The Arab Spring: Why the Surprising Similarities with the Revolutionary Wave of 1848?

“…social media—facilitates mobilization by making it easier for peripheral members to learn of other protests or coordinate without core social network actors (Hale 2013; Warren 2014; Weyland 2012); if that is the case, core social network members may have driven mobilization in earlier centuries.”

“Prominent examples are the diffusion of free market policies (Simmons & Elkins 2004; Meseguer 2009), same-sex marriage (Kollman 2007; Fernandez & Lutter, 2013; Mitchell & Petray 2016), protests in the Arab Spring (Weyland 2012) and national conservative forces (Rooduijn 2014; Van Hauwaert 2018), to name just a few.”

“Several qualitative studies provide empirical evidence for the relevance of bounded learning in the Arab Spring (Cooley and Nexon, 2011; Dalacoura, 2012; Herb, 2014; Heydemann and Leenders, 2011; Lutterbeck, 2012; Lynch, 2013; Weyland, 2012).”

“Email: ksg@essex.ac.uk The Arab Spring has renewed interest in nonviolent direct action and the notion that protest come in waves, where dissent in one country diffuses to others (see, e.g., Lynch 2012; Weyland 2012).”

“As both qualitative and statistical analyses suggest, the initial riptide of protest was propelled by the cognitive shortcuts that fueled the wildfire of 1848 (Bamert 2013; Weyland 2012).”

“…of revolutionary success, placing too much weight on dramatic news from elsewhere and drawing firm conclusions from relatively sparse information (Weyland 2012: 920-4); second, revolutionaries enact their protests in increasingly inhospitable settings – regimes learn quickly, including how to…”

“Activists may choose to take advantage of openings in the political opportunity structure signaled by the onset of campaigns elsewhere, and empirical studies show that nonviolent campaigns diffuse across countries (Beissinger 2007; Weyland 2012; Gleditsch and Celestino 2013).”

“In recent work, Weyland (2008; 2012; 2014) shows how bounded rationality, cognitive heuristics, and loss aversion explain various political decisions.”

“This explanation also speaks to literature on the role of threat perception to explain the spread of revolutionary movements (Weyland, 2012) as well as literature on foreign policy choice during times of uncertainty (Odinius & Kuntz, 2015).”

“…(Goldstone 2013; Goodwin 2011; Mann 2013; Ritter 2015), processes of contagion and diffusion (Beck 2014; Diani 2011; Hale 2013), strengths of movements and coalitions (Austin Holmes 2012; Foran 2014; Lawson 2015; Leenders 2012), and the contingency of collective action (Kurzman 2012; Weyland 2012).”

“3 Weyland 2012 likewise argues that the closest parallel to 2011 is 1848, though he emphasizes the interaction of cognitive heuristics and organizational capacity in both waves.”

“Indeed, some scholars have noted that the activists who organized early protests during the Arab Spring were noteworthy for their courage and commitment (Lynch 2011; Weyland 2012).”

“Without such safeguards, uncertainty about the continued flow of events portends only a chaos diametrically opposed to political progress (see Wiarda, 2012: 137).”

“After four decades of authoritarianism, Syrians longed for greater freedom, rule of law, economic opportunity, protection from an unchecked security apparatus, and an end to endemic corruption (George 2003; Yazbek 2011; Ziadeh 2011; Starr 2012; Wieland 2012).”

“Bounded learning models emphasize that learning is difficult because experience is “meager relative to the complex and changing nature of the world” (Levinthal and March 1993, 96; cf. Weyland 2006, 2012).”

“…provided a powerful tool to cast Morocco as a ‘modern’, ‘liberal’ monarchy and to consolidate its legitimacy in the face of domestic civil society pressures for liberalisation, as well as the monarchy’s fear of regional ‘revolutionary diffusion’ (Weyland 2012) in the context of the ‘Arab Spring’.”

“Others remain even more sceptical: Springborg (2011) and Weyland (2012) liken the Arab Spring more to the failed European revolutions of 1848 than to the more successful democratic transitions of the Communist bloc at the end of the Cold War in 1989.”

“…e.g., Goldstone, 2011, 2014; Beck, 2014; Lang and De Sterck, 2014; Korotayev et al., 2011a, 2011b, 2013, 2014; Grinin and Korotayev, 2011, 2012; Moore, 2012; Weyland, 2012; Wilson, 2013).2 In some cases (especially in Libya and Syria), an important role was played by external destabilizing actions.”

“This type of explanation typically comes from the diffusion literature, which examines how externally generated policies prompt domestic policy changes (Simmons & Elkins, 2004; Strang, 1991; Weyland, 2012).”

“‘Loyalty to the government is the most critical qualitative characteristic of armed forces, for the outcome of rebellions and revolutionary wars hinge on that loyalty’ (Wickham-Crowley, 1992: 64; see also Brownlee et al., 2015; Koehler and Albrecht, 2019; Russell, 1974).”

“For instance, the literature on protest cascades has argued that individuals who witness protest will expect more participation by others, more successful protest, or a lower likelihood of personally experiencing repression (Kuran 1991; Weyland 2012).”

“The high degree of regional media and social media integration arguably helped to create the conditions for the international diffusion of revolutionary protest, culminating in a regime change cascade (Hale, 2013; Hussain and Howard, 2013; Patel et al., 2014; Weyland, 2012).”

“Political as well as economic revolutions may diffuse (Lucas 2009; Weyland 2009, 2012), as may electoral strategies (Bunce and Wolchik 2011), democratization (Huntington 1993; Institute for Democracy and Conflict Resolution 2012), patterns of repression (Patel, Bunce, and Wolchik 2013), and so on.”

“There were many other social scienti fi cally relevant mechanisms at play during the Arab Spring; for example, the bounded rationality noted by Weyland (2012) and the preference falsi fi cation described by Kuran (1991).”

“In the case of the 1848 Revolutions, protests began in three countries (i.e., Germany, Austria, and Denmark) less than one month after Louis Philippe I was dethroned in France.”

“…theoretical perspectives looking at empirical examples (Aminzade & McAdam, 2001; Calhoun, 2001; Goodwin, Jasper, & Polletta, 2000, 2001, 2004; Goodwin & Pfa ff , 2001; Hale, 2013; Jasper, 1998; Kemper, 2001; McAdam, 1982; Patel, Valerie, & Sharon, 2014; Tilly, 1978; Walsh, 1981; Weyland, 2012).”

“The December 2010 protests of Tunisia incited similar demonstrations across the Arab world because youth activists across borders were receptive to learning new strategies, eager to emulate the success story of Tunisia and able to coordinate around common symbols and themes (Harrelson-Stephens and Callaway 2014; Saide…”

“As Kurt Weyland (2012) has argued, the events in Tunisia invited Egyptians to imagine the previously unthinkable possibility of taking similar action against Mubarak.”

“In the case of the Arab Spring, serious threats were posed by governmental violence against the protestors, suggesting that non-participants decided against protest based on threats to their safety (Pearlman, 2013; Weyland, 2012).”

“Accounting for the cross-border, transnational dimension of social movements and protest behaviour, comparative research has also studied diffusion processes in regional waves of contention (Patel et al., 2014; Weyland, 2012).”

“This captures whether the mass protests differ from the (limited) protests and strikes that were taking place across the region before (Moghadam, 2013; Posusney, 2004; Szmolka, 2017; Weyland, 2012) and could thus raise expectations.”

“The same idea has been applied to the Arab Spring: countries with repressive laws that had previously successfully prevented challenges to the state experienced widespread protests and demonstrations (Hale 2013; Weyland 2012).”

“…toward political liberalism and democracy’, primarily because in both cases the upheavals were driven not by organized leaderships but by ‘ordinary people’ unable to conduct strategic calculations ‘according to the rules of Bayesian updating and standard logic’ (Weyland 2012: 918, 922, 928).”

“36 Kurt Weyland (2012) The Arab Spring: Why the Surprising Similarities with the Revolutionary Wave of 1848?, Perspectives on Politics, 10(4), pp. 917–934.”

“Conversely, similar heuristics have prompted would-be revolutionaries in Europe and the Arab World to overestimate their chances of success and mobilize precipitously against wellfortified regimes (Weyland 2009, 2012).”

“The Arab Spring protests have received attention mostly with regard to their interaction with regime responses and their outcomes (Bellin 2012; Hess 2015; Way 2011; Weyland 2012).”

“Some scholars have found parallels in the wave of revolutionary protests in Europe and beyond in 1848, likewise quickly smothered (Weyland, 2012).”

“…nature and causes are expressed (Albrecht and Koehler, 2020; Beck, 2011, 2014; Keller, 2012; Lawson, 2019; Mako and Moghadam, 2021; Ritter, 2015; Weyland, 2012; see also the study by Beck et al., 2022: 161; Goldstone et al., 2022a, 2022c; Grinin and Grinin, 2022a, 2022b; Grinin et al., 2022;…”

“Other specialists distinguish between rational and bounded learning, with the former assuming full rationality while the latter implies cognitive shortcuts (Weyland, 2009, 2012).”

“…great waves of protest, such as those unleashed in 1848, 1968, 1989, or 2010, it seems that new forms of collective action spread rapidly both within and across societies, even when local conditions were unfavorable for their adoption and fostered strategic blunders (Hale 2013; Weyland 2012).”

“In the context of the Arab uprisings, it has been underlined how more people joined the revolutionary movements as a result of the critical role played by cognitive shortcuts (Weyland, 2012) or emotions (Pearlman, 2013).”