The Age of Counter-revolution: States and Revolutions in the Middle East by Jamie Allinson (review)

The Arab revolutions were filled with aspirations for social justice, freedom, and human dignity. But most of the uprisings led to brutal repression, violent civil wars, and state collapse. Are they failed revolutions? Passive revolutions? Or, as has been argued, revolutionrestorations?

Betrayal, loss, defeat, and tragedy are words that repeatedly appear in the literature on revolutions. Despite their commonness, the book tells us that these words are insufficient to explain the processes of these revolutions and their failure. A revolution cannot fail until the counterrevolution succeeds. Therefore, to understand a revolution's failure, we need to understand the success of the counterrevolution. Unfortunately, little attention has been given to counterrevolution in the existing literature.

How did the counterrevolutions in the Arab Spring succeed, and how did they crush revolutionary movements? What type of counterrevolution characterized the Arab Spring? How did counterrevolutions succeed? The Age of Counter-revolution answers these questions in eight chapters and 367 pages. Allinson argues that there were revolutions in Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, and Bahrain. Except in Tunisia, counterrevolutions succeeded and took the upper hand, albeit through different mechanisms. In Egypt the army led the counterrevolution, while in Syria the regime led the counterrevolution with the help of Russia and Iran. In Bahrain Saudi military intervention suppressed the revolutionary movement. In Libya, Yemen, and Syria the state or part of it collapsed or was dismantled, and as a result the revolutionary movement burst into chaos and civil war. It cannot be said that the Arab revolutions simply failed; they failed because counterrevolutions succeeded (3).

The difference between counterrevolution and passive revolution, which is used to explain the experiences of the Arab Spring, is that while passive revolution demobilizes or absorbs mass movements, counterrevolutions crush them (45). Therefore passive revolution, Allinson argues, cannot fully account for the process we witnessed in the Arab Spring,

In the literature around this issue, counterrevolution is historically associated with the trinity of throne, sword, and altar. The book examines how the situation has changed. Counterrevolutions intervened between revolutionary situations produced by mass uprisings from below and the outcomes that resulted from them (3). Therefore the opponents of the revolution from above, below, and within pursued the eradication of the revolution and created counterrevolutionary forces.

Counterrevolution typically has ties to old regimes. We call this Thermidor, which became common after the French revolution in 1789. Thermidor refers to the reversion, after the establishment of a new social order, to the practices of the old. If a revolution consists of a change to a new revolutionary economy and society, a counterrevolution consists of the undoing of this change.

The case of the Arab counterrevolutions is different. Allinson describes the counterrevolution from below as social counterrevolution. This terminology is quite interesting, because, in the dominant literature, the social is primarily associated with revolution rather than counterrevolution.

A social revolution calls forth a social counterrevolution. Counterrevolutions can emerge from the ranks of revolutionaries as they seek to re-create themselves after gaining power on the terms of the old order that they initially overthrew. Counterrevolution is therefore a project that involves both a policy and a movement to reverse revolution or close a revolutionary situation (41).

Another topic related to revolution and counterrevolution, the book argues, is understanding a revolutionary situation. In such a situation there is a dual sovereignty caused by mass insurrections; a radical outcome does not always ensue. A counterrevolution, which aims to restore singular rather than dual power, may be mounted against a revolution that has established its rule: a process of civil war and overthrow, most often enlisting the support of outside powers (41). Counterrevolutions typically close a historical moment of the revolutionary situation through demobilization and repression. In this book, counterrevolution implies a renewal of terms favorable to the old order in either its narrow political or its broader social sense (40). Counterrevolution therefore depends on the existence of a prior revolutionary...