The Arab “Spring” 2011 and the end of communism 1989

The first surprise surrounding the Arab “Spring” was that it erupted at all. For years, the Arab world had been seen as sunk in torpor and was seemingly unaffected by the various waves of democratisation in the world. The second unexpected development was the speed of the demonstration effect. And the third is the apparent lack of clarity about the outcome of the change. Freedom, the end of the rule by corrupt elites, but then, where?

The immediate trigger may appear to be inconsequential, as with a policewoman slapping a market trader (Tunisia), but that kind of event happens regularly, so there must be deeper, structural flaws in the system.

All this leads one to reflect on the deeper causes of the change, the course of the shift and the direction or lack of it. Demography is obviously the primary such factor, given that a very high proportion of the population is in the 15-24, 25-34 age cohorts. Many of these people are aware that their economic prospects are bleak. The second is the arrival of the latest communications technology (internet, facebook, twitter), which have permitted the rapid spread of information and helped the organisation of mass action.

A third factor is that a statistically significant part of the population of the Arab world is urbanised and city living has implications for higher levels of literacy than the older (rural) generation. It is not unreasonable to attribute political and cultural objectives to the 15-34 age groups that differ from their parents’ by reason of having grown up in the city and expect a degree of anonymity. Not least, the so-called “street”, the locus of demonstrations, can attract a critical mass of persons who have fewer ties of tradition.

Much of the attention has focused on the use and utility of facebook and twitter for constant communication and organisation. But access to the latest information technology has other implications, above all the way in which the internet has made access to information easy and cheap, and has simultaneously eroded the control of the power elite over what information should be made available. This process provides access to non-local alternatives, even if visual information is frequently superficial and misleading.

The next factor that is very likely to impede a successful democratic outcome to the Arab spring is the distrust of existing institutions, the perception of the state as a source of power and not of empowerment and the segmentation of some of these societies. In the case of Egypt, clashes between Muslims and Coptic Christians emerged rapidly after Mubarak’s departure. Syria is for all practical purposes an Alewite dictatorship, where roughly 10 percent of the population dominates the rest. In Bahrain the Shi’a majority frets against the Sunni ruling house. Libya is a kinship based society, with little to unite the eastern and western parts, other than coercion and the threat of coercion.

But more than anything else what is striking is that several months after the initial spark, there is no clarity about what kind of political system should be the aim of these movements. This political vagueness is regrettable, because it will make it far easier to reimpose the systems of control that the movements sought to end, even if these will have a somewhat different shape; and, of course, it is always easier to be rid of discredited rulers than to effect structural change.

One final thought. In looking at these structural factors what is striking is how different these societies are from Central and South-Eastern Europe in 1989. There was no demographic factor to speak of, urbanisation had been completed some time earlier, there was no instantaneous communication – those with memories long enough should think back to the miserable state of telephony – and these societies were generally not segmented. Where they were – Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, Soviet Union – the state itself fell apart.

On two points, however, there are evident parallels between 1989 and 2011. The collapse of a system is directly linked to the elite’s will to power, its sense of self-legitimation. In 1989, with the rather murky exception of Romania, the communist regimes fell one by one and the demonstration effect was working. The second parallel is that both the communist systems and the Arab autocracies sought to sustain tightly controlled systems of power and repression. Such systems become fragile and liable to disruption, which, indeed, illustrates the proposition that small causes can have disproportionate outcome. There is no return to equilibrium.

Sch. Gy