This paper discusses the data limitations associated with the measurement of top incomes and inequality in the Middle East, with special emphasis to the case of Egypt. It has been noted that high inequality might have contributed to the Arab spring revolt movement. Some studies have argued however that measured inequality in Middle East countries is not particularly large by international standards, and that popular discontent mostly reflects the perceived level of inequality, and the perceived (un)fairness of the distribution. In this paper we review the evidence and present new estimates. We come with two main conclusions. First, data sources at the national level are insufficient to derive reliable estimates of top income shares in a country like Egypt(or in other Middle East countries). One would need reliable fiscal sources in order to make a precise comparison with other emerging or developed countries. Unfortunately, such sources are lacking in most of the region. Next, and irrespective of these uncertainties on within-country inequalities, there is no doubt that income inequality is extremely large at the level of the Middle East taken as whole-simply because regional inequality in per capita GNP is particularly large. According to our benchmark estimates, the share of total Middle East income accruing to the top 10% income receivers is currently 55% (vs.48% in the United States,36% in Western Europe, and 54% in South Africa). Under plausible assumptions, the top 10% income share could be well over 60%, and the top 1% share might exceed 25% (vs. 20% in the United States,11% in Western Europe, and 17% in South Africa). Popular discontent might reflect the fact that perceptions about inequality and the (un)fairness of the distribution are determined by regional (and/or global) inequality, and not only on national inequality.

This paper explains the divergent military behavior in the “Arab Spring” uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria using thorough case studies that analyze five factors shaping military behavior: ethnic favoritism, regulated patronage, unregulated patronage, perceived legitimacy, and tactical control. Drawing on the divergence between Libya and Syria, as well as the nuanced nature of Egyptian military behavior, the paper underlines the need to embrace complexity and reject monocausal explanations, dichotomous outcomes, and unitary actors in the analysis of civil-military relations. Instead, the paper develops and advances a two-stage game tree in which the military leadership can attempt to retain, replace, or remove the authoritarian regime, and the military rank-and-file can then react to the leadership’s decision in terms of its rate of defections or its acceptance of change. Additionally, the analysis highlights the importance of the regime’s control of the military at the micro-level in determining the behavior of the military (which is so closely linked to transition outcomes) at the macro-level.

There has been a wide-spread belief that elections with a wide franchise following removal of an oppressive dictator lead to establishment of a government that is not vulnerable to mass protest. At the same time, most of the post-World War II non-constitutional exits of recently-installed autocratic leaders were caused by elite coups, rather than popular protests. The recent experience of Egypt, where the democratic post-Mubarak government, a result of the Arab Spring, collapsed after having had almost uninterrupted protests since its first day in office, offers a striking counterexample to both of these patterns. We demonstrate that this is a general phenomenon: the same technological shock, arrival of social media, that makes the incumbent vulnerable, lays foundation for continuous instability of the subsequent democratic government. Our theoretical model, which incorporates protest into a Downsian framework, takes into account specific features of modern protests: the significant role of social media and the absence of the partisan or personalized leadership during popular unrest. Case studies of the Arab countries with and without large-scale protests corroborate our theoretical findings.

State-society relations have seen significant upheaval in Egypt in the wake of the Arab uprisings of 2011. This paper examines the struggle over the labor movement and the status of minority groups, specifically the Coptic Orthodox minority and the Nubian community. In each of these issue areas, I argue that changes at the regime level since 2011 have had considerable effects on the processes of change that have been unleashed with the uprising of 2011, but that these processes are specific to state–society relations within these issue areas and not reducible to regime-level outcomes. Across these otherwise unrelated issue areas I argue that parallel sets of dynamics have been at work, owing to institutional legacies from the pre-2011 period. In the cases of the workers’ movements and the Coptic Orthodox minority, a legacy of neocorporatism has meant that these dynamics have been marked by 1) the struggle for control over the institutional legacies of the Mubarak period, and 2) a parallel mobilization of movements within each population that vie to break the respective elite monopoly over group representation vis-à-vis the state. Within the case of the Nubian community, on the other hand, low levels of incorporation and institutionalization did not prevent the community from making an unexepected breakthrough in the highly corporatist constitutional revision process of 2013.

In late 2010, the Arab Spring spread from a small town in Tunisia to engulf most of the MENA region. Morocco’s Arab Spring lasted from the 20th of February to the 9th of March of 2011, but largely concluded after a televised address wherein King Mohammed VI pledged to make changes to the constitution. Although driven by many of the same grievances as protestors in other Arab Spring countries – including lack of rights, high levels of inequality, political corruption, and the absence of truly meaningful elections – the Moroccan Arab Spring was comparatively short-lived. My paper seeks to understand why the regime’s promise of reforms were largely successful in extinguishing the Moroccan Arab Spring, and thus were able to stabilize the regime in a time of great flux. I argue that Morocco’s history of social reforms has institutionalized the regime’s response mechanisms to widespread protests and thus have acted as a stabilizing force.

This paper will focus in the challenges of Egypt and Sudan relating the Nile. The Popular Manifestations calling for Justice, Dignity and ‘Bread’ in North Africa the last 2 years, known as Arab Spring, will provide the context for two central arguments: a) The particular evolution(s) of Sudan these years is strongly related with the Arab Spring: The temporal coincidence between the Referendum-Division of Sudan and the Arab Springdetermined some North Sudanese leaders’ decisions. The Sudanese Government’s acceptance of Referendum’s Results was influenced by the International Scandal on the repressive measures of governments (like Tunisian) against the Popular Demonstrations. Sudanese Government preferred not to risk a re-emergence of calls for international intervention. A Sudanese Denial would be easily demonized given this Scandal Stance and International Media’s call for solidarity with Peoples Manifestations’. b) Egypt and Sudan confront significant National Challenges relating the Geopolitics of the Nile: Water Quotas as well as Complex counter-alliances after the emergence of the Republic of South Sudan. Egypt’s must develop a Coherent Strategy on the Nile not perturbed by changes of Regimes or internal politics. Sudan has to attract a more forceful support in this new regional context of North and East Africa.

This paper will focus in urban youth’s strategies of political identification and participation in Algeria. It will analyze Algerian Youth’s participation in debates on national identity and their use, modification and transformation of political representations in the last decade (after Civil War) as well as the current context of popular pro-democracy movements of Arab Spring. It will be answer to: How do Algerian Youth respond to sociopolitical representations? How do they transform them? To do that we’ll first analyze the tensions of historic and new social and political representations. Afterwards we will examine Algerian youth’s participation in current popular movements for democratic change. What are the messages articulated by Algerian youth in the current demonstrations – since January 2011? Do youth’s vindications coincide with other social movements’ (as Syndicate and political parties) or can be distinguished as ‘youth’s specific’? Can we distinguish between articulated messages by youth students and non-students’ demonstrations (i.e. Jobless youth)? Are there different kind of messages of resistance or diverse political representations in youth movements?