Unfinished Arab Spring

Fatima El-Issawi is a Reader in Journalism and Media Studies at the University of Essex and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Africa at The London School of Economics (LSE). She is the principal investigator for the research project “Media and Transitions to Democracy: Journalistic Practices in Communicating Conflicts — the Arab Spring,” funded by the British Academy Sustainable Development Programme, looking at media’s role in communicating political conflicts in post uprisings in North Africa. She has over fifteen years of experience as international correspondent in conflict zones in the MENA region and is the author of Arab National Media and Political Change. Francesco Cavatorta is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherche sur l’Afrique et le Moyen Orient (CIRAM) at Laval University in Quebec, Canada. He has published extensively on Islamist parties and movements, and on processes of democratization in the Middle East and North Africa. His work has appeared in Democratization, Mediterranean Politics, Government and Opposition, Middle East Policy, and the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, among others. He is also the author and editor of numerous books.

"The book does make a compelling critique of the common paradigms through which scholars see the region and the enduring tendency to over-emphasize the role of elite politics and formal political institutions."