Beyond Structural Explanations: Causal Configurations of Authoritarian Regime Collapse during the Arab Spring

Why do comparable military defections and elite divisions sometimes produce regime collapse while identical conditions fail elsewhere? Conventional explanations falter by assuming uniform effects rather than context-dependent configurations. This article argues that breakdown arises from conjunctural combinations, transcending variable-centred approaches via Qualitative Comparative Analysis of eleven high-intensity protest cases from 2010-2014. Military insubordination, elite fragmentation, and the absence of external support prove necessary and jointly sufficient for collapse. Two equifinal pathways emerge: endogenous breakdown through domestic fragmentation without external support; and externally assisted collapse fuelled by foreign intervention. Structural factor such as youth unemployment and institutional weakness, however, do not achieve conventional necessity thresholds, acting as permissive enablers of mobilisation rather than determinants of outcomes. This set-theoretic test advances configurational methods, explaining divergent trajectories in similar cases while challenging monocausal and linear approaches.