The Arab Spring: Causes, Conditions, and Driving Forces

This chapter offers an analysis of conditions in the MENA countries on the eve of the Arab Spring wave of revolutions from the World System perspective, as well as the causes (internal and external, general and specific) and certain consequences of this revolutionary wave, both in the MENA region and in the World System. The authors will discuss the Arab revolutions in a wide historical and theoretical context. Grinin and Korotayev show that it is very useful to compare the causes of revolutions in modern and previous epochs, in Arab and other countries, to find similarities and specific patterns. For example, in the Arab revolutions, a very important role was played by new information technologies. The revolutionary sentiments were especially fueled by the diffusion of radical ideas and ideologies in society, as well as by rapid urbanization, a growing youth share in the population, and the combination of rapidly increasing education levels for part of population with very poor education for others. These rapid, unregulated changes, and increasing structural disproportions, may bring a society to a modernization trap that often causes revolutions and other political upheavals. All these phenomena were present in the Arab countries on the eve of the Arab Spring, especially in Egypt and Tunisia.