Arab Spring Protests Research Articles

Endangered Scholars Worldwide

Endangered Scholars Worldwide Ebby Abramson and Dolunay Bulut The information in this quarterly print report is current as of November 14,2018. The situation of scholars and students around the world changes on a daily basis. For the most up-to-date informationand ways in which you can be involved in calling for the freedom of endangered scholars and students, please visit us online at www.endangeredscholarsworldwide.net or follow us at www.facebook.com/endangeredscholars. In these pages we introduce new cases that have come to our attention over the past three months and provide basic information about continuing cases—a description of charges and potential or act al reported sentences. If you are aware of a scholar or student whose case you believe we should investigate, please contact us at esw@newschool.edu. SPECIAL REPORT Endangered Scholars Worldwide Deplores Attacks on Freedom of Expression in Brazil'S Universities Endangered Scholars Worldwide deplores and condemns the outrageous invasions of Brazilian universities by military police, as well as the confiscation of teaching materials on ideological grounds. Reports claim that police officers and military have taken these actions in more than 20 public Brazilian universities as a result of the campaign and election of the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. The measures have triggered a reaction from the academic community and public interest organizations. On November 1, 2018, more than 107 academics, researchers, graduates, students, and staff members at universities across Europe signed a letter opposing the attacks on freedom of expression in Brazil's universities. [End Page v] We join other academic, intellectual, and political leaders in Europe, the United States, and other regions in decrying these attacks on Brazil's universities, which were done in the name of Bolsonaro's wider aggressive, antiprogressive, and fascistic agenda. ESW stands in solidarity with the students and faculty of the Brazilian universities that have been subjected to the attacks. For full coverage of the crisis in higher education in Brazil and to sign our letter of protest, please visit www.endangeredscholarsworldwide.net/brazil. NEW AND CONTINUING CASES BAHRAIN Scholars and Researchers: abdul-jalil al-singace, 56, the former head of the Department of Engineering at the University of Bahrain, has been in Jau Prison since 2011 on a life sentence for allegedly "plotting to overthrow the government" during the Arab Spring protests. Throughout his time in detention, Al-Singace has been subjected to torture and various other forms of ill-treatment. Since March 2013, Bahraini officials have consistently ignored Al-Singace's requests for medical attention despite his long-term poliomyelitis, which has left him paralyzed since childhood. Whether deliberately or through indifference, Bahraini authorities are wielding the denial of adequate medical care as a weapon against their dissidents, both academics and others. ESW urges the authorities to grant Abdul-Jalil Al-Singace access to all necessary medical care as a matter of urgency, and we continue to call for his immediate and unconditional release, as well as the release of all those detained in Bahrain in violation of Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Bahrain is party. ESW calls for letters, emails, and faxes respectfully urging authorities to reconsider any convictions related to this scholar's peaceful exercise of free speech and association and to ensure his well-being and access to medical attention while in custody, in accordance with international human rights standards. [End Page vi] Students: ali mohamed hakeem al-arab, 23, a nursing student was arrested on February 9, 2017, with his cousin, ahmed al arab, also a nursing student. Both men were subsequently sentenced to death by the Fourth High Criminal Court in Bahrain on charges including "forming and joining a 'terrorist group.'" Al-Arab had escaped along with several prisoners from Jau Prison on January 1, 2017, which resulted in the killing of a policeman. The Bahrain Ministry of Interior issued a statement in February identifying Ali al-Arab as "the main suspect" in the killing of the officer, after he was "found to be in possession of two Kalashnikov rifles and three firearms." According to a report by Amnesty International dated March 15, 2018, Al-Arab claims he...

Modeling migrant smuggling: Testing descriptive types against recent findings

AbstractThis article develops a typology of migrant smuggling. Six generic types of migrant smuggling that were originally produced in the early 2000s are reviewed against more recent empirical findings. These six types were developed in the context of the profound transformation faced by Europe over the course of the 1990s in terms of its geopolitical landscape, when the fall of the Iron Curtain and the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia resulted in an unprecedented magnitude of asylum migration, irregular migration flows, and migrant smuggling. Today, in the aftermath of the Arab spring protests and the outbreak of civil war in Syria, the phenomenon of migrant smuggling toward Europe has regained notoriety and relevance. The article concludes that the fundamental mechanisms and types of migrant smuggling that were identified more than a decade ago have persisted over time, but that certain changes in the modus operandi of migrant smugglers can be observed, changes that are linked to geopolitical, market, infrastructural, and other factors.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMICS OF THE ARAB SPRING

There were large differences in the responses of Arab dictators to the Arab Spring protests. To understand these differences, I present a stylized model of how a dictator responds to mass protests for democratization in a polarized country with two ethnic or religious groups. In this model, the dictator's response crucially depends on oil revenues and his affiliation to either the majority or the minority group. I document that the model's predictions are consistent with the observed differences in the Arab dictators' responses. Hence, ethnic politics and religious divides may play an important role in political transitions and regime changes. (JEL D72, D74)

Arab spring protests and women's labor market outcomes: Evidence from the Egyptian revolution

We analyze the effects of the 2011 Egyptian protests on the relative labor market conditions of women using panel data from the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey (ELMPS). Using unique information from the Statistical Database of the Egyptian Revolution, we geocode each “martyr”, i.e. demonstrators who died during the protests, based on the location of the political incident. We construct our measure of the intensity of the protests – the district-level number of “martyrs” – and rely on a Difference-in-Differences approach. We find that the 2011 protests have reduced intra-household differences in labor force participation by increasing women's employment and unemployment relative to men. Women's employment relative to men increased in both the private and informal sectors. Our estimates suggest how economic uncertainty such as the one associated to the recent protests may undermine the importance of cultural factors and attitudes towards female work. We link these findings to the literature showing how a relevant shock to the labor division between women and men may have long run consequences on the role of women in society.

Endangered Scholars Worldwide

Endangered Scholars Worldwide Ebby Abramson and Dolunay Bulut The information in this quarterly print report is current as of December 5, 2017. The situation of scholars and students around the world changes on a daily basis. For the most up-to-date information and ways in which you can be involved in calling for the freedom of endangered scholars and students, please visit us online at www.endangeredscholarsworldwide.net or follow us at www.facebook.com/endangeredscholars. In these pages we introduce new cases that have come to our attention over the past three months and provide basic information about continuing cases—a description of charges and potential or actual reported sentences. If you are aware of a scholar or student whose case you believe we should investigate, please contact us at esw@newschool.edu. PETITION TO IRAN TO OVERTURN PROFESSOR AHMADREZA DJALALI'S DEATH SENTENCE We the undersigned are compelled to express our outrage at the arrest, conviction, and sentencing of Iranian professor Ahmadreza Djalali, who has been detained since April 2016 by the Islamic Republic of Iran. He was accused of espionage and, following a closed trial, sentenced to death on October 20, 2017. The 45-year-old professor, who taught at the European Master in Disaster Medicine (EMDM) in Italy—a joint master's program of the Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel—was arrested in April 2016 in Tehran on charges of "collaboration with a hostile government" while he was visiting his family. Djalali was later accused of providing information to Israel to help it assassinate several senior nuclear scientists. Amnesty International reports [End Page v] that Djalali's lawyers were told on Saturday, December 9, 2017, that the Supreme Court had considered his case and upheld his October 24 sentence in a secret process without allowing them to file defense submissions. We at Endangered Scholars Worldwide and the undersigned consider this arbitrary sentence a flagrant and unjust violation of the freedom, security, and safety of an academic who is clearly a victim of a political witch hunt—arrested without cause, held for months in solitary confinement and without access to a lawyer, and subjected to physical mistreatment and psychological abuse. Endangered Scholars Worldwide and the undersigned deplore this unjustified verdict in the strongest terms and ask all international organizations, academic and professional associations, and other groups and individuals devoted to the promotion and defense of human rights, to strongly protest and condemn this arbitrary sentence, to call for Professor Djalali's immediate and unconditional release, and to urge the officials of the Iranian government to respect, guarantee, and implement the provisions and principles of human rights as specified in international conventions and treaties. Signed: Talal Asad, Etienne R. Balibar, Jose Casanova, Nancy Fraser, Ira Katznelson, Janos Kis, Arien Mack, Steven Pinker, and more than 100 others from Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Netherlands, Poland, and the United States. Please add your signature at: https://tinyurl.com/esw-djalali-petition. NEW AND CONTINUING CASES BAHRAIN Scholars and Researchers: abdul-jalil al-singace, the former head of the department of engineering at the University of Bahrain, has been in Jau [End Page vi] prison since 2011 on a life sentence for allegedly "plotting to overthrow the government" during the Arab Spring protests. Al-Singace, who has long campaigned for political reform and an end to torture, was himself tortured at the time of his detention. Recent reports suggest that he has repeatedly been denied medical treatment as he refused to wear the prison uniform and handcuffs. ESW calls for Dr. Abduljalil Al-Singace to be granted access to all necessary medical care as a matter of urgency, and continues to call for his immediate and unconditional release, as well as all those detained in Bahrain in violation of Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Bahrain is a state party. Students: ali mohamed hakeem al-arab, 23, was arrested on February 9, 2017. On March 7, he was moved to Dry Dock Prison. Ali al-Arab has allegedly been tortured during interrogation, including having his toenails pulled off, given electric shocks, and beaten...

Rethinking civil society and transitional justice: lessons from social movements and ‘new’ civil society

ABSTRACTTransitional justice has often reduced conceptions of civil society to human rights NGOs, and lacks a rigorous conceptualisation of the role that civil society plays in transitional justice processes. It largely ignores as political actors the social movements that have driven democratisation in various parts of the world and can be credited as integral to the creation of the discourse of transitional justice. While transitional justice in theory and practice remains focused on traditional civil society, institutions and the state, recent transitions highlight that change is driven by a range of different actors, often using modes of organisation and repertoires of action linked to social movement modalities and other forms of collective action. As such we coin the term ‘new’ civil society, associated with events such as the Arab Spring and austerity-led protests in Southern Europe, to argue that it provides new models for understanding change and justice in transition. An effort is made to conceptualise the roles civil society can play in shaping transitional justice and the ‘new’ civil society framework is used to understand how such actors actively contest mainstream social, political and transitional paradigms, and model alternatives to them. ‘New’ civil society actors rethink how justice and rights are understood in transition, and model alternatives that constitute new forms of transitional politics.

Ties to the Rest: Autocratic Linkages and Regime Survival

The relationship between international linkages and the nature and survival of political regimes has gained increasing attention in recent years, but remains one that is poorly understood. In this article, we make three central contributions to our understanding of international linkage politics and autocratic regime survival. First, we introduce and develop the concept of “autocratic linkage,” and highlight its importance for understanding the international politics of autocratic survival. Second, we use event history analysis to demonstrate that autocratic linkage has a systematic effect on the duration of authoritarian regimes. Finally, we complement our quantitative analysis with a focused comparison of autocratic linkage politics in the Middle East. We show that variation in Saudi Arabian support for autocratic incumbents in the wake of the Arab Spring protests can be explained in significant part by variation in linkage relationships.

Piracy and the Politics of Social Media

Since the 1990s, the understanding of how and where politics are made has changed radically. Scholars such as Ulrich Beck and Maria Bakardjieva have discussed how political agency is enacted outside of conventional party organizations, and political struggles increasingly focus on single issues. Over the past two decades, this transformation of politics has become common knowledge, not only in academic research but also in the general political discourse. Recently, the proliferation of digital activism and the political use of social media are often understood to enforce these tendencies. This article analyzes the Pirate Party in relation to these theories, relying on almost 30 interviews with active Pirate Party members from different parts of the world. The Pirate Party was initially formed in 2006, focusing on copyright, piracy, and digital privacy. Over the years, it has developed into a more general democracy movement, with an interest in a wider range of issues. This article analyzes how the party’s initial focus on information politics and social media connects to a wider range of political issues and to other social movements, such as Arab Spring protests and Occupy Wall Street. Finally, it discusses how this challenges the understanding of information politics as a single issue agenda.

Repression and Activism among the Arab Spring’s First Movers: Evidence from Morocco’s February 20th Movement

Why are some people willing to initiate protest against authoritarian regimes? How does repression affect their willingness to act? Drawing on data from the Arab Spring protests in Morocco, this article argues first that activism is passed down from one generation to the next: first movers often came from families that had been punished for opposing the regime in the past. Secondly, repression during the Arab Spring was also counterproductive: those connected to first movers via Facebook supported renewed pro-democracy protests when informed of the regime’s use of repression in 2011. A regime that jails and beats political dissidents creates incentives for its citizens to oppose it; these abuses can come back to haunt the regime long after repression occurs.

Predicting protests via tweets

Political Science Although many investigations have attempted to link the use of social media with protests, they have usually been based on events occurring in one country. Steinert-Threlkeld et al. collected nearly 14 million tweets and protest records from 16 countries in the Middle East and North Africa from 1 November 2010, through 31 December 2011, which includes the period of the Arab Spring protests. They studied the coordination of tweets (i.e., the progressive use of smaller numbers of protest-related hashtags by multiple users) and found that increased coordination was strongly associated with increased protests the next day. This was not the result of a few highly tweeted events or a few digital activists or international attempts to draw attention to the events. EPJ Data Sci. 10.1140/epjds/s13688-015-0056-y (2015).

A Society of Young Women: Opportunities of Place, Power, and Reform in Saudi Arabia

A Society of Young Women: Opportunities of Place, Power, and Reform in Saudi Arabia

A Society of Young Women: Opportunities of Place, Power, and Reform in Saudi Arabia

A Society of Young Women: Opportunities of Place, Power, and Reform in Saudi Arabia

Coupled catastrophes: sudden shifts cascade and hop among interdependent systems.

An important challenge in several disciplines is to understand how sudden changes can propagate among coupled systems. Examples include the synchronization of business cycles, population collapse in patchy ecosystems, markets shifting to a new technology platform, collapses in prices and in confidence in financial markets, and protests erupting in multiple countries. A number of mathematical models of these phenomena have multiple equilibria separated by saddle-node bifurcations. We study this behaviour in its normal form as fast–slow ordinary differential equations. In our model, a system consists of multiple subsystems, such as countries in the global economy or patches of an ecosystem. Each subsystem is described by a scalar quantity, such as economic output or population, that undergoes sudden changes via saddle-node bifurcations. The subsystems are coupled via their scalar quantity (e.g. trade couples economic output; diffusion couples populations); that coupling moves the locations of their bifurcations. The model demonstrates two ways in which sudden changes can propagate: they can cascade (one causing the next), or they can hop over subsystems. The latter is absent from classic models of cascades. For an application, we study the Arab Spring protests. After connecting the model to sociological theories that have bistability, we use socioeconomic data to estimate relative proximities to tipping points and Facebook data to estimate couplings among countries. We find that although protests tend to spread locally, they also seem to ‘hop' over countries, like in the stylized model; this result highlights a new class of temporal motifs in longitudinal network datasets.

Practical Geopolitical Reasoning in the Turkish and Qatari Foreign Policy on the Arab Spring

As a regional power, Turkey aspires to become an influential international actor. As a small state, Qatar seeks to enhance its security and sovereignty and become an indispensable regional middle power. The Arab Spring protests have created an ideal context for both actors to realize their geopolitical goals. However, adverse political developments have turned most Arab Spring countries into battlegrounds wherein old geopolitical rivalries deepened and new regional alliances were constructed. Taking Gaza, Syria and Egypt as cases in point, this paper investigates how Ankara and Doha's evolving practical geopolitical reasoning and its domestic and international representations converged to create venues for cooperation and promotion of relations to a level of political alignment.

Macroeconomic adjustment under regime change: From social contract to Arab Spring

Against the backdrop of the Arab–Spring protests, we examine macroeconomic stabilization under regime shift. We model this as a dynamic interaction between a government and a profit-maximizing firm. The former imposes the state of technology, some value of rent extraction, labor-market rigidities and time preference. The firm, conditional on these factors and the optimally-determined inflation rate, sets labor demand. Given its extractive nature, there is a continuous probability of a political regime shift, characterized by a hazard function (we compare state and non state contingent forms). The model is able to rationalize the early growth and developmental gains of many Arab economies and their subsequent reversal, as well as the later stalling of economic reforms. The model provides a novel analysis of the evolution of the Arab economies, the shifting time preferences of policy makers and their interaction with economic reforms.

Reactions and Actions to Xenophobia in South Africa: An Analysis of The Herald and The Guardian Online Newspapers

The spate of xenophobic attacks that occurred in South Africa first in 2008 and more recently in 2015 has raised questions in relation to causes and possible solutions. These discourses have focused on South African narratives with little contributions on how other African nationals perceive and conceptualize xenophobia. The paper recognizes the power of the mass media in serving as a major source of information for a variety of people in shaping their views and opinions about issues concerning xenophobia. Based on mass media narratives, the concept of a global village becomes more apparent as viewers, listeners and readers were informed of the events even though they were several miles away and in the comfort and safety of their environments. The paper argues that the media did not only inform but also served as a platform through which national and international reactions and actions could be aired and reported. These reactions and actions speak to a perceived identity that bind people along the lines of fundamental and sensitive issues such as religion, gender, rights and race. The Arab Spring protests exemplify the quintessential demonstration of the mobilization, by mass media, of citizens who through reactions and actions united to fight a common course and defend a common identity in the 21 st century. The study focuses on the xenophobic attacks in South Africa between April and June 2015. The paper considers xenophobia not from the point of view of South African journalists and citizens but from the narratives of foreign online newspaper reportage. Through content analysis of online versions of The Guardian (based in Nigeria) and The Herald (based in Zimbabwe), the study attempts to understand the role of the media in reporting the reactions and actions as identified in these papers. Key findings of the study suggest that mass media are not only instrumental in stimulating actions and reactions within the selected countries but also in South Africa where the xenophobic attacks took place.

Representing the Arab Spring in the Iranian press: Islamic awakening or foreign-sponsored terror?

The Islamic Republic of Iran, the largest non-Arab country in the region, has sought to play an influential role in regional politics since its establishment in 1979, and the Arab Spring protests have provided the prime opportunity for doing so. The Iranian government has vocally supported the revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, but has also remained defiantly supportive of the Syrian president despite popular opposition to his government. The Iranian media have been pivotal in communicating the position of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Using qualitative thematic analysis and Social Representations Theory, this article examines emerging media representations of the Arab Spring in two major English-language Iranian newspapers, The Tehran Times and Press TV. The following two themes are discussed: (1) “Islamic Awakening”: Islamicizing the Arab Spring, and (2) “Bashar Al-Assad is not Muammar Al-Gaddafi”: Compartmentalizing the Syrian Ally. Islamic identity and ingroup–outgroup dynamics are mobilized in order to increase the political influence of Iran and to undermine that of its foes. It is argued that there is a systematic “instrumentalization” of the Arab Spring in the Iranian press – it is employed to validate and accentuate tenets of the Islamic Republic of Iran's revolutionary ideology and to support its political interests in the region.

Kuwaiti political cartoons during the Arab Spring: Agenda setting and self-censorship

Where criticism of a government could be punishable, political cartoons are used to make critical social commentary in a less direct way. In this study, political cartoons published in four Kuwaiti newspapers during Arab Spring protests were analyzed. Most of the 261 cartoons linked negative attributes to Arab Spring and Kuwaiti politics, society and economy despite certain press restrictions. Newspapers established after a change in press regulations in 2006 were remarkably similar to older newspapers. Liberal and conservative papers both published mainly negative messages but provided starkly different issue agendas; of the 89 cartoons depicting the Arab Spring, only 8 appeared in conservative papers. Conservative papers concentrated on topics relating to Kuwaiti society, economy, and politics.

The Arab Spring Protests and Concurrent Disability Protests: Social Movement Spillover or Spurious Relationship?

Protests from different social movements sometimes coincide, but does that mean that one movement is influencing the other and increasing its “action mobilization,” or are different sets of factors causing the coincident protests? This paper examines that question in reference to two sets of coincident protests: those of people with disabilities and those of the pro-Democracy protests of 2011. It shows that, although disability protests did not start at the same time as the pro-Democracy protests, a number happened during and after, and in close physical proximity to, those protests. Neither set of protests acknowledged or referred to the other. While it is likely that a new law in Egypt and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities were among the mobilizing factors for people with disabilities, it also appears that the language of “rights” began to diffuse from the pro-Democracy protests to the disability protests.

The Struggle to Reclaim the City

The potential for citizens to reclaim and reappropriate the physical spaces of their city has garnered a great deal of attention over the past year or so. The Occupy movement, “Arab Spring,” and various social protest movements around the world have all reinvigorated debates over the political importance of public space. These movements posit an alternate historical trajectory to the one depicted by urban theorists and sociologists over the past half-century, who lament the steady “decline” of public space. One of the most vocal critics of the detrimental effects of contemporary urban planning for the sanctity of public space and urban life is the New York–based architect, academic, and architectural critic Michael Sorkin. Sorkin is currently Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Urban Design Program at the City College of New York. He is the author of several books and hundreds of articles on buildings, cities, and urban planning and design. In this interview, Sorkin weighs into these debates over the political and social importance of public space in cities and the challenges to disempowerment and disenfranchisement in urban environments. He discusses his early influences, the ongoing importance of Jane Jacobs to urban planning, sustainable living and “the possibility of New York becoming completely self-sufficient within its political boundaries”; as well as his views on the Occupy movement and post-9/11 surveillance and paranoia.