The Term Arab Spring
Arab Spring
ARAB SPRING
The term Arab Spring as used to denote these events may have started with an article by Marc Lynch published in the political journal Foreign Policy. The Arab Spring is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations, protests, and wars occurring in the Arab world that began on 18 December 2010 and have continued since. To date, rulers have been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen; civil uprisings have erupted in Bahrain and Syria; major protests have broken out in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Sudan. Some key characteristics of this revolutionary movement are the key role of social media, difference of results in monarchies and dictatorial political setups and the containment of the dissent to the Muslim world. Enough time has passed to try to make sense of what has happened so far and, perhaps, gain an inkling of where the region is headed.
CAUSES
Like all great social upheavals, the Arab Spring was long in the making, and born of many intertwined causes. The best way to understand what happened in the Arab world in 2011 is to start with the stagnation of the Arab economies. While other countries in the world evolved from agrarian economies to industrial economies to information economies, the Arab world lagged far behind. United Nations’ Arab Human Development Report first pointed out almost ten years ago, the foibles of the inadequate educational method of the Arab world. Before 2011 the Middle East was a democratic desert: only Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories could lay any claim to democracy, and all three efforts were deeply imperfect. The net effect of ulcerous economic liabilities, inadequate education and political lag: unemployment, underdevelopment and yawning wealth gaps. In the Arab autocracies, the poor, the working classes, and the middle classes met only callous indifference, corruption, and humiliation when they sought redress from their governments.
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Arab Spring
ARAB SPRING
The term Arab Spring as used to denote these events may have started with an article by Marc Lynch published in the political journal Foreign Policy. The Arab Spring is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations, protests, and wars occurring in the Arab world that began on 18 December 2010 and have continued since. To date, rulers have been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen; civil uprisings have erupted in Bahrain and Syria; major protests have broken out in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Sudan. Some key characteristics of this revolutionary movement are the key role of social media, difference of results in monarchies and dictatorial political setups and the containment of the dissent to the Muslim world. Enough time has passed to try to make sense of what has happened so far and, perhaps, gain an inkling of where the region is headed.
CAUSES
Like all great social upheavals, the Arab Spring was long in the making, and born of many intertwined causes. The best way to understand what happened in the Arab world in 2011 is to start with the stagnation of the Arab economies. While other countries in the world evolved from agrarian economies to industrial economies to information economies, the Arab world lagged far behind. United Nations’ Arab Human Development Report first pointed out almost ten years ago, the foibles of the inadequate educational method of the Arab world. Before 2011 the Middle East was a democratic desert: only Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories could lay any claim to democracy, and all three efforts were deeply imperfect. The net effect of ulcerous economic liabilities, inadequate education and political lag: unemployment, underdevelopment and yawning wealth gaps. In the Arab autocracies, the poor, the working classes, and the middle classes met only callous indifference, corruption, and humiliation when they sought redress from their governments.
1|Page
Arab Spring