TITLU în română: Analizând reflecţiile revoltelor din 2011 asupra democraţiei şi identităţii în Orientul Mijlociu arab: o retrospectivă
Subiect: Ten years have passed since the outbreak of the Arab Uprisings. Kicking off first in Tunisia following the self-immolation of a street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, the public demonstrations swept throughout the Arab Middle East from early 2011. As noted by Gregory Gause III, most academics were astonished by the Arab Spring, especially the downfall of the two long-standing rulers in Egypt and Tunisia in 2011. What makes the Arab Spring or Revolts or Uprisings an extremely significant series of events is not solely related to the regional power shifts it caused; instead, it was the nascent idea of ‘democracy as a panacea’ embedded in the people’s demands that resonated.
The key objective of this article is to parse the reflections of these popular protests on notions of democracy and identity in the Arab Middle East today. To that end, this work will first shed light on the demands of the demonstrators during and after the Arab revolts, and as the corollary of this, the changing perceptions of the effectiveness of democracy in the region amid mounting economic challenges will also be addressed. In the second part of the article, new regime-survival mechanisms enacted to stimulate new forms of nationalism(s) in Egypt and Jordan will be explored.
