Revisiting the Arab uprisings: the politics of a revolutionary moment.

摘要

The Arab uprisings held such promise. It seemed that after decades of political ossification in the Arab world, 'the people' were finally gaining a voice and wresting control of their destinies. As the editors, Stephane Lacroix and Jean-Pierre Filiu, note in their introduction, the changes in the Middle East moved instead-with the notable exception of Tunisia-in two directions: chaos and civil war on the one hand, and resurgence of authoritarianism (assisted by a counter-revolutionary regional alliance) on the other. The details of the events within the countries whose leaders were toppled in 2011 (Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen) are obscured by the long stretch of internationalized regional violence and rivalries which followed. In the words of the editors, it is as if 'those transitions were simply footnotes in a narrative that progresses naturally from an Arab "spring" to an Arab "winter"', rather than expressions of a 'revolutionary moment whose outcome was never pre-determined, but depended on the choices and actions of a large range of actors, old and new' (p. 2). This edited collection illuminates these transitions and brings important insights from political science to the analysis of Middle East politics.