Violent Protest, Contentious Politics, and the Neoliberal State (The Mobilization Series on Social Movements, Protest, and Culture) by Seraphim Seferiades

Author:Seraphim Seferiades [Seferiades, Seraphim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2016-02-10T18:30:00+00:00

A New Wave: The Arab Revolutions of 2011

At this writing, revolutions have just overturned governments in Tunisia and Egypt, led to a partition of Libya, and obtained a promise by Yemen’s leader to step down from power. In addition, popular revolts in Morocco and Oman have demanded reforms, while similar revolts in Bahrain were put down by force with Saudi intervention, and revolts in Syria are growing each week. Only the Libyan revolt, however, has seen notable violence on the part of protestors/rebels. In other countries, violence has come mainly from the regime in power.

In Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria, the revolts were a response to both positive and negative changes during the last decade. Positive changes, undertaken as part of modernization programs, included investments in education, encouragement of foreign investment, and the growth of Internet and satellite communications. Yet these positive changes did not yield the expected results for most of the population, and especially for the recipients of higher education. Jobs remained scarce and badly paid, and poverty remained widespread. What the positive changes did produce was greater ability of youth and labor to communicate and organize. The negative changes included sharply rising food prices, and increasingly obvious corruption and privilege among the families and cronies of the state leaders.

Youth played a particularly prominent role, as both the positive and negative changes most strongly affected those under 30. The surge in population in this group—young adults aged 15 to 29 increased by a third or more in the last 20 years, comprising roughly 40 percent of all adults in North African and the Middle East—combined with a doubling of college enrollments, to heighten the demand for white-collar jobs. Yet at the same time, from the late 1990s, the governments of the region ceased providing guaranteed government jobs to college graduates, reduced food and energy subsidies, and relied more on foreign investment (whose gains went to a small number of well-connected individuals) to boost the economy. The result was youth unemployment in this region reaching double the global average level, large numbers of young men under 30 remaining unmarried, and a concentration of grievances among the best educated, most Internet savvy, and youngest adults in these societies. As Hank Johnston notes in his contribution to this volume, and I have noted elsewhere (McAdam and Goldstone 2001), youths frequently play a vanguard role in political protests. Conditions in the Middle East and North Africa positioned them to take precisely that role in 2011.

The entire chain of events began with an act of existential violence, as a fruit vendor in a rural town in Tunisia—Mohamed Bouazizi—set himself on fire, and died soon thereafter.

Bouazizi had been unable to find formal employment, and had been repeatedly harassed by police over his fruit stall. After an incident in which he had been publicly humiliated by a female official, seeing no other way to express his anger and frustration with authorities, he immolated himself in public in front of the governor’s office. His act, captured

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