Revisiting the Arab Uprisings ─ The Politics of a Revolutionary Moment

Since 2013, the Middle East has experienced a double trend of chaos and civil war, on the one hand, and the return of authoritarianism, on the other. That convergence has eclipsed the political transitions that occurred in the countries whose regimes were toppled in 2011, as if they were merely footnotes to a narrative that naturally led from an "Arab Spring" to an "Arab Winter".
This volume aims at rehabilitating those transitions, by considering them as expressions of a "revolutionary moment" whose outcome was never pre-determined, but depended on the choices of a large range of actors. It brings together leading scholars of Arab politics to adopt a comparative approach to a few crucial aspects of those transitions: constitutional debates, the question of transitional justice, the evolution of civil-military relations, and the role of specific actors, both domestic and international.

Stephane Lacroix is an associate professor of Political Science at Sciences Po and a researcher at Sciences Po's Centre de Recherches Internationales (CERI). He is the co-author of Saudi Arabia in Transition and of Egypt's Revolutions. Jean-Pierre Filiu is Professor of Middle East Studies at Sciences Po in Paris, and has held visiting professorships at both Columbia University and Georgetown University. He is the author of From Deep State to Islamic State and Gaza: A History, also available from Oxford University Press.