The Economic Inevitability of The Arab Spring

On the morning of December 17, 2010 Tunisian street vendor Mohammed

Bouazizi publically set himself on fire – an act of protest against the police confiscation

of his only source of income (an unlicensed vegetable cart)1. What initiated as an

“isolated protest”2 against the “petty tyranny”3 of local authorities in Tunisia grew into a

pervasive civil unrest that engulfed most of the Middle East and North African (MENA)

region, as a wave of uprisings collectively known as the ‘Arab Spring’ swept through,

each calling for the end of longstanding authoritarian regimes that had retained power

through the support of the U.S. Though it may please romantic sentiments to consider the

Arab Spring to be a sudden triumph of democratic spirit against oppression – the will of

the people overcoming tyrannical rule – a close examination of the economic and

political climate surrounding the Arab Spring reveals that the demonstrations and revolts

that composed it were merely a mechanism through which a long overdue wave of

democratization was able to occur. The internal economic situation of the MENA region

made the Arab Spring revolts and the democratic changes that they brought inevitable,

with only the bolstering of pro-American autocracies by the U.S keeping them at bay for

so long.

Persistent Autocracy In The MENA Region

In the years immediately following World War II, decolonization left a void in the

1 Adeed Dawisha, The Second Arab Awakening, (New York: W.W Norton & Company, 2013), 18.

2 Campante, Filipe R., and Davin Chor. "Why was the Arab World Poised for Revolution? Schooling, Economic Opportunities, and the Arab Spring." Journal of Economic Perspectives 26, no. 2 (2012): 167.

3 Adeed Dawisha, 18.

international political system, in which authoritarian regimes naturally arose, only to be

brushed aside or “recycled…as quasi-democracies” 4 in the “so-called third wave of

democracy”5 that swept through much of Latin America and the former Soviet bloc in the

1970s and the post-Cold War era. This sweep of democratization failed to reach the

MENA region however, as indicated by the nearly consistent Freedom House Political

Liberty and Civil Liberty scores for the aggregate Arabic-speaking world between 1989

and 2009. While other formerly colonized regions such as East Asia and Latin America

experienced a change in average score during this period of .72 and .32 respectively, the

MENA region witnessed a change of only .04.6 This persistence of authoritarianism in the

MENA states prior to the Arab Spring coincides with a heavy reliance on the U.S for

both financial and military support. Between 1991 and 2009 the MENA region was the

largest recipient of aid from the U.S, as per the Organization for Economic Co-Operation

and Development.7 Even adjusted to correct for Iraq, the Arab region still received nearly

20% of all official development assistance funds given out by the U.S.8 Correlates of War

data evince a similar determination of the U.S to bolster the MENA region’s political

systems through military force, with the Middle East (which in this data set includes the

Arabic-speaking region of North Africa) accounting for 32% of all the U.S’s direct

4 Brynen, Rex, Pete W. Moore, Bassel F. Salloukh, and Marie-Joelle Zahar. Beyond The Arab Spring: Authoritarianism and Democratization in the Arab World. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers Inc., 2012. 4.

5 Brynen. 4.

6 Jamal, Amaney A.. Of Empires and Citizens: Pro-American Democracy or No Democracy at All?. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. 2.

7 Jamal. 26.

8 Jamal. 26.

2

involvement in conflict by region between 1990 and 2001.9 The U.S’s heavy support of

autocratic political systems in the MENA region may seem to have been a “striking

departure from the ‘civilizing-mission’ that Western powers had arrogated unto

themselves in the last decades of the nineteenth century”10 however, such a view follows

the assumption that “The United States systematically and universally – and not

strategically – promotes democracy across the globe”11 which in the case of the MENA

region prior to the Arab Spring is simply not accurate. The U.S’s presence in the region

and its bolstering of pro-American autocracies clearly represented a desire to protect

strategic interests, deemed more important than democratization in the Middle East and

North Africa

The desire of Western powers in general, and the U.S in particular, to protect the

political status quo in the MENA region derived from the need for international economic

openness and political stability so as to protect two main interrelated interests: access to

oil and preventing political Islam. The U.S’s reliance on access to MENA’s oil reserves,

which accounted for “Over fifty-six percent of the world’s ‘proven’ (that is technically

and commercially recoverable) conventional crude oil reserves”12 in 2006 and still close

to “48.6%”13 as of 2010, serves as the dominating power regional autocracies used to

9 Jamal. 24.

10 Achar, Gilbert. The People Want: A Radical Exploration of The Arab Uprising. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. 68.

11 Jamal. 4.

12 Achar. 76.

13 Achar. 76.

3

extort the U.S into propping them up. Access to these reserves proved pivotal to winning

the battle for world hegemony after the Cold War, giving the U.S a “position of

dominance vis-à-vis both its greatest potential rival, China and also its traditional vassals,

Western Europe and Japan.”14 Because the U.S was so dependent upon MENA’s oil it

likewise felt it imperative to curb the power of political Islam. Though the situation was

“morally messy”15 the U.S felt that it could not allow democratization to occur because of

the high probability that an anti-American group would legitimately come to power

through elections. In terms of the previously stressed urgency for economic openness, the

U.S needed the keep fundamentalist Islamic groups from gaining control of the

government, as they were unsupportive of the U.S’s dominance in the MENA region.

Former U.S Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted in an interview with the

Washington Post in March 2005 (two months after her appointment) that the U.S actively

sought to prevent the rise of political Islam, even if it legitimately gained power through

democratic process. “People said, well you talk about democracy in Latin America, you

talk about Democracy in Europe, you even talk about democracy in Asia or Africa, but

you never talk about democracy in the Middle East. And, of course, they were right

because this was the decision that stability trumped everything.” 16 Though anti-terrorism

became a factor contributing to the U.S’s interest in stability in the last decade – the

belief being that turbulence leads to radicalism – the fear of anti-American political

14 Achar. 84.

15 Yafi, Wissam S.. Inevitable Democracy in the Arab World: New Realities In An Ancient Land. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012. 53.

16 Rice, Condoleezza. "Interview With The Washington Post Editorial Board." U.S Department of State Archive. http://2001-2009.state.gov/secretary/rm/2005/43863.htm (accessed November 13, 2013).

4

Islam had far greater influence upon its strategic decision to, at the regional level,

prohibit any large-scale democratization. “The Western alliance supports democracy

only when it serves its interests. Therefore, when democracy brings together individuals

or groups inconsistent with the Western aims, it is considered undesirable.”17The U.S and

other Western powers were not blind to the oppressive economic and political nature of

these regimes, but yet they opted to maintain the status quo. “So long as the authoritarian

regimes fulfilled the West’s interests in the MiddleEast – the Western nations had

‘tolerated’ the flagrant suppression of economic and political rights in the Arab region.”18

For much of the post-Cold War period the U.S and other Western powerhouses had been

successful at keeping democratization at bay in the oil rich region of the Middle East and

North Africa, through providing financial and military support to despotic leaders.

However this status quo could not be sustained. Within these tightly controlled political

systems dramatic economic distortions grew out of the sole focus Arab countries put on

exporting oil, creating tensions that came to a boiling point in the months that

immediately preceded the Arab Spring revolts.

Economic Underpinnings of Social Unrest in MENA Region

A UNDP Arab Human Development report published in the early 2000s found

that though the modern Arab World had slowly garnered some economic development

over the course of the several preceding decades, most economic activity “centered on the

17 Metawe, Mohamed. "How and Why the West Reacted to the Arab Spring: An Arab Perspective." Insight Turkey 15, no. 3 (2013): 153.

18 Metawe. 142

5

export of petroleum-related products.”19 The oil export-centric economic model that

prevailed in the MENA region brought great financial benefits to its leaders, but overall

created warped economies – ultimately leading to an unstable political environment.

Reliance on oil exports led states within the MENA region to import most of its

consumer goods, rather than produce them on their own.20 While Adam Smith, the father

of classical economics, called for countries to produce goods which it has a comparative

advantage, these oil-exporting Arab states took specialization too far, failing to grow any

other sectors of their economies. In this manner authoritarian leaders put their countries at

a disadvantage, as they did nothing to add value to the natural resource they relied so

heavily upon. Oil exporters from the U.S will, for example, generally refine their crude

oil into more profitable gasoline before putting it on the market, whereas Arab countries

chose to sell barrels of its most precious natural resource in its crude form. Barrels of oil

exported from Arabic states were efficiently sold at the price the market is willing to pay,

but failures to add value beforehand meant that oil-related transactions generated no

national profit, and in fact only diminished the abundance of the resource itself.

Because of this backwards model, income disparities and subsequent social

marginalization also emerged, as the regimes maintained a tight control over oil exports,

preventing other industries from growing. Income inequality in the region fell within the

medium to high range during the decade preceding the Arab Spring, with an average Gini

index coefficient of just over 37 (the world’s most egalitarian country Sweden

comparably has a coefficient of 25).21 According to World Bank data from 2008, the

19 Yafi. 4. 20 Yafi. 11.

21 Achar.18.

6

percentage of people living under the international extreme poverty line of $1.25 (PPP)

was lower in the MENA region than in all other developing regions – only 2.8% in

MENA countries on average, but an astonishing 47.5% in sub-Saharan African states.22

At first glance dire poverty might not seem to have been prevalent leading up to the Arab

Spring revolts, however, “The image that emerges when we focus on the number of

people in the Arab region living below the ‘upper’ line, which varies between $2.43 and

$2.70 (PPP) a day, differs sharply from the one that appears when we apply the

international poverty line.”23 In fact using this upper line, which “defines the revenue

needed to obtain both basic nutrition and essential nonfood items in a country.” 24 the

average percentage of people living in poverty in countries within the MENA region

jumps to 39.9%, as opposed to the average of 16.9% under the international poverty

line.25 The great disparities in income, and the plight of those living below the poverty

line led to social marginalization as the inequality of wealth was obvious, thus adding to

brewing tensions between the MENA governments and their peoples.

The autocratic leaders in the MENA region were able to keep discontent from

manifesting into successful movements for democratization throughout much of the post-

Cold War period, largely due to the financial and military support of the U.S. However

what the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde later

22 Achar. 16.

23 Achar. 17.

24 Achar. 17.

25 Achar. 17.

7

called the “ticking time bomb of youth unemployment”26 inevitably emboldened

dissidents to revolt against the authoritarian regimes in their states. In 2001 the

International Monetary Fund found that unemployment in Algeria was 28%, in Egypt

12%, in Jordan 15% in Morocco 13% and in Tunisia 15%.27 These official rates are

“thought to be gross underestimates of their true values” and are among the highest in the

world.28 According to World Bank data from 2002 the regional average unemployment

rate was 15% in the Arab Spring states, as compared to 5% in South Asia and around

7.5% in sub-Saharan Africa.29 Youth unemployment drastically contributed to the overall

high unemployment rates within the MENA region, as 34% of the working age

population was between the ages of 15 and 24.30 Specifically, the unemployment rates of

those young people who had completed their tertiary education created tension, as “the

proportion of people with a tertiary education among the unemployed is everywhere [in

the MENA region] higher than their proportion in the labor force.”31 It is a direct result of

these trends in unemployment, which were expected to continue worsening,32 that

26 Lagarde, Christine . ""The Arab Spring, One Year On" By Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund." "The Arab Spring, One Year On" By Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund. http://www.imf.org/external/np/speeches/2011/120611.htm (accessed November 14, 2013).

27 Yafi. 23.

28 Yafi. 23.

29 Yafi 24.

30 Awadallah, Bassem, and Adeel Malik. "The Economics of the Arab Spring." World Development 45 (2012): 296-313.

31 Achar. 33.

32 Yafi. 24.

8

regional stability fell apart at the seams. Faced with a grim financial future, the young

and unemployed turned to protest and revolution in the form of the Arab Spring.

Mohammed Bouazizi’s act of self-immolation served as a fiery symbol for the

anger felt not only by the people of Tunisia towards their authoritarian political system,

but the people of the MENA region as a whole. Some four months before the

demonstrations and uprisings of the Arab Spring were sparked by Bouazizi’s original

protest, President Of the United States Barack Obama sent a five-page memorandum

titled “Political Reform in the Middle East and North Africa” to Vice-President Joseph

Biden, Former President Bill Clinton, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and

several other close advisors, in which he said “Progress toward political reform and

openness in the Middle East and North Africa lags behind other regions and has, in some

cases, stalled,” but that there was “evidence of growing citizen discontent with the

region’s regimes,” and that it was likely that “if present trends continue,” allies there

would “opt for repression rather than reform to manage domestic dissent.”33 Though

Obama had predicted that the Arab Spring revolts – or at least a version of them – would

occur, the U.S found itself powerless to stop them. For decades the U.S had actively, and

hypocritically, provided financial and military support to the despotic leaders of the

MENA region, delaying democratization – yet ultimately ensured that it occurred. These

autocratic leaders allowed contorted economies to develop, because the financial benefits

they personally derived from oil export meant they had no real incentive to promote

growth. If the U.S had not aided these regimes and ensured their survival, gradual

33 Lizza, Ryan. "The Consequentialist." The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/02/110502fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all (accessed November 14, 2013).

9

democratization through incremental reforms might have occurred. However, because the

U.S kept the autocratic governments in the MENA region in place, social, economic, and

political unrest grew within the people, finally bursting into the Arab Spring uprisings.

An “African Spring”?

Analysis of the economic and political situation in the MENA region prior to the

Arab Spring reveals clear signs of instability preceding the revolts, which should serve as

a warning to despotic leaders in sub-Saharan Africa, whose economic and political

systems echo those of the MENA region.

High unemployment and expectations among a bulging youth population, cost of living pressures, aging long-time rulers and government that is unresponsive and unrepresentative. The coexistence of these factors helped drive the 2011 uprisings in North Africa. In varying degrees and combinations, they are also evident across much of the rest of the continent.34

Though Sub-Saharan Africa, differentiated from Northern Africa as all countries on the

African Continent South of the Sahara desert and North of the Limpopo River,35

witnessed democratization in the post-Cold War period, “many of these new democracies

have initiated only the rudiments of democratic institutions.” 36 In fact Freedom House

34 Ford, Jolyon. The Social Science Research Council, "Democracy And Change: What are the Prospects for an "African Spring"?." Accessed November 14, 2013. http://forums.ssrc.org/african-futures /2012/07/14/democracy-change-prospects-african-spring/.

35 Martin, Guy , and Mueni wa Muiu. A New Paradigm of The African State: Fundi wa Afrika. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

36 Domatob, Jerry. "Sub-Saharan Africa's Democratic Quest: Perspectives, Problems, and Policies," The Western Journal of Black Studies, 21, no. 1 (1997): 59-76,

10

scores indicate that the region of sub-Saharan Africa (whose score is 3.8) is closer to

being unfree (a score of 1) than it is to being free (a score of 7).37 The same interests that

caused the U.S to support autocratic regimes in the MENA region likewise influence the

U.S’s support of autocracies or spurious democracies in the sub-Saharan region of Africa.

“In the post-September 11, 2001 world, key U.S foreign policy makers have

characterized African oil resources as strategically essential to U.S interests. In 2003,

sub-Saharan Africa already provided 14.5 percent of U.S oil requirements; in 2015, that

region will supply at least 25 percent of such requirements.”38 Consistent with its tactics

for establishing dominance in MENA’s oil-export economy, the U.S uses financial

support to aid governments in sub-Saharan Africa. The same Organization for Economic

Co-Operation and Development data that show the MENA region received 20% of all

official development assistance funds given out by the U.S, reveal that sub-Saharan

Africa received almost 20% as well, 39 demonstrating the U.S’s determination to stabilize

the region. While the pitiful state of most sub-Saharan economies is not so singularly

caused by oil-export, as is the case in the MENA region, many indicators of the regions’

economic woes are shared in common. Sub-Saharan African countries similarly have

unbalanced economies, relying on the “production and export of a limited range (one to

three) of unprocessed agricultural commodities…in return for manufactured goods

imported from industrialized countries.”40 Income disparities are also prevalent, as

37 Jamal. 2.

38 Martin. 86.

39 Jamal. 26.

40 Martin. 86.

11

indicated by the high regional Gini index of sub-Saharan Africa (that of .47).41 There are

many political, social, and cultural differences between the MENA and sub-Saharan

African regions, however the similarities between the economic situation that faced

MENA prior to the Arab Spring, and what sub-Saharan Africa still struggles with make it

reasonable to predict that a wave of democratization will sweep through sub-Saharan

Africa within the next decade or two.

Conclusion

Two questions stand crucial to understanding the causes of the Arab Spring:

“Why was the MENA region impervious to the waves of democratization that came at the

close of the Cold War?” and “Why did the self-immolation of an ordinary Tunisian man

spark a region-wide movement for democratization?”. There are many factors that offer

alternative explanations to the economic interpretation of the Arab Spring that has

composed this analysis, that do not reveal any insights to answer these questions. Some

may point to the emergence of social media as an organizing tool, or the Internet’s role of

a harbinger of information as the dominant factors explaining the cause of the Arab

Spring, but such a shallow evaluation fails to address the peculiarity of long lasting

autocratic regimes in the MENA region, as well as the hypercritical actions the U.S took

to promote them. Through an examination of the economic situation that the MENA

region faced, as well as the economic interests the U.S pursued there, a clear image of

why the Arab Spring occurred is painted, as well as an understanding of how the same

factors may cause similar uprisings to occur in other regions of the world. Autocratic

leaders in the MENA region clung to power by allowing the U.S to dominate its oil-

41 Lopez, J.Humberto and Guillermo Perry, Inequality in Latin America: Determinants and Consequences. (working paper., The World Bank, 2008). 5.

12

export economy in exchange for their financial and military support. This informal

contract proved advantageous for the U.S and dictators in the Middle East and North

Africa, but wreaked havoc upon the economies within the region. Income disparities,

social marginalization, and high youth unemployment levels were the direct result of the

bad economic decisions made by autocratic leaders, and so dissent slowly built up within

each political system, finally expressed through revolt. The Arab Spring was no random

rise in passion, nor was it a mere product of its time, but rather a process of

democratization made inevitable by the deep-seated current of social unrest and

economic strife that many newly democratic nations in the MENA region are only just

beginning to combat.

13

Works Cited

Achar, Gilbert. The People Want: A Radical Exploration of The Arab Uprising. Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2013.

Adeed Dawisha, The Second Arab Awakening, (New York: W.W Norton & Company,

2013).

Awadallah, Bassem, and Adeel Malik. "The Economics of the Arab Spring." World

Development 45 (2012): 296-313.

Brynen, Rex, Pete W. Moore, Bassel F. Salloukh, and Marie-Joelle Zahar. Beyond The

Arab Spring: Authoritarianism and Democratization in the Arab World. Boulder:

Lynne Rienner Publishers Inc., 2012.

Campante, Filipe R., and Davin Chor. "Why was the Arab World Poised for Revolution?

Schooling, Economic Opportunities, and the Arab Spring." Journal of Economic

Perspectives 26, no. 2 (2012): 167.

Domatob, Jerry. "Sub-Saharan Africa's Democratic Quest: Perspectives, Problems, and

Policies," The Western Journal of Black Studies, 21, no. 1 (1997): 59-76.

14

Ford, Jolyon. The Social Science Research Council, "Democracy And Change: What are

the Prospects for an"African Spring"?." Accessed November 14, 2013.

http://forums.ssrc.org/african-futures/2012/07/14/democracy-change-prospects-

african-spring/.

Jamal, Amaney A.. Of Empires and Citizens: Pro-American Democracy or No

Democracy at All?. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. 2.

Lagarde, Christine . ""The Arab Spring, One Year On" By Christine Lagarde, Managing

Director, International Monetary Fund." "The Arab Spring, One Year On" By

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund.

http://www.imf.org/external/np/speeches/2011/120611.htm (accessed November

14, 2013).

Lizza, Ryan. "The Consequentialist." The New Yorker.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/02/110502fa_fact_lizza?

currentPage=all (accessed November 14, 2013).

Lopez, J.Humberto and Guillermo Perry, Inequality in Latin America: Determinants and

Consequences. (working paper., The World Bank, 2008). 5.

Metawe, Mohamed. "How and Why the West Reacted to the Arab Spring: An Arab

Perspective." Insight Turkey 15, no. 3 (2013): 153.

Rice, Condoleezza. "Interview With The Washington Post Editorial Board." U.S

Department of State. Archive..

Martin, Guy , and Mueni wa Muiu. A New Paradigm of The African State: Fundi wa

Afrika. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

15

Yafi, Wissam S.. Inevitable Democracy in the Arab World: New Realities In An Ancient

Land. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012. 53.

16