Book contents
- The Age of Counter-Revolution
- The Age of Counter-Revolution
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- A Note on Transliteration
- 1 Introduction
- 2 What Is Counter-Revolution?
- 3 The Revolutionary Situations
- 4 Political Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions
- 5 Militarising Counter-Revolution
- 6 From Revolution to State Collapse
- 7 Revolutionary States?
- 8 Conclusion
- Glossary
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Introduction
Another World Was Possible?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 May 2022
- The Age of Counter-Revolution
- The Age of Counter-Revolution
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- A Note on Transliteration
- 1 Introduction
- 2 What Is Counter-Revolution?
- 3 The Revolutionary Situations
- 4 Political Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions
- 5 Militarising Counter-Revolution
- 6 From Revolution to State Collapse
- 7 Revolutionary States?
- 8 Conclusion
- Glossary
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The uprisings that shook the Middle East in 2011 shaped the subsequent decade of civil wars, coups and political crisis. The ‘Arab Spring’ has, therefore, come to be seen as a failure – a failure of transition from authoritarian to democratic regimes. Such transitions were expected to follow the model established in the last quarter of the twentieth century, producing only political rather than social transformation. Rather than revolutions, however, the 2011 uprisings have come to be seen as at most unsuccessful revolts. The reasons for this failure are typically ascribed to peculiarities of the region, in the presence of Islamist oppositions, sectarian division and external intervention into relatively weak states. Yet the crushing of the Arab uprisings represents not an inevitable failure or defeat but success: the success of counter-revolution.
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- The Age of Counter-RevolutionStates and Revolutions in the Middle East, pp. 1 - 28Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022