The Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 sent shockwaves across the globe, mobilizing diaspora communities to organize forcefully against authoritarian regimes. Despite the important role that diasporas can play in influencing affairs in their countries of origin, little is known about when diaspora actors mobilize, how they intervene, or what makes them effective. This book addresses these questions, drawing on over 230 original interviews, fieldwork, and comparative analysis. Examining Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni mobilization from the US and Great Britain before and during the revolutions, Dana M. Moss presents a new framework for understanding the transnational dynamics of contention and the social forces that either enable or suppress transnational activism. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

"The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has long fascinated Western observers, more often than not out of a sense of misguided curiosity. Owing to imperialism, Orientalism, and enduring stereotypes, commentary has revolved around a central query: Why is the region and its people so "backward"? The social sciences have remained focused on this question, albeit in a modified form, since the fall of the Soviet Union (Bayat 2013; Munif 2020). As researchers looked optimistically to a post-1989 future that appeared to be liberalizing, they asked why the wave of democracy sweeping the formerly colonized world had bypassed the MENA region. The answer provided, in one form or another, was that regimes led by autocrats, kings, and presidents-for-life were too powerful and the people too weak-too loyal, apathetic, divided, and tribal-to mount a credible challenge to authoritarian rule"--

Moss presents a new theoretical framework for explaining when anti-authoritarian diaspora movements emerge and become transnational agents of change.

Making peace in the long-troubled Middle East is likely to be one of the top priorities of the next American president. He will need to take account of the important lessons from past attempts, which are described and analyzed here in a gripping book by a renowned expert who served twice as U.S. ambassador to Israel and as Middle East adviser to President Clinton. Martin Indyk draws on his many years of intense involvement in the region to provide the inside story of the last time the United States employed sustained diplomacy to end the Arab-Israeli conflict and change the behavior of rogue regimes in Iraq and Iran. Innocent Abroad is an insightful history and a poignant memoir. Indyk provides a fascinating examination of the ironic consequences when American naïveté meets Middle Eastern cynicism in the region's political bazaars. He dissects the very different strategies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to explain why they both faced such difficulties remaking the Middle East in their images of a more peaceful or democratic place. He provides new details of the breakdown of the Arab-Israeli peace talks at Camp David, of the CIA's failure to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and of Clinton's attempts to negotiate with Iran's president. Indyk takes us inside the Oval Office, the Situation Room, the palaces of Arab potentates, and the offices of Israeli prime ministers. He draws intimate portraits of the American, Israeli, and Arab leaders he worked with, including Israel's Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, and Ariel Sharon; the PLO's Yasser Arafat; Egypt's Hosni Mubarak; and Syria's Hafez al-Asad. He describes in vivid detail high-level meetings, demonstrating how difficult it is for American presidents to understand the motives and intentions of Middle Eastern leaders and how easy it is for them to miss those rare moments when these leaders are willing to act in ways that can produce breakthroughs to peace. Innocent Abroad is an extraordinarily candid and enthralling account, crucially important in grasping the obstacles that have confounded the efforts of recent presidents. As a new administration takes power, this experienced diplomat distills the lessons of past failures to chart a new way forward that will be required reading.

Diaspora politics is often expressed as an emancipating experience and can therefore give agency to migrants. Yet, rather than interpreting transnational political practices as globally liberal or cosmopolitan, Müller-Funk’s findings underline that diaspora politics is a highly diverse political field which can reinforce political fragmentation among migrant collectivities. This volume explores the controversial topic of diaspora politics: the political activities of migrants who aim to influence the domestic or foreign policy of their country of origin. The revolutions in 2010/11 represented a major political upheaval in the Middle East, which politicised Arabs across borders on a grand scale. Müller-Funk explores the links between recent political developments in Egypt between 2011 and 2013 and emigration. More specifically, she examines the question of how the revolution in and its aftermath influenced emigrants’ political perceptions and actions regarding their homeland. The book takes an interdisciplinary macro and micro approach by investigating policies which influence migrants’ political transnational behavior as well as by looking at individual activists’ perspectives. This volume will be of great interest to scholars of international relations, security studies, political theory, politics and middle east studies.

Eighteen months since the Arab Spring began, there has been extraordinary progress in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. Yet many challenges still lie ahead, not least the need to support and reform the economies of these Arab Spring states. In 2011, the G8 Deauville Partnership identified $38 billion of funding available to support reform. The UK must use its leadership in the EU and G8 to ensure that we deliver on our promises. The Government needs to learn lessons from its experience in anticipating and handling the Arab Spring. Questions arose about the FCO's staffing levels, linguistic expertise and information gathering in the Middle East and North Africa region, although diplomats understood well the long-term problems in the region. The report welcomes the Government's recent moves to establish contacts with Islamist parties in the region and calls for deeper engagement to demonstrate at an early stage the UK's support and assistance for democratically elected leaders who respect human rights and democratic reforms. The BBC's Arabic Service further highlighted the importance of the BBC World Service in providing an independent news service and enhancing the UK's standing in the region. The Committee welcomes the Government's decision to reverse planned cuts to the Arabic Service last year, expresses concerns that cuts made elsewhere in the World Service will prove detrimental to the national interest, and urges that there be a sustained investment in the World Service

Education and the Arab Spring: Resistance, Reform, and Democracy explores the current debate about education in the Middle East and North Africa post-Arab Spring. It draws from a variety of conceptual frameworks rooted in different disciplines and fields, such as education, religious and cultural studies, political science, and Arab studies. The book is, in part, a response to an increased demand since the Arab Spring – by universities, cultural institutions, think-tanks, education officials, policymakers and journalists – for a richer, deeper understanding of the role of education in post-Arab Spring states and societies. The book adds a unique and much-needed perspective to this field: its specific focus is on the Arab context, and its analysis is of issues of particular relevance to a changing world order. The great mix of experiences of the contributors attests to the excellent quality of this promising work. “It is not infrequent to hear sweeping but general criticisms of all aspects of educational systems in the Arab world – everything from textbooks to teaching methodologies have come under scrutiny. The authors of this collection seek to move the debate beyond generalities by providing detailed studies; while informed by a sense of the inadequacy of existing systems, they also provide an empirically rich analysis of existing systems.” – Nathan Brown, George Washington University, USA

For every pithy conceptualization of complex events, there are additional lenses through which to examine them. One of the several virtues of this book is precisely that it brings different perspectives to bear on the complexity, diversity, and uncertainty of recent and current events in the Arab world. The thirteen authors concentrate on the critical social forces shaping the region—demography, religion, gender, telecommunication connectivity, and economic structures—and they are painstakingly analyzed and evaluated.—from the foreword by Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution The Arab Spring will be remembered as a period of great change for the Arab states of North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Facing fundamental transitions in governance, these countries are also undergoing profound social, cultural, and religious changes. The European Union and the United States, caught unprepared by the uprisings, now must address the inescapable challenges of those changes. How will the West respond to these new realities, particularly in light of international economic uncertainty, EU ambivalence toward a "cohesive foreign policy," and declining U.S. influence abroad? Arab Society in Revolt explains and interprets the societal transformations occurring in the Arab Muslim world, their ramifications for the West, and possible policy options for dealing with this new world. Arab Society in Revolt examines areas of change particularly relevant in the southern Mediterranean: demography and migration, Islamic revival and democracy, rapidly changing roles of women in Arab society, the Internet in Arab societies, commercial and social entrepreneurship as change factors, and the economics of Arab transitions. The book then looks at those cultural and religious as well as political and economic factors that have influenced the Western response, or lack of it, to the Arab Spring as well as the policy options that remain open.

In 2011, the Arab Spring revolutionary movements that erupted across the Middle East galvanized supporters in the diaspora to work collectively for regime change and relief at home. Existing theories argue that diasporas residing in democratic states possess the requisite political opportunities and resources to mobilize on behalf of their home-countries and intervene in significant ways. However, this explanation cannot account for why diaspora movements only emerge and play a role in home-country crises under certain conditions. This dissertation therefore investigates 1) how members of the Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni diasporas in the US and Great Britain mobilized to support the 2011 uprisings, and asks 2) why the pace of their public emergence as regime opponents, their degree of intra-movement solidarity, the strength of their roles in the revolutions, and the short-term outcomes of their efforts varied significantly by national group. In order to explain this variation, this study analyzes three sets of data using grounded and process-tracing methods: 240 original interviews; ethnographic participant observations of Syrian-American pro-revolution events; and secondary sources on the diasporas and the revolutions.The findings demonstrate that diaspora mobilization dynamics are shaped by multi-level and relational factors that not only include political opportunities in the host-country, but also conditions in and diasporas' relations with relevant actors in the home-country---including sending-state regimes and opposition movements---and relevant third-parties, such as journalists and international institutions. I find that quotidian disruptions to any one of these conditions and relations produce corresponding changes in the strength and longevity of diasporas' collective actions. This study also demonstrates that activists overcome obstacles to transnational mobilization posed by hostile external conditions when they divert resources to establish full-time formal advocacy organizations. Though this strategic adaptation constrains their tactics, movements that do not make this adaptation are likely to die off. The establishment of a transnational organizational field also improves the capacity of diasporas to pursue rights and recognition in both the home- and host-countries over time. I conclude by discussing the theoretical implications of these findings for the study of social movements, diasporas, and conflict.

This volume analyzes the political, economic and strategic dimensions of the recent upheavals in the Middle East known as the Arab Spring. Mass demonstrations in many Arab states challenged the political status quo and the existing political and cultural system in the region. While it is too early to offer a definitive analysis of the impact of the widespread discontent in the Arab world, the trajectory of the events indicates regime change in several states, containment of political unrest in most states, increase in Islamic tendencies, centrifugal tendencies in a number of political units and deterioration of economic conditions. This volume presents an initial assessment by a selected group of Israeli scholars of the implications of the Arab Spring. The chapters focus on important issues such as democratization, the role of economic factors in political change and explanations for variations in regime stability in the Middle East. Taking an international relations perspective, the book not only examines the evolving regional balance, but also explores the link between external and internal politics and the implications of terrorism for regional security. The chapters also address the implications of the Arab Spring for Israel and its chances of existing peacefully in the region. This volume will be of much interest to students of Middle East politics, international security, foreign policy and international relations.