Arab Spring: The New Middle East in the Making (Essays) - Paperback

by Hichem Karoui (Author)

This is a collection of essays written about the Arab revolts, and trying to answer the questions many people are raising: why did such revolts occur? Were they preceded by precursory signs? What role played the domestic political elite in toppling the dictators? What role played the foreign powers? What were the claims of the protesters? Were they manipulated? How about the political process that followed the downfall of Ben Ali, Mubarak, Gaddafi, Ali Abdullah Saleh? What about the neighboring countries? How did the contagion occur? Is the revolt still expanding? Will it reach other countries? How about the monarchies? How about the reactions of Israel, Iran, Turkey, the USA and Europe? What about Syria and Lebanon? Why did the Islamists succeed in the first free elections organized in Tunisia and Egypt? Are the countries of the Arab spring going to be led by anti-liberal, anti-Western elite? Is it the beginning of the greatest change in the modern history of the Arab region? Are there new values of the Arab spring? Are they different from the values of the West? These are some of the questions the author tries to investigate and fathom through a systematic monitoring of the events preceding and following the Tunisian revolt in January 14, 2011.

Author Biography

Dr. Hichem al-Karoui is a Research fellow at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, where he coordinates the work of the political Unit, and the US Think Tanks monitoring. Before joining the Center, he has long been active as a political journalist and researcher for various media organizations. Throughout his career, he has published dozens of articles and books (in Arabic, English and French) about politics in the Middle East, the USA, Europe, and international relations. His scholarly papers have been regularly disseminated through the Social Sciences Research Network. In 2009, he founded in Paris an online peer-reviewed scholarly journal: Middle East Studies Online Journal, to which several renowned scholars were associated as members of the international Editorial Board. While serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Middle East Studies Online Journal, he was also a member of the editorial board of the Maxwell Science journal "Current Research Journal of Social Sciences," an Adjunct Fellow of the Guild of Independent Scholars (Florida, USA), which publishes the "Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences," France's Editor for the World Security Network Foundation (WSN), and a columnist for different media outlets. His weekly column is published by The Gulf Today newspaper (UAE) every Sunday.