A youth rally & sit-ins in the city centre of Amman. Demotix/Mohammad Magayda. All rights reserved.
Uprisings and internal conflicts are still sweeping across several Arab countries, often with significant human and financial costs. These protests and widespread discontent are a direct result of decades of failed economic and political transitions led by long-lived, largely autocratic regimes.
While embarking on a wave of economic liberalisation since the eighties and a rollback of the state, Arab regimes succeeded in maintaining their grip on power by moving from social modernising populism to an alliance with elite capital, through the development of a “crony” form of capitalism. Governments embraced a consumerist culture at the expense of job-creating investments, with oversized real estate projects and shopping malls owned by state-linked business elites mushrooming around the region.
