The revolutions that began on the streets of Tunis and Cairo have already sent into exile two long-serving presidents. They have also become the subject of a great deal of analytical interest. Thousands of newspaper columns have been written in hundreds of newspapers across the world. These will be followed by articles in journals and magazines. Books will be written. Lessons will be learned by those who hold political power and by those in whose name that power is wielded.
With this article I begin a series that will examine what led to the challenge by the Arab Street to the rule of their authoritarian masters who had governed with such impunity for so long. Since I am an economist, my emphasis will be on the element of economics. Being a Pakistani I will examine how these developments in an important part of the Islamic world will affect Pakistan, the world’s second-largest Muslim country. Being a long-time student of Pakistan’s history I will analyse how the past may affect the country’s economic and political future. And being a resident in a Washington suburb, I will look at how the West is coming to terms with what has happened in the Arab world, and how its own position in that part of the world will be affected by these historical developments.
How does economics enter the Tunisian and Egyptian pictures – and at a later date possibly the Algerian, the Bahraini, the Jordanian, the Syrian, and the Yemeni as well? The successes achieved by the streets in Tunis, Cairo and Alexandria have inspired and emboldened others like those who agitated in Tunisia and Egypt to look to the street as a way out of their problems. What has caused so much disaffection among the so many young people to risk so much, including their lives, to bring change in the ossified societies in which they live?
This question was ably answered decades ago by a political scientist and economist at Harvard University. Before Samuel P Huntington gained fame for writing The Clash of Civilizations – a book in which he predicted that Islam and the West were destined to clash since the values each espoused could not be reconciled – he had established his reputation in academic circles by putting what he called “relative deprivation” at the centre of political conflict. This thesis was developed in a book that appeared under the title of Political Order in Changing Societies. In explaining his hypothesis he studied the rapidly growing economies in what the Third World. The countries he studied in the 1960s included Pakistan, which then had one of the highest rates of GDP growth in the world.
Rapid growth, Huntington maintained, produced a sense of deprivation among those who were left behind by the process of economic advance. In weak political systems this discontent on the part of the relatively deprived could not be accommodated. This often led to political violence. Huntington’s book built around that argument came out at the time when the regime headed by Field Marshal Ayub Khan had begun to crumble. The Harvard professor felt that Pakistan had vindicated him by providing real-time substance to validate his thesis.
The other contribution for understanding the economics of political despair came from the economist Albert O Hirschman, who published his book Exit, Voice and Loyalty about the time that Huntington’s treatise came out. In his book Hirschman suggested that those unhappy with their situation could exercise one of three choices. They would remain loyal to the system if the system found a way of accommodating them and dealing with their distress. If that did not happen, they were likely to give voice to their unhappiness; this is something that was done by the crowds in Cairo’s Tahrir Square for 18 days following the shorter period of agitation in Tunis. If they could not raise their voice because of repression, many of those who were unhappy with their situation were likely to exit from the system. They could become dissidents forming groups that went underground. This is precisely what those who founded Al-Qaeda did. As is well known, the situation in Egypt was one of the elements that led to the creation of Al-Qaeda.
These two arguments, now decades old, serve us well in understanding the revolution in the streets of Tunis and Cairo. With the two presidents having left their offices, the period of transition has begun. The assumption is that before too long new systems will be in place, based on participation by broad segments of the populations of the two countries, and that these systems will spread the benefits of economic growth more evenly.
There is now debate in policy circles as to why the streets in Tunisia and Egypt suddenly erupted and what will happen to other mostly Muslim countries in the area. There was a combination of many factors that produced the “perfect storms” in the two countries. The most important of these was that a significant number of people in both countries felt that they had been left behind while a small number had gained enormously.
It is interesting that the two revolutions occurred when Tunisia and Egypt were doing well economically. Egypt over the last five years had achieved a rate of growth in GDP that was unprecedented in its history. The same was true for Tunisia. In other words, the situation was ripe for a Huntingtonian-type upheaval. Those who were in despair chose to raise their voice, and in this they were helped by cable TV networks and the new communication technology associated with social networking. Al Jazeera, Facebook and Twitter were the instruments that kept the level of excitement among the disgruntled at a high pitch and also made it possible for the disaffected to coordinate their activities.
The regimes attempted old techniques to suppress agitation spurred on by new technologies. Even though the plug was pulled in Cairo to stop Al Jazeera from broadcasting, and even when Facebook and Twitter websites were blocked by the authorities, technically savvy young individuals managed to keep them alive. The old could not beat the new.
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