In The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen offers an interpretation of the biblical Good Samaritan according to which the Samaritan stops not because he recognizes the need of his neighbor, but because through the act of stopping he enters into a neighborly relation.Footnote ¹ Practice similarly helped to constitute neighborly relations for Yemeni activists who forged new solidarities through their experiences during the eleven-month uprising of 2011 and its aftermath.Footnote ² Yemeni activists across the political spectrum—from Marxists to Islamists to liberal constitutionalists—have remarked that late nights spent in the squares writing slogans, making posters, and preparing and serving meals fundamentally altered their sense of self in relation to differently situated others. Rather than articulating a single national(ist) project, however, many activists speak of solidarities made in difference, or what political philosopher Iris Marion Young described as “a relationship among separate and dissimilar actors who decide to stand together, for one another.”Footnote ³ These solidarities resulted in new and concrete forms of activism, which the formal transitional process has severely undermined. The experiences of Yemeni activists stand as an important reminder to scholars to attend to the intersection of formal and informal in our analysis of the politics of the Arab uprisings.

Like other movements in the region that seemed to (but did not) come out of nowhere, the Yemeni uprising built upon multiple and overlapping forms of protest that preceded the 2011 Thawrat al-Taghir (Change Revolution) by several years. Leading up to the uprising, policy analysts and journalists routinely characterized Yemen as “on the brink,” due to a secessionist movement in the south, an armed insurrection in the far north, and the growing impact of al-Qaʿida in the Arabian Peninsula in many parts of the country.Footnote ⁴ Frustration with the government's inability or unwillingness to address these crises, as well as with its rampant corruption and suppression of critics, fueled the 2011 Yemeni uprising. A nonviolent protest movement emerged and persisted for nearly a year alongside violence between rival factions of a fractured military and, in some places, tribal irregulars. While media coverage often tied violence to the specter of civil war, less attention was paid to the armed “people protectors” who encircled the protest camps to protect them and create space for sustained nonviolent collective action, thereby contributing to the conditions that enabled new relationships among activists.

In the year following the uprising, Yemeni activists worked together in the squares, in workshops, and in new media collaborations, demonstrating a respect for each other's concerns that was rare in opposition circles of the 2000s, when it was often mistrust and formalism that characterized the politics of the opposition alliance. Collective action transformed these activists not into undifferentiated Yemeni citizens engaged in a common struggle, but rather into differentiated comrades in solidarity who spoke of one another with commitment, even from positions of disagreement. As one activist recollected, collective action afforded him his “first opportunity to meet youth, farmers, and workers from governorates like Maʾrib, al-Jawf, and al-Mahra. Even . . . participants from Sanaʿa represented diverse backgrounds and political affiliations, bringing about an opportunity for interaction that never existed before.”Footnote ⁵ Many recognized—some for the first time—that they had a stake in defending each other's right to difference.

Through the quotidian work of coordinating protest, activists enacted new ways of dealing with difference by foregrounding rather than effacing it. Grassroots organizations such as the #SupportYemen media collective, Resonate Yemen, and others born in the squares attracted diverse contributors who have emphasized the value of principled disagreement in their work, demonstrating that it is entirely possible to “stand together, and for one another” in difference.

The agreement that ultimately succeeded in removing President ʿAli ʿAbd Allah Salih from office, however, failed to account substantively for the new forms of cooperation and dissent evolving on the ground. In response to the 18 March 2011 massacre of civilians by regime loyalists and the ensuing defection of factions of the armed forces, tribal militias, and prominent civil servants, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) brokered an agreement between President Salih and elites from the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP), a nearly decade-old alliance of formal opposition parties. This agreement was ultimately adopted as the basis of UN Security Council Resolution 2014 and remains the backbone of Yemen's transitional process. Three of the agreement's central provisions—the creation of a power-sharing government divided between Salih's ruling General People's Congress and the JMP, the provision of legal immunity for Salih and his closest allies, and the plan for Salih's vice president, ʿAbd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, to run for president in an uncontested election—made clear that it was not a template for a substantive democratic transition. Unsurprisingly, when representatives of the JMP signed the agreement (months before Salih accepted its terms), protesters turned on JMP members, adopting the slogan lā qabīla lā aḥzāb—thawratnā thawrat shabāb (no tribe, no parties—our revolution is a youth revolution).

The transitional process proceeded, barely registering this claim. The planners implemented the controversial mechanisms and moved on to the agreement's centerpiece, the National Dialogue Conference (NDC). At every stage in the NDC planning process, inclusivity was scuttled in favor of the embedded interests of established partisan, military, and tribal figures.Footnote ⁶ However, continuing mass mobilizations such as the Life March and Dignity March (in which tens of thousands marched hundreds of kilometers on foot from Taʿizz and Hodeida, respectively, to Sanaʿa in opposition to the GCC initiative's immunity provision and the JMP's support of it) show that the unity government mandated by the initiative did not represent the aspirations of major sectors of the population. The agreement's weaknesses were further reflected by the sit-ins and work stoppages that made up the so-called “parallel revolution,” which focused on public-sector corruption largely unaddressed by the transition. The role of the JMP—by then part of the new government—in suppressing these nonviolent forms of activism highlights the tension that has come to characterize the relationship between, on the one hand, the leaders of ossified opposition parties, and on the other hand, partisan youth and independents.

The NDC deepened the divide between party leaders and those who mobilized the uprising. Most troubling to independent activists was what many characterized as the NDC's quota-based representational logic. As one activist described it, “the way groups are identified [for representation in the NDC] puts us in closed boxes and reduces our identity to only one.”Footnote ⁷ This logic suppressed activists’ changing sense of self, in relation to both others and the state, forged through collective action—a shift that, as another activist noted, “wouldn't have happened otherwise.”Footnote ⁸ Rather than building an institutional framework capable of sustaining solidarities across difference, the partisan and demographic logic of NDC appointments undermined activists’ ability to stand with differently situated others.

Within the parties themselves, the NDC closed opportunities for younger members to reform party policy and practice on the basis of their experiences in the squares. Absent any incentive to do otherwise, many parties suspended internal consultative and electoral processes for the duration of the NDC. An overwhelming majority of partisan youth surveyed by Resonate Yemen complained that their party's selection of NDC delegates was opaque and lacked accountability.Footnote ⁹ On the whole, the process thus left no path for partisan youth or independent activists to shape political agendas or practice at a pivotal moment of formal restructuring.

Despite these glaring problems, President Obama and others have continued to promote the premise that Yemen's National Dialogue could serve as a model for deescalating violence in other parts of the region by helping “to give people a sense that there is a legitimate political outlet for grievances that they may have” and by advancing “policies of inclusiveness.”Footnote ¹⁰ There is little reason for such optimism. In fact, more Yemenis have died during the “transition” process than died during the 2011 uprising. The UN currently estimates that deteriorating security conditions and government paralysis have left half of all Yemenis—more than 14 million people—in need of immediate humanitarian assistance.Footnote ¹¹ And most recently, one of the groups marginalized by the transitional government has launched a full-scale attack on Sanaʿa, leaving the capital in disarray. Given these stark realities, it is impossible to judge Yemen's transitional process a success, let alone a model to apply elsewhere.

Although the framework of the GCC agreement has been a dead end for independent and youth activists, a parallel process has been underway outside of formal transitional institutions that hints at the durability of at least some new solidarities and at the possibility for effective change. Since 2011, a broader and more inclusive range of Yemeni activists has participated in a number of programs and events through which these activists have connected to others facing similar (though not identical) challenges, shared experiences, strategies, and goals, and forged direct contact with decision makers outside of formal Yemeni government channels, thus expanding their voice in international policymaking. Although this participation is clearly politicized—the selection of participants favors particular political projects, and the required skills and capacities tend to promote actors with particular identities—it has contributed to the growth of a region-wide epistemic community of what Sheila Carapico has called “norm entrepreneurs and interpreters” committed to accountable and inclusive politics.Footnote ¹²

Unfortunately, there is something of a vicious cycle in this process. The seeming irrelevance of formal institutions to crisis management—let alone to the more robust standard of accountable governance—is at once a symptom and a contributing factor to activists’ turn outward. Yet activists will find it difficult to effect change without engaging state actors and institutions. How will the informal meet the formal without being subsumed by its impoverished logic of representation? By failing to account for the role of informal practices in building formal institutions, scholars and policymakers may overlook a critical ingredient in the development of the kind of state capable of responding to Yemen's current crises and to the broad and diverse aspirations of Yemeni society.

Throughout the region, revolutionary solidarities have appeared and then seemingly foundered on the rocks of identity politics. In the Yemeni case, however, it has been transitional institutions more than entrenched identities that have eroded solidarities made through informal practices of collective action. This may be one of the most durable lessons of the Yemeni uprising and the ensuing transitional period. Rather than serving as a template for resolving other conflicts in the region—in the words of President Obama and others, the “Yemen Model”—today's febrile and polarized environment points to the risks inherent to formal institutional changes that do not account for important shifts in informal politics.