Bayat, Asef. "Revolution in Bad times." New Left Review, No.80 (2013): 47-60.

Bayat, Asef. "Revolution in Bad times." New Left Review, No.80 (2013): 47-60.

• In 2011, the descriptions of the Arab Spring revolution, and the contemporaneous Occupy movement in the USA and indignado protests in Europe, put these revolutions are a novel political phenomenon that could develop into a new form of democratic politics separate from authoritarianism or liberal capitalism (47).
• Despite predictions of the transformative character of these revolutions in the West, Arabs were consistently frightened about the failure of the Arab Spring, and worried about the power of conservative forces to make a come-back, as many did (47-48).
• Many accounts of the Arab Spring have focused too much on the 'revolution as movement' aspects of protest and the spontaneous appearance of democratic organization and revolutionary unity during the revolution. This focus removes attention from the institutional changes and power arrangements that appear after the success of the revolution and that have a much greater bearing on its effects (48).
• The crisis of Western democracy created by unaccountability in governance, rising inequality, and the exclusion of large segments of the population, including the skilled and educated, under neoliberalism has created a need for rapid change and the conditions for revolution (48-49).
• Political change normally occurs through reform, insurrection, or implosion (49).
• Reform is when a social movement uses the power of a regime's institutions to pressure the political elites into accepting change, as happened in Brazil in the 1980s or Mexico in the 1990s (49)
• Insurrection occurs when the political opposition creates their own parallel institutions and eventually displaces the state, as in the 1959 Cuban Revolution or the 1979 Iranian Revolution (49-50)
• Implosion occurs when the regime falls before alternative power structures have been established, creating a free-for-all until someone takes control and establishes their own institutions (50).
• The revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen did not resemble the reform, insurrection, or implosion paths of political change. They occurred incredibly quickly, sometimes toppling the dictator in under one week, and did not have sufficient time to build oppositional structures. Instead, they usually asked pre-existing institutions that had not been major participants in the revolution themselves, like the Army in Egypt, to make reforms on their behalf (50-51).
• The 1989 revolutions in Romania and East Germany were also extremely rapid, but in those cases the old regime institutions actually ceased to exist. The goals of Eastern European protesters in 1989 were revolutionary, whereas the demands of Arab Spring protests are reformatory and imagine the continuation of most existing state institutions (51).
• These 'refolutions' avoid the revolutionary excesses of violence that often follow the end of dictatorships, but also create a danger of counter-revolutionary. Without constant pressure by revolutionary social movements, the elites controlling the state apparatus are liable to destroy the gains of the revolution (53).
• The fact that the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions had not intended to seize direct control of the state limited their ability to do so later, when they realized this might be necessary to secure revolutionary gains, as by that point, the spontaneous revolutionary fervor was gone and they lacked the organization and resources to challenge the free-riders or counter-revolutionaries that held political power (54).
• The Arab Spring revolutions created new spaces for freedom of expression that had been previously restricted under dictatorial governments. This manifested in the creation of new political parties, the organization of new groups, and a rise in protests and strikes. People in 2011 advocated for their interests in ways that they had previously been too frightened to do (52).
• Prior to the 1990s, revolutions had been primarily driven by the ideological forces of anti-colonial nationalism, Marxist Communism, or Islamism (54).
• Anti-colonial nationalism wanted to establish a new political and economic order separate and distinct from that of the colonial administration. They often succeeded in many of their national development goals and creating state infrastructure, but failed to address wealth inequality and poverty. Many turned into dictatorships or abandoned their revolutionary goals in favor of neoliberalism due to indebtedness (54-55).
• Marxist revolutions dominated the global revolutionary scene in the 1960s and 1970s, inspiring guerilla movements and leftist insurrections both in the Third World and major industrial capitals in Europe and North America. With the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in the late 1980s, global interest in Communism waned and the ideology lost popular support. Intellectually, Marxist state planning became seen as authoritarian, repressive, and undesirable, and Communist values were replaced by neoliberal values (55-56).
• From the 1970s, political Islamism emerged as a major revolutionary force in the Arab world, inspired by the writing of Sayyid Qutb. Many of the ideas of Islamism were taken from Communism, particularly in its focus on revolution and ideas about organization. By the early 2000s, revolutionary Islamism had begun to die out and be replaced by Islamist trends more acceptable to reformism, democracy, and neoliberal societal norms, as seen in the AKP in Turkey or the Nahda party in Tunisia (56-57).
• In 2011, the major revolutionary ideologies of Islamism, Marxism, and anti-colonial nationalism had all been discredited. This meant that when the Arab Spring happened, no one was thinking in revolutionary terms nor prepared for this kind of action. The non-revolutionary mindset of protesters explains why the Arab Spring did not result in revolutionary changes to government (57-58).
• Radical and organized revolutions do not necessarily create democracies, instead the concentration of power in a single organization often leads to a new form of authoritarianism. Instead, 'refolutions' may actually have better potential for creating democracy since they necessarily involve power being split among a number of rival actors (59).
• The author speculates that even though the Arab Spring revolutions failed to create democracies, they may be part of a 'long revolution' that changes how people interact and ultimately leads to societal change (59-60). This guy is really stretching for something to be hopefully about here...