I wrote this article three years ago on the eleventh anniversary of the Egyptian revolution. I am republishing it today as we approach the fourteenth anniversary of that blessed revolution, which coincides with the events unfolding in one of the most significant Arab Spring countries, Syria, as well as the developments occurring across the region and the world as a whole.
Eleven years ago, the sparks of change ignited in Tunisia, setting the flame of revolution ablaze amidst the oppressive and tyrannical conditions experienced by Arab nations. Thus began the “Arab Spring,” breathing life into the bodies of peoples on the brink of surrender, ready to yield their spirit to the despots. However, as these nations began to awaken, their spring quickly turned into autumn. Despite the differences in forms and methods, the outcome in most of these countries was the same: “the return of tyrants and oppressors.” Therefore, after eleven years, it is time to reexamine these events from all perspectives with a critical eye to gain insights and lessons. Here, we shed light on one aspect: answering an important question—how can the causes of the Arab Spring revolutions be understood within their internal and external frameworks? We will attempt to address this question in this article.
On Revolution and Its Stages:
A revolution represents a fundamental change in the political and social conditions of a state, achieved through means not prescribed by that state’s constitutional framework. Revolutions generally pass through three main stages. The first is the overthrow of the regime, including all its symbols and figures. This phase is characterized by political uncertainty, unforeseen events, unrestrained actions, and unintended consequences. The second stage involves establishing a political system to replace the former regime. This includes forming a transitional government, drafting a constitution, and conducting presidential and parliamentary elections. This stage focuses on fostering democracy, entailing the implementation of institutions and genuine acceptance of democracy by both the governed and the elite. The third and most challenging phase involves transforming the social structure in all its dimensions, creating a new reality through profound and radical changes to the socio-economic conditions. This phase reshapes the distribution of power and resources within society.
Completing the first stage—overthrowing the existing political regime—requires more than just removing its leader. It necessitates dismantling the entire system, including its symbols, figures, and the methodologies it employed. The departure of authoritarian leaders who held power for extended periods does not necessarily mean that the authoritarian regime has collapsed, as the machinery of despotism is often deeply entrenched in oppressive, political, media, and financial institutions.
Despite the potential of revolutions as opportunities for comprehensive change, the revolutionary approach to change can sometimes negatively impact the process of democratic state-building. It can create significant obstacles to the transition and even lead to the emergence of new authoritarian regimes. This is precisely what happened in the Arab Spring countries. While the revolutions succeeded in toppling authoritarian regimes, they failed to establish alternative democratic systems. Perhaps this failure resulted from the incomplete execution of the first revolutionary phase and the rapid transition to the subsequent phase—establishing a new system—which posed a threat to the new regimes and hindered the course of revolutionary change.
The Causes of Revolution:
Every revolution has its causes, but as a revolution reflects the specific social reality of a given society, pinpointing universal causes for all revolutions is impossible. Each revolution emerges within a distinct context, leading to diverse causes. However, some common causes can be identified. Five factors contribute to the development of political capacity for revolution: internally driven development dependent on external elements, a repressive and personalist state, a culture of opposition and resistance to the regime, a worsening economic crisis, and an international political gap leading to a temporary weakening of external control that allows a revolution to erupt. Thus, the causes of revolutions can be classified as internal and external.
Internal Causes of Revolutions:
Some attribute revolutions to inequality and dissatisfaction with the status quo. Others argue that revolutions stem from economic factors, viewing the historical development of human societies as a constant struggle between economic classes—between the haves and have-nots. Backwardness becomes a decisive factor for change, making revolution inevitable. Oppression and resentment can create a revolutionary climate, while psychological factors, such as widespread injustice, individuals’ perception of this injustice, and social inequity resulting from a minority monopolizing the nation’s wealth, also play a role. In summary, the internal causes of revolution lie in the triad of oppression: political, social, and economic. Political oppression manifests in monopolizing power, excluding the populace and various factions from sharing authority, and perpetuating external interference. This leads to economic oppression, characterized by monopolizing resources, which concentrates wealth and income in the hands of a few at the expense of the majority.
Similarly, social oppression arises from the absence of social justice and the marginalization of most of the social structure. Consequently, the causes of revolutions vary with time, place, and social structures. In the Arab Spring countries during the first decade of the current century, this triad of oppression converged, undermining the legitimacy of their ruling regimes and eventually sparking their revolutions.
External Causes of Revolutions
The external factors leading to the eruption of the Arab revolutions can be summarized into two main groups:
- External push towards democratization: This emerged in the international agenda as part of the shift towards globalization.
- The effect of contagion: The initial wave of democratic transformation and its success inspired other countries to pursue the path of democracy.
From this, three key points about the role of external factors in the Arab Spring revolutions become clear:
- External support for democratization transformed into a challenge for democratic transition in Arab countries.
- The degree of influence of external factors varies from one case to another, depending on the strategies of international actors and the nature of internal conditions in the target countries.
- External factors in the Arab Spring countries played a significant role in supporting and entrenching authoritarian regimes.
External powers sought to protect their interests by continually attempting to steer the revolutions in ways that served those interests. The clash between these interests—among themselves and with the interests of the revolutionary states—hindered the progress of these movements. External powers employed numerous mechanisms of penetration, similar to those they had previously used, which ultimately contributed to sparking the revolutions. These mechanisms operated at three levels: authority, elites, and society.
- At the authority level, intervention sometimes came in the form of conditional aid provided by major powers to these states, exerting pressure on governments, or through more aggressive infiltration, either internally via the state’s security and military apparatus or externally through bodies like the United Nations Security Council.
- At the elite level, external connections existed through education, media outlets, civil society organizations, or even military elites.
- At the societal level, interventions included gradually undermining individual and societal confidence in the justice of their causes, leading to the erosion of ideological structures and societal cohesion.
Revolution Between Domestic and International Dynamics
In attempting to understand the relationship between revolutions and international relations, several strategies emerged, invoking key concepts such as social revolutions, international revolutions, and counterrevolutions.
- Social revolution: This concept emphasizes the internal, social dimension of revolutions, distinguishing between social revolutions, which lead to significant transformations in the social structures of a state, and political revolutions, which change political systems without fundamentally altering the society’s structure and internal relationships.
This perspective suggests that focusing on international structural factors in explaining revolutions neglects important internal factors, such as agency or cultural influences. It proposes five factors for a successful social revolution: deteriorating developmental conditions, a repressive, personalized authoritarian regime, an effective culture of political resistance, economic decline, and opportunities created by the international system.
- International revolution: This concept addresses the interplay between revolutions and international dimensions, examining the impact of revolutions on the development of the international system and its evolving values.
International revolutions are those that originate in a specific country but:
- Serve as a model for potential revolutions in other nations.
- Trigger counterrevolutions from other states.
- International counterrevolution: This concept highlights how modern revolutions often provoke counterrevolutions on the international level. These counterrevolutions represent external attempts to overthrow a revolutionary regime or thwart revolutionary efforts in a given state.
Such counterrevolutions involve varying levels and types of intervention, ranging from outright violence to providing internal factions with weapons, training, and funding, to disrupting the environment through negative media portrayals or imposing sanctions aimed at undermining revolutionary systems. The greater the extent of international counterrevolutionary activity, the higher the likelihood of internal revolutions veering towards authoritarianism. Thus, the counterrevolution represents a critical intersection where domestic revolutions meet the external international reality.
Conclusion
In the Arab Spring countries, their revolutions cannot be viewed solely as reflections of external international dynamics or as mere realizations of the will of donor states and international institutions. Rather, internal and external factors combined to produce these revolutions, which undeniably influenced the reshaping of the region and the global balance of power. Consequently, these revolutions faced counterrevolutions not only internally but also externally, turning their spring into autumn. However, the seasons of the year are not yet over.
Original Article Link
الربيع العربي بين الداخل والخارج: قراءة في السياقات والأسباب – مجلة سبل (subulmagazine.com)
