Professors from multiple academic departments last night teamed up to hold a dialogue on the rapidly unfolding Arab uprising in the Middle East and North Africa, addressing the causes and possible outcomes of the unprecedented revolutions in the region.
The departments of political science, economics and sociology, along with the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies and the International Relations Program, sponsored a panel discussion about the various uprisings, which began in Tunisia earlier this year and have since spread to Egypt, Libya, Yemen and many other strategically significant countries in the Middle East.
Professor of Political Science Robert Devigne opened the panel with a comparison between today's Middle East and Europe in 1848, a time when people began to challenge authoritarian regimes and revolted in the streets of Paris and Rome.
Devigne, who is the chair of the department, noted the differences between 1848 Europe and 2011 Middle East, referring to the former as "the turning point of history that didn't turn."
"While on the one hand it was a widespread revolt, it was marked by not a single success," he said.
Entrenched authoritarian regimes in Europe at the time were insistent on a top-down approach to change, Devigne said, while the public revolt against them was ultimately divided by ideology. The two factors resulted in the revolts' failure, he said.
"It took 50 to 70 years just to get a section, a significant section of political parties who were not committed to liberalism as their end goal," he said. "Even then, a significant section — the communist section — stayed outside of it."
While 1848 was not a year of political reform, it did spark an era of liberalization in Europe, Devigne said, and resulted in major shifts in the balance of power that could not have been predicted beforehand. The revolution in Egypt demonstrated a similar shift, though it will require more than a public uprising to remain long-lasting, he said.
"I would argue that when the public enters the political stage ... it will require some type of consolidation and creation of new centralized forms of political power," Devigne said, referring to the recent revolution in Egypt.
Associate Professor of Political Science Malik Mufti spoke on the variables that will play into the next stage of the Arab revolutions, saying the uprisings illustrated a democratic rhetoric new to the region.
In addition to the importance of the recent popular demand for democracy in the Arab world, the role of religion cannot be ignored, Mufti said, citing Egypt as a specific example of the complicated relation between the two.
"Islamists will continue to be the main opposition force in all of these countries," he said. "Every successful opposition movement in the Arab world will have it. Some of these will stay on the democratic path, others may not and that variation is important as well."
Despite a few "hiccups," Mufti added, the new Egyptian leadership will eventually be integrated into the international system.
Assistant Professor of Political Science Oxana Shevel drew comparisons between the Arab uprisings and the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe, saying both were characterized by a "snowballing" effect.
"Most obviously, events in Eastern Europe show us how long-established authoritarian regimes can collapse quite quickly," Shevel said.
Shevel cautioned that despite these comparisons, liberal democracy is not now, at least in the short term, a guarantee in the Middle East because of the spontaneous and disorganized nature of the revolts.
Professor of Economics Enrico Spolaore, who is also the department chair, examined the economic causes of the uprisings. He specifically cited the relatively low income per capita of Arab states like Tunisia and Egypt — where dictators were ousted fairly quickly by protests — and high youth unemployment rates across the Arab world.
Assistant Professor of Sociology Ryan Centner discussed the urban planning and social factors that contributed to the successful revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. He emphasized that accessibility to large public spaces was in both countries a factor contributing to the success of the protests.
