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What Happened in the Middle East and the Maghreb? A Theory-Based Explanation of the “Arab Spring”
- Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
- Villanova University
- Volume 36, Number 1, Fall 2012
- pp. 32-45
- 10.1353/jsa.2012.0017
- Article
- Additional Information
Abstract:
“Hopes were high that the Middle East and the Maghreb would be swept up in the latest wave of democratization that began thirty years ago. But by the latter half of the 1990s any optimism in this regard seemed misplaced. The democratic winds of change—the practice of competitive elections, the adherence to the rule of law, and the protection and promotion of explicit rights and liberties—seem to have largely bypassed many of these countries... [P]olitical systems in the Arab world have undergone little change.”