Read more
Based on empirical and theoretical investigation, and original insight into how a local protest movement developed into a revolution that changed a regime, this book shows us how we can understand political revolutions. Azmi Bishara critically explores the gradual democratic reform and peaceful transfer of power in the context of Tunisia. He grapples with the specific make-up of Tunisia as a modern state and its republican political heritage and investigates how this determined the development and survival of the revolution and the democratic transition in its aftermath.
For Bishara, the political culture and attitudes of the elites and their readiness to compromise, in addition to an army without political ambitions, were aspects that proved crucial for the relative success of the Tunisian experience. But he distinguishes between protest movements and mass movements that aim at regime change and discerns the social and political conditions required for the transition from the former to the latter. Bishara shows that the specific factors that correspond to mass movements and regime change are relative deprivation, awareness of injustice, dignity and indignation. He concludes, based on meticulous documentation of the events in Tunisia and theoretical investigation, that while revolutions are unpredictable with no single theory able to explain them, all revolutions across different historical and conceptual contexts be seen as popular uprisings that aim at regime change.
The book is the first of a trilogy, the
Understanding Revolutions series by Bishara, seeking to provide a rich, comprehensive and lucid assessment of the revolutions in three states: Tunisia, Syria, and Egypt.
List of contents
List of Abbreviations
Introduction to the English Edition
Preface: On Revolution and Susceptibility to Revolution
Chapter 1: The Arab and the Tunisian in the Tunisian Revolution
Chapter 2: Pre-Revolutionary Times
Chapter 3: From Gafsa to Sidi Bouzid
Chapter 4: Parties and Other Associations before the Upheaval
Chapter 5: Diary Entries: From Uprising to Revolution
Concluding Remarks
Epilogue
Bibliography
About the author
Azmi Bishara is one of the Arab world’s most prominent scholars and critics of authoritarianism and colonialism. He has published extensively on political thought, state formation theory, social theory, and philosophy. His books include his trilogy on the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria (I.B. Tauris), as well as Palestine: Matters of Truth and Justice; Religion and Secularism in Historical Context; The Question of the State; and On Salafism.
Summary
Based on empirical and theoretical investigation, and original insight into how a local protest movement developed into a revolution that changed a regime, this book shows us how we can understand political revolutions. Azmi Bishara critically explores the gradual democratic reform and peaceful transfer of power in the context of Tunisia. He grapples with the specific make-up of Tunisia as a modern state and its republican political heritage and investigates how this determined the development and survival of the revolution and the democratic transition in its aftermath.
For Bishara, the political culture and attitudes of the elites and their readiness to compromise, in addition to an army without political ambitions, were aspects that proved crucial for the relative success of the Tunisian experience. But he distinguishes between protest movements and mass movements that aim at regime change and discerns the social and political conditions required for the transition from the former to the latter. Bishara shows that the specific factors that correspond to mass movements and regime change are relative deprivation, awareness of injustice, dignity and indignation. He concludes, based on meticulous documentation of the events in Tunisia and theoretical investigation, that while revolutions are unpredictable with no single theory able to explain them, all revolutions across different historical and conceptual contexts be seen as popular uprisings that aim at regime change.
The book is the first of a trilogy, the Understanding Revolutions series by Bishara, seeking to provide a rich, comprehensive and lucid assessment of the revolutions in three states: Tunisia, Syria, and Egypt.
Foreword
Azmi Bishara's analysis of Tunisia's transition to democracy
