The Arab Revolts: The Old Is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born

Abstract

The toppling of the Tunisian despot in January 2011 produced a wave of revolts that swept the Arab World and opened the door for counterhegemonic movements in the region. Using the Gramscian concept of hegemony, this paper examines the strategies deployed by subaltern groups in three Arab countries with comparable sociopolitical conditions: namely, Egypt, Syria, and Algeria. It contends that Egyptian protesters were successful in toppling their president because they were facing a weak hegemony while in Algeria people were unable to threaten the regime seriously since they confronted a strong hegemonic bloc. Furthermore, on a continuum from the most to the least hegemonic, the Syrian regime is situated midway between the two. The Syrian elite were not strong enough to implement a passive revolution comparable to the Algerian one, but they had sufficient cohesion to prevent a quick fragmentation similar to the one that the Egyptian ruling class experienced.

Keywords:

• Antonio Gramsci
• Hegemony
• Arab Revolts

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to Omar Dahi and Elsa Wiehe for their extensive comments. I also want to thank the reviewers of Rethinking Marxism for their valuable suggestions.

Notes

¹Some Arab scholars have argued that Gramsci's concept of civil society is not applicable in the Arab region. For insightful accounts see Samara (2011) and Najar (2004, 57).

²For an exhaustive study of the historical formation of social classes in Egypt see Beinin and Lockman (1998) and Mitchell (2002).

³The Syrian regime's close ties to Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas and its public discourse about anti-imperialism have led several progressive leaders, such as Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, to support it.