520 |
|
|
|b The Arab Spring is considered an expansion of the democratic shift in the modern times and its fourth wave. The Arab peoples are not an exception of the current global political changes. History saw 2 public revolutions against totalitarianism in 1848 and 1989. Likewise, the Arab public uprisings of 2011 broke out in the face of dictatorships, which had lost their legitimacy, taking the shape of spontaneous protests calling for freedom, dignity, equality and social justice against oppression and corruption. The causes for these revolutions were similar to a certain extent in being against regimes without a legitimacy of achievement. In the three cases, they were surprising and fast in toppling the regimes, regardless of the ideological differences. Those of 1848 called for liberalism against dictatorship, those of 1989 rose against communist regimes and those of 2011 stood up against secular regimes. For the results, liberalism and capitalism managed to rule in the first and second cases respectively. However, in the third case, the public activity was without ideology, but the fall of the regimes led to a conflict between political Islam movements and secularist, liberal groups. In the case of 1989, external powers - especially the EU and US - supported the democratic shift in political, economic and media terms. However, the uprisings in the Arab Spring states were different in facing international, regional and national counter-revolution powers, employing the above tools to switch the course of the changes, mainly to exclude the Islamists from politics. The resulting conflict often reached a civil war in some of these countries. In conclusion, the lesson derived from those events is that there are always counter revolutions, which are often defeated - however powerful - by the revolutions. In their rule, the former repeats the failure of the previous dictatorships, which do not have achievements to mention.
|