Social movements, protest movements and cross-ideological coalitions – the Arab uprisings re-appraised

Abstract

This article explores the utility of social movement theory, reviewing conceptual developments and its application to Middle East cases before examining its relevance to the Arab uprisings. The initial youth-led new social movements were non-ideological, leaderless, and lacking in clear organizational structures. As the protest movements spread, they grew to encompass a diverse array of other movements and actors: The breadth and diversity of these coalitions made the successful achievement of their core demands for regime change possible. However, the persistence of ideological cleavages within them made agreement on the post-regime change political order near impossible.

Introduction: Orienting Feminism: Media, Activism, and Cultural Representation

“…But the roles performed by each team member have been somewhat fluid without a clear "leader" or head of the march. This is reflective of the practices identified in the wider literature, in which social movements-such as the Arab Spring uprisings (Durac 2015), the Occupy movement (Rojek 2014), and various anarchist campaigns (Sutherland et al 2014)-each identify as being largely "leaderless." As Western (673) asserts, the "nonhierarchical, informal and distributed forms of leadership" can be viewed as autonomist leadership-a form of leadership that thrives in contemporary movements organized primarily through digital platforms.…”

Allying beyond social divides: An introduction to contentious politics and coalitions in the Middle East and North Africa

“…After 2011, the focus moved towards regime change and the implementation of reforms concerning claimed human and social rights. During and immediately after the Arab Spring some argued that it was precisely because these protest movements were able to gather people beyond class divisions and ideological differences that they were, in some cases, able to overthrow regimes (Goldstone, 2011;Harders, König, 2013;Durac, 2015). In fact, Gianni Del Panta (2016) attributes the lack of a similar uprising in Algeria to the lack of a cross-class and crossideological coalition there.…”

“…Moreover, the diversity that characterized the actors involved in the 2011 uprisings in the Middle East played a vital role in bringing about regime change while at the same time contributing to these coalitions' inability to endure afterwards. Lacking internal coherence, the coalitions that were crucial to the success of the Arab revolts proved unsustainable in the longer term (Goldstone, 2011;Durac, 2015). Such processes of coalition-building across social, regional, and ideological divides are not specific to the Arab region: they are also a striking feature of contemporary social movements in other parts of the world.…”

From North Africa to Latin America and Back: Comparative Findings and Theoretical Reflections

“…Protest movements were decidedly cross-class (Della Porta 2014, Chap. 3;Durac 2015). The terminology of the comparative study of revolutions, again, helps to clarify this point: While, as already mentioned, the results of the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia can be called political revolutions (in a broad sense), the uprisings themselves were hardly driven by a network of actors that might be considered "revolutionary movements," that is, social movements that "attempt to gain control of the state as such" (Goodwin 2001, p. 10).…”