While the Arab people took center stage in the Arab Spring protests, academic studies have focused more on structural factors to understand the limitations of these popular uprisings. This book analyzes the role and complexities of popular agency in the Arab Spring through the framework of contentious politics and social movement theory.

Why did Tunisian protests following the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi lead to a massive wave of uprisings across the entire Arab world? Who participated in those protests, and what did they hope to achieve? Why did some leaders fall in the face of popular mobilization while others found ways to survive? And what have been the lasting results of the contentious politics of 2011 and 2012? The Arab uprisings pose stark challenges to the political science of the Middle East, which for decades had focused upon the resilience of entrenched authoritarianism, the relative weakness of civil society, and what seemed to be the largely contained diffusion of new norms and ideas through new information technologies. In this volume, leading scholars in the field take a sharp look at the causes, dynamics, and effects of the Arab uprisings. Compiled by one of the foremost experts on Middle East politics and society, The Arab Uprisings Explained offers a fresh rethinking of established theories and presents a new framework through which scholars and general readers can better grasp the fast-developing events remaking the region. These essays not only advance the study of political science in the Middle East but also integrate the subject seamlessly into the wider political science literature. Deeply committed to the study of this region and working out the kinks of the discipline, the contributors to this volume help scholars and policymakers across the world approach this unprecedented historical period smartly and effectively.

"A fine collection of empirically rich and thoughtful studies on a topic of considerable interest. Its fine-grained analyses of individual countries, organizations, and episodes of regime-opposition interaction make an important contribution to our understanding of authoritarian rule in the Middle East and beyond."--David Waldner, University of Virginia "Clearly addresses a gap in the literature on Middle East politics by focusing on various oppositions within different countries of the region. Deepens understanding of the concepts of opposition and contentious politics within authoritarian political systems."--Nicola Pratt, University of Warwick Scholarship examining the governments in the Middle East and North Africa rarely focuses on opposition movements, since those countries tend to be ruled by a centralized, often authoritarian government. However, even in an oppressive state, there are civil society and oppositional forces at work. The contributors to Contentious Politics in the Middle East reveal how such forces emerge and are manifested in nondemocratic states across the region. In most cases, the essays offer a comparative perspective, highlighting similarities across political borders. Providing historical context for current events, they examine the sociopolitical situations in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Algeria and analyze the role of Islam in Arab states' governments and in the opposition movements to them. They also demonstrate that not all opposition forces propose the overthrow of authority and point out the various forms opposition takes in societies that leave little room for political activism. The contributors to the volume are drawn from countries across three continents and bring backgrounds in political science, conflict resolution, and history. Challenging the assertion that state-society relations are limited to coercive top-down arrangements in authoritarian regimes, the book will inspire debate on the topic of contentious political participation within the region as well as in similar settings throughout the world.

This book uses a Contentious Politics lens to examine patterns of contestation since 2009 and 2011 among the Middle East's most important opposition actors. The volume is comprised of seven chapters that ask questions in relation to the responsiveness of opposition groups to their political environments, the long-term legacies of authoritarianism, and whether the post-2009/2011 political environment is better or worse for Middle Eastern oppositions. It interrogates the ways in which oppositions have morphed in relation to this changed operating environment, subjectively interpreting the costs and benefits of contestation in order to maximise political opportunities. To some oppositions, changes in the power balance between regime structures and opposition agents led to unprecedented opportunity for political action, while for others, structures were galvanised to restrict opposition activities. In total, the volume shows that even though the Arab Uprisings and Green Movement achieved few of their overt goals, the events unleashed smaller shifts across the region that have led to a fundamental change in the politics of contestation amongst the region’s oppositions. These patterns echo experiences in other parts of the world, including the coloured revolutions in post-Soviet states, and the political environment in Chile after Pinochet.

This book reveals how civil society and oppositional forces emerge and are manifested in non-democratic states across the Middle East. In most cases, the essays offer a comparative perspective, highlighting similarities across political borders.

"An analysis of the major contentious events over the course of the past ten years"--

This book considers the diverse forms of mass mobilization and contentious politics that emerged during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 and its aftermath. Drawing on a catalogue of more than 8,000 protest events, as well as interviews, video footage and still photographs, Neil Ketchley provides the first systematic account of how Egyptians banded together to overthrow Husni Mubarak, and how old regime forces engineered a return to authoritarian rule. Eschewing top-down, structuralist and culturalist explanations, the author shows that the causes and consequences of Mubarak's ousting can only be understood by paying close attention to the evolving dynamics of contentious politics witnessed in Egypt since 2011. Setting these events within a larger social and political context, Ketchley sheds new light on the trajectories and legacies of the Arab Spring, as well as recurring patterns of contentious collective action found in the Middle East and beyond.