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While the scholarship on the Arab uprisings is increasingly complex and intellectually refined, this special issue considers an aspect that so far has failed to attract sustained scholarly attention, namely continuity and change. This introduction provides the framework underpinning the special issue as a whole and discusses all the articles composing it, while elaborating on the scientific contribution that the examination of continuity and change before and after the uprisings can make to our understanding of politics in the region.

This article examines the centrality of political activism in the identity of Iranian refugees and investigates how they perform and incorporate it by considering the interlocked pressure of international politics, personal networks, and the assistance provided by civil society organizations. The case of Iranian political refugees in Italy and Turkey is of particular interest because of the international visibility of the Green movement, the Iranian people's historical experience of emigration, and the fact that Iran is a subject of great interest for a number of human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). It shows how the process of "being a refugee" works not only through classical forms of institutional pressure but also through "unexpected" forms such as NGO efforts to empower refugees politically. Despite the positive value attached to it, in this context political activism can force refugees into preestablished roles, such as "human rights defenders" or "Green movement activists." Paradoxically, refugees act within a context that dominates them even when it tries to empower them.

This article examines the centrality of political activism in Iranian refugees' identity and investigates how they perform and incorporate it by considering the interlocked pressure of international politics, personal networks and civil society organisations' assistance. The case of Iranian political refugees in Italy and Turkey is of particular interest, due to the international visibility the Green movement enjoys, the Iranian people's historical experience of emigration and to the fact that Iran is a subject of great interest for a number of human rights NGOs. The article shows how the process of incorporation of "being a refugee" comes about not only through classical forms of institutional pressure but also through "unexpected" forms, such as NGOs' efforts of empowering the refugees politically. Despite the positive value attached to it, in this context political activism can force refugees into pre-established role, such as the one of "human rights defenders" or "Green movement activists." The article brings further evidence to the fact that refugees are merged in a context that dominates them, even when it paradoxically tries to empower them.

The Iranian 2009 massive anti-regime protests in the wake of the contested presidential elections and the Arab Spring have taken the scholars of Middle Eastern Studies and the international community by surprise. It seems that, despite the very diverse outcomes of the uprisings in Iran and across the Arab world, Middle Eastern societies are in the very middle of what has been called an 'unfinished revolution' (Sakbani 2011). Despite the confusion that affected the academic community following the surprising events of the past few years, a great amount of studies have been produced in order to identify the roots and make sense of the uprisings. For the most part, however, explanations for the events refer to and are based on well-known theoretical debates and paradigms. In the case of the Arab world, the fall of long-standing authoritarian regimes has revived scholarly interest for the transition to democracy paradigm, whereas studies on the resilience of authoritarian regimes are now perceived as over-estimating authoritarian rulers' grip on society. In addition, the electoral success of Islamist parties has re-ignited scholarly enthusiasm for the rather trite debate on the compatibility between Islam and democracy. In the case of Iran, similar debates centred on democratization versus authoritarian persistence and on the relationship among Islam, democracy and modernity have been animating academic discussions for the last two decades. The 2009 crisis strengthened 2 scholars' perception of Iranian society as democratic, liberal, secular and in conflict with the authoritarian Islamic regime. Indeed, many social scientists of Iranian Studies support the idea that the explosion of political and social crisis in Iran, such as the 2009 uprising, demonstrates the existence of that liberal, secular and 'modern' civil society willing to shake a backward and authoritarian regime off. These four books elaborate on this interpretative line of inquiry, setting forth interesting arguments for an analysis of the current ...

This article engages the theoretical debate on 'continuity and change' before and after the so-called 'Arab Spring' and argues that the notion of uncertainty can further our understanding of continuity and change in the region. The article argues that the scholarship on the Middle East has so far failed to produce relevant theoretical innovation as an effect of the theoretical instruments previously dominant in the discipline, namely the two paradigms of democratization and authoritarian resilience. The article is composed of four sections. After a short examination of the two 'paradogmas' and their rigidities, the article focuses on the issues that scholars have debated after the outburst of the Arab Uprisings, examining those assumptions that the uprisings have contributed to dismantle. Next, the article discusses the notion of uncertainty as analytical tool and it finally examines three case-studies in order to substantiate the claims about its usefulness.

In this intervention, we discuss the ongoing protest movement and the quasi-revolutionary situation in Iran with the goal of offering contextual as well as background analysis. Our objective is to examine the current wave of revolutionary politics in the frame of a longer history, that is, the one of the "unaccomplished" 1979 revolution. We do not argue that the current movement is in continuity with the so-called Islamic revolution; rather, we ask what afterlives of the 1979 revolution and successive waves of mobilizations reverberate within the current situation. We do so from a political transformative vantage point, which we understand as inherently feminist, in that we refuse to recognize any hierarchy between the struggles, the issues, and the demands as expressed by the protesters. Indeed, we understand liberation as a collective project resulting from the intersection of struggles, demands, and issues. Following this line of reasoning, we interrogate the current moment along three thematic axes: the social composition, the prospects for political convergence, and the genealogy, or the ideational connection, of the current struggle with those of the past.