Thesis advisor: Ali Banuazizi / Thesis advisor: Jennifer L. Erickson / This study will take an economic historical approach to the Arab Spring in an attempt to discover why citizens across the Middle East and North Africa rose up against their respective governments and demand change. The study will focus, more specifically, on Egypt and Tunisia where the revolutions were successful in overthrowing Ben Ali and Mubarak. It will be shown that the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia as well as regionally was primarily the result of decades of economic stagnation and regression for the vast majority of citizens as well a notable increase in the levels of education across the populations. A plethora of concrete statistics, including but not limited to the Gini coefficient, unemployment rates, and GDP per capita, all combine to show that the Middle East and North Africa was not only a highly unequal place but also one where citizens found ample reason to demand meaningful change. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

M.A. (Politics) / The study undertakes to establish whether the Arab uprisings of 2011 can be understood as the product of a process of contagion or diffusion, and to analyse how protests spread between Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. A framework of diffusion is developed from the literature in light of which the protests in these countries are analysed. Furthermore, the aim is to determine whether the outcomes of the uprisings have resulted in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya being any more democratic than they were before. For this purpose, political conditions in these countries are analysed against a framework of democratic transition. The study finds that the protests in late 2010 and 2011 did in fact originate in Tunisia and spread to Egypt and then Libya through a process of diffusion, by which adopters in Egypt and Libya emulated the behaviour of protesters in Tunisia who had demonstrated a successful innovation. Evidence for this is found in the analysis of the elements and mechanisms of the diffusion process, specifically in the master frames of protesters, particular features of protests common to all three countries, and similarities and channels of communication between transmitters and adopters. Only in Tunisia is the outcome of the uprising found to have produced democratic results. The country has met most of the procedural requirements of democracy in addition to developing many key democratic values in the transition process. In Egypt, the state has reverted back to the control of the old regime’s security apparatus, and Egyptians enjoy even less protection of human and civil rights than before. The failure of Libya’s transitional authorities to harness the rogue militias that emerged after the civil war has resulted in the virtual absence of the rule of law and the almost complete delegitimisation of the country’s young democratic institutions. With the emergence of two rival parliaments Libya risks further descent into chaos.

Thesis advisor: Kathleen Bailey / The recent wave of unrest across the Middle East has raised crucial questions about the stability of the remaining regimes in the region. Monarchies have appeared to have weathered the Arab Spring well and have emerged relatively intact while republics such as Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Syria have experienced revolutions that have completely overturned existing political and economic systems. Jordan has consistently been praised as a beacon of gradual liberalization in a region where so many dictators have ruthlessly clung to power. Upon closer inspection, however, the Jordanian system is not as well adjusted to democracy and economic capitalism as it may seem. The rentier system, most commonly found in resource rich countries, allows authoritarian regimes to co-opt their populations by using economic rent to supply goods and services usually provided by representative governments. Jordan fulfills a unique role as a rentier state because it does not possess natural resources but is instead able to co-opt its citizens as a result of the influx of external rent that the government receives through foreign aid and remittances. Drawing analysis primarily from scholarly articles and making use of media analysis and first person interviews, I examine the current problems facing the Jordanian system and the changes that have taken place as a result of the popular uprisings during the Arab Spring. The larger implications of this research present a roadmap for other entrenched regimes to follow in order to avoid falling into the self reinforcing and destructive system of favors and economic rent. While it may be too late for Jordan to reform its political system without a revolutionary overhaul, other regimes have the potential to work their way out of the rentier system before the network of rentseeking groups in itself becomes a force that not even the regime can stop. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: Political Science .

Thesis advisor: ALI BANUAZIZI / How can one think of the possibility of emergence of democracy in non-Western countries? Such an idea had been approached in pessimism for a long time in academia. This is because the conditions deemed indispensable for democratic development (such as high rates of urbanization and literacy) rarely existed in those countries. Thus, the concept “Western democracy” was considered an oxymoron, since, according to earlier scholars of democracy, only Western polities could meet the conditions/prerequisites for the genesis of democracy. Nevertheless, this long-held prophecy was challenged as non-Western countries demonstrated significant progress towards establishing a democratic rule, despite having “so-called” unfavorable conditions (such as religion or poor economic performance) to democratic development. Despite this global resurgence of democratic governance, the countries in the Middle East and North Africa were never able to develop a democratic rule, a situation that has long been explained by pointing at the “exceptional” characteristics (primarily Islam) inherent in the region. Yet, the events that began on December 17, 2010 in Tunisia opened up the possibility for the countries that had been long-ruled by autocrats to embark on a democratic transition. The uprisings that eventually unseated longtime authoritarian rulers (only occurred in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya) enabled divergent socio-political forces to become involved in transitional processes in the aftermath of regime breakdowns. However, only the first two cases had meaningful steps that were taken towards sustaining the transition. This research has been built on the argument that four key factors have played important roles in transitional processes of these two cases, namely Tunisia (the transition to a democratic governance) and Egypt (the restoration of a new form of authoritarianism): the formation of the state, pact-making compromises among revolutionary actors, moderation of religious parties, and civil society activism. In addition to explaining the divergence in these two countries’ transitional processes, this research has been written in response to the prolonged pessimism that the regimes in the region are destined to stay non-democratic. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Middle Eastern Studies.

This thesis analyses the problematic trajectory of the Syrian Revolution 2011, which was inspired by the Arab Spring. It first evaluates the causes of the revolution during Bashar al-Asad's era. An era was aimed to be a transition from authoritarianism to democracy and from suppression to fair openness. It second investigates the factors behind turning the Arab Spring into a Syrian winter, plunging the country into internal war and uncontrolled violence. The research is based on a qualitative approach that includes interviews as a source of information and analysis. Factors covered are the disintegration of Syrian society as the greatest challenge for the civil uprising and mass mobilization as well as the regime's coherent inner core accounting for the regime's violence and persistence. As violence breeds violence, the revolutionaries decided to react violently towards the regime brutality descending the country into an internal war. The formulation of the Free Syrian Army was formalized, but could not transform into a proper military formation, and so could not control the spread of violence in the country. The inclination towards Jihad was evident and common, and associated with resorting to violence because the revolutionaries are Muslims, and believed in Jihad as a way to defend themselves and their families. However, Jihad became more formalized with the arrival of global Jihadists to Syria, forming Jihadist groups and controlling parts of Syria. The stance of the international community was another big obstacle helped escalating, but not terminating the conflict. A conflict could develop into a devastating regional crisis changing the structure of the Middle East and changing the international politics of this vital region.

The thesis discusses the progress or lack thereof of in the Middle East, specifically Egypt to achieve "democracy". It will critically explore the reasons why the Arab Spring happened, what were the factors and what changed in Egypt during those times until the present. I will show how it was before the revolution in Egypt which toppled ex-president Mubarak, examine the transition phase when ex-president Morsi was in power, and at the end the second revolution or coup d'état by current president El-Sisi. With that said Egypt will be compared with the other countries in the region; Tunisia, Libya and Syria, and we will see what are some of the similarities in the revolutions as well as some of the differences.

At the beginning of 2011, independence movements arose across the Middle East and stoked the fires of revolution in nations like Libya, Egypt and Syria. Colloquially known as “The Arab Spring,” the movement toppled dictatorships that had existed for decades. Those dictatorships also provided stability for foreign business conducted in their countries, including Texan oil field companies. But as civil unrest persists and the political story unfolds, Texan oil field companies continue to do business in the region, largely unabated. This report addresses the effects of the Arab Spring on the performance of select Texan oil field companies operating in Libya. / text

This thesis analyses the hirak movements that emerged in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 2011. Amalgamating literature from studies of identity and defensive democratization, the thesis places two central questions into historical context: why did the hirak movements emerge in the rural tribal strongholds of the Hashemite monarchy before spreading into urban centers? And why did the founders of more urban and demographically heterogeneous hirak collectively agree in the nascent stages of their movements’ geneses to underrepresent the presence of Palestinian-Jordanians? / Graduate

After successfully overthrowing Hosni Mubarak and his government in 2011, protestors rejoiced in long-repressed nationalist fervor, hopeful for the bright future that was sure to follow. Today, three years since the triumph, political inclusion and greater economic opportunity have not arrived. Throughout this transition process, the Egyptian economy has soured, and Egyptians have begun to feel nostalgia for the days of Mubarak’s regime when political stability, albeit repressive, had at least been accompanied by economic stability. This paper seeks to discover the root causes of poor economic performance in Egypt’s recent history, examine historical cases in which governments successfully overcame similar economic hardships, and propose feasible institutional reforms and recommendations to revive Egypt’s domestic economy in light of the country’s current political landscape.

The Arab Spring marked a new age of international political participation and support, facilitated by the wide circulation of imagery via social and mass media. Many in the West found themselves in ideological agreement with the political efforts of the protests, upholding the U.S. rhetorical tenets of democracy and freedom of speech. The visual framing of the Arab Spring in U.S. news media played a crucial role in forging this ideological consensus. My thesis focuses specifically on the visual framing of women in the Egyptian uprising by exploring the Western news portrayal of the presence of women in the Egyptian political sphere. In order to ground my assessment of Western perceptions, I conduct a content analysis of coverage of the Egyptian uprising protests from Getty and AP photography databases. My analysis is also supported and influenced by a rigorous theoretical foundation in framing theory, Orientalism, and postcolonial feminist theory.