The arab spring and the involvement of external actors in democratization processes

Abstract

In 2011, more than two decades after the momentous events that swept across Eastern Europe, a massive popular revolution against authoritarian regimes, ignited by the protests erupted in Tunisia in December 2010, put down roots throughout the Middle East and North Africa – from Egypt, Libya, Algeria and Morocco to Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and Jordan – and brought democratization processes back under the spotlight of the international community. This major movement towards democracy in the Arab world, known as the ‘Arab Spring’, marked a new wave of popular quest for pro-democratic changes in State governance that revitalized the “global democratic revolution”, heralded at the beginning of the Nineties as the “the most profound event of the twentieth century and,