The tide that failed to rise: Young people’s politics and social values in and after the Arab uprisings

Pamela Abbott; Andrea Teti; Roger Sapsford

doi:10.1080/13629395.2018.1482124

The tide that failed to rise: Young people’s politics and social values in and after the Arab uprisings

Pamela Abbott, Andrea Teti, Roger Sapsford^* (Corresponding Author)

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

12 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The story of the ‘Arab Spring’ as a revolt of young people against autocracy does not stand up to survey analysis at country level. Data from the Arab Transformations Survey show that young people were over-represented as participants, but it is necessary to stretch the concept of ‘youth’ into middle age in some countries to say this, there were plenty of older participants, and the protests were aimed less at political rights and more at social justice. Fundamental political changes have been expected in MENA which would sweep away autocratic rule in favour of democratisation, as the values successive younger generations became individualised, liberalised and secularised under
the influence of economic and market development and the spread of education, but there is very little evidence that this is what occurred in the Arab Uprisings. Whether young or older, protestors were looking for regime change, an end to corruption and a reduction in IMF-inspired austerity, but political freedoms and democratic governance do not appear to have been at the top of their agenda.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1-25
Number of pages	25
Journal	Mediterranean Politics
Volume	25
Issue number	1
Early online date	22 Jun 2018
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/13629395.2018.1482124
Publication status	Published - Jan 2020

Bibliographical note

The Arab Transformations Project is an international research project operating within the European Commission’s FP7 framework, Grant No. 320214.

The authors acknowledge the contribution of the partners to the project and specifically the design and conduct of the Arab Transformations survey on which this paper draws. The authors alone remain responsible for the content of this Article; it does not necessarily represent the views of the EU, the Court of the University of Aberdeen or any of the project partners.

Keywords

MENA
Arab Uprisings
Youth
Modernisation Theory
Secularisation
Gender attitudes

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10.1080/13629395.2018.1482124Licence: Unspecified

Accepted Manuscript
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Mediterranean Politics on 22 June 2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13629395.2018.1482124
Accepted author manuscript, 527 KBLicence: Unspecified

Cite this

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The tide that failed to rise: Young people’s politics and social values in and after the Arab uprisings

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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