The DOI matches its Crossref record; 99 of the 99 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Arab Spring: Why the Surprising Similarities with the Revolutionary Wave of 1848?
Abstract
Prominent scholars have highlighted important similarities between the Arab Spring of 2011 and the “revolutions” of 1848: Both waves of contention swept with dramatic speed across whole regions, but ended up yielding rather limited advances toward political liberalism and democracy. I seek to uncover the causal mechanisms that help account for these striking parallels. Drawing on my recent analysis of 1848, I argue that contention spread so quickly because many people in a wide range of countries drew rash inferences from the downfall of Tunisia's dictator. Applying cognitive heuristics that psychologists have documented, they overrated the significance of the Tunisian success, overestimated the similarities with the political situation in their own country, and jumped to the conclusion that they could successfully challenge their own autocrats. This precipitation prompted protests in many settings that actually were much less propitious; therefore problems abounded. Cognitive shortcuts held such sway because Arab societies were weakly organized and repressed and thus lacked leaders from whom common people could take authoritative cues. The decision whether to engage in emulative contention fell to ordinary citizens, who—due to limited information access and scarce experience—were especially susceptible to the simple inferences suggested by cognitive heuristics.
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“revolutionaries in states outside the original onset of the crisis often overstate the possibilities of revolutionary success, placing too much weight on dramatic news from elsewhere and drawing firm conclusions from relatively sparse information (Weyland 2012: 920-4)”
From Within and Beyond the “Fourth Generation” of Revolutionary Theory (2016) · cites this paper as Weyland 2012
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“In doing so, this model resists the notion that Tunisia’s uprising spread across the Arab World due to ‘rash inferences’ by citizens, mainly of the republics, from Ben Ali’s downfall (Weyland, 2012).”
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Metadata
- Authors
- Weyland, K.
- Affiliations
- The University of Texas at Austin (US)
- Corresponding author
- Weyland, Kurt
- ORCID
- Weyland, Kurt
- Venue
- Perspectives on Politics
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2012-12
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 917-934
- ISSN
- 1537-5927 (ISSN-L)
- 1541-0986
- OpenAlex
- W2091445573
- Semantic Scholar
- 024a79f927e3d57f32c3d96f3eae4f5a2eccddb1
- Cited by
- 333
- References
- 97
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 37 · 2023: 27 · 2022: 37 · 2021: 46 · 2020: 18 · 2019: 52 · 2018: 20 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 13 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 12 · 2013: 11
- FWCI
- 43.25
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Perspectives on Politics (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Political Conflict and Governance
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Arab Spring and North African Politics
- Keywords
- Arab Spring, Revolutions of 1848, cognitive heuristics, political contagion, authoritarian regimes, Tunisia, political liberalization, democratic transition, information scarcity, authoritarian repression
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