http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/keyword/arab-spring Inquiries Journal provides undergraduate and graduate students around the world a platform for the wide dissemination of academic work over a range of core disciplines. en-us Mon, 08 Jun 2026 20:15:10 -0400 Mon, 08 Jun 2026 20:15:10 -0400 http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1953/civil-military-linkages-and-authoritarian-regime-survival-during-the-arab-spring-understanding-different-outcomes-of-the-revolutions By Darya Maliauskaya - Strong linkages between autocrats and the military are often seen as a necessary condition for authoritarian regime survival in the face of uprising. The Arab Spring of 2011 supports this contention: the armed forces in Libya and Syria suppressed the mass protests, while the military in Tunisia and Egypt refused to engage in the counterinsurgency efforts. To better understand these divergent outcomes, the following paper examines the factors that affect civil-military linkages in authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa. The paper argues that there are three main methods through... Fri, 06 May 2022 09:38 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1953/civil-military-linkages-and-authoritarian-regime-survival-during-the-arab-spring-understanding-different-outcomes-of-the-revolutions http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1632/arab-feminism-in-the-arab-spring-discourses-on-solidarity-the-socio-cultural-revolution-and-the-political-revolution-in-egypt-tunisia-and-yemen By Stephanie Maravankin - Over the last couple of decades, women-spearheaded social movements have mobilized to leave a lasting impression on civil societies across the globe. The Arab Spring challenged old ideas of oppressive regimes and signaled possibilities for change, originating in Tunisia and spreading to Arab countries throughout the Middle East. This paper explores the existing literature on political opportunity structure, resource mobilization theory, and framing theory as a means to understand the question: How did collective action frames during the Arab Spring shape the discourses on Arab feminism? My research... Sun, 30 Apr 2017 12:00 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1632/arab-feminism-in-the-arab-spring-discourses-on-solidarity-the-socio-cultural-revolution-and-the-political-revolution-in-egypt-tunisia-and-yemen http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1480/the-muslim-brotherhood-and-egypts-failed-democratic-transition By Jacob C. Potts - In January of 2011, massive protests emerged against Hosni Mubarak, the autocratic leader of Egypt since 1981. After Mubarak stepped down, there was a period of relative freedom for Egyptians, which unfortunately came crashing down roughly two years later, when the military forced the democratically elected president, Muhammad Morsi, to resign. The subsequent regime headed by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has gone further in its authoritarian practices compared to the former Mubarak regime. After this turn of events, many wonder why this transition to democracy was such a failure. Many have placed blame... Fri, 28 Oct 2016 11:20 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1480/the-muslim-brotherhood-and-egypts-failed-democratic-transition http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1044/the-arab-uprisings-and-the-blossoming-of-a-global-imaginary By Tristan Smaldone - The social uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt that unfolded in late 2010 and early 2011 were the catalyst for a political awakening that soon after encompassed the globe. The same logic that allowed for localized social populism to flourish, in these cases, was at play in the subsequent blossoming of protest movements around the world. In Jacques Lacan’s terms, a ‘social imaginary’ or illusive unity was constructed, forming into a counter-hegemonic force of global proportions. This conceptual framework has been integrated into Ernesto Laclau and Chantel Mouffe’s discourse analysis... Mon, 01 Jun 2015 10:41 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1044/the-arab-uprisings-and-the-blossoming-of-a-global-imaginary http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1586/do-western-educated-middle-east-leaders-pass-the-democracy-test By Jessica Agostinelli - The purpose of this research is to study this linkage and its implications for democratization efforts in the Arab World. First, a large-N study is used to see the overall impact in this region of Western education of a leader with its Economist Intelligence Unit democracy index. Then, to delve deeper into the issue, two cases will be examined: that of Gaddafi, the Libyan president who was not Western-educated and was highly nationalist, and his Tunisian counterpart Ben Ali, who was Western-educated and whose country is often regarded as the sole success story of the Arab Spring. The discourse... Sun, 31 May 2015 12:00 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1586/do-western-educated-middle-east-leaders-pass-the-democracy-test http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/924/inequality-and-corruption-drivers-of-tunisias-revolution By Dor Srebernik - Many analysts argue that the reason Tunisia fulfilled a democratic transition is that their Islamist Ennahda party is more moderate and inclined toward civilian political order than its Islamist counterparts in other countries, such as Egypt. Ennahda’s willingness to engage in constructive dialogue with secularists in writing a constitution is viewed as the main factor behind the democratic transition. However, this popular approach underemphasizes the main driving forces behind the Tunisian revolution, which are the underlying economic inequalities and structure of the country’s patronage... Mon, 13 Oct 2014 05:00 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/924/inequality-and-corruption-drivers-of-tunisias-revolution http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1202/liberal-opposition-mounting-pressures-for-reform-in-saudi-arabia-and-kuwait By Sam Kuhn - For all the border-transcending, common cause implications of the popular moniker "the Arab Spring," the sociopolitical upheaval it is meant to allude to seems, upon superficial review of its developing impacts, to have largely missed the Persian Gulf. The protests at Bahrain's Pearl Roundabout garnered minor international media attention relative to the "revolutions" undertaken in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria, while Kuwait and Saudi Arabia project images of comparative regime stability. In fact, invigorated by the successes and mindful of the tactics of the selfdetermination movement throughout... Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:00 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1202/liberal-opposition-mounting-pressures-for-reform-in-saudi-arabia-and-kuwait http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1245/the-awakening-how-revolutionaries-barack-obama-and-ordinary-muslims-are-remaking-the-middle-east By Peter Bergen - One, why were we attacked? When Bin Laden talked to us in March of 1997, we asked him "why are you declaring war on the United States?" There were a lot of things he didn't say. He didn't say, "I'm attacking you because of your freedoms, I'm attacking you because of the first amendment, I'm attacking you because of the Supreme Court, I'm attacking you because of Hollywood, I'm attacking you because of your policies on homosexuals, I'm attacking you because of feminism," he didn't mention any kind of cultural issue at all. It was a foreign policy critique of the United States and basically there... Sun, 15 Apr 2012 12:00 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1245/the-awakening-how-revolutionaries-barack-obama-and-ordinary-muslims-are-remaking-the-middle-east http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/624/dissent-protest-and-revolution-the-new-europe-in-crisis By Andrew R. Myers - The understanding of the political landscapes of current times varies widely in form and content. Some assure the larger community that threats of collapse are fear mongering in form and invalid in content. Others see a changing western world and radical departure in the ideologies of its inhabitants. Though this paper takes a negative view of the prospects for a stable, peaceful future, the tone only remains negative to expose the meaning of current events, to encapsulate the “vague” calls and attitudes of a movement protesting the current global situation. Europe, though perhaps... Mon, 19 Mar 2012 08:05 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/624/dissent-protest-and-revolution-the-new-europe-in-crisis http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1062/who-drove-the-libyan-uprising By Alex Serafimov - During the armed conflict to topple Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, a common question for observers was “who are the Libyan opposition?” Indeed, for one scholar this was the ‘billion dollar question’,1 and, in the United States, it was a common concern.2 Conspicuously absent from most media discourse, and rarely discussed in narratives of the conflict, is who the armed militants and Libya’s new leadership are. Technocratic, neoliberal, exile and Islamist elements mingle under the moniker of “anti-Gaddafi forces” and the National Transitional Council (NTC), which... Sun, 01 Jan 2012 12:00 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1062/who-drove-the-libyan-uprising http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1218/letter-from-tunisia By Jouini Elyès - I will remember that phone call of January 20th 2011 for a long time. Six days after the flight of the Tunisian president Ben Ali, the Prime Minister, Mohamed Ghannouchi, called me and said, “I need you to form a new government.” I asked for a few days to organize my departure from Paris, but Mohamed Ghannouchi passed the phone to one of his advisers, who said, “the situation is too unstable, come as soon as possible.” So the next day, I took the 8am flight for Tunis and settled in an office adjacent to Prime Minister. My role was to attend all of the Prime Minister&rsquo... Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:00 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1218/letter-from-tunisia http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1221/the-evolution-of-revolution-social-media-in-the-modern-middle-east-and-its-policy-implications By Taylor Bossung - Cyber-pessimistic scholars like Evgeny Morozov and Malcolm Gladwell dispute the notion that social media is a “magic pill” for the subjugated in the Middle East. Says Morozov, “The idea that the internet favors the oppressed rather than the oppressor is marred by what I call cyber-utopianism: a naïve belief in the emanicipatory nature of online communication that rests on a stubborn refusal to admit its downside.”2 Still, scholars and politicos like Clay Shirky and Nicholas Kristof suggest otherwise. Condoleezza Rice trumpeted the internet’s utility as a tool... Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:00 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1221/the-evolution-of-revolution-social-media-in-the-modern-middle-east-and-its-policy-implications