CONCEPTUALIZING RECENT MOVEMENTS IN THE ARAB WORLD

Conceptualizing what is happening in some parts of Arab World has generated heated debate among academicians, pundits, policy makers and journalists. These events have been called: Arab Revolutions, Arab Spring, Islamic Awakening, Rebellion and Revolts among other things. Conceptual clarifications and definitional demarcations can help us to understand these changes better. In this paper an attempt has been made to evaluate and critique different definitions of revolutions and apply these definitions of the revolution to the events of the Arab World in order to assess if they can be called revolution. Definitions of revolutions have been divided to Consequence Oriented, Process Oriented and Goal Oriented definitions. It has been concluded that we are better off not to call these transformations, revolutions.