Myths of military defection in Egypt and Tunisia

In this article, we challenge existing analyses of military behaviour during the Arab uprisings. Egypt and Tunisia are often presented as cases where the military formed an explicit or implicit alliance with the opposition and thereby ‘defected‘ from the regime. In contrast to this interpretation, we show that in Tunisia, insubordination took the form of a police mutiny rather than military defection, while in Egypt the military did not defect from, but rather preserved the regime. Finally, we challenge the arguments about Tunisia being a ’pacted’ transition, while in Egypt polarization led to calls for the military to intervene. We show that in Tunisia there were also calls for the military to intervene, and in Egypt the decline of support for Mursi did not directly translate into support for military intervention. The military’s popularity rating had in fact declined substantially since 2011. Misinterpreting military behaviour has led scholars to underestimate the level of regime cohesiveness and the significance of other security agencies in the overthrow of rulers. Finally, it has fed into the (false) belief that the military could mediate the transition to democracy.