Democratic Uprisings In The New Middle East

As Egypt retreats from its newly elected government and Syria moves from one crisis to another, this book’s reflection on the Arab Spring could not be more timely. Monshipouri’s account of the role of emotion, solidarity, and online activism is informed by several trips to the region that continue to this day. The uprisings were fueled by a demographic surge of young people unable to find employment and frustrated by the lack of freedom, and now the elected regime has been ousted for failing to address these continuing circumstances. While modern technologies and social media may have brought new politics to the streets, organization on the ground trumps the enthusiasm of young protesters when it comes to shaping a country’s political future. How to turn elections into democracy in these post-conflict societies continues to be a daunting task, especially in countries with a longstanding history of military involvement in politics now experiencing a resurgence. This book addresses all of these subjects in an engaging and accessible narrative. Key features of the text:

Barely a year after the self-immolation of a young fruit seller in Tunisia, a vast wave of popular protest has convulsed the Middle East, overthrowing long-ruling dictators and transforming the region’s politics almost beyond recognition. But the biggest transformations of what has been labeled as the “Arab Spring” are yet to come. An insider to both American policy and the world of the Arab public, Marc Lynch shows that the fall of particular leaders is but the least of the changes that will emerge from months of unrest. The far-ranging implications of the rise of an interconnected and newly-empowered Arab populace have only begun to be felt. Young, frustrated Arabs now know that protest can work and that change is possible. They have lost their fear—meanwhile their leaders, desperate to survive, have heard the unprecedented message that killing their own people will no longer keep them in power. Even so, as Lynch reminds us, the last wave of region-wide protest in the 1950s and 1960s resulted not in democracy, but in brutal autocracy. Will the Arab world’s struggle for change succeed in building open societies? Will authoritarian regimes regain their grip, or will Islamist movements seize the initiative to impose a new kind of rule? The Arab Uprising follows these struggles from Tunisia and Egypt to the harsh battles of Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and Libya and to the cautious reforms of the region’s monarchies. It examines the real meaning of the rise of Islamist movements in the emerging democracies, and the longterm hopes of a generation of activists confronted with the limits of their power. It points toward a striking change in the hierarchy of influence, as the old heavyweights—Iran, Al Qaeda, even Israel—have been all but left out while oil-rich powers like Saudi Arabia and “swing states” like Turkey and Qatar find new opportunities to spread their influence. And it reveals how America must adjust to the new realities. Deeply informed by inside access to the Obama administration’s decision-making process and first-hand interviews with protestors, politicians, diplomats, and journalists, The Arab Uprising highlights the new fault lines that are forming between forces of revolution and counter-revolution, and shows what it all means for the future of American policy. The result is an indispensible guide to the changing lay of the land in the Middle East and North Africa.

The New Middle East critically examines the Arab popular uprisings of 2011-12.

In False Dawn, noted Middle East regional expert Steven Cook offers a sweeping narrative account of the past five years, moving from Turkey to Tunisia to Yemen to Iraq to Egypt and beyond, ultimately presenting a powerful theoretical analysis of why the Arab Spring failed.

The 2011 eruptions of popular discontent across the Arab world, popularly dubbed the Arab Spring, were local manifestations of a regional mass movement for democracy, freedom, and human dignity. Authoritarian regimes were either overthrown or put on notice that the old ways of oppressing their subjects would no longer be tolerated. These essays from Middle East Report—the leading source of timely reporting and insightful analysis of the region—cover events in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen. Written for a broad audience of students, policymakers, media analysts, and general readers, the collection reveals the underlying causes of the revolts by identifying key trends during the last two decades leading up to the recent insurrections.

Marc Lynch's last book, The Arab Uprising, described the then ongoing revolutionary change and prospect for the consolidation of democracy in key Arab countries that still seemed possible. But Lynch saw dark signs on the horizon, especially in Syria. That book ended with the hope that the Arab uprisings heralded a fundamental change over the long-term, but with the warning that Arab regimes would not easily give up their power. Instead, Egypt’s revolution has given way to a military coup; Libya’s produced a failed state; Yemen is the battleground for a proxy war and will be destroyed; Syria has become a sprawling humanitarian catastrophe that will take a generation to begin to recover from. At the same time, America has less and less reason to want to engage with the region and now has only one functional ally apart from Israel. The New Arab Wars describes how the political landscape of an entire region has been convulsed, with much of it given over to anarchy, as proxy wars on behalf of three competing powers—Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia—scar the region. It is a brutal, compelling story.

The recent "Arab spring", with its popular uprisings in many Arab countries, has exposed the ambiguity at the heart of American promotion of democracy in the Middle East. The US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were packaged as democracy promotion, as heralding the beginning of a new phase in the politics of the Middle East when democracy would replace authoritarian regimes. Many of these authoritarian regimes, however, were sustained by US support. The recent popular uprisings threaten to bring democracy without promotion by the US, and threaten to overthrow regimes previously supported by the US and important for US strategy in the region – hence an initial hesitant response by the US to some of the uprisings. This book explores the contradictions in American democracy promotion in the Middle East. It discusses the principles underlying US democracy promotion, and the debates surrounding US policy formation, and examines the application of US democracy promotion in specific cases. It concludes by assessing the likely future patterns of US engagement with democratic reform in the Middle East.

Popular uprisings and revolts across the Arab Middle East have often resulted in a democratic faragh or void in power. How society seeks to fill that void, regardless of whether the regime falls or survives, is the common trajectory followed by the seven empirical case studies published here for the first time. This edited volume seeks to unpack the state of the democratic void in three interrelated fields: democracy, legitimacy and social relations. In doing so, the conventional treatment of democratization as a linear, formal, systemic and systematic process is challenged and the power politics of democratic transition reassessed. Through a close examination of case studies focusing on Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, this collection introduces the reader to indigenous narratives on how power is wrested and negotiated from the bottom up. It will be of interest to those seeking a fresh perspective on democratization models as well as those seeking to understand the reshaping of the Arab Middle East in the lead-up to the Arab Spring.