Quantitative Research of Political Regimes in the Arab Middle East: Mission Impossible?

Abstract

The article deals with the methodological problems of quantitative studies of political regimes and regime transformations in the Arab Middle East. Special attention is given to the questions of conceptualization, operationalization and typology of political regimes and regime changes since the quantitative research results depend on the datasets used. The article considers two approaches to operationalization, categorization and quantification, which are aimed either at distinguishing of separate unordered categories, or at measuring and linear placement of the observations on the axis. The conceptual problems reviewed include conceptual stretching and operationalization of successful and unsuccessful regime transformations. The article states that structural approach dominates in the quantitative research of regime changes since the conditions and cause-and-effect relationships between contextual factors and the risk of regime change are studied. The article shows how the regime changes can be quantitatively studied at the global, regional and country levels. The article concludes that the structural approach in quantitative studies is methodologically correct since a large number of hypotheses can be tested, but the main disadvantage of such studies is the explanation of different political regime changes by the same set of nonpolitical factors. The quantitative analysis of the Arab spring on the basis of Arab Barometer at the level of individuals revealed the significance of the high education, employment, male gender, religiosity an young age. The article shows that survey provide rich data for quantitative research with large numbers of observations, but the quality of the conclusions will depend on the quality of survey data.