Resonance of the Arab Spring: Solidarities and youth opinion in the Global South
| Published date | 01 March 2018 |
| Author | Adam K Webb |
| Date | 01 March 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0192512116666391 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512116666391
International Political Science Review
2018, Vol. 39(2) 290 –305
© The Author(s) 2017
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0192512116666391
journals.sagepub.com/home/ips
Resonance of the Arab Spring:
Solidarities and youth opinion in
the Global South
Adam K Webb
Johns Hopkins University, Hopkins-Nanjing Centre, China
Abstract
The Arab Spring exemplifies to many a kind of globalisation from below. It cuts across borders and challenges
liberal and technocratic élites. But how far does its global resonance really go? Are publics still largely
corralled within national political spaces? Are waves of revolt confined by civilisational breakwaters? Or is the
cosmopolitan space that many leftists envision taking shape? Based on a three-country survey of university
students, this article probes these assumptions. It finds far-reaching solidarity with the aspirations of the
Arab Spring, driven by the rise of a cross-border global society. But on probing the bases of such solidarity,
it also finds that the cosmopolitan cohort emerging in the Global South does not fit a simple liberal or leftist
mould. The Arab Spring resonates on multiple frequencies at the same time. This complex cosmopolitanism
has implications for layers of common ground as global political opportunity structures emerge.
Keywords
Arab Spring, globalisation, public opinion, social movements, Global South
The eruption of the Arab Spring in 2011 unnerved élites in the Middle East and farther afield. Such
nervousness stemmed from the uprisings’ content and scale. First, once the initial protests by mid-
dle-class activists gave way to political gains by the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafis and the like, it
became clear that this wave of democratisation threatened to empower poor and traditionalist pub-
lics of a sort alien to the recent winners from globalisation. Second, from the catalysing release by
Wikileaks of details on Tunisian corruption, to the foreign fighters converging on Syria, the Arab
Spring embodied new energy from cross-border networks rooted in society. The revolts threatened
to spread and to breach the sovereign compartments of world order.
Despite a cross-border element, however, this wave of revolts has not yet spread beyond the
Arab world. There might be breakwaters on the sea of global society, in other words. This article
considers the Arab Spring as a test case amid globalisation. It explores solidarity with the Arab
Spring in distant parts of the world, though a drill-down survey of university student opinion in
Corresponding author:
Adam K Webb, Johns Hopkins University (SAIS)–Hopkins-Nanjing Centre, 162 Shanghai Road, Nanjing, 210093, China.
Email: adamkwebb@gmail.com
666391IPS0010.1177/0192512116666391International Political Science ReviewWebb
research-article2016
Article
Webb 291
Peru, Pakistan and Kenya. The findings offer insight into the Arab Spring’s resonance with a
global public.
Global society versus cellularity?
The literature connected to this puzzle clusters around several dimensions of emerging
cosmopolitanism.
Cross-border interactions are sometimes considered to make up an emerging ‘world society’.
Buzan (2004) sees ‘world society’ as a third layer of global integration, alongside the realpolitik of
the ‘international system’ and the norms that constrain governments in ‘international society’.
Lechner (2009) likewise argues that markets, migration and the ‘global association revolution’ are
creating cross-border spaces beyond sovereign states. Norris and Inglehart (2009) find that beyond
in-person interactions, internet usage is another powerful driver of cosmopolitanism, though
mainly among Western-oriented ‘core societies’ with open economies and media. In more ‘paro-
chial’ parts of the world, the cosmopolitan potential of electronic communication is slowed by
‘societal firewalls’ of censorship and protectionism, as well as by ‘individual firewalls’, namely
poverty and distrust of foreign media.
The extent of global society in the Global South specifically is underexplored. Much of the lit-
erature presumes an overlap of the cosmopolitan, the liberal and the Northern. While all roads no
longer lead to Rome, they are thought at least to lead to somewhere between Hollywood and
Stockholm. Empirically, that view may be dated. Internet penetration of the Global South has
grown rapidly among the young, for example, even in the seven years since the Norris and Inglehart
study. It is currently at 35% worldwide and rising. More broadly, the paths of cosmopolitanism are
diversifying. Werbner (1999) identifies a ‘vernacular’ or ‘working-class cosmopolitanism’ driven
by ‘boundary-crossing demotic migrations’, which parallel the globetrotting of the business class
and intelligentsia. And Furia (2005) and Pichler (2012) found a surprising number of people in
parts of the Global South self-identifying as global citizens.
One vital point of intersection between global society and cosmopolitanism is cross-border
political solidarity. Particularly on the left, movements have long borrowed slogans and styles of
protest across borders (e.g. Markoff, 1996: 20–31; Thörn, 2007). Yet what solidarity really means
globally, rather than nationally, is contentious. Featherstone (2012) and Gould (2007) suggest that
such solidarity among movements rests not on pre-existing common identities, but rather on loose
networks and contested ‘political imaginaries’, linked together only by diffuse empathy. Olesen
(2005a, 2005b) likewise warns against ‘the problem of global longsightedness’, namely overlook-
ing that ‘transnational framing’ often merely supports tactics within countries. He suggests that
today’s ‘global consciousness’ involves ad hoc cooperation among ‘a plurality of transnational
publics rather than the singularity of a global civil society’. Tarrow (2001) likewise predicts that
true transnational social movements will be scarce for some time to come, until global institutions
gain more power and become targets of high-stakes contestation from below.
In short, while cosmopolitanism is proliferating in unlikely places, there are debates over how
far it goes, what drives it, what content it takes outside the Western core, and how politically salient
it is. Warnings against over-reading political solidarity within global society are also compelling,
if taken in a limited way.
The Arab Spring is a promising case for exploring these points. It is the first large-scale wave of
popular revolts since globalisation accelerated in the 1990s and since internet usage more recently
penetrated the Global South, even though its social base – economically hard-pressed and ideologi-
cally traditionalist – is rarely seen as a prime breeding ground for cosmopolitanism. If the Arab
Spring resonates farther afield, then we can gain a fuller picture of a South-centred version of
To continue reading
Request your trial