Many writers are reflecting and trying to draw lessons from the 10-year anniversary of the Arab Spring protest movement. Timothy Kaldas at Bloomberg has a great analysis. Take a look at this excerpt:
The chaotic, unpredictable and uneven fashion in which regimes entered into crisis and collapsed, along with the societies they ruled for decades, shows that authoritarianism is both highly fragile and a major source of violent turmoil. In 2011, the rulers of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya were overthrown while Syria fell into civil war and Bahrain had to invite foreign military forces to quash its massive uprising against the monarchy.
This is not to say any particular authoritarian government has an expiration date. But even when they endure, but they face a persistent risk of violent turmoil and sudden collapse.
At the same time, popular discontent in the Arab street continues to this day as described in a recent Democracy Digest article:
In recent years, new uprisings in Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq toppled governments and triggered processes toward political reform whose outcomes are far from certain, especially given that the the root causes of simmering discontent — massive youth unemployment, stagnating economies, endemic corruption and feckless political elites – remain, the Post’s Tharoor adds.
“The status quo is untenable, and the next explosion will be catastrophic,” said Fawaz Gerges, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics. “We’re talking about starvation, we’re talking about state collapse, we’re talking about civil strife.”
Also see our section on World Democracy or our articles on Worldwide Corruption.
Leave a Reply