A Revolutionary Wave in the Arab World Paper Example

This article offers great insight into the background of events and technicalities that eventually contributed to the Arab Uprising that was recently witnessed in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and even Syria. The article paints a background picture of the Arab world, the geographical region that covers 22 countries drawn from the Middle East, North and Horn of Africa, and parts of Europe touched by Turkey. The Arab world has also been described as the culture of the people inhabiting this vast territory. The author clarifies that there are different sub-sects as far as Islam is concerned, with Shi'ites and Sunni Muslims being the majority groups in the Arab World. There are also Berbers and Kurds in some of these Arab states who are a majority in a handful of the Arab world countries although they remain the overall minorities. This culture has been fostered by Islam and other factors like the Qatari-based Arabic mouthpiece, Al-Jazeera.

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Most of the Arab world countries have authoritarian political systems that have given democracy a backseat. There are a raft of possible reasons provided in the article that could be contributing factors to the revolutionary uprising witnessed in these countries. Civil liberties, independence of the fourth estate, and individual political rights of the citizens are mainly absent in these counties. The civil service is also not independent in these nations, with bureaucracy and poor quality provision of public service being a common occurrence. Corruption in the form of cronyism, bribery, or graft is also prevalent in the Arab world nations. They have also been rightly described as black-hole states where the ruling authoritarians maintain a tight grip on the nation such that no one and nothing escapes from their oppressive ruling. Most of the regimes in Arab world countries are dynastic successions and the ones that are not, their rulers frequently alter the constitutions to favor their ruling.

Majority of the rulers in the Arab world also acquire legitimacy by blackmail where they present themselves as Islamist and convince the masses to elect them as they will uphold the tenets of Islam. They use the religion as a veil to their true intentions of ruling. These nations do not have a supportive atmosphere for political parties whose formation is tightly controlled or banned altogether in the different countries. They also censor and control the flow of information from the mass media outlets including the content published in newspapers. Most of the countries have been in a perpetual state of emergencies that enable them to manipulate the citizenry, not to mention their apparent disregard for human rights like democratic states. These are the pre-existing conditions that propelled the masses to stage uprisings in the Arab world.

Conclusion

The article also succeeds in illustrating the source of this extensive authoritarianism in the Arab world that has given despots tight control over their subjects. One of the possible reasons given for this is the tight grip over the Arab world resources. Unlike other countries that depend on taxation as a source of income, the Arab world countries depend on rent income that mainly comes from the vast oil resources in most of these nations. All the rent collected from the oil fields and exportation is centralized, giving the rulers the say on who to share the resources with and on whom to use the resources to vanquish their dissidence. The other possible explanation for the autocratic rule from the Arab world regimes is the support garnered from the United States through its foreign policy that seeks to safeguard the interest of Americans. Given this hindsight from the article, the reading audience and political scientists can grasp the intricacies involved in the revolutionary wave.