Demographics, Economics, and Technology: Background to the North African Revolutions

Abstract

This article examines the interlocking roles that demographic change, economics, and Internet and cellular telephone technology played in fomenting and accelerating revolutionary and reform movements in North Africa in 2011. Although the bulging populations of youth in North Africa—with their access to the Internet and cell phones and their frustrations regarding both political liberty and economic mobility—came together in 2011 to demand revolutionary change, demographic projections indicate that as fertility continues to decline in all North African states except Libya, the region is likely to become more stable approximately twenty years from now, when these nations' populations have become older.

KEYWORDS:

• Arab Spring
• cellular telephones
• demographics
• economics
• fertility
• Internet
• North Africa
• reform
• revolution
• youth
• youth bulge

Notes

¹See Thomas Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Populations (London: J. Johnson, 1798); Jack Goldstone, Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Gunnar Heinsohn, Söhne und Weltmacht: Terror in Aufsteg und Fall der Nationen [Brotherhood and World Power: Terror in the Rise and Fall of Nations] (Munich: Piper, 2008); Christian Mesquida and Neil I. Wiener, “Male Age Composition and Severity of Conflicts,” Politics and the Life Sciences 18 (September 1999): 181–89; Herbert Möller, “Youth as a Social Force in the Modern World,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 10, no. 3 (1968): 237–60; Henrik Urdal and Kristian Hoelscher, “Urban Youth Bulges and Social Disorder: An Empirical Study of Asian and Sub-Saharan African Cities,” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 5110, November 2009; Henrik Urdal, “The Devil in the Demographics: The Effect of Youth Bulges on Domestic Armed Conflict, 1950–2000” (paper presented at the Peace Research Institute Oslo conference, New Orleans, March 24–27, 2002), http://www.prio.no/CSCW/Research-and-Publications/Publication/?oid=158491.

Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, http://www.un.org/esa/population/meetings/egm-adolescents/roudi.pdf

Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wfr2009web/data/comparativetables.html.

Source: United Nations Population Department.

²Richard Javad Heydarian, “The Economics of the Arab Spring,” Foreign Policy in Focus, April 21, 2011, http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_economics_of_the_arab_spring.

Source: International Monetary Fund, www.imf.org/external/data.htm.

Note: Figures for Algeria are for 2006, the last date for which data are available.

Source: Internet World Stats, Usage and Population Statistics, http://www.internetworldstats.com/africa.htm#tn.

³International Labor Organization, Global Trends for Youth, August 2010, 4, http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_emp/---emp_elm/---trends/documents/publication/wcms_143349.pdf.

⁴International Labor Organization, http://www.ilo.org/global/publications/books/global-unemployment-trends/lang--en/index.htm.

⁵Brookings Institution, “Understanding the Generation in Waiting in the Middle East,” http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/articles/2010/06_middle_east_youth/06_middle_east_youth_map.swf.

⁶See the account of the Tunisian revolution elsewhere in this issue.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ricardo René Larémont

RICARDO RENÉ LARÉMONT is Professor of Political Science and Sociology at SUNY Binghamton, New York.