inhabitants evicted by Moroccan security forces. The security forces faced
strong opposition from some young Sahrawi civilians, and rioting soon spread to El Aain
and other towns within the territory, resulting in an unknown number of injuries and deaths.
Tunisian revolution
Following the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Sidi Bouzid, a series of
increasingly violent street demonstrations through December 2010 ultimately led to the
ouster of longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on 14 January 2011. The
demonstrations were precipitated by high unemployment, food inflation, corruption, lack of
freedom of speech and other forms of political freedom, and poor living conditions.
The protests constituted the most dramatic wave of social and political unrest in Tunisia
in three decades, and have resulted in scores of deaths and injuries, most of which were the
result of action by police and security forces against demonstrators.
Egyptian revolution
Following the uprising in Tunisia and prior to his entry as a central figure in Egyptian
politics, potential presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei warned of a 'Tunisia-style
explosion' in Egypt.
Protests in Egypt began on 25 January and ran for 18 days. Beginning around midnight
on 28 January, the Egyptian government attempted, somewhat successfully, to eliminate the
nation's Internet access, in order to inhibit the protesters' ability to organize through social
media. Later that day, as tens of thousands protested on the streets of Egypt's major cities,

President Mubarak dismissed his government, later appointing a new cabinet. Mubarak also
appointed the first Vice President in almost 30 years.
On 10 February, Mubarak ceded all presidential power to Vice President Omar Suleiman,
but soon thereafter announced that he would remain as President until the end of his term.
However, protests continued the next day, and Suleiman quickly announced that Mubarak
had resigned from the presidency and transferred power to the Armed Forces of Egypt. The
military immediately dissolved the Egyptian Parliament, suspended the Constitution of
Egypt, and promised to lift the nation's thirty-year "emergency laws".
Libyan civil war
After the success of the revolution in Tunisia, a protest on living conditions began on 14
January in Bayda, Libya, where protesters clashed with police and attacked government
offices. Anti-government protests began in Libya on 15 February 2011. By 18 February, the
opposition controlled most of Benghazi, the country's second-largest city. The government
dispatched elite troops and mercenaries in an attempt to recapture it, but they were repelled.
By 20 February, protests had spread to the capital Tripoli, leading to a television address
by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who warned the protestors that their country could descend into
civil war.
On 26 February 2011, amidst ongoing efforts by demonstrators and rebel forces to wrest
control of Tripoli from the Jamahiriya, the opposition set up an interim government in
Benghazi to oppose Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's rule. On 17 March, United Nations
Security Council Resolution 1973 was adopted, authorising a no-fly zone over Libya, and
"all necessary measures" to protect civilians. Two days later, France, the United States and
the United Kingdom intervened in Libya with a bombing campaign against pro-Gaddafi
forces. A coalition of 27 states from Europe and the Middle East soon joined the intervention.
The forces were driven back from the outskirts of Benghazi, and the rebels mounted an
offensive, capturing scores of towns across the coast of Libya.
Syrian uprising

Protests in Syria started on 26 January, when one case of self-immolation was reported.
Protesters have been calling for political reforms and the reinstatement of civil rights, as well
as an end to the state of emergency, which has been in place since 1963. A "day of rage" was
set for 45 February, but it was uneventful.
On 6 March, the Syrian security forces arrested about 15 children in Daraa in Southern
Syria for writing slogans against the regime. Children were tortured brutally. Daraa is the
first city to protest against the Baathist regime, which has been ruling Syria since 1963.
Thousands of protestors gathered in Damascus, Aleppo, al-Hasakah, Daraa, Deir ez-Zor,
and Hama on 15 March, with recently released politician Suhair Atassi becoming an
unofficial spokesperson for the "Syrian revolution". The next day there were reports of
approximately 3000 arrests and a few martyrs, but there are no official figures on the number
of deaths.
Bahraini uprising
The 2011 protests in Bahrain were initially aimed at achieving greater political freedom
and respect for human rights, and were not intended to threaten the monarchy. Lingering
frustration among the Shiite majority with being ruled by the Sunni government was a major
root cause, but the protests in Tunisia and Egypt are cited as the inspiration for the
demonstrations. The protests began in Bahrain on 14 February and were largely peaceful,
until a raid by police on the night of 17 February against protestors sleeping at the Pearl
Roundabout in Manama, in which police killed three protestors. Following the deadly raid,
the protestors' aims expanded to a call for the end of the monarchy. On 18 February,
government forces opened fire on protesters, mourners, and news journalists, prompting
protesters to begin calling for the overthrow of the Bahraini monarchy and government. On
19 February, protesters occupied Pearl Roundabout after the government ordered troops and
police to withdraw.
Impact of the Arab Spring

The regional unrest has not been limited to countries of the Arab world. The early success
of uprisings in North Africa was inspired by the uprisings of disenchanted people in the
Middle Eastern states of Iran and Turkey to take to the streets and agitate for reforms.

The bid for statehood by Palestine at the UN on 23 September 2011 is also regarded as
drawing inspiration from the Arab Spring after years of failed peace negotiations with Israel.
In the West Bank, schools and government offices were shut to allow demonstrations backing
the UN membership bid in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus and Hebron; echoing similar
peaceful protests from other Arab countries.
Arab Revolt
The rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire goes back to 1821. Arab nationalism
has its roots in the Mashriq (the Arabs lands east of Egypt), particularly in countries of Sham
(the Levant). The political orientation of Arab nationalists in the years prior to the Great War
was generally moderate.
The Young Turk Revolution began on 3 July 1908 and quickly spread throughout the
empire, resulting in the sultan's announcement of the restoration of the 1876 constitution and
the reconvening of parliament. This period is known as the Second Constitutional Era. The
Arabs' demands were of a reformist nature, limited in general to autonomy, greater use of
Arabic in education, and changes in conscription in the Ottoman Empire in peacetime for
Arab conscripts that allowed local service in the Ottoman army. In the elections held in 1908,
the Young Turks through their Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) managed to gain the
upper hand against the rival group led by Prens Sabahaddin.
Berber Spring
The Berber Spring was a period of political protest and civil activism in 1980 claiming
recognition of the Berber identity and language in Algeria with events mainly taking place in
Kabylia and Algiers. The background was marked by two decades of harsh Arabization
measures instituted by the Arab nationalist FLN dictatorship government, which refused to
recognize Algeria's Berber identity and banned the Berber language altogether.

The Berber Spring is traditionally dated as beginning on March 10, 1980 with the banning of a
conference due to be held by the Kabyle intellectual Mouloud Mammeri at Hasnaoua University
in Tizi-Ouzou. A critical point was the coordinated arrest of hundreds of Berber activists,
students and doctors on April 20, sparking a general strike.
International reactions
Protests in many countries affected by the Arab Spring have attracted widespread support
from the international community, while harsh government responses have generally met
condemnation. In the case of the Bahraini, Moroccan, and Syrian protests, the international
response has been considerably more nuanced.
Protests have also affected oil prices, contributing to the 2011 energy crisis. The
International Monetary Fund said oil prices were likely to be higher than originally forecast
due to unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, major regions of oil production.

CONCLUSION
The relation between political factors and economic growth has come to the fore by the work of
Lipset (1959) who examined how economic developments affect the political regime. Since then,
research on the issues has proliferated making clear that the political environment plays an
important role in economic growth. While political institutions are influenced by economic
development, they are in turn a key determinant of the development process. In this paper the
influence of political regimes on economic development was re-examined.

The time and country fixed-effects model shows that controlling for global trends will decrease
the effect of democracy on income per capita. As such, our main result points out that when we
control the growth regression by the initial period GDP per capita the democracy factors lack
their relevancy, independently of the measure adopted for the political regime variable (Freedom
House Index or Policy Index). Therefore, results obtained give reasons to suspect that there is a
strong causal effect of democracy (and as such political regimes) on income, being consistent
with previous literature (Rodrik, 1997; Gerring et al., 2005, among others), but which contradict
those obtained by Papaioannou and Siourounis (2008a), where they do not control for the initial
period log GDP per capita.
However, the importance of controlling for country and time fixed effects was showed to be
relevant and a lot more work is still needed on the field of the relation between GDP per capita
and political regimes. Under the attained results we see that there is no causal effect of
democracy and political regimes on income. However, there is strong cross-sectional relationship
between the two variables.
Therefore we may formulate two hypotheses that could explain this fact.
Hypothesis 1: Our first prediction is that countries with more democratic structures are better
developed, as measured by higher GDP and higher GDP per capita, however it may take a
long time for a culture of democracy to influence economic growth and also because political
institutions change only slowly.
Hypothesis 2: Historical factors are influencing the economic and political development
of societies
Bibliography
Websites
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

www.wikipedia.org
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-political-regime.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_regime
www.library.carleton.ca/sites/default/.../prrt-africa-10-94-cbk.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regime_theory
http://books.google.com/books?id=kCWBDECTtMC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage
&q&f=false

7. http://books.google.com/books?
id=WIYKBNM5zagC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=one
page&q&f=false
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berber_Spring
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Revolt
Books
1. International regimes By Stephen D. Krasner.
2. Theories of international regimes By Andreas Hasenclever, Peter Mayer, Volker
Rittberger.