Africa And The Arab Spring A New Era Of Democratic Expectations

2011 saw dramatic changes in Africa's governance landscape. Unprecedented popular demonstrations in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya led to the overturning of a century of autocratic rule in North Africa. These protests, demanding greater political freedom, economic opportunity, and an end to systemic corruption, have resonated deeply across Africa, sparking calls for change throughout the continent. Already home to more of the world's democratizing states than any other region, even modest reverberations from the Arab Spring on Africa's democratic trajectory will have implications for global governance norms, stability, and development. Recognizing the fluid nature of these events, the Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS) convened a Working Group of Africa democracy experts to take stock of the significance of the Arab Spring for African democracy. The objective was to evaluate the extent to which the Arab Spring would be a catalyst for further political change on the continent, the durability of such change, the influence of other drivers and counterweights to democratization, and their combined implications for African democracy in the coming years. Based on this analysis, the Working Group assessed priority actions that would be required of African and international actors to reinforce and sustain Africa's nascent democratic structures.

2011 saw dramatic changes in Africa's governance landscape. Unprecedented popular demonstrations in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya led to the overturning of a century of autocratic rule in North Africa. These protests, demanding greater political freedom, economic opportunity, and an end to systemic corruption, have resonated deeply across Africa, sparking calls for change throughout the continent. Already home to more of the world's democratizing states than any other region, even modest reverberations from the Arab Spring on Africa's democratic trajectory will have implications for global governance norms, stability, and development. Recognizing the fluid nature of these events, the Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS) convened a Working Group of Africa democracy experts to take stock of the significance of the Arab Spring for African democracy. The objective was to evaluate the extent to which the Arab Spring would be a catalyst for further political change on the continent, the durability of such change, the influence of other drivers and counterweights to democratization, and their combined implications for African democracy in the coming years. Based on this analysis, the Working Group assessed priority actions that would be required of African and international actors to reinforce and sustain Africa's nascent democratic structures. The insights from these deliberations have informed this ACSS Special Report as distilled and principally authored by Working Group Chair, Joseph Siegle. All members of the Working Group endorse the findings and recommendations herein

2011 saw dramatic changes in Africa's governance landscape. Unprecedented popular demonstrations in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya led to the overturning of a century of autocratic rule in North Africa. These protests, demanding greater political freedom, economic opportunity, and an end to systemic corruption, have resonated deeply across Africa, sparking calls for change throughout the continent. Already home to more of the world's democratizing states than any other region, even modest reverberations from the Arab Spring on Africa's democratic trajectory will have implications for global governance norms, stability, and development. Recognizing the fluid nature of these events, the Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS) convened a Working Group of Africa democracy experts to take stock of the significance of the Arab Spring for African democracy. The objective was to evaluate the extent to which the Arab Spring would be a catalyst for further political change on the continent, the durability of such change, the influence of other drivers and counterweights to democratization, and their combined implications for African democracy in the coming years. Based on this analysis, the Working Group assessed priority actions that would be required of African and international actors to reinforce and sustain Africa's nascent democratic structures. The insights from these deliberations have informed this ACSS Special Report as distilled and principally authored by Working Group Chair, Joseph Siegle. All members of the Working Group endorse the findings and recommendations herein.

The Arab Spring, widely perceived as a momentous event in West Asia, has evoked a persistent flow of interpretation and analysis by academic experts and policy-makers since the upheaval first broke out in December 2010 and the pace of events suggests the flow of analysis on this issue will continue. Like all great social upheavals, the Arab Spring was long-drawn-out in its realisation and born of many factors that are intertwined. It could have occurred any time during the course of the last two or three decades but each passing year brought to the forefront new developments that made it that much more imminent. Economic problems, social problems, political problems, juridical problems and diplomatic problems combined to contribute to an uncompromising sense of grievance across the Arab world that ultimately manifested itself in the Arab spring and winter of 2011. This volume comes out of a conference organised by the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, in collaboration with Institute of Foreign Policy Studies and Centre of Pakistan and West Asian Studies, in which an attempt was made to discuss these issues threadbare.

Amid the current turmoil in the Middle East, Understanding Tahrir Square sounds a rare optimistic note. Surveying countries in other parts of the world during their transitions to democracy, author Stephen Grand argues that the long-term prospects in many parts of the Arab world are actually quite positive. If the current polarization and political violence in the region can be overcome, democracy will eventually take root. The key to this change will likely be ordinary citizens—foremost among them the young protestors of the Arab Spring who have filled the region's public spaces—most famously, Egypt's Tahrir Square. The book puts the Arab Spring in comparative perspective. It reveals how globalization and other changes are upending the expectations of citizens everywhere about the relationship between citizen and state. Separate chapters examine the experiences of countries in the former Eastern bloc, in the Muslim-majority states of Asia, in Latin America, and in Sub-Saharan Africa during the recent Third Wave of democratization. What these cases show is that, at the end of the day, democracy requires democrats. Many complex factors go into making a democracy successful, such as the caliber of its political leaders, the quality of its constitution, and the design of its political institutions. But unless there is clear public demand for new institutions to function as intended, political leaders are unlikely to abide by the limits those institutions impose. If American policymakers want to support the brave activists struggling to bring democracy to the Arab world, helping them cultivate an effective political constituency for democracy—in essence, growing the Tahrir Square base—should be the lodestar of U.S. assistance.

Examines the variety of mostly unorganized and informal ways in which Africans exercise agency and resist state power in the 21st century, through citizen action and popular culture, and how the relationship between ruler and ruled is being reframed.