Protest and Mass Mobilization

Merouan Mekouar is a political scientist and professor of International Development Studies at York University and a senior fellow at the inter-university consortium of Arab and Middle Eastern Studies at McGill University. He works on social movements and authoritarian collapse in North Africa and the Middle East.

• 1 Introduction 2 Tunsia’s Intermediate Actors: Bridging the Popular Divide and Making the Revolution 3 Libya’s Revolution: How Qaddafi’s Friends Made the Revolution.4 Algeria: Social Mobilization Routinized 5 Morocco’s Aborted Social Mobilization: All Behind the King 6 The Media in the Arab Spring 7 Conclusion

This context-sensitive monograph is a great contribution to the literature on social mobilization in the largely understudied Maghreb region. It provides a unique examination of the dialectical process of social mobilization and state repression based on interviews with activists and members of the security services. Definitely a must read book.Osire Glacier, Bishop’s University, CanadaMekouar’s theoretically unique and narratively rich book is a required-read for students of the Middle East and practitioners who want to understand how the regimes, the opposition movements and ordinary citizens reacted in a way that stimulated or failed mobilization in Tunisia, Libya, Algeria and Morocco. Any MENA or social movement syllabus must include this work for a better understanding of the Arab Uprisings and its continuing legacies on the region.Ekrem Karakoç, Binghamton University, SUNY, USAMerouan Mekouar tackles a central question not yet answered by the vast literature on the Arab uprisings: why do some small acts of protest spark revolutionary mobilization while others do not? By examining successful as well as failed mobilizations, he develops an original approach that brings process-tracing models into dialogue with theories of information cascades. A must-read for those interested in the origins and timing of the Arab uprisings and revolutions in general.Jillian Schwedler, City University of New York, USA