Abstract
This chapter contains an analysis of selected indicators of legitimacy, human rights and inequality, as well as information about conflict events for eight African countries affected by the Arab Spring, namely Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia. The analyses described in this chapter allowed the determination of plausible estimates for input parameters such as legitimacy and welfare inequality, as well as patterns of size, duration and recurrence of conflict events in these countries. These results were used for setting the values of the input parameters, and for analyzing the plausibility of the solutions in the exploration of the agent-based model described in next chapter.
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Notes
- 1.
The current version of SCAD does not include information about conflict events in other countries affected by the AS such as Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman and Syria. Also, there is no information about conflict events in European countries involved in the European Sovereign Debt Crisis, which would be worthwhile studying and comparing with those in the countries affected by the AS.
- 2.
More specifically, this is the case for 728 events, representing 42% of all events in the database from May 17th, 1983 to December 31st, 2013.
- 3.
In SCAD, “escalation” has a different meaning than is usual. It refers to events of one type that degenerated into another type, regardless of violence intensity, organization, etc. It does not mean that the degenerated event was more violent than the original one.
- 4.
Analyzing the issuenote field for all events in the eight countries would be extremely time consuming, but is feasible for very large and huge events and sometimes yields useful details. For instance, the issuenote description for the very large demonstration in Algiers, Algeria, on January 22nd, 2011, whose main issue was food, water, subsistence reads: “Arab Spring. Rock and chair throwing protesters defy a ban on public gatherings and clash with police, they also demand radical change to the regime. 20,000 police stop the protests, leaving 5 dead and 800 hurt.” This shows that although the coded issue1 was related to economic RD, the event was in fact associated with the AS movement and its main issues (struggle for individual liberties and regime change), and was violently repressed by a massive police force. The description of the huge demonstration in several cities in Egypt on January 25th, 2013, whose main issue was human rights, democracy reads: “An estimated 500,000 people marched across Egypt against the Morsi government and against the Muslim Brotherhood and the protests turned violent, with 11 people killed and several hundred wounded.” This also illustrates the uncertainty of the estimates of participation (the npart field is coded “over 1,000,000,” which is not consistent with the estimate in the issuenote). For the very large, nationwide demonstration in Morocco on February 2nd, 2011, whose main issue was economy, jobs, the description reads: “Arab Spring. Protests erupt in favor of constitutional reform, social justice, and economic reform. 37,000 people take to the streets. Marches escalate to violence in Hoceima, where several people die after setting a bank on fire.” Once again, the number of participants mentioned in the issuenote does not match the npart value.
- 5.
The longest demonstration after the beginning of the AS started in Morocco on January 1st, 2012, with duration = 126 days, npart = “10,001 to 100,000” and its issuenote is as follows: “Thousand of Berbers participated in protests throughout various regions of Morocco to demand the government for more democratic reform and more government services for Berbers.” In Mauritania, the demonstration that started on May 2nd, 2012, with duration = 95 days, npart = “10,001 to 100,000” has the issuenote: “The Coordination of a Democratic Opposition, a coalition of opposition parties, held a lengthy series of weekly protests in Nouakchott demanding the resignation of President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz. Police arrested, beat, and tear gassed protesters on several occasions. Some youth demonstrators resorted to throwing rocks and burning tires. Attendance ranged between hundreds and thousands.” In Tunisia, the demonstration that started on September 17th, 2012, with duration = 71 days, npart = “1,001 to 10,000” has the issuenote: “Prisoners protested against the Justice Ministry.” In Egypt, the longest demonstration after the beginning of the AS had duration = 46 days.
- 6.
The median of the interval between successive events changed from 18 to 12.5 days for Algeria; [29 to three days for Egypt]; 1,801.5 to 18.5 days for Libya; 266 to 36 days for Mali; 346.5 to 15 days for Morocco; 226 to 21 for Sudan; and in Tunisia the median of the time between successive demonstrations was 12 days after the beginning of the AS.
- 7.
This proportion or % is independent of the time unit and thus of the time step in an ABM, which for models of “abstract” type like Epstein’s is usually indefinite.
- 8.
The second and third countries were Morocco with 1.09% and Mali with 0.72% of the time with active demonstrations. The difference between the sum of the countries’ individual % of time with active demonstrations (16.96%) and aggregated value (16.27%), is a measure of the percentage of the total time with demonstrations occurring simultaneously in more than one country.
- 9.
This is a surprising result, especially because only major demonstrations against the central governments were considered, which in itself gives an objective measure of the intensity of social conflict manifest in the AS.
- 10.
The monotonic decrease of the width of the error bars, particularly for very large demonstrations (npart = ‘‘100,000 to 1,000,000’’) is due to the effect of population growth [45], and consequently is more pronounced for Egypt.
- 11.
The time line of demonstrations for Morocco in Fig. 4.9 induces the impression that the AS started in Morocco, which was not the case. The first of these two events was a spontaneous demonstration by Saharawis, with issue ‘‘economy, jobs’’ and an estimated number of participants between 100,001 and 1,000,000, which started on October 18th, 2010 and ended on November 10th, 2010. The issuenote for this demonstration reads: “Western Saharans set up a camp to protest, demanding a better standard of living and more jobs.” The second event was a spontaneous demonstration by Textile Workers, with issue ‘‘economy, jobs’’, with an estimated number of participants between 10,001 and 100,001, which started on October 29th, 2010 and ended on November 27th, 2011. The issuenote is: “Textile workers stage a sit-in, protesting the decision to close four textile plants.” The two following demonstrations in Morocco started on February 10th and 20th, 2011, and were related to the AS. The issuenote field for these events reads: “Arab Spring. A Moroccan dies after self-immolating to protest his situation after being dismissed from the army” and “Arab Spring. Protests erupt in favor of constitutional reform, social justice, and economic reform. 37,000 people take to the streets. Marches escalate to violence in Hoceima, where several people die after setting a bank on fire.” The issue1 field for these two events is coded as economy, jobs. These remarks show the importance of analyzing the details of each situation when exploring the SCAD database.
- 12.
- 13.
Bischof [9] argues that monarchies are more stable than republics in authoritarian regimes.
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Lemos, C.M. (2018). Analysis of Conflict Datasets and Indicators: The Case of the “Arab Spring”. In: Agent-Based Modeling of Social Conflict. SpringerBriefs in Complexity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67050-8_4
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