Arab Spring Uprisings: Revolutionary Patterns and Theoretical Explanations
Literature on authoritarianism and democratization in the Arab world lacks the required political shrewdness to predict and explain the trajectory of current Arab uprisings. In this paper, I briefly highlight theoretical explanations of concurrent Arab uprisings through a literature review on the wr...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Sakarya University
2014-07-01
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| Series: | Akademik İncelemeler Dergisi |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/17774 |
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| Summary: | Literature on authoritarianism and democratization in the Arab world lacks the required political shrewdness to predict and explain the trajectory of current Arab uprisings. In this paper, I briefly highlight theoretical explanations of concurrent Arab uprisings through a literature review on the writings of democratization, authoritarianism in the Middle East and third generation insights on the causes of revolutions. Theoretical explanations are supported with empirical evidences from State Fragility, and Transformation Index on the democracy status of eight Arab countries: Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Bahrain, Jordan, Libya, Yemen, and Algeria. The paper seeks to illustrate differences of revolutionary patterns among those countries, how this can be theoretically explained, and how concurrent upheavals would draw a new political map for the region. Through theoretical discussion to Arab uprisings, and available empirical evidences the paper argues that revolutionary situation is more likely to emerge due to level of elite’s solidarity, autonomy of armed forces, national unity and geopolitics of the region compared with other factors like coercion, and economic, and political structure of the state. |
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| ISSN: | 1306-7885 |