Tunisia's Arab Spring: The Local Process of Revolution

• In Event: 066 - Section on Political Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Section on Political Sociology Roundtables (one-hour). Table 01. Social Movements

Abstract

The past four years have witnessed numerous publications seeking to explain the events of the Arab Spring of 2010-2011, including the Tunisian revolution. With the benefit of hindsight, these have put forth classic demographic and socio-economic theories of revolution, and offered new theories of social movements and social media. This study undertakes the first known sub- national, quantitative test of these theories on revolution by conducting Rare Events Logistic and Negative Binomial Regressions on a unique dataset of 258 Tunisian districts during three critical time periods of the Tunisian revolution. These models analyze the likelihood and intensity of revolutionary events during three months of the Tunisian revolution, with results indicating strong support for social movement theories, and in particular, significant effects of tribes in the first and second periods, and unions in the third period.

Author

• Nicholas E. Reith, University of Texas-Austin