The Impact of the Colonial Legacy on the Processes of Democratic Transition in the Arab Region during the Period (2011-2016)

Abstract

The study investigates the role of the colonial legacy in establishing the official Arab system ruling within the framework of the state in the Arab region and focusing on its impact on the processes of ‘democratization’ since the beginning of the outbreak of the Arab popular revolutions, or what was termed the ‘Arab Spring. It relies on the historical descriptive approach and the analytical approach using the content analysis method to measure the extent of this impact by analyzing the dialectic of the relationship between the external variable as an independent variable and the internal variable as a dependent variable within the course of the Arab Spring. This study is conducted in terms of the extent of this impact, positively or negatively, and the processes of democratic transition. It indicates that the course of the "Arab Spring" and the accompanying democratic transformation has resulted in its realistic practical findings in the fall of some Arab regimes and the change of others by renewing their regimes. while others remained self-preserved, not far from the external presence in the Arab political reality, despite the continuity of democratic interactions and transformations in Arab countries, whether radical or reformist.

Received: 16 December 2023 / Accepted: 24 February 2024 / Published: 5 March 2024