The Socio-Demographic and Political Contexts and Legacies of the "Arab Spring" in North Africa

This paper sets the 2011 uprisings in their country contexts: the "demographic surge" throughout the region, which was being accompanied by youth migration into cities and increased enrolments in higher education, all amid job deficits in which higher education graduates had become the group at greatest risk of unemployment. The central argument in this paper is that relatively enduring "contexts" matter in accounting for 2011, but so do "events" and "recent developments". It is argued that young people’s contexts, even in combination with "events" and "recent developments" such as the creation of new public spaces in old and new media, do not provide a full causal explanation of the events of 2011. The actors’ political orientations need to be added. However, contexts become crucial in explaining "legacies", especially the political outcomes of the events of 2011. Survey evidence from the preceding and subsequent years permits the development of plausible explanations of how and why the Arab Spring erupted, spread, and led to different outcomes in different countries.