المستخلص: |
Since January 2011 a wave of revolutions are erupting in the Middle East, toppling tyrannical regimes that have been in power for decades, often supported by Western countries. These revolutions exposed the fragile base of these regimes that was weakly rested on censorship and security apparatus while suffocating growth through endemic corruption, dysfunction and deteriorating economy. With the success of the first revolution in Tunisia that toppled the Ben Ali regime, subsequent revolutions followed in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Algeria, Syria, and Bahrain. These revolutions, although differ in particularities from one country to another, they share common traits that unite them around paradigms such as spontaneity, leaderless, discipline, egalitarianism, and espousing a direction toward a fourth political path in the Middle East: a road toward democracy and good governance. In doing so, the 2011 revolutions in the Middle East are bypassing the previous three political movements of nationalism, communism/ socialism, and Islamic fundamentalism. This paper addresses the causal factors for the emergence of these revolutions, their characteristics, the specifics of the fourth dimension, and the historical context of which it was born.
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