POLI 340 Lecture Notes - Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, Pearl Roundabout

• School: McGill University
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLI 340

Document Summary

Although the middle east tends to be thought of as unstable, between 1970 and 2010 it was one of the most stable regions in the developing world. There was of course the exception of the iranian revolution inn 1979 and the us intervention in iraq in 2003, there were few regime changes in the region. This stability was highly authoritarian in character, but it was also remarkably resistance to the third wave of democratization in the 70s, 80s, 90s. During that period there was an increase in the number of democratic governments, the transformation of dictatorships in southern europe into democracy, then the military regimes in latin america and then the fall of communism. There is a clustering of countries that are not free in the middle east and northern africa. House data, the middle east and north africa are lacking in freedom. 17 december 2010: vegetable seller mohammed bouazizi sets himself alight in tunisia to protest against government harassment.