Archival
Youssef Chahine (1926–2008), Egypt’s most celebrated director, made forty-two films over six decades. His work, which runs the gamut from social realism to melodrama, musical comedy to grand historical spectacle, resisted easy compartmentalization. In his final film, Hiyya Fawda (Chaos, 2007), he returned to a favorite theme, Egypt’s national predicament, dispensing with his recent propensity to couch his criticism in allegorical/historical garb. This paper reads Chahine’s final film as a coda to his career, highlighting several key themes—political corruption and state brutality, sexual longing and deviancy—that reference, sometimes directly, his earlier classic work. Chahine’s depiction of Egypt marks him as a prescient, courageous observer of Egypt on the brink of an “Arab Spring,” perhaps even an oracle, certainly a romantic. The ending of his final film may be typically sentimental, but it is certainly less unbelievable than when the filming ended, even if it remains a cautionary tale.
The Ennahda Movement, whose foundations were laid in Tunisia at the beginning of the 1970s by Rached Ghannouchi and his friends, has continued its existence as an Islamic movement for many years, and has acquired the identity of a political party. This article analyzes the transformation of the Ennahda Movement –the role model of political transformations for Islamic movements in the Arab world post Arab Spring–from a religious movement to a political party. The article also addresses issues such as the role of the Ennahda Party in the democratization process started in Tunisia after the Arab Spring, its contributions to the new constitution, and its influence in the governments in which it has participated.
On 9/11, the global jihadist movement burst into the world’s consciousness, but a decade later, thanks in part to the Arab Spring and the killing of Osama bin Laden, it is in crisis. With Western-backed dictators falling, al Qaeda might seem closer than ever to its goal of building Islamic states. But the revolutions have empowered the group’s chief rivals instead: Islamist parliamentarians, who are willing to use ballots, not bombs.
Since 2011, Saudi Arabia experienced the largest and longest protest movement in its modern history. This article outlines how small protests inspired by the so-called “Arab Spring” and in solidarity with the uprising in neighboring Bahrain developed into a sustained youth protest movement with its own particular demands and frames of references. At the local level, the article shows how the emergence of this protest movement affected the political and social dynamics within the Saudi Shi’a community. The government reacted with repression and an anti-Shi’a sectarian rhetoric that ensured that the “Saudi Spring” in the Eastern Province failed to spill over to the rest of the country. The case study of the Eastern Province protest movement in 2011 and 2012 shows that, while new media are good organizational tools for protesters, personal networks, a semi-autonomous public sphere, and histories of political subversion facilitate a protest movement.
Will the Arab Spring lead to long-lasting democratic change? To explore this question, I examine the determinants of the Arab world’s democratic deficit in 2010. I find that the percentage of a country’s landmass that was conquered by Arab armies following the death of the prophet Muhammad statistically accounts for this deficit. Using history as a guide, I hypothesize that this pattern reflects the long-run influence of control structures developed under Islamic empires in the premodern era and find that the available evidence is consistent with this interpretation. I also investigate the determinants of the recent uprisings. Taken in unison, the results cast doubt on claims that the Arab-Israeli conflict or Arab culture or Muslim theology is a systematic obstacle to democratic change in the region and point instead to the legacy of the region’s historical institutional framework.
Following the collapse of long-lived dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt in early 2011, many analysts have turned their attention to China to identify possible stirrings of revolution. Of course, in the Middle East and North Africa, the Chinese Jasmine Revolution stimulated little domestic interest and failed to materialize into a popular movement. Beginning with the cases of Egypt and Tunisia, this article critically examines recent literature identifying the causes of the Arab Spring revolutions to develop several hypotheses on the sources of diet vulnerability and their applicability in explaining the exceptional resilience of single-party rule in China. After the collapse of the long dictatorships of Tunisia and Egypt in early 2011, many analysts turned to China to identify possible seeds of revolution. In fact, as the movements formed a revolutionary spiral in North Africa and the Middle East, the Chinese Jasmine Revolution caused few domestic reactions and failed to materialize in a popular movement. From the cases of Egypt and Tunisia, this article critically examines the recent literature identifying the causes of the revolutions of the Arab Spring 2011, to develop several hypotheses about the sources of the vulnerability of regimes in these countries and to consider their adequacy in explaining the exceptional resistance of the one-party authority in China.
This article presents a brief characterization of the transformational consequences of the Arab Spring for global policy frameworks and democracy promotion efforts regarding Internet infrastructure. To do so, we begin with unpacking the battle that took place in Dubai in December 2012 at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12) between competing state powers, technology policy regimes, and civil society activists jockeying on the global stage to promote Internet freedom. Particular emphasis is placed on the discourses and controversies carried over from the Arab Spring surrounding Internet freedom as democracy promotion, including the growing importance of transnationally-organized and tech-savvy civil society activists who have joined these opaque policy debates. The next section focuses on highlighting the new practices and ideologies of this particularly novel “community of practice” comprising transnational tech-savvy activists who have joined the Internet freedom proto-regime. The final discussion elucidates the policy innovations and frameworks born from the interactions of this diverse stakeholder network since the Arab Spring, and contrasts them with those of the state and private sector stakeholders who traditionally hold sway in shaping information infrastructure policies. We conclude by outlining the opportunities and challenges facing these policy entrepreneurs and the democratic interests of global Internet users.