Lessons learnt? The EU and the Arab uprisings

Nikki Ikani
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Nikki Ikani: Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs

No pft3s_v1, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: A reboot of the Arab Uprisings has become more likely in the wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic. In order to assess whether the European institutions are currently better able to anticipate an event such as the Arab Uprisings, this paper contends one must first investigate in depth what made the Arab Uprisings so surprising, and to whom. Hereto, this paper unpacks this surprising nature of the Uprisings and the performance of the EEAS, INTCEN and DG NEAR, challenging some of the extant explanations in this literature. To this aim and following previous research, it dissects surprise into three elements. By unpacking who was surprised (the spread of the surprise), on what (the scope of the surprise) and to what degree (the dissonance of the surprise), it complements the extant literature which prioritizes the explanation of their ‘surprisingness’ over an in-depth investigation of the characteristics which made the Arab Uprisings so surprising. It subsequently probes which factors negatively affected the EU’s performance, preparing the field for the learning of specific lessons.

Date: 2021-03-31
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:pft3s_v1

DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/pft3s_v1

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