Frederic Volpi

University of Edinburgh, The Alwaleed Centre for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World, Faculty Member

University of St Andrews, School of International Relations, Faculty Member

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Frédéric Volpi is Professor in the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies and Director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World at the University of Edinburgh.
He recently authored Revolution and Authoritarianism in North Africa (Oxford UP 2017) and co-edited with J.M Jasper Microfoundations of the Arab Uprisings (Amsterdam UP 2018).
His work addresses the dynamics of democratization and authoritarian resilience in the Muslim world, with a particular focus on Islamism.

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Papers by Frederic Volpi

Enacting and contesting citizenship in Algeria beyond the Hirak:The strategic uses of exit, voice and loyalty

by Benzenine Belkacem and Frederic Volpi

CITIZENSHIP STUDIES, 2023

This paper investigates the place of citizenship in the Hirak protest movement with the view to h... more This paper investigates the place of citizenship in the Hirak protest movement with the view to highlight the strengths and weak-nesses of the current modes of being citizen in an authoritarian regime in the Arab world. It identifies and analyses the tensions and frictions that generate change and the strategies of the ruling elites and the social movement to articulate and implement their choices. In this perspective, we frame the popular discontent that resulted from the candidature of Bouteflika to a fifth presidential mandate as a case of social mobilization giving a ‘voice’ to new projects of citizenship. We analyse key demands and propositions of this ‘voice’ strategy in relation to the ‘loyalty’ counter-narratives of the regime and its clients. Beyond the attempt at revising civil and political rights, we also link these modes of protesting and being to the experiences of lived citizenship under authoritarianism and how these fuels ‘exit’ strategies discounting formal citizenship.

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Transnational Islam and Regional Security

Algeria: When Elections Hurt Democracy

Journal of Democracy, 2020

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Shaping contention as a Salafi Movement: The rise and fall of Ansar al-Sharia in post-revolutionary Tunisia

The rise and fall of Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia (AST) in the aftermath of the 2011 Tunisian upris... more The rise and fall of Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia (AST) in the aftermath of the 2011 Tunisian uprising is indicative of the opportunities and pitfall of institutionalization of revolutionary movements in situations of democratic transitions in the Middle East and North Africa. AST&#39;s failure to become a leading player of the Tunisian political transition is a direct consequence of its strategic confrontation with other Islamist and secularized players seeking to impose a new identity on the Tunisian state and society. On closer inspection, the origins of this confrontation can be traced to the intestine struggles within AST, between different ideological trends, and between the leadership and the base to define the identity and practices of the movement.

Democratization in the Muslim World

Political Science, 2019

The issue of the democratization of the Muslim world has puzzled scholarship since the end of the... more The issue of the democratization of the Muslim world has puzzled scholarship since the end of the Cold War, when the third wave of democratization swept across the world but seemed to bypass most Muslim-majority countries, particularly the Arab world. Central to the debate about democratization in the Muslim world is the relationship between the Islamic religion and the political system supposedly bound up with it. As we will see, for some authors there is an inherent contradiction between the precepts of the Muslim faith and the requirements of democracy, while for others the two can be compatible or causally separated. When the debate on democratization is framed in these terms, it becomes very important to specify the definitions, issues, and processes investigated and evaluated to avoid confusion. When discussing processes of democratization—the move away from authoritarian practices to a political system based on political pluralism—there is a tendency in the literature to cons...

Crises and critical junctures in authoritarian regimes: addressing uprisings’ temporalities and discontinuities

Third World Quarterly, 2020

In this article, we aim at sharpening common understandings of the notion of political crisis to ... more In this article, we aim at sharpening common understandings of the notion of political crisis to better explain the trajectories of authoritarian transformations during popular uprisings. We make three major claims. First, we propose a definition of crisis as brief moments of institutional fluidity and openness in which a process can take different directions. We delineate the crisis concept from the concept of critical junctures and outline how our approach contributes to the methodological debate on 'near misses'. Second, we indicate how the de-institutionalisation processes leading up to a crisis are to be analytically distinguished from within-crisis moments. We argue in favour of a discontinuity approach that takes into account the different temporalities of gradual lead-up processes and rapid within-crisis dynamics. Finally, we illustrate our theoretical and analytical reasoning with concrete cases from the authoritarian crises of the Arab uprisings, whilst suggesting that our argument can travel to other areas of research in which crisis narratives have gained prominence.

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Le mouvement protestataire algérien de 2019 à la lumière de la théorie des mouvements sociaux et des Printemps arabes

L'Année du Maghreb, 2019

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Activism in the Middle East and North Africa in times of upheaval: social networks’ actions and interactions

Social Movement Studies, 2018

We seek to better understand recent changes in social mobilization in the MENA region by analysin... more We seek to better understand recent changes in social mobilization in the MENA region by analysing the formation and evolution of social networks. We propose an interactive perspective linking up contentious politics with routine governance through a dynamic articulation of repertoires of contention. At the heart of our analysis of social networks lie important questions regarding agency, strategic action and outcomes that have significance for social mobilization, social movements and politics at large. We outline how mobilization can change suddenly in the face of dramatic social and political events that transform societal interactions and adopt a bottom-up approach that highlights how micro level interactions in times of crisis produce specific logics and dynamics inside networks and shape what the networks achieve. By starting with descriptions of interactions at the grassroots level, we seek to explain macro level dynamics between networks and other players, including the state. In our approach, the role of other players becomes as important as, if not more than, structural characteristics. By adopting an interactionist orientation, we reveal the temporal dimension of strategic and non-strategic choices of these different players. In this perspective, the internal dynamics of the networks play a crucial part in determining the strategy of mobilization at the time of unrest; they also shape the possibilities for reformulating of the identity of the movement. Equally, the interactions between networks and other social and political players during episodes of contention contribute to validate or invalidate the internal choices of the networks; they also shape the impact of the networks' mobilization on the trajectory of the protests. Finally, the resonance of the networks with the behaviours and identities activated by the upheaval simultaneously empower them as players and tie their fate to a specific type of demands and needs which may be more or less transient.

format_quotePost-2011, scholars of MENA shifted focus towards agency, emphasizing micro-level interactions and local causal mechanisms in social mobilization.format_quote

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Constitutionalism and political order in Libya 2011–2014: three myths about the past and a new constitution

The Journal of North African Studies, 2016

Libya's 2011 revolution enabled ordinary citizens and an emerging civil society to voice their de... more Libya's 2011 revolution enabled ordinary citizens and an emerging civil society to voice their demands on a variety of key issues including Libya's new constitution. Libyans faced the challenge of redefining and re-empowering national political institutions through the establishment of a new constitution. This article analyses a series of constitutional grassroots debates that were led by the Forum for Democratic Libya thereby unpacking insights not only into the constitutional process itself but also into the underlying expectations regarding a new political order in the country. We argue that the brief period of relative peace and stability in Libya between 2011 and 2013 presents a "golden age" of constitutional activities that created meaningful interface among Libyan citizens after decades of oppression. We argue however that although constitutional debates allowed for citizen engagement in the process of constitutional development it had little bearing on the outcomes of this process. Citizen demands remained unanswered due to deeply entrenched informal political practices causing activists to face the arduous task of trying to influence a formal process of constitutional development. Priority demands expressed by citizens in our research pointed to the need for Libyan political actors to address the creation of a new system of governance, civil liberties and three regional priorities namely immigration and citizenship in Southern Libya, reconciliation and justice in Western Libya, and natural resources in Eastern Libya. The priorities remain unaddressed in Libya and provide insights of priority issues that will require serious efforts in the future of a stable Libya.

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Revolution and Authoritarianism in North Africa

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2017

This book analyses how the Arab uprisings, the sudden wave of leaderless protests that broke out ... more This book analyses how the Arab uprisings, the sudden wave of leaderless protests that broke out in 2011, could produce regime change in a region until then characterized by authoritarian resilience. It investigates the factors that shaped the trajectories of the uprisings in four North African countries: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Using an interactionist perspective, it analyzes the three stages of regime change and authoritarian resilience during this wave of uprisings. The first stage corresponds to the implosion of the ruling authoritarian system. This episode is defined by a sharp increase in mobilization of protesters against the regime and the accompanying decrease in the capabilities of the ruling institutions. The second stage corresponds to the reconstruction of practices and discourses around the demands of the protesters and the counter-propositions of the regime to halt the process of deinstitutionalization. This period is marked by the diffusion of new social...

Local (R)evolutions in Tunisia, 2011–2014: Reconstructing Municipal Political Authority

The Middle East Journal, 2016

Introduction: contextualizing the Tunisian transition In recent scholarship on democratization in... more Introduction: contextualizing the Tunisian transition In recent scholarship on democratization in the Arab world, there have been repeated criticisms of the dominance of top-down institutionalist analyses in the period prior to the Arab uprisings. 1 This is not to say that bottom-up approaches were not present, as there were indeed very relevant studies produced at the time, even in such unpropitious research settings as Tunisia. Researchers looking at the protests in the mining region of Gafsa in 2008 already highlighted some of the dynamics between local unrest and state authoritarianism that would later impact the Tunisian revolution. 2 Similarly, studies had investigated the dynamics of the (crony) neo-liberal reforms of the Tunisian regime at the local level and outlined the many unintended consequences of macro-reforms in the face of local resistance and adaptations. 3 Yet in all these cases,

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Introduction: Making Islamic Authority Matter

Theory Culture &amp Society

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Islamism and the state after the Arab uprisings: Between people power and state power

Democratization, 2015

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Pathways of Islamist Mobilization against the State in the Middle East and Central Asia