Doctoral Dissertation Research: Uprisings and Political Outcomes in the MENA Region

题目：中东和北非地区的起义和政治结果本项目旨在解释当代地区革命浪潮的出现和结果。最近的中东-北非历史为检验和丰富相关理论提供了特殊案例。从2010年底开始，阿拉伯之春一连串的群众运动挑战了政权？统治权、警察国家和经济发展方向。到2011年初，许多人将这些起义视为中东和北非地区民主和社会正义的开端。然而，只有六个中东和北非国家出现了起义；其他国家则是改革派或少数抗议者；后来的结果与要求相矛盾。与社会经济福利或民主赋权的普遍呼声相比，政治绝望、监禁或死亡、大众沦为难民。在这6次起义中，4次推翻了长期统治者（突尼斯、埃及、也门、利比亚），2次改变了方向（巴林、叙利亚）。到那时，突尼斯将独自向政治民主过渡；埃及的军队和巴林的君主制使专制的反革命制度化；也门、利比亚和叙利亚陷入国际化内战。本项目试图解释这三个相互关联的结果：即，为什么起义出现在一些地区国家而不是其他国家（革命出现）；为什么一些起义推翻了统治者，而另一些没有（最初的政治结果）；最后，为什么案件会产生政治民主、反革命或内战（主要的政治结果）。该项目涉及有关反对运动、政治和经济制度以及影响革命的全球关系的理论辩论。该项目分析了社会、国家和全球行动者争夺改变或保留专制和新自由主义的偶然动态，以及调节这些斗争和结果的制度结构地形。通过将病例分解为多个事件和结果，而不是单个孤立的线性过程，该项目增强了对革命浪潮中成功/积极、失败/消极和逆转病例的认识。本研究以比较历史社会学的方法，进行深入的个案研究与比较，以及多层次、组合式、互动式的因果分析。首先，该项目对21个中东和北非国家进行模糊集/定性比较分析，找出革命出现、没有出现和改革派抗议的因果组合。模糊集允许在潜在因果因素的集合隶属度上进行精细分级，而不是整齐定义的固定集，这使得能够评估复杂的因果关系。该项目创建了综合指数，以确定各国在对立动员结构、苏丹专制政权、食利国家、不平衡发展和新自由主义全球化方面的设定成员分数，fs/QCA为特定结果定位这些因素的必要和/或充分组合。这些组合通过-à-vis病例相互作用/革命扩散进行分析。其次，本项目对三个完整和三个小型案例研究使用内部和跨案例分析。案例分析优先考虑运动组成和行动形式、国家-军事结构以及全球关系对初始和主要政治结果的影响。密集的事件时间线使用来自组织报告和系统收集的报纸数据的事件级数据创建，生成演员的活动和兴趣，抗议事件和周期以及制度变化的分析草图。对运动组织者的半结构化深度访谈进一步巩固了这个项目。通过研究积极的、消极的和相反的案例，本项目将解释为什么许多阿拉伯之春案例无视现有的革命理论，并告知运动活动家和政治领导人关于专制政权和剥削性经济制度的性质、持久性和变化。

Title: Uprisings and Political Outcomes in the MENA RegionThis project seeks to explain the emergence and outcomes of contemporary regional revolutionary waves. Recent Middle East-North African history provides exceptional cases to test and enrich related theories. Beginning late 2010, the Arab Spring concatenation of mass movements challenged regimes? right to rule, police states, and economic-development orientations. By early 2011, many saw these uprisings as initiating democracy and social justice across MENA. Yet, uprisings emerged in only six MENA countries; others had reformist or few protests; and later outcomes contradicted demands. Consider the political despair, the imprisoned or dead, the masses made refugees, compared to popular calls for socioeconomic wellbeing or democratic empowerment. Of the six uprisings, four ousted long-standing rulers (Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya) and two were deflected (Bahrain, Syria). Tunisia alone would then transition to political democracy; Egypt's military and Bahrain's monarchy institutionalized autocratic counterrevolutions; and Yemen, Libya, and Syria descended into internationalized civil wars. This project seeks to explain these three interrelated outcomes: namely, why uprisings emerged in some regional countries and not others (revolution emergence); why some uprisings ousted rulers and others did not (initial political outcomes); and lastly, why cases produced political democracy, counterrevolution, or civil war (major political outcomes). This project addresses theoretical debates on the oppositional movements, political and economic regimes, and global relations impacting revolutions. The project analyzes the contingent dynamics of social, state, and global actors contending to transform or retain autocracy and neoliberalism, and the institutional-structural terrains conditioning these struggles and outcomes. By splitting cases into multiple episodes and outcomes, not single isolated-linear processes, this project enhances knowledge of successful/positive, failed/negative, and reversed cases amid revolutionary waves. This project uses comparative historical-sociological methods for in-depth case studies and comparisons, and multi-level, combinatorial, and interactive causal analysis. First, the project uses fuzzy-set/Qualitative Comparative Analysis of 21 MENA countries to locate causal combinations for revolution emergence, no emergence, and reformist protest. Fuzzy sets allow fine gradations in degrees of set membership in potential causal factors, rather than neatly-defined fixed sets, which enables evaluating complex causation. This project creates composite indexes to determine countries' set membership scores in oppositional mobilizing structures, sultanistic-autocratic regimes, rentier states, uneven development, and neoliberal globalization, with fs/QCA locating necessary and/or sufficient combinations of these factors for the specified outcomes. These combinations are analyzed vis-à-vis case interaction/revolutionary diffusion. Second, this project uses within- and cross-case analysis for three full and three mini case studies. Case analysis prioritizes the impact of movement composition and action-forms, state-military structures, and global relations on the initial and major political outcomes. Dense event timelines are created using event-level data from organizational reports and systematically-gathered newspaper data, generating analytical sketches of actors' activities and interests, protest events and cycles, and institutional changes. Semi-structured in-depth interviews of movement organizers further ground this project. By processually studying positive, negative, and reversed cases, this project will explain why many Arab Spring cases defy existing revolution theories and inform movement activists and political leaders on the nature, durability, and change of autocratic regimes and exploitative economic systems.