After the Arab Uprisings Progress and Stagnation in the Middle East and North Africa

Why were some, but not all the Arab mass social protests of 2011 accompanied by relatively quick and nonviolent outcomes in the direction of regime change, democracy, and social transformation? Why was a democratic transition limited to Tunisia, and why did region-wide democratization not occur? After the Arab Uprisings offers an explanatory framework to answer these central questions, based on four key themes: state and regime type, civil society, gender relations and women's mobilizations, and external influence. Applying these to seven cases: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, Valentine M. Moghadam and Shamiran Mako highlight the salience of domestic and external factors and forces, uniquely presenting women's legal status, social positions, and organizational capacity, along with the presence or absence of external intervention, as key elements in explaining the divergent outcomes of the Arab Spring uprisings, and extending the analysis to the present day.

1. Introduction and Overview; 2. Pathways to Democratization: The Arab Spring in Comparative Perspective; 3. States and Political Institutions; 4. Civil Society; 5. Gender and Women's Mobilizations; 6. International Connections and Interventions; 7. Findings and Conclusions.

Shamiran Mako is Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University. A political scientist specializing in state formation and statebuilding, civil wars, ethnic and identity politics of the Middle East and North Africa, she is an editor of State and Society in Iraq: Citizenship under Occupation, Dictatorship and Democratization (2017) and her work has appeared in the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, International Journal of Minority and Group Rights, and Transitional Justice and Forced Migration: Critical Perspectives from the Global South (2019), among others.
Valentine M. Moghadam is Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Northeastern University where she specializes in the sociology, political economy, and gender politics of the Middle East and North Africa. She is the author of four books, including the award-winning Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Movements (2005), along with nine edited volumes and numerous journal articles and book chapters. In addition to her academic career, she has been a Senior Research Fellow at the United Nations University's WIDER Institute in Helsinki, Finland, and a section chief in the Social and Human Sciences Sector of UNESCO, Paris.