서강대학교

초록/요약

The Arab region remained immune to democracy since its independence in the aftermath of World War II, while the world was experiencing multiple democratization waves. The sudden, spontaneous and simultaneous outbreak of the Arab Spring pro-democracy movements across the region in early 2011, as a direct response to the self-immolation act of a desperate young Tunisian, surprised politicians, scholars and analysts. There are three main explanations that have been explored in previous studies on the causes of the Arab Spring. According to the first explanation - the rise of a new Arab public sphere - the Arab Spring is the result of a process of modernization and developments that the Arab population went through during the last decade. This new Arab sphere was characterized by the rise of a young generation that grew with new hopes of change and engaged itself in sustained arguments, debates and discussions about Arab common issues. The second explanation is based on the perception that the Arab Spring was designed by the US and carried out by Arab young activists. US offered them training to carry out the change in their respective countries using social media for nonviolent mass mobilization. The third explanation presents the Arab Spring as the result of a combination of economic and social marginalization, high inequalities, high levels of corruption and centralization of economic resources in the hands of the ruling families and their loyal servants. The aim of this study is to analyze to what extent education contributed to the outbreak of the Arab spring in 2011. It focuses on the spread of education, mainly among youth, as a pivotal factor in the outbreak of the Arab Spring uprisings, regardless of their success or failure. The rationale behind raising this question is to further explore the initial observation that the spread of education among youth has an impact on making an environment fertile and ready for democracy. This study does not downplay the importance of previous explanations, nor does it claim to provide the most complete and the most accurate account for the outbreak of the Arab Spring prodemocracy movements. This study is based on the qualitative research methodology, and uses comparative case studies to test the hypothesis. Bahrain and Sudan are the main comparative cases, while Tunisia and Mauritania are supportive cases. The analysis confirms the hypothesis that the spread of education played a pivotal role in the outbreak of the Arab Spring. The cases of Bahrain and Tunisia illustrate that education levels were high among their population, while the cases of Sudan and Mauritania illustrate that educational attainments were very low. Countries with high levels of education directly experienced the turbulence of the Arab Spring, while those with low education levels are among non-Arab Spring countries.