The Arab Spring: when democracy meets global protest*

Abstract

Not so many events attracted the scholarly debate and the attention of the wide public as the Arab Spring1 did in the last couple of years. The wave of popular protests that started in Tunisia in January 2011 and then spread all over the Arab world unsettled decades of stability of the Arab authoritarian regimes. Inevitably, many Political Science assumptions have been discussed, rediscovered, or challenged. In the short-term this revival of democracy studies has led to a flourishing of books, international seminars and conference panels. In the mid- to long-term the discipline will have to draw from these events to elaborate new paradigms. Some suggestions are here provided, aiming to open a focus of discussion that can profit of the on-line distribution of IPS.