{"id":13882,"date":"2012-01-10T11:07:35","date_gmt":"2012-01-10T07:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=13882"},"modified":"2012-01-10T11:07:35","modified_gmt":"2012-01-10T07:07:35","slug":"stuff-happens-the-dangers-of-predicting-arab-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/stuff-happens-the-dangers-of-predicting-arab-spring\/","title":{"rendered":"Stuff Happens: The Dangers of Predicting ‘Arab Spring’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published in April 2010, many people have come across this\u00a0book<\/a>\u00a0on Tunisia unerringly failing to discern the way things would go. The Arabist has\u00a0highlighted\u00a0<\/a>perhaps the worst paragraph, its final conclusion:<\/p>\n

Authoritarianism in Tunisia could prove to be very durable, and not simply because the government represses opponents. A majority of Tunisians may determine that the benefits of the status quo outweigh the individual and collective costs that a transition would require them to pay. In fact, the country\u2019s history and its current balance of political forces make this the safer bet over the medium term. It does seem clear, though, that political change in Tunisia will not come about through some dramatic event that suddenly replaces the existing order with a new one. The stability\u2013reform dialectic<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not for one second do I write this to sneer at this author. I would imagine that his book is fairly well grounded in history and approximated the best that social scientific predictive powers could do (can you tell which side of the Soc Soc\/US v UK debate I am on?). But things happen, some of which simply defy prediction.<\/p>\n

Similarly, I find myself defending the likes of David Held. While I don\u2019t know the in-depth bits and pieces of the case, I don\u2019t find the notion that Saif al-Islam Qaddafi was always a despot bursting to get out and Held was a fool for being fooled particularly persuasive. Yes, there were a number of pointers that Saif was not a nice piece of work (to say the least) and for this reason alone, perhaps Held ought not have interacted with him. This, however, is a different question.<\/p>\n

Specifically on the notion that Saif was \u2018always\u2019 likely to become some blood-thirsty dictator or some such notion, I\u2019m not sold. I don\u2019t think that it takes much imagination to foresee \u2013 minus the Arab Spring (!) \u2013 Saif eventually taking over from his delusional, vicious father and leading Libya on something of a more normal path (note I don\u2019t say that he\u2019d be a paragon of virtue and democracy).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAVID ROBERTS: Events have a way of making an idiot of anyone predicting how the Arab world will play out. Here’s a perfect example. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":13883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,325,235,482,5,233],"tags":[18332,569,18322,18337,18302],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13882"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}