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" The Arab Spring unleashed forces of liberation and social justice that swept across North Africa and the Middle East with unprecedented speed, ferocity, and excitement. Although the future of the democratic uprisings against oppressive authoritarian regimes remains uncertain in many places, the revolutionary wave that started in Tunisia in December 2010 has transformed how the world sees Arab peoples and politics. Bringing together the knowledge of activists, scholars, journalists, and policy experts uniquely attuned to the pulse of the region, Dispatches from the Arab Spring offers an urgent and engaged analysis of a remarkable ongoing world-historical event that is widely misinterpreted in the West. Tracing the flows of protest, resistance, and counterrevolution in every one of the countries affected by this epochal change--from Morocco to Iraq and Syria to Sudan--the contributors provide ground-level reports and new ways of teaching about and understanding the Middle East in general, and contextualizing the social upheavals and political transitions that defined the Arab Spring in particular. Rejecting outdated and invalid (yet highly influential) paradigms to analyze the region--from depictions of the "Arab street" as a mindless, reactive mob to the belief that Arab culture was "unfit" for democratic politics--this book offers fresh insights into the region's dynamics, drawing from social history, political geography, cultural creativity, and global power politics. Dispatches from the Arab Spring is an unparalleled introduction to the changing Middle East and offers the most comprehensive and accurate account to date of the uprisings that profoundly reshaped North Africa and the Middle East. Contributors: Sheila Carapico, U of Richmond; Nouri Gana, UCLA; Toufic Haddad; Adam Hanieh, SOAS/U of London; Toby C. Jones, Rutgers U; Anjali Kamat; Khalid Medani, McGill U; Merouan Mekouar; Maya Mikdashi, NYU; Paulo Gabriel Hilu Pinto, U Federal Fluminense, Brazil; Jillian Schwedler, Hunter College, CUNY; Ahmad Shokr; Susan Slyomovics, UCLA; Haifa Zangana. "--

This title provides a succinct, readable, and comprehensive treatment of how the Obama administration reacted to what was arguably the most difficult foreign policy challenge of its eight years in office: the Arab Spring. As a prelude to examining how the United States reacted to the first wave of the Arab Spring in the 21st century, this book begins with an examination of how the U.S. reacted to revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries and a summary of how foreign policy is made. Each revolution in the Arab Spring (in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen) and the Obama administration's action—or inaction—in response is carefully analyzed. The U.S.' role is compared to that of regional powers, such as Turkey, Israel, and Iran. The impact of U.S. abdication in the face of pivotal events in the region is the subject of the book's conclusion. While other treatments have addressed how the Arab Spring revolutions have affected the individual countries where these revolutions took place, U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East, and President Barack Obama's overall foreign policy, this is the only work that provides a comprehensive examination of both the Arab Spring revolutions themselves and the reaction of the U.S. government to those revolutions.

"This book examines the domestic and international factors involved in the revolutions in Egypt from 2011 up to the present"--

Looking at political mobilization in the years leading up to the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, one can notice a stark disparity between the number of people who participated in online organizing and the number of individuals who protested in the streets. During one silent demonstration organized by the We are all Khaled Said Facebook page in 2010, when the numbers in the streets were limited, one activist posted, "Where are the people who said they were coming? Where are the 10,000 men and women?" For years prior to the Arab Spring, opposition activists in Egypt organized protests with limited success. So why and how did thousands of Egyptian citizens suddenly take to the streets against the Mubarak regime in January 2011? Contesting the Repressive State not only answers this question, but asks specifically why and how people who are not part of political movements choose to engage or not engage in anti-government protest under repressive regimes. The central argument is that individuals are rational actors and their decisions to protest or not protest are based on the intersection of three factors: political opportunity structures, mobilizing structures, and framing processes (or the way in which the media presents particular issues). In turn, specific situations and frames trigger emotion in people, and it is this emotion that drives people to protest. Each chapter looks at a different facet of the revolutionary process (grievances, online participation, media framing, government violence) and identifies a relationship between key structural factors in each and the emotional responses they produce. Contesting the Repressive State is based on 170 interviews conducted in Egypt, during the Arab Spring, both with people who participated in street protests and those who did not. Ultimately, Kira D. Jumet explores how social media, violent government repression, changes in political opportunities, and the military influenced individual decisions to protest or not protest.

This book investigates the role of social groups in mobilizing resources for protests in repressive contexts. In particular, it examines the impact of organizations and informal groups on individual engagement in the protests developed in 2010-2011 in Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria. Empirical analysis draws on a wave of events and protests that took place between 2010 and 2021. It explores how, in repressive contexts, spontaneous groups and more established and formal organizations continuously switch from one form to another, transforming themselves faster than they would do in democratic contexts.

1. Modern technologies : possibilities and constraints -- 2. The digital age, demographics, and an ethos of protest -- 3. Youthful momentum, social media, human rights, and political economy -- 4. Emerging identities : emotions, protests, and new media -- 5. US-Iran relations : from the green movement to the Arab Spring -- 6. The Arab Spring : regional implications and beyond.