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Perturbations in the Arab World During the Arab Spring: A General Analysis

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Islamism, Arab Spring, and the Future of Democracy

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Abstract

This chapter offers an analysis of the conditions in the MENA countries on the eve of the Arab Spring in the World System perspective, as well as causes (internal and external, general and specific) and certain consequences of the Arab revolutions in certain countries, the MENA region and in the World System. We will discuss Arab revolutions in a wide historical and theoretical context. It is very useful to compare the causes of revolutions in modern and previous epochs, in Arab and others countries; to find similarities and specificity. For example, in Arab revolutions, a very important role was played by new information technologies. The revolutionary sentiments are especially fueled by the diffusion of radical ideas and ideologies in a society, as well as by a rapid urbanization, growing youth share in the demographic composition and rapidly increasing education level of a part of population in combination with poor education of the other part. Thus, the rapid unregulated changes, and increasing structural disproportions may bring a society to a modernization trap which often causes revolutions and other political upheavals. All these phenomena were present in the Arab countries on the eve of the Arab Spring, especially in Egypt and Tunisia.

The corresponding authors for this chapter are Leonid Grinin (leonid.grinin@gmail.com) and Andrey Korotayev (akorotayev@gmail.com).

This chapter is an output of a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in 2018 with support by the Russian Science Foundation (Project No. 14-11-00634).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “The echo of the North African revolutions has even reached the authoritarian regimes of Central Asia, including Kazakhstan… Though those two regions differ significantly from each other, they have much in common: dependence on carbohydrates, mass poverty, long rule of political leaders, and the absence of democratic transitions of power” (Nabitovski 2011). Note that in the quote above the poverty of the two regions in questions is grossly exaggerated—by the Third World standards the living standards in both regions is fairly high (especially, in comparison with Tropical Africa or South Asia) (see below, or, e.g., Korotayev and Zinkina 2011a, b). Actually, the mass media of the Arab Spring period were full with such exaggerations.

  2. 2.

    See, e.g., Austin Holmes (2012), Goldstone (2011), Beck (2011), Lang and De Sterck (2014), Korotayev et al. 2013, Korotayev et al. (2014a), Grinin and Korotayev (2011, 2012a, b), Howard and Hussain (2013), Brynen et al. (2012), Weyland (2012), Wilson (2013), Beissinger et al. (2015), Sumiala and Korpiola (2017) etc.

  3. 3.

    Of course, this is an exaggeration, especially in relation to countries such as Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, etc. This shows the level of understanding of Islamic countries, as well as Islamist movements on the part of the media.

  4. 4.

    For example, Ali Abdullah Saleh was in power in Yemen for 34 years; Hosni Mubarak in Egypt was for 30 years, Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya was for 42 years, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia was for 24 years, whereas Bashar al-Assad by the present moment has been occupying the position of the President of Syria for more than 17 years….

  5. 5.

    Incidentally, in most modern revolutions (with the exception, perhaps, of some revolutions led by communist, ultra-right, or radical Islamist leaders), the demand for freedom and democracy occupies an important, if not the most important, place. And even during the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1978–1979 at least part of the revolutionary forces opposed the authoritarian monarchy and fought for freedom and democracy.

  6. 6.

    This is just by definition, as otherwise such regimes would be classified as democratic.

  7. 7.

    Note that military factories (virtually possessed by Egyptian generals) have a clear competitive advantage, as they can exploit virtually free labor of the conscripts (see, e.g., Tadros 2012).

  8. 8.

    However, the latter estimate appears to be clearly exaggerated.

  9. 9.

    However, even with respect to Yemen one could not observe any substantial trend toward the decline of the level of life of its population in the pre-Arab-Spring period; hence, even with respect to Yemen such an explanation does not look convincing at all.

  10. 10.

    To understand how false is the fashionable interpretation of the Arab Spring as “a revolution of the hungry”, it appears appropriate to mention the percentage of obesity among the Egyptians by the start of the Arab Spring was one of the highest in the world (e.g., Korotayev and Zinkina 2011a, b; Martorell et al. 2000). According to Egyptian Demographic and Health Survey (conducted in 2008), 40% of Egyptian women and 18% of men were overweight because of overeating (Egypt Ministry of Health et al. 2009). According to a bit more recent data, these figures equal 22% for males and 48% for females just by the beginning of the protests under a hypocritical slogan “Bread, Freedom, Social Justice!” (Badran and Laher 2011: 3). The Egyptian liberals have to recognize now that there was much more freedom and social justice before the revolution (Grinin et al. 2016: 237–258). And in January 2011 it was difficult to find in the world a population better provided with the bread than the population of Egypt (Korotayev and Zinkina 2011a, b). If anything, the Egyptian 2011 revolution was “a revolution of the fat”. As we have shown earlier, by 2011 a substantial proportion of Egyptians continued getting food subsidies from the government while suffering serious obesity problems (Korotayev and Zinkina 2011a, b; see also Korotayev and Zinkina 2015: 413).

  11. 11.

    See, e.g., Grinin and Korotayev (2012, b), Grinin (2012a, 2013b, 2017a, b), Korotayev et al. (2011) etc.; Korotayev (2017).

  12. 12.

    For example, in Athens since Solon’s times there operated a law that claimed that when the city was torn by civil strife everyone who refused to join one of the warring sides and place his arms at the disposal of either side would be deprived of civil rights (see Aristotle 8.5; Kautsky 1931: 334–335). The situation of civil strife was called stasis (for details about it see Finley 1984a, b; van der Vliet 2005; Berent 1998). About the peculiarities of ancient democracies, the overthrows of power and civil strifes in them see also Grinin (2004).

  13. 13.

    As we already mentioned, the growth of education stimulated the expansion of social basis of Islamism by increasing the number of people capable of independent reading of spiritual literature and trying to make sense of the issues important for them. The same occurred during the sixteenth-century Reformation in Europe.

  14. 14.

    Meanwhile, the insufficiently democratic regimes are even more vulnerable to destabilization risks than the monarchic ones. Under certain circumstances the former experience a more considerable collapse in case of a successful revolution.

  15. 15.

    In particular case of the Arab Spring it was the coincidence of economic crisis and increase in food prices (see below). Let us add that the emerging problems are often reinforced by the accelerated demographic growth which usually occurs due to the above-mentioned “improvement of quality of life” (see, e.g., Korotayev et al. 2011, 2014b, 2015a).

  16. 16.

    By the way, it took place at the peak of the first wave of global food price explosion, so called “agflation” (see below for more detail on the agflation factor, see also Korotayev and Zinkina 2011a, b).

  17. 17.

    See, e.g., Aftandilian (2009).

  18. 18.

    As regards purely conspirological explanations of the Arab Spring, the following observation of William J. Dobson appears to be very relevant. He calls conspiracy theories “the last refuge of dictators” and maintains: “It was true that these countries did have Western civil society organizations working there. But it has never been explained how a handful of employees from a few poorly funded nongovernmental organizations were capable of toppling a string of authoritarian regimes” (Dobson 2011). What is even more important that the mainstream governmental structures of the West (like the CIA) had no reason to topple Hosni Mubarak, a faithful ally of the USA, which implies that the respective NGO frequently acted against the interests of their governments and not under their orders. Hence, if this could be called a conspiracy then it is a conspiracy of a very specific sort.

  19. 19.

    In complete accordance with the demographic transition theory the decline of the birth rates in the Arab World lagged significantly behind the decline of the death rates (see, e.g., Korotayev and Zinkina 2011a, b).

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  1. National Research University Higher School of Economics and Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

    Leonid Grinin & Andrey Korotayev

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Grinin, L., Korotayev, A. (2019). Perturbations in the Arab World During the Arab Spring: A General Analysis . In: Islamism, Arab Spring, and the Future of Democracy. Perspectives on Development in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91077-2_4

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