Thom Hartmann: The Arab Spring ''J Curve''

[thomhartmann]

So, what the heck is going on in the Middle East right now? I submit for your consideration that what we’re seeing is actually the logical continuation of revolutions against poverty and dictatorship that we’ve been calling the “Arab Spring.” And it’s going to continue - and get worse - until one very specific thing happens. Here’s why and how. In a brilliant paper that explains revolutions far better than Marx & Engles, back in 1962 James C. Davies wrote for the American Sociological Review an article titled, “Toward a Theory of Revolution.”

In it, he proposed that revolutions don’t happen because life is intolerable for people, which was basically Marx’s theory. He points out correctly that there are countries all over the world and all through history where life was and is terrible, but people don’t revolt. Keep in mind that of the 7 billion people on earth right now, about 5 and a half billion of them live on less than $5 a day, and about 3 billion of them live on less than $2 a day. Over a billion of them don’t even have access to sanitation or safe drinking water. But they’re not revolting. Why is that?

Davies proposed that it’s not life being terrible that provokes revolutions. Instead, it’s all about the gap between what people expect life to be like and what it’s actually like. When that gap is small - people live in squalor, but just figure that’s the hand life has dealt them - then you don’t have revolution. But when that gap is large, when people expect that life is going to get a lot better very quickly and it doesn’t, then they revolt.

Which brings us to the Arab Spring and James Davies’ "J curve" theory of political revolutions, which seeks to explain the rise of revolutionary movements in terms of rising individual expectations and falling levels of perceived well-being. All across the Arab world, people took President Obama’s advice from his famous Cairo speech in 2009, and tore down those dictators. They knew that Mubarak and Qaddafi and the others were stealing billions from them, essentially keeping them in poverty.

And, therefore, they expected that when the dictators fell, that there would be more money, more services, better schools and hospitals, even a middle class life, for them. But because Congress would not approve any spending that the Obama administration proposed, and because the Obama administration apparently wasn’t so familiar with Davies’ work, we never did a “Marshall Plan” for those countries that had just overthrown their tyrants. And, to make things worse, we didn’t work hard to demand that the new governments themselves start building schools and hospitals, put people to work, and spread around the wealth.

So what happened was that people had their revolution, but they didn’t see the expected outcome of revolution - a better life for themselves and their families. In Egypt, the military is still in charge and still owns most of the nation’s businesses - and hasn’t given a pay raise to workers or undertaken any sort of stimulus for their economy. In Libya, the new government is barely hanging on by their fingernails, and hasn’t made any substantial efforts to share the oil wealth of that country with it’s poor or working class people.

Variations on these two themes are pretty much the case in every country where the Arab Spring has happened. It’s also what’s going on in Iraq right now. So the revolutions are still incomplete - and, even worse, people now have high expectations for better lives, but are seeing no movement in that direction. When we look at what’s happening through this lens, the solution is obvious. We need an Arab Marshall Plan, and we need to work with the new governments to improve the lives of their people fast.

Arab people are no different than any other people. They want to be part of the middle class. They want a decent job, and good schools for their kids. They want to see life get better, generation to generation. And they resent their nation being looted by the top 1 percent and having nothing “trickle down” to them. Threatening and bluster - like Romney and the neocons are suggesting the Obama Administration sould do - won’t stop this second wave of the Arab Spring revolutions. If anything, it’ll make it worse.

Similarly, just stepping back and encouraging “self rule” as the Obama administration has been doing won’t stop the revolt, either. Because it doesn’t address the issue of the expectations people had when they literally put their lives on the line to tear down the dictators - successfully! - and then didn’t see their lives improve. If America intends to play any sort of leadership role in that part of the world, the tiniest sliver of our federal budget - just a percent or two of our military budget, for example - being spent instead to build schools and jumpstart industry in those nations would make all the difference in the world.

The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann on RT TV & FSTV "live" 9pm and 11pm check www.thomhartmann.com/tv for local listings

[leveymg]

1. Davies' J-curve theory has been proven correct over and over again.

Revolutions often follow failed or half-hearted attempts at reform or concessions by weakening regimes under the influence of foreign powers. One of the clearest modern examples of this is the overthrow of the Shah of Iran after his attempt to impose from above wide-ranging modernization. The westernizing reforms urged by the US threatened traditional elites. The revolution originally included a broad coalition of groups, but after the Shah fled, it was the best-armed and organized elements, the religious fundamentalists following the Ayatollah Khomeini, who seized and kept power by quite ruthless methods.

This follows a pattern that goes back through the other "great social revolutions" in China, Russia and France studied by the sociologists of revolution, including Skocpol, Goldstein, and the Tilleys. One could certainly argue, as does Hartmann, that events in Libya, Egypt and other Arab countries that have gone through partial or incomplete revolutions follow the same pattern.

[chknltl]

2. A DU must read, but something i don't understand:

Best explanation so far. What I do not understand is how recent American Embassy protests fits in this bigger picture. I do not buy into the notion that this many protests going on in Muslim countries worldwide for this many days is due to a single movie.

That only plays into a broad brushed meme that at it's root wants us to believe the Muslim world hates the Christian world and vice verse.

Extremists on both sides can be broad brushed this way but this appears to be a much larger movement.

Something else is going on here imho, something that may be tied into the ongoing Arab Spring Revolution. If so HOW is this an extension of that Revolution?

[leveymg]

3. The J-Curve has to do with failures of modernization or reform amidst rising expectations

It argues basically that a revolution is most likely when the mass of people believe that change is possible, but are disappointed by the failure of the pace of change or come to see the incumbent agents of change as insufficiently legitimate or under foreign control.

Davies' uses this model to explain the 1952 revolution that overthrew the Egyptian king that brought Nassar to power in his original paper at pp. 13-14, here: http://www.louischauvel.org/DAVIES2089714.pdf The style is very academic, but you can read and understand those two pages without specialist training. It will also tell you a lot about the history of revolution in Egypt that's still relevant.

Take a look at the Wiki for J-Curve.

If you want, I can find some more things that will help you to understand how professional sociologists, and the US Government, tends to view and interpret these sorts of events.

[chknltl]

4. Maybe i posed question inadequetly or maybe i miss something.

perhaps (and more likely), I have an ulterior suspicion coloring my question but I am not seeing how this J Curve model fits in with the Embassy protests.

Laying my suspicion on the table too, I think there is something more to those Embassy protests than the citizenry looking for an expected but unrecieved outcome to their revolution.

The timing, both fits and is odd at the same time. The oddness being how it can play into our election, at worst a modest distraction and at best an out and out talking point for war. War as we both know argued for by those here seeking to sew fear among our populace in order to realize vast sums of profit. As was done last war with Iraq.

A second part of that same oddness in timing is that those Embassy protests were 'preplanned' I think to correspond with 9/11. This suggests to my imagination that a faction within the Muslim world used that movie as an extra excuse to deliberately push some of the more fervent of the Muslim world into open protest against all things Western.

No, I am not suggesting some shadowy group overseeing both the Muslim provocateurs and the Western warhawks but even that is not discountable in my mind.

I have listened to Thom lay this out already, three times actually, first live, then as repeats both late Friday night then late Sunday night on AM1090. I am thrilled that it is repeated once more here, doubly so because it is transcribed.

Perhaps I am overthinking all of this, which is why I wonder how specifically those Embassy protests worldwide fit into things.

[leveymg]

5. The J-Curve explanation is structural. You're talking about situational causes. Both are valid

and necessary to a realistic understanding of these events and the persons and processes that created them.

I also suspect preplanning behind the attack on the US consulate, as do many others including the US and Libyan Governments. Based upon the events described, it appears to have likely been a coordinated attack. Similarly, the coincidence with 9/11 doesn't seem to be purely coincidental. There's been some obfuscation by the State Dept. and UN Ambassador Susan Rice of the degree to which the attack was planned as opposed to opportunistic. It may have elements of both.

Furthermore, this incident clearly doesn't help the Administration's case for "humanitarian intervention", as it points up the costs and potential for blowback from a strategy of regime change using terrorist groups, which I believe is fundamentally flawed, morally repugnant, and inherently risky. I pointed that out elsewhere in my diary, Blowback in Benghazi http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021343355 We'd do well to reassess our approach in that region, particularly the US role in coordinating Jihadists in covert wars and our regime change operations in Syria.

Finally, I believe we're off the rails in the Mideast because hope and expectations for this Administration have so far exceeded delivery of change. Just common sense without sociological lingo and algorithms tells you it's dangerous to fail to meet expectations.