Democratization process in MENA : A comparative case study on Arab spring in Yemen and Tunisia

The purpose of this study was to analyze and compare why Yemen’s democratization process failed while Tunisia’s succeed after the Arab spring. The main question of this paper is: Why did the democratization process in Yemen failed, but succeeded in Tunisia after the Arab Spring emergence in year 2011 based on Diamonds theory? The method that applied to this study is a comparative case study in form of “Most Similar System Design” known as “MSS-design”. After applied four of Larry Diamonds nine factors, the study finally reached the answer of the main question. The results showed that the absence of historically solid national unity, internally fragmented civil society and the military intervention of Saudi-led coalition was the main factors that caused why Yemen’s democratization process failed. On the other side the strong civil society, diplomatic peaceful pressure and the historical separation of military from the Tunisian political system was the main factors that pushed Tunisia towards democracy.