Typology of the Arab Left

Despite a growing consensus that socio-economic grievances were the main driving factors behind the 2011 protests across the Arab world, the changes brought on by those protests did not benefit the Arab left. Why was the left not able to take advantage of this new, more favorable environment? I argue that academic approaches to the question have been insufficient, due to imprecise definitions and categories when discussing the left. Based on ethnographically informed interviews with current and former left wing party members in Tunisia, I have created a new typology of the left, one which takes the organizational differences between parties seriously. By seriously examining the different ways the left has responded to the constraints of the authoritarian system, I will explain why the different streams of the left faced limited paths after 2011, in a framework that can be extended across the Arab world.