After the Arab Uprisings

Abstract

The Middle East and North Africa region has not been immune to forms of contentious politicsfar from it. The region has experienced independence struggles, revolutions, labor protests, and demonstrations for women's rights. Yet it has been regarded as a laggard in the democracy waves that Samuel Huntington theorized. The region was not, for example, part of democracy's third wave, which enveloped Southern Europe, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and parts of Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa between the mid-1970s and 1990. Eva Bellin asked: "Why have the Middle East and North Africa remained so singularly resistant to democratization?" Michael Herb noted that among the Arab monarchies, all except Morocco lacked a strong party system. Just before the start of the Arab Spring protests, Larry Diamond wrote, "The continuing absence of even a single democratic regime in the Arab world is a striking anomalythe principal exception to the globalization of democracy." At around the same time, Asef Bayat argued that mass protests for political change were unlikely to occur, and thus analysis had to focus on variegated individual and localized forms of resistance. 1 Shortly thereafter, the region exploded in mass protests, with demands for political change and socioeconomic rights.As noted, the immediate outcomes varied. Regime changes occurred in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, albeit in very different ways; Syria, Libya, and Yemen descended into varying degrees of violence and then internationalized civil conflict; and Bahrain's Day of Rage was suppressed with Saudi military support. The Tahrir Square protests in Egypt raised expectations of significant sociopolitical transformation, and in 2011-12, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia appeared to be undergoing a democratic transition. However, by 2013 Egypt's process had stalled and then reverted to a military-led authoritarianism, and in Pathways to Democratization 27 terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

Mapping methodological nationalism in Middle Eastern studies: Toward a transnational understanding of the 2011 Arab uprisings?

“…Consequently, a variety of variables are included in multilevel analyses. An example is the assessment of the interrelation between (international) nongovernmental organizations and local or regional dynamics (Mako & Moghadam, 2021).…”

What Was the Arab Spring? The Promises and Perils of Globalization

“…Some studies attributed the structural causes of the uprisings to the fallout from two decades of neoliberalization, including rising prices, high unemployment, and deteriorating public services (Achcar, 2013;Hanieh, 2013). Others explored the combination of internal and external factors and forces: authoritarianism and unpopular regimes; collective action legacies; democracy promotion and diffusion of norms of human rights; the effects of the Great Recession (Brownlee, Masoud, & Reynolds, 2015;Mako & Moghadam, 2021). The protests engulfed many countries in the region; four autocrats fell (in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen); and other governments quelled the protests and avoided revolts through some degree of reform and concession.…”

Immanuel Wallerstein’s Lasting Legacies

“…Deterioration of economic conditions led to protests and clampdowns in 2017-2019, numerous casualties from the COVID-19 pandemic, and renewed enforcement of hejab strictures-which led to the death in police custody of a young woman from Iran's Kurdistan province, Mahsa Jina Amini, in September 2022. 7 In Tunisia's case, its 2011 political revolution, part of the so-called fourth wave democratic transitions, took place in an untoward global economic environment and did not receive the international financial assistance necessary for an effective and sustainable democratic development strategy (Mako and Moghadam 2021). Instead, the country endured over a decade of high unemployment, declining foreign investment and receipts from tourism, an increasingly dangerous neighborhood after the NATO assault on Libya and the internationalized civil conflict in Syria, growing indebtedness, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, rising prices and shortages from the Russia-Ukraine-NATO war, and the attendant political travails.…”