Abstract
This chapter introduces the January 25 Uprising and lays out the book’s central aim, research problem and argument. Taking its point of departure in the consistent and repeated failures of the Egyptian prodemocracy movement to mobilize significant popular support for their struggle against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak during the first decade of the new Millennium, it is argued that, to understand the rapid and large-scale diffusion of protest during the Egyptian Uprising of 2011, one not only needs to account for the underlying objective structure of political opportunities, but also for the ways in which different actors at different times perceived, navigated and affected these structures.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Abdelrahman, M. (2009). ‘With the Islamists? Sometimes: With the state? Never!’ Cooperation between the left and Islamists in Egypt. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 36(1), 37–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/13530190902749556.
Abdelrahman, M. (2011). The transnational and the local: Egyptian activists and transnational protest networks. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 38(3), 407–424. https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2011.621701.
Abdelrahman, M. (2013). In praise of organization: Egypt between activism and revolution. Development and Change, 44(3), 569–685. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12028.
Abdelrahman, M. (2015). Egypt’s long revolution: Protest movements and uprisings. New York: Routledge.
Alexander, A., & Bassiouny, M. (2014). Bread, freedom, social justice: Workers & the Egyptian revolution. London: Zed Books.
Beinin, J. (2001). Workers and peasants in the Middle East: Struggles, histories and historiographics. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Beinin, J. (2011). A workers’ social movement on the margin of the global neoliberal order, Egypt 2004–2009. In J. Beinin & F. Vairel (Eds.), Social movements, mobilization, and contestation in the Middle East and North Africa (pp. 181–201). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Beinin, J. (2012). Egyptian workers and January 25th: A social movement in historical context. Social Research, 79(2), 323–348.
Beinin, J. (2015). Workers and thieves: Labor movements and popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Clancy-Smith, J. (2013). From Sidi Bou Zid to Sidi Bou Said: A long durée approach to the Tunisian revolution. In M. L. Haas & D. W. Lesch (Eds.), The Arab Spring: Change and resistance in the Middle East (pp. 13–34). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Clarke, K. (2011). Saying “enough”: Authoritarianism and Egypt’s Kefaya movement. Mobilization: An International Journal, 16(4), 397–416.
Clarke, K. (2014). Unexpected brokers of mobilization: Contingency and networks in the 2011 Egyptian Uprising. Comparative Politics, 46(4), 379–397.
El-Mahdi, R. (2009). Enough! Egypt’s quest for democracy. Comparative Political Studies, 42, 1011–1039.
Freedom House. (2019). Freedom in the world 2018: Egypt. Retrieved from https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/egypt.
Goldstone, J. A., & Tilly, C. (2001). Threat (and opportunity): Popular action and state response in the dynamics of contentious action. In R. R. Aminzade, J. A. Goldstone, D. McAdam, E. J. Perry, W. H. Sewell, S. Tarrow, & C. Tilly (Eds.), Silence and voice in the study of contentious politics (pp. 179–194). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Guerney, J. N., & Tierney, K. J. (1982). Relative deprivation and social movements: A critical look at twenty years of theory and research. Sociological Quarterly, 23(1), 33–47.
Hafez, B. N. (2013). New social movements and the Egyptian Spring: A comparative analysis between the April 6 movement and the revolutionary socialists. Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, 12(1–2), 98–113. https://doi.org/10.1163/15691497-12341245.
Hill, S., & Rothchild, D. (1992). The impact of regime on the diffusion of political conflict. In M. Midlarsky (Ed.), The internationalization of communal strife. London: Routledge.
Jumet, K. D. (2018). Contesting the repressive state: Why ordinary Egyptians protested during the Arab Spring. New York: Oxford University Press.
Korany, B., & El-Mahdi, R. (2012). Arab Spring in Egypt: Revolution and beyond. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press.
Kurzman, C. (1996). Structural opportunity and perceived opportunity in social movement theory: The Iranian Revolution of 1979. American Sociological Review, 61(1), 153–170.
Kurzman, C. (2009). The Iranian Revolution. In J. Goodwin & J. M. Jasper (Eds.), The social movements reader: Cases and concepts (pp. 42–52). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
McAdam, D., Tarrow, S., & Tilly, C. (2001). Dynamics of contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McCarthy, J. D., Britt, D. W., & Wolfson, M. (1991). The institutional channeling of social movements by the state in the United States. Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, 13(2), 45–76.
Meyer, D. S. (2004). Protest and political opportunities. Annual Review of Sociology, 30, 125–145.
Simmons, B. A., Dobbin, F., & Garrett, G. (2006). Intoduction: The international diffusion of liberalism. International Organization, 60(4), 781–810.
Snyder, D., & Tilly, C. (1972). Hardship and collective violence in France, 1830 to 1960. American Sociological Review, 37(5), 520–532.
Soule, S. A. (2013). Diffusion and scale shift. In D. A. Snow, D. Della Porta, B. Klandermans, & D. McAdam (Eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell encyclopedia of social & political movements (pp. 349–353). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Tarrow, S. (1996). States and opportunities: The political structuring of social movements. In D. McAdam, J. D. McCarthy, & M. N. Zald (Eds.), Comparative perspectives on social movements: Political opportunities, mobilizing structures and cultural framings. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Tarrow, S. (2011). Power in movement: Social movements and contentious politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Tilly, C. (2008). Contentious performances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tilly, C., & Tarrow, S. (2007). Contentious politics. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Wackenhut, A. F. (2018). Ethical considerations and dilemmas before, during and after fieldwork in less-democratic contexts: Some reflections from post-uprising Egypt. The American Sociologist, 49(2), 242–257.
Wackenhut, A. F. (2019). Revisiting the Egyptian Uprising of 2011: Exploring the role of relational networks within the Cairo-based political opposition. Social Problems, online first. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spz014.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wackenhut, A.F. (2020). Introduction. In: Understanding Protest Diffusion. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39350-2_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39350-2_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-39349-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-39350-2
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)