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Tunisia
The Tunisian Revolution began with the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi on December 17th, 2010, although it is also possible to consider the miner strike in the west central town of Gafsa in 2008 to be the official beginning of the movement. The Tunisian people toppled Ben Ali, who had imposed a police state. The revolution, like other Arab Spring revolutions which would soon follow, was prompted by endemic poverty, rising food prices, and chronic unemployment. Tunisians demanded democracy, human rights, the end of corruption, and the end of the enforcement of the 2003 Anti-Terrorism Act, which effectively criminalized their religious ideas and practices.

The previous legitimacy of the Tunisian government had been based on a combination of the charisma of former president Bourguiba’s secular legacy and an achievement legitimacy based on the modernization of the Tunisian state. After this legitimacy had failed and its accompanying regime had fallen, En-Nahdha, an Islamist party, sought to provide legitimacy through criticism of the previous regime. Tunisia initiated a top-down modernization, led by civil, urban, and secular petty bourgeoisie, contrasting with the military coups in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, the leadership of traditional scriptural elites in Morocco and Libya, and the leadership of revolutionary armed peasantry in Algeria.

Tunisians asked that a National Constituent Assembly (NCA) be formed that would be charged with writing the new constitution. The party of the former regime, the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) was banned from running for re-election, and En-Nahdha received 40% of the vote in an election overseen by a higher independent authority in April of 2011. With its share of 89 out of 217 total seats, En-Nahdha then formed a coalition in the form of a triumvirate, or troika, with the Congress for the Republic and the Forum known as  Ettakatul within the NCA.

En-Nahdha then seized considerable control by appointing 83% of public agents at all levels, and shutting down the media by physically attacking hundreds of journalists. En-Nahdha was also suspected of several assassinations, prompting the resignation of En-Nahdha prime minister Hamadi Jebali in April 2013. En-Nahdha also failed to produce a constitution by the agreed-upon time of a year, causing many political parties, including the major political party Nidaa Tounes, to declare the end of En-Nahdha’s electoral legitimacy.

The Tunisian public and political parties then asked for a compromise legitimacy that consisted of a mandatory national dialogue between En-Nahdha and the other ruling members of the NCA, which began in October 2013. This effectively forced En-Nahdha to negotiate its own immediate departure from the government, while at the same time conceding the current failure of Islamism as a means of legitimacy. The national dialogue, which is still taking place, is seeking to establish a legitimate government, end the legislative process for the constitution and electoral code, and set up an independent body to organize elections and fix a definitive date.

Libya
Libya’s revolution is also considered part of the Arab Spring, beginning February 15th, 2011, just a few months after the events in Tunisia. The revolution deposed Muammar Gaddafi, who had been the ruler of Libya for four decades and had united the country under the themes of Pan-Arabism (a form of nationalism), common geography, shared history, and Islam. The revolution was an attempt to replace these forms of legitimacy with democratic legitimacy via the National Transitional Council.

Gaddafi’s legitimacy waned as his regime failed to benefit those of most need in the state. Although Libya has the world’s ninth-largest known oil deposits and a population of only 6.5 million, in 2010, Gallup polls showed that 29% of young Libyans were unemployed, and 93% of young Libyans described their condition as “struggling” or “suffering.” As protestors took to the streets, Gaddafi dispatched tanks, jets, and mercenaries to attack them, further eroding his legitimacy as ruler. The actual death count of these attacks is not known, as Gaddafi’s regime shut out and shut down both world and local media and communications. However, Libya’s militarily weak regime was eventually overcome, and Gaddafi was killed on October 20th, 2011, leading to the disintegration of the regime.

Since Gaddafi’s departure, tribal elders, NGOs, youth groups, town councils, and local brigades have stepped in to fill the power vacuum. There are many different tribes in Libya, not all of which have supported the regime change, making the establishment of a new form of legitimacy difficult. However, unlike Egypt, Libya has no entrenched officer class or judiciary to prolong or obstruct the country’s transition to democracy. Since the revolution, no single group has been dominant, although several brigades, or katiba, have been able to exercise considerable strength.

These katiba are “armed fighting groups ranging from 20 to 200 young men, formed along neighborhood, town or regional lines.” These brigades were central to the military strength of the revolutionary forces. After Gaddafi’s overthrow, the powerful brigades from Misrata and Zintan raided Tripoli, the Libyan capital, “pillaged automobiles, took over ministries and encamped at key institutions like the airport and oilfields” in order to gain political power.

In order to establish democratic legitimacy and sovereignty, the National Transitional Council has had to deal with these brigades, a process which has so far been mostly unsuccessful due to mistrust between the two bodies and the popularly illegitimate but regardless tangible military strength of the brigades. To firmly establish democratic legitimacy, the National Transitional Council is attempting to draft a new constitution. It has also struggled in this task, for which it is looking back to Libya’s first constitution in 1951.

Yemen
Even before the 2011 revolution, former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime’s legitimacy relied on a patronage network based on the entrenched Yemeni tribal system, effectively tying Saleh’s political legitimacy to the tribes’ much more established and trusted socio-political legitimacy. Yemen is historically tribal, with tribes being responsible for defense, keeping the peace, protecting and encouraging trade and markets, and either prohibiting or facilitating travel. For many Yemenis, tribal systems are “the main or only administrative system they know.” Tribes function effectively as local governments, introducing generators and water pumps, opening schools, and providing local services. Thus, for many “the state is not representative of the Yemeni nation to which they feel they belong.”

The Yemeni revolution, also part of the Arab Spring, was brought about by the loss of legitimacy by Saleh’s regime. Yemeni youth wanted Saleh’s resignation and “a more accountable and democratic system.” Though reform came slowly due to a lack of support from the international community and the poverty of the protestors – Yemen is the Arab world’s poorest country – the anti-Saleh movement gained steam and high-level government officials and tribal leaders joined the opposition against Saleh. The most significant government official to join the revolutionary movement was Major General Ali Mohsin Al-Ahmar, who ordered his troops to defend antigovernment demonstrators.

Saleh was deposed and his successor, Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, was elected in an uncontested election to serve as head of the transitional government, which includes the oppositional bloc, the  Joint Meeting parties (JMP), a five-party alliance including the leading Islamist party Islah and the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP), the Nasirist Popular Unity Party, and two small Islamist  Zaydi parties. The National Dialogue Conference, launched in March of 2013, brought together 565 delegates from these parties in order to write a constitution and deal with longstanding challenges to Yemeni governance, such as counterterrorism, development, and the  Southern Separatist Movement.

Although Yemen was the only country from the 2011 Arab Spring to emerge with a negotiated settlement with the current regime and a transition plan for a national dialogue, by 2013 there was “no significant redistribution of resources or hard power outside the traditional elite.” The vestiges of Saleh’s regime  and a lack of support from southern tribes   plagued the National Dialogue Conference, which consequently finished four months later than expected, in January of 2014. Further elections were indefinitely postponed, leading to speculation that Hadi and members of the parliament will keep their positions indefinitely. Due to these complications, there is currently no legitimate unifying political body in Yemen.