The Rise and Fall of Bahrain’s Al-Wefaq Society: De-democratisation and Crackdown in a Troubled Gulf State

Abstract

This chapter examines the cycle of contention that began with Bahrain’s decade of political liberalisation prior to the 2011 Arab Spring uprising and ended with measures to dissolve the country’s last remaining legal political societies in 2017. In seeking to explain why Bahrain has abandoned its ‘National Action Charter’ reform process in favour of a return to full authoritarianism, this chapter analyses the fate of the al-Wefaq Society, Bahrain’s largest opposition group and the most popular political organisation within the country’s Shi’a community. In examining the government's post-2011 crackdown on moderate, ‘tolerated’ opposition groups such as al-Wefaq, this chapter asserts that Bahrain’s liberalising reforms were never intended to situate the country on a path to democratisation and rather should be viewed as an attempt to secure the Al Khalifa’s grip on power. This chapter argues that the National Action Charter’s failure to inoculate the regime against Arab Spring-inspired unrest led to its abandonment in favour of tried-and-tested authoritarian strategies such as repression and military intervention.