Demographic change and its social and political implications in the Middle East
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| Author | Shingo Hamanaka |
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2057891116636490 |
| Subject Matter | Research articles |
Research article
Demographic change
and its social and political
implications in the Middle East
Shingo Hamanaka
Ryukoku University, Kyoto, Japan
Abstract
This study examines the effect of the demographic trend on the breakdown of authoritarian
regimes in the Middle East. Several scholars have pointed out that the combination of youth’s
disproportionate share of the total population, the ‘‘youth bulge,’’ and high unemployment throws
a society into turmoil. The demographic change determines not only how human activities are
conducted but also how a society embarks on a political transition, such as a revolution, a state
breakdown, or a regime change.
I conduct two levels of empirical analysis of the political implications of the demographic
dynamics in the Middle East. First, the macro-level analysis is based on cross-sectional data over
two decades. This analysis will clarify whether the youth population had a significant effect on the
Arab uprisings. Second, the micro-level analysis uses survey data from the Arab Democracy
Barometer wave III to examine whether there is a significant correlation between youth and
participation in protest. This analytical approach integrates the macro level with the micro level in
order to avoid an ecological inference.
My empirical analysis finds evidence to support Jack Goldstone’s revolution theory: it is built on
demographic changes accompanied by rising food prices. The hypothesis is tested by examining the
interactive effect of youth bulge and the deteriorating economic situation in the two decades
following the end of the Cold War. The empirical tests at both the macro and micro levels identify
a statistically significant effect.
Keywords
youth bulge, Arab spring, democratization, Demographic Theory
In early 2011, the uprisings of Arab peoples led to the breakdown of, first, the regimes in Tunisia
and Egypt, and then, later in that year, the regimes in Libya and Yemen. Since unrest in Syria
Corresponding author:
Shingo Hamanaka, Department of Law, Ryukoku University, 67 Tsukamoto-cho Fukakusa, Kyoto 612-8577, Japan.
Email: oshiro@law.ryukoku.ac.jp
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics
2017, Vol. 2(1) 70–86
ªThe Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/2057891116636490
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turned into a state of civil war, by late July 2015 over 250,000 people have died and approximately
four million people abroad and 6.5 million inside the country have been internally displaced or
made refugees.
1
Libya and Yemen are also in a de facto state of civil war, and their new leaderships
have been unable to create unified political order in the countries. The sequence of uprisings
known as the Arab Spring and the subsequent turmoil called the ‘‘Arab Winter’’ originated in the
social and political implications of certain demographic trends, especially the existence of an
extensive younger generation in the Arab world. As Ragui Assaad puts it, ‘‘demographics, simply
by having large numbers of people who are very frustrated at their inability to turn their education
into productive jobs, has really exacerbated the problems’’ (Assaad, 2011: 237).
Emmanuel Todd and Youssef Courbage suggest that the fundamental transformations of the
Arab and Islamic societies are due to the concurrence of an increasing literacy rate and decreasing
birth rate. These demographic transformations ha ve brought tremendous political turmoil and
social instability (Todd and Courbage, 2011). Todd indicated the validity of his argument at the
time of the Arab Spring (Todd, 2011). Yamauchi Masayuki, a historian of the Ottoman Empire,
describes the Arab uprisings as ‘‘the youth bulge question.’’ The youth bulge is the peculiar
demographic trend that a society faces when the young generation constitutes the largest share
of its population. Yamauchi interprets the revolts in the Arab world as an insurgency caused by a
demographic ‘‘time bomb’’ (Yamauchi, 2012: 40–48).
This study examines the effect of this demographic trend on the breakdown of authoritarian
regimes in the Middle East. In addition to Assaad and Todd, scholars have pointed out that the
combination of youth’s disproportionate share of the total population, the ‘‘youth bulge,’’ and high
unemployment throws a society into turmoil (Amin et al., 2012; Campante and Chor, 2012;
Courbage, 2015; Haas and Lesch, 2012; Hoffman and Jamal, 2012; Matthijs et al., 2015; Singer-
man, 2013). Tsunekawa (2012) argues that a sense of grievance among highly educated jobless
youth was one of the five major causes of the Arab uprisings. The demographic change determines
not only how human activities are conducted but also whether a society embarks on a political
transition, such as a revolution, a state breakdown, or a regime change.
The Middle Eastern countries had never faced a wave of democratization until the Arab Spring.
The political regimes in most developing countries were democratized in the late 20th century, by
what Samuel Huntington has called the ‘‘Third Wave’’ of democratization (Huntington, 1991).
Since Arab authoritarianism had strength and robustness at that time, the notion of Arab excep-
tionalism became a popular explanation for the phenomenon. Here, there is a reason to overcome
the exception and ask the question: Why did the breakdown of four Arab regimes happen over
20 years after the Third Wave?
In the following section, we explain the theory of youth bulges and examine its theoretical
compatibility with the Arab Spring. The second section is a literature review to outline the puzzle
of the link between demographic change and revolution. The third section describes our analytical
strategy with a macro dataset and micro data from the 12-country survey of the Arab Democracy
Barometer wave III. The fourth section shows our empirical results both in the macro- and the
micro-level analysis. The final section discusses the results and indicates some theoretical
implications.
The theory of youth bulges and revolutions
This study focuses on the Arab Spring as a political result of demographic change in the Middle
East. Several scholars regard the mass demonstrations that led to regime breakdowns in the Middle
Hamanaka 71
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