Abstract
The “Arab Spring” was a surprising event not just because predicting revolutions is a difficult task, but because current theories of revolution are ill equipped to explain revolutionary waves where interactive causal mechanisms at different levels of analysis and interactions between the units of analysis predominate. To account for such dynamics, a multidimensional social science of revolution is required. Accordingly, a meta-framework for revolutionary theory that combines multiple levels of analysis, multiple units of analysis, and their interactions is offered. A structured example of theory building is then given by detailing how the development of world cultural models and practices challenge existing political structures, affect mobilization processes, and make diffusion more likely. A structured example of study design using qualitative comparative analysis of 16 Middle Eastern and North African countries provides support for the interaction of subnational conditions for mobilization, state-centered causes, and transnational factors, including a country’s linkage to world society, as one explanation of the Revolutions of 2011.
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Acknowledgments
The author thanks John W. Meyer, Charles Kurzman, Robin M. Cooper, Pierre Englebert, three reviewers for Theory and Society, and the participants of the Irvine Comparative Sociology Workshop for their helpful comments on prior versions of this article. Previous variants were presented at the American Sociological Association in 2012, Social Science History Association in 2012, California Sociological Association in 2012, Department of Sociology at the University of Arizona in 2013, and the Capitalism, the Politics of Inequality, and Historical Change Mini-Conference in 2013.
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Appendix
Appendix
Table 1 presents the raw data used for five fuzzy set codes in QCA analysis. Each measure was calibrated into fuzzy sets using scores for a crossover point between membership and non-membership, and upper and lower thresholds indicating full membership or non-membership respectively.
First, economic pressures are measured using the average annual growth in real gross domestic product between 2008 and 2010 (World Bank 2013). For fuzzy set coding, the crossover point of 3 (sluggish growth for the developing world) is used. Full membership in economic pressure set at 2 % and full non-membership set at 4 %. These thresholds err on the side of overstating economic strain.
Next, demographic pressure is measured using the percent of the population in 2010 between ages 15 and 24 as a percent of the population older than 15 taken from the United Nations Population Division (2010) statistics. While the effect of youth bulges on political instability generally is monotonic, cohorts of young adults at about a third of the adult population raises the chance for instability by 150 % as compared to cohorts that average 15 % (Urdal 2006). Accordingly, for fuzzy set calibration the crossover is 25 %, and 20 and 30 % are the lower and upper thresholds.
Third, the presence of exclusionary political institutions is measured using a standard indicator: the Polity score for regime democracy in 2010 (Marshall and Jaggers 2011). The scale ranges from −10 to 10 where higher values indicate greater levels of democratic practice, and the range of −6 to 6 represents anocracies. The crossover point is set to 0 and the bounds of political exclusion or not are set to the outside of the anocratic range.
History of opposition is coded dichotomously on whether or not there has been organized armed anti-state contention since 1980 (roughly the generation preceding 2011). For fuzzy set coding, all countries are thus set to full membership or non-membership. Seven cases display a culture of opposition: Egypt for its Islamist rebellions; Syria for the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1980s; Yemen with its civil war and myriad tribal conflicts; Algeria from its experience of Islamist rebellion and civil war; Iraq for the recent insurgency and a history of Shiite and Kurdish uprisings; Lebanon from its lengthy civil war and conflicts; and, finally, Saudi Arabia due to the Islamist terror campaigns of the 1990s and 2000s. Alternate fuzzy set codings that account for the intensity of these experiences and memories of previous eras of resistance yield similar results in analysis.
Fifth, I use a standard measure of global embeddedness and linkage to broader world society: the number of international non-governmental organization memberships in 2010 (cumulative count of organization types A-D in the Union of International Associations’ 2011 yearbook). As organizational memberships are unequally distributed, I standardize them by GDP per capita, which accounts for skew in membership due to a society’s level of relative development and size. Unfortunately, alternate measures of inequality (see Beckfield 2010; Hughes et al. 2009) are not available through 2010. Fuzzy set membership is calibrated around embeddedness or not, relative to the region. The crossover point is set at the region average of 0.129 with membership and nonmembership thresholds at 0.5 standard deviation above or below the mean.
Finally, outcomes of contention include political revolutions (change in regime), revolutionary situations (sustained contention and competing claims to power), protests of other levels of intensity, and no contention.
The primary analyses (see Fig. 1) consider only solutions that are consistent at a 0.70 level for revolutionary situations or revolution (per Ragin 2008). Table 2 presents the results of secondary analyses where inconsistent solutions are considered. The results, while relatively inconsistent, show support for conjunctural causation across multiple levels of analysis, particularly linkages to transnational conditions, mirroring the results of the primary analysis. Table 3 presents the results of analysis for the outcome of protest only (as compared to revolutionary situations or no contention) consistent at the 0.70 level. The solutions suggest the importance of a history of opposition in several cases, but each is missing the key combination of linkage to world society and political exclusion.
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Beck, C.J. Reflections on the revolutionary wave in 2011. Theor Soc 43, 197–223 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-014-9213-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-014-9213-8