Introduction. New Wave of Revolutions in the MENA Region in the Global Perspective

Abstract

In the late 2010s, the countries of the Middle East and North Africa were swept by a new revolutionary wave, which was also called “Arab Spring 2.0”. In this introductory chapter, Issaev and Korotayev offer a preliminary description and analysis of this revolutionary wave in the MENA region. The scale of the protests of the late 2010s approached the one of the Arab Spring and led to the fall of regimes in Sudan, Algeria and Mali, the protests became permanent in Lebanon and Iraq, and in Egypt and Iran they were suppressed at the cost of substantial casualties among the civilian population. As in the case of the events of the Arab Spring, the new revolutionary wave was characterized by a domino effect, when the success of the revolutionaries in one of the countries of the region gave rise to increasing protest sentiments in another. An important synchronizing factor was also dissatisfaction with rising food and fuel prices, which caused people to take to the streets in every country of the Arab Spring 2.0. At the same time, the economic agenda quickly gave way to the political one and actualized long-standing unresolved problems in each of the countries, which, as a rule, were of a systemic nature. On the other hand, the events of a new revolutionary wave were distinguished by their pronounced orientation “against everyone”, against the political class as a whole, and not just against a specific autocrat, as was mostly observed during the Arab Spring. It is no coincidence that the main slogan of the new revolutionary wave was “All Must Go” (with variations). In other words, faced with situations in which the departure of the dictator does not solve anything, or the political system does not in principle imply his existence, the dissatisfaction of the protesters was directed against the entire political establishment. The chapter ends with a description of how the present volume is organized.