Moataz A. Fattah: Five Reasons Why Arab Regimes are Falling
[Moataz A. Fattah is an associate professor of political science at Cairo University and Central Michigan University. He is also a fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and the author of “Democratic Values in the Muslim World.”]
Public protests in Egypt are not about minor changes or grievances. President Hosni Mubarak’s regime faces a deep process of legitimacy erosion – the same pattern of legitimacy erosion that exists across much of the Arab region. This erosion won’t simply go away with more protests or new governments, and it will be with us in the years to come. Understanding the larger societal and demographic factors eroding these regimes is vital to understanding the unrest in the Middle East and how the Arab world can move forward....
The first challenge is what I call the biological challenge. There is a generation gap between old rulers and the majority youth. Biologically, a new generation of Egyptians reproduces at a relatively high rate. Currently, around 65 percent of Egyptians are under 30 years old with an unemployment rate of 25 percent among those who are between 18 and 29 years old. For those who are employed, half of them work on jobs that do not match the kind of training they got while in college or technical high school....
Second, the geological challenge contributes to this legitimacy erosion. There was great geological virtue in having such primary resources such as oil and phosphates, and being in control of geo-strategic waterways or even sources of water (following the famous theory of Asiatic despotism). This control over natural resources, in addition to foreign aid, brought many Arab states their legitimacy in the 1970s through 1990s through “baksheesh” or “stipend petrocracies.”...
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Public protests in Egypt are not about minor changes or grievances. President Hosni Mubarak’s regime faces a deep process of legitimacy erosion – the same pattern of legitimacy erosion that exists across much of the Arab region. This erosion won’t simply go away with more protests or new governments, and it will be with us in the years to come. Understanding the larger societal and demographic factors eroding these regimes is vital to understanding the unrest in the Middle East and how the Arab world can move forward....
The first challenge is what I call the biological challenge. There is a generation gap between old rulers and the majority youth. Biologically, a new generation of Egyptians reproduces at a relatively high rate. Currently, around 65 percent of Egyptians are under 30 years old with an unemployment rate of 25 percent among those who are between 18 and 29 years old. For those who are employed, half of them work on jobs that do not match the kind of training they got while in college or technical high school....
Second, the geological challenge contributes to this legitimacy erosion. There was great geological virtue in having such primary resources such as oil and phosphates, and being in control of geo-strategic waterways or even sources of water (following the famous theory of Asiatic despotism). This control over natural resources, in addition to foreign aid, brought many Arab states their legitimacy in the 1970s through 1990s through “baksheesh” or “stipend petrocracies.”...