Aspiring to the ‘gatekeeper role’ in the realm of foreign policy? The North African Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Arab Spring era

This article explores the evolving foreign policy roles played by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia, by drawing on a unique data set of diplomatic data, interviews and field research, and a small, largely case study-oriented literature. The results demonstrate that North Africa is unique as a region due to the fact that all five North African countries maintain ‘high’ levels of diplomatic representation (i.e. more than forty-five embassies maintained abroad), and that these embassy networks have grown and diversified throughout the contemporary independence era, including during the Arab Spring. This is principally due to economic power and cultural history; neither a country’s size, regime type, nor transition to democracy appear to matter. Second, the foreign policy role played by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs throughout North Africa has ebbed and flowed during the last sixty-seven years (1951–2018), including during the Arab Spring. The evolution of foreign policy influence is the result of a number of factors, including regime type, the stability (i.e. turn-over rate) of the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the rise and decline of other government institutions and especially other bureaucracies. Of particular importance is the relationship of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the economic affairs bureaucracies, the Ministry of Defense and the military establishment more broadly, and the assumption of power by moderate Islamist parties.