Have Middle Eastern Leaders Learned from the Arab Uprisings? An Arabic Operational Code Approach

How do individual leaders react to major political crises shaking their decision-making authority and challenging their political survival? What do political leaders learn from formative events transpiring on their watch? Riddled with protracted and multidimensional conflicts, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is a geographical unit where political learning, or the lack thereof, has been more crucial than ever. This study utilizes an actor-specific approach, i.e., operational code analysis, to examine the profiles and learning patterns of three Arab national leaders who have experienced different forms and magnitudes of political crisis in the post-2011 Arab Uprisings: 1) King Abdullah II bin al-Hussein of Jordan; 2) President Bashar al-Assad of Syria; and 3) Emir Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah of Kuwait. The case selection comports, by and large, with most different systems design (MDSD) where an individual leader’s operational code type functions as the independent variable while learning (or unlearning) is the dependent variable. This study’s temporal domain is three-pronged as I compartmentalize leaders’ political beliefs as follows: 1) each leader’s general operational code profile (aggregated) 2) before the Arab Uprisings (starting with the year each studied Arab leader came to power); 3) after the Arab Uprisings (2011-2018). I employ an original Arabic coding scheme for leadership analysis to study a group of understudied MENA leaders in their native language. This study lends to state-of-the-art leadership studies within foreign policy analysis and the broader International Relations discipline. It also carries policy relevance concerning regional and world powers’ foreign policy and military strategies toward the MENA region.