Massimo Ramaioli, Al-Akhawayn University & Francesco Cavatorta, Université Laval in Quebec

November 10, 2025, marked the first ever visit of a Syrian president to Washington as Ahmad al Shar’a, shedding the turban and fatigue attire of the rebel and donning suit and tie, met Donald Trump. This event followed several pledges by the new Syrian Transition Government (STG) to respect minority rights, building an inclusive, secular state, and proceed with the drafting of a new constitution, which would include dispositions for regular free and fair elections. This development may very well be rhetorical posturing, necessary to earn a degree of legitimacy and support from the US. Be that as it may, listening to a former Jihadi fighter speaking the language of constitutional, liberal democracy causes, at the very least, some surprise. The former radical opposition leader promptly embraced a discourse squarely at odds with Salafi ideology, an about-face that can only be partially explained by sheer pragmatism. This prompts a more general question about opposition actors in the region, whether they manage to finally get to power as in the case of Hay’at Tahrir ash-Sham (HTS) in Syria or they remain marginalised: what and how do they learn in the face of changing circumstances?

We attempt an answer via two key concepts. We posit MENA as a penetrated region. Second, and based on that, we prime the concept of ‘external referent’ to elucidate one mechanism whereby penetration occurs.  While most of the efforts to rethink Middle Eastern politics since October 7 (in this collection and elsewhere) focus on the international dimension, we argue that it is important to also rethink how those international changes impact domestic politics across the region.

The MENA is often portrayed as a ‘penetrated’ system more than other areas: international actors and events have here a more substantial impact on the domestic politics of the countries making up the system than anywhere else (Ehteshami and Hinnebusch, 1997). This ‘penetration’ is not limited solely to great powers’ interference in regional interstate relations and domestic politics. Regional actors – state and non-state – also contribute to such high degree of external influence due to the linguistic, religious or tribal connections that exist between groups living under different political authorities. These connections, furthermore, may extend beyond the boundaries of the region itself, however defined.

The assumption of penetration has informed a significant number of studies on how the international dimension shapes domestic political outcomes, ranging from state-making (Yom, 2015) to democratization (Cavatorta, 2009), from public opinion (Lynch, 2007) to support for authoritarian rule (Brownlee, 2012) and from sectarianism (Mathiesen, 2013) to migration (Tsourapas, 2021). In the aftermath of the 2011 Arab uprisings, this literature also found its way in the work of Heydemann and Leenders (2013), who argued that Arab societies and authoritarian regimes were able to adapt their strategies during and after the uprisings by learning from what the first movers did or did not do at a particular moment in time. Their contribution has opened the door to studies that no longer focused exclusively on the domestic context to explain the adaptative strategies of authoritarian regimes or, conversely, of the opposition to these regimes.

Our essay takes their findings as a starting point to reflect on opposition movements in the MENA. We argue that the international dimension, in the specific configuration of outer penetration of the regional system, influences not only the regimes in power, but also opposition actors. Hence, the domestic context of repression, co-optation or both might not be the sole factor, let alone the decisive one, in determining how opposition actors learn and adapt. This is even more evident in the aftermath of the tragic (such as the war in Gaza), worrisome (fears of regional conflagration), unexpected (as the sudden fall of the Asad regime in Syria), or potentially seismic (the US-Israeli war with Iran) events that have shaken the region. These events have had significant repercussions throughout the MENA, where regimes have had to adapt to the quickly evolving regional landscape and where opposition movements had to do the same.

These kinds of momentous shifts have occurred in the past as well, and the ways in which they shaped regimes’ responses across the region have been analysed in detail (see Keddie, 1992 on the end of the Cold War on regional relations and Darwich, 2016 on the Iran-Iraq war impact on their neighbours). However, less attention has been paid to the impact of such significant events on opposition movements. Currently, most of the regimes in the region are authoritarian or, at best, semi-authoritarian. This fact places opposition formations in a more precarious position as opposed to opposition formations which operate in democratic contexts. But it does not follow that they are not also similarly deeply involved and affected by the dynamics of regional penetration. Rather, given the impact, influence and, in fact, penetration of outer actors and ideas in the vicissitudes and dynamics of the region, opposition actors learn not only through their interactions with authoritarian regimes, but also from key actors outside the country.

Building on the assumptions of penetrability and on the importance of the international dimension, we propose the concept of ‘external referent’: an actor, situated outside the boundaries of a given state, which serves as an ideological and institutional template for a political force (ruling or in opposition) inside the country (for other dimensions of this dynamic, see Clausen in this collection). It is usually a sovereign country, but any player (such as a party, militia, or movement) capable of offering such a template would fit our definition. The external referent can also provide active or open support (military, financially, logistically). But it does not have to. What is key is that it may be considered a source of inspiration for doing politics.

We illustrate this dynamic in the case of opposition movements. We offer three cases and then present some reflections about its usefulness in the current MENA scenario. The first case is the radical Arab left, specifically communist. The trajectory of Marxist-Leninist parties in the Arab world clearly demonstrates that international events and actors have a decisive influence on how opposition actors react and strategize in their relations with the incumbent regimes. Never in power (at best, members of a loose governing coalition, such as in Iraq in the early 1970s), more often an embattled minority opposition force, their presence has been significant in Arab politics at least throughout the Cold War (Jebari, 2020).

It is crucial to notice the presence and role of an external referent: in this case, the USSR as the sponsor for world communist parties towing Moscow’s line. Such an external reference provided key ideological guidance, coupled indeed with material resources, that allowed Arab leftists through much of the Cold War to withstand the significant repression they faced without coming to terms with the incumbent regimes (which often exerted tremendous repression against them). Relations with those regimes only mattered to a limited extent when it came to defend and sustain communism as a political project. As long as the Soviet Union existed and performed the role of external referent, the Arab left – and the communist left elsewhere for that matter – remained true to its ideological outlook and plans.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, these formations sought to accommodate such a demise through a mechanism of external diffusion (an involuntary process of adaption spurred by developments outside the domestic theatre). In doing so, they adapted to the extenuating circumstances (marginalization, repression, co-optation) under which they operated. The external change forced a different outlook and a different strategy on these opposition movements. Leftist formations suffered more from the loss of an external referent which supplied crucial ideological coordinates and organizational guidelines (in addition, to be sure, with logistical and financial support) than from domestic constraints. This suggests that an authoritarian context, no matter how restrictive or repressive (and again, the case of Iraq with extensive purges of the local communists after Saddam came to power is a case in point), has limits in its reach against opposition actors. In the case of the communist left, the external dimension emerges as a crucial mechanism through which the opposition ‘learned’ in reaction to what occurred outside and not solely to what occurred inside the country.

The logic of the external referent also applies to Shi’a Islamist formations across the region. The successful Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 played the role of an external reference for a host of groups. Notably, the emergence of Hezbollah in Lebanon in the early 1980s, or Kata’ib Hezbollah and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq in Iraq in the mid-2010s, represent in fact formations making the velayat-e faqih, the principle of the guardianship of the jurists that underpins the Islamic Republic, their key ideological tenet, too. This is not of course to dismiss the financial support, military equipment and training they receive from Teheran. What is key here, however, is the Islamic Republic qua a political template they can latch on to. Their prominence as opposition forces in Lebanese and Iraqi politics, and the fundamental incapacity of either government to disarm their military wings, owes just as much to Teheran’s unrelenting support as it does to its ideological example.

However, the velayat-e faqih have hardly played the same role in a Sunni context. Considering the Islamic Republic as an external referent for Shi’a Islamist forces highlights by contrast the overall trajectory of Islamism in the region. Iran did seek to represent an international template for a specific kind (Islamic) of revolutionary state in ways not dissimilar from the USSR (Walt, 1996). But only some Islamist actors accepted the Iranian proposition. The vast majority, stemming from either the Muslim Brotherhood tradition or various permutations of Salafism, never considered Teheran as a viable (or even acceptable) example to follow. In Tunisia, for instance, Ennahda historic leader Rachid Ghannouchi initially expressed sympathies for the Iranian Revolution, hailing it as a major inspirational example – but he quickly abandoned that position (in 1984). After the fall of Ben Ali in 2011, Ennahda increasingly talked the language of liberal democratic principles and rejected Iran as any sort of external referent.  Repression and co-optation by the regime under Bourguiba and Ben Ali, or alliances, deals and contrasts with other political parties and social forces after 2011, would represent the privileged locus of analysis.

The recent, dramatic events in Syria also point in this direction. An avowedly Salafi-Jihadist movement, HTS overthrew the Baathist regime in December 2024. Some have questioned whether HTS may still be considered a Salafi-Jihadi formation (Haenni and Drevon, 2025). Ensconced in Damascus, it has seemingly forfeited most of its erstwhile uncompromising ideological positions. The lack of a clear, viable and internationally legitimate template for Islamic (much less Salafi-Jihadi) governance has prodded the STG to fly to America as opposed fighting it, nodding to the US and its liberal democratic norms as a possible external referent.

The recent regional upheaval has not undermined the assumption of the penetrability of the regional system: rather, it has underlined the relevance of the international dimension in shaping domestic politics and, in the cases presented here, the influence on domestic opposition actors. Some of the cases presented here suggest also a further significant and somewhat paradoxical point when it comes to democratic norms diffusion and adoption. Across the globe, democracy is under considerable pressure. It is backsliding in established western democracies for its inability to deliver what citizens expect. Authoritarian rule is increasingly attractive, particularly among younger cohorts of citizens who do not seem to see the benefits of liberal democracy. Democratization also seems to be off the agenda in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries. In fact, indicators suggest that not only semi-authoritarian countries are regressing towards full autocracy, but a process of further autocratization is taking place in established authoritarian regimes (Cassani and Tomini, 2019).

The dynamics of opposition movements in the MENA region that we have presented here seem to manifest an interesting, and somewhat confounding, trend. The momentous shifts that have affected opposition actors in the region have led such actors to embrace, or at least to make overtures towards, the discourse and practice of liberal democracy. In the past, when the communist and socialist left railed against authoritarian rule in the region, it did so in the name of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It certainly did not preach for the establishment of a liberal democratic system based on elections and individual civil and political rights. But after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Marxist-Leninist parties quickly embraced the fundamental traits of hitherto despised ‘bourgeois democracies’ and made them their own, emphasizing the necessity of elected officials around liberal principles.

When the Islamist project floundered under the weight of widespread violence and evolutionary failure, Muslim Brotherhood-inspired movements and parties like Ennahda or the Moroccan Party for Justice and Development replaced the notion of an Islamist state with the one of a civil state, embracing political pluralism and manifesting increasing secular dispositions. Ghannouchi has been, in this sense, one of the most articulate voices supporting an ideological transition from an Islamic to a civil (madaniy) state. Conversations about post-Islamism (Bayat, 2013 and Roy, 2004) reflect this trend. Even in the face of post-uprisings authoritarian retrenchment with Kais Saied, when Ennahda was marginalized from the power acquired through elections, it did not react by turning to violence but insisted for the return to electoral legitimacy as did the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

This process occurred even for battle-hardened and violent jihadis. The doomed political experiences of governance of kin formations like Al Qaeda in Yemen and the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (Furlan, 2025) has prompted HTS-STG to steer away from such a model of governance. As briefly mentioned before, it has started in fact ‘to talk the talk’ of liberal democracy. Even when faced with an Israeli invasion over the Golan Heights, and direct interference in its domestic affairs regarding the Syrian Druze community, the new regime has demonstrated a surprising commitment to restraint and moderation in both rhetoric and practice – certainly not a sufficient condition for liberal democratic governance, but certainly an encouraging sign of abandonment of earlier ideological radicalism.

In other words, regardless of their provenance (Marxism-Leninism, Islamism, even Salafi-Jihadism), movements in opposition have all progressively shed their ideological radicalism. Erstwhile external referents that may have guided or inspired steadfast anti-systemic courses of action have gradually lost their capacity to represent viable templates of political action. In the cases we have examined – the Arab Communist Left, Islamist Ennahda, and Jihadi HTS – a turn towards what may be regarded as moderation, at different stages, in different modalities and in different contexts, can clearly be detected.

This ideological moderation on the heels of withering external referents suggests two additional considerations, only prima facie at odds with one another. First, this process has entailed at the very least the rhetorical adoption of some of the principles of liberal democracy, in particular the combination of civil and social rights, a degree of political pluralism, and some version of government accountability (though not necessarily or immediately via the electoral process). This is all the more remarkable given how staunchly anti-western and relatedly anti-liberal democracy all these movements have historically been.

Second, this turn to liberal democracy is itself an appeal to an external referent which can wither. In other words, we are in no position to declare that History, after all, is really over. The adoption of liberal democracy is at least rhetorical: but it may not be much more than that. It is not so much that this template, this external referent, has proven its viability. Rather, nothing else has really emerged as an appealing alternative for guiding the politics of opposition movements writ large. Russian traditionalist authoritarianism or Chinese one-party rule may work for those in power, not for those trying to gain it. Dubai hedonistic and authoritarian capitalism may have better chances, but it is not hailed yet as such an inspiring political template and might have very limited application in larger countries with no energy riches. All the while, one may well notice Al-Shar’a’s conciliatory statements towards minorities while remaining sceptical whether Syria will develop anything resembling a liberal democracy. We may in fact be witnessing a transition in the region that ominously resembles a systemic crisis: with Gramsci, we say that “the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

 

 

References

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