CZ:Featured article/Current
Arab Spring
by Nick Gardner
The term Arab Spring (also known as the "Arab Awakening") refers to the sequence of protest movements that started with the successful uprising in Tunisia that began in December 2010. The subsequent protest movements in other Arab countries were mainly motivated by a wish to put an end to what was perceived as government oppression, corruption and incompetence. They have led to the overthrow of existing regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and the initiation in those countries of transitional processes that are to include the election of representative assemblies and the adoption of new constitutions. Major protest movements have also arisen in Syria and Yemen, but they have so far been frustrated by violent resistance by their governments. The protest movements elsewhere in the Arab world have achieved little more than promises of minor reforms.
Background: the Arab condition
The political structures of the countries involved in the Arab uprisings have (with the exception of Lebanon) been categorised as "authoritarian" (with Syria, Libya and Saudi Arabia ranking among the 15 least democratic countries). Five of them have suffered unusually high levels of corruption (Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Libya and Yemen appear among the upper half in the ranking of Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index). Their populations are predominately ethnically Arab with small native Berber minorities. They include two mixed oil economies (Algeria and Libya); three oil economies (Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia); six diversified economies (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia); and one primary export economy (Yemen). The oil-producing countries of Oman, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Libya are among the world's more prosperous countries. The prosperity of each of the others is below, or well below the world average in terms of GDP per head, with Syria ranking 153rd out of a total of 228. According to an estimate based upon data from Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen, at least 19% of the Arab population lived below the poverty line at the end of the 1990s.
The development of national protest movements
The violent mass protest movements in Tunisia and Egypt succeeded within a few months in the overthrow of their existing regimes and, as noted below, the same was acheived, with the assistance of NATO, in Libya after eight months of civil war. The governments of Morocco, Algeria, Jordan and Oman responded to more limited protests with promises of political and constitutional reform. Saudi Arabia's administration sought to avoid confrontation by announcing a major programme of infrastructure investment, and its forces were used to suppress dissent in Bahrain. Political instability in Lebanon has inhibited governmental response to demonstrations for constitutional change. In Yemen and Syria, continuing protests are being frustrated by violent military opposition.
The processes of creating democratically-elected governments now dominate the situations in Tunisia and Libya, and in Egypt they are being accompanied by sporadic demonstrations against the behaviour of its transitional military government. The transitional process in Libya, is expected to include - and may be hampered by - the need to disarm its local militias. In Syria and Yemen, the undeterred vigour of the protest movements in the face of violent resistance suggests the possibility of democratic transition in those countries. Elswhere in the Arab Spring countries, the prospects appear to be limited to partial relaxations of authoritarian governance.