1. The Great Arab Revolution: Challenges, Dilemmas and Opportunities?
- Author:
- Graeme P. Herd
- Publication Date:
- 03-2011
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
- Abstract:
- Beyond noting the fluidity, ambiguity and ambivalence associated with the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, there is little consensus on causes and likely consequences. Do these geopolitical earthquakes constitute an “Arab Spring” leading to transition democratization, akin to 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe? Or should we look to 1979 in Iran, and the prospect of Sunni rather than Shia theocracy taking hold? Might the wider Muslim world – Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and Turkey – provide alternative potential governance models for the MENA region, given indigenous variants appear exhausted and no longer able to self-reproduce? What are the lessons which other MENA incumbent regimes and the international community will identify? How might those lessons be learned?
- Topic:
- Democratization, Regime Change, and Insurgency
- Political Geography:
- Pakistan, Indonesia, Turkey, Middle East, and Arabia