>> Dan Turello: I'm Dan
Turello with Kluge Center
at the Library of Congress.
Welcome to Kluge
Book Conversations.
I'm here with Dr.
Valentine Moghadam
and Shamiran Mako the coauthors
of After the Arab Uprising,
Progress and Stagnation in The
Middle East and North Africa,
which was published this year
by Cambridge University press.
Dr. Moghadam is professor
of Sociology
and International Affairs
at Northeastern University.
Previously, among other
roles, she was section chief
for gender equality and
development at UNESCO in Paris,
and at the Kluge Center, she
currently holds the chair
in Countries and
Cultures of the South.
Dr. Mako, her co-author,
is Assistant Professor
of International Relations
at the Pardee School
of Global Studies at
Boston University.
Val, Shamiran, great
to see you today.
Thanks for being with us.
Let's start with a
little bit of history.
Tell us about your background
and some of your experience,
and how is that came to be
inspired to write this book?
>> Valentine Moghadam:
All right,
I'll get started with that.
I've been working in the
area of the Middle East
and North Africa, as
well as Afghanistan,
by the way, since the 1980s.
I was born in Iran, became
active in the student movement,
and began thinking about
how revolutions in Iran
in Afghanistan and had turned
out very differently,
especially for women.
So my interest in
comparative studies
and in women's rights
began then,
and I published some
papers on the subject
after I earned the PhD in 1986.
As you notice, then my
professional career has included
actually two stints with
the UN and during the first,
when I based in Helsinki,
Finland,
I wrote my first book
Modernizing Women,
Gender and Social Change
in the Middle East,
which was first published in
1993, and the third edition came
out in 2013, and that book
examines how women were involved
and affected by various
social change processes,
economic development,
revolutions, Islamic movements,
sociodemographic changes
in eight MENA countries
plus Afghanistan.
So, subsequently, as part of my
interest in women's movements
and in globalization, I began
to study what I think are called
transnational feminist networks,
and I wrote a book
on the subject,
and then I considered
several articles
and book chapters
on that subject.
And before Shamiran
and I embarked
on our Arab Spring book, I had
another book, Globalization
and Social Movements
Islamic Feminism
and Global Justice Movement,
and the third edition that came
out last year just as I
started the pandemic, alas,
and it includes a chapter
on populist movements
and the implications for
democracy, and at Northeastern,
I switched courses,
Women [inaudible].
>> Dan Turello: Thanks, Val.
How about you, Shamiran?
>> Shamiran Mako:
Thank you so much.
Good to be with you
this morning.
I think much of my interest in
the project certainly touches
on things I explore both in
the book and outside the book
in other works that I've either
published or I'm working on,
including a book manuscript
on ethnic conflict in Iraq.
And I think, before I had
met Val around 2014 2015,
I was really interested in
knocking out trajectories,
especially in relation
to foreign influence
in the Arab uprisings.
And at the time, I was
working on a project,
kind of collecting data across
countries that have experienced,
specifically, military
interventions in the uprisings.
And I was focusing both
on regional dimension
and on the international
dimension
of these responses
to the uprisings.
And at the same time,
I was kind of picking
up on this continuation of
various forms of influence
that really struck me
as important dimensions
for how things were unfolding
about five or six years
after the initial wave
in late 2010/early 2011.
And I became interested in the
ways in which both regional
and international actors
were, in some ways,
facilitating repression, and
at the same time, stiffling,
you know, the transitions
that we seeing in places
like [inaudible] and in the
more, you know, violent places
that we saw unfold over the
past decade, the past 10 years,
in places like Syria, Libya,
and Yemen that have descended
into this kind of
international and civil wars.
And as a political
scientist, much of that relates
to much kind of broader
questions that I tackle
in my research on Iraq
and elsewhere that looks
at foreign interventions,
US foreign policy towards the
region, ethnic fractionalization
and conflict, and then
some of the solutions,
which I guess we're going
to be talking about,
that have been proposed by,
you know, westerners think
in the way of democracy
promotion in these kind
of post conflict settings that
include the state building,
peace building, and so on.
And so, the project kind
of gained my interest
in that sense, and it's
a theme that we focus
on throughout the book.
>> Dan Turello: So, we're
going to talk about some
of the individual
countries later on,
but just to start us off,
would you give us a
very high-level snapshot
of just past the
10-year anniversary
of the beginning
of the Arab Spring.
How did it all start?
Why and how did it
spread, and 10 years later,
where are those countries today?
>> Valentine Moghadam: Well,
the protests began in Tunisia
in December of 2010
following the self-immolation
of a young man after he was
unable to fly his [inaudible]
on the streets of his hometown,
as he did not have
a license to do so.
So, protests began first locally
then spread across Tunisia,
especially when Tunisia's large
and powerful trade unions,
which had organized strikes and
protests which were then joined
by tens of thousands of people
protesting across the country,
and the demand for a
job, bread, and dignity.
The protest precipitated a
governance crisis which led
to the collapse of
the government
of President Zine El
Abidine Ben Ali, who had been
in place since since 1989.
The Tunisian protests
then diffused to Egypt,
which similarly saw huge
protests in Cairo, Alexandria,
and elsewhere, followed by
another governance crisis
in the collapse of the
regime of [inaudible],
who had been in power
since 1981.
Protests then spread across
the region, enveloping Libya,
Morocco, Bethane,
Syria, and Yemen,
there were other countries that
saw protests, too, like Algeria
and Morocco, but no where near
as large and consequential
as the seven countries that
we deal with in the book.
You know, I should say
that the speed and scope
of the Arab protests have
been compared to those
in Eastern Europe in 1989,
but with big differences.
And earlier to protest
that precipitated the
so-called third wave democratic
transitions, Portugal, Greece,
Spain, in the mid-1970s,
Philippines and North Korea,
South Korea, goodness,
in the early to mid 1980s
and around the same time
in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile.
The Arab Spring protest
also had been compared
to the much earlier 1848
revolutions in Europe,
which came to be known, by
the way, the "spring time
of the people," which, you know,
similarly had very
modest outcomes.
So, you know, we post
the central question.
Why were some, but not all, of
the Arab national social protest
of 2011, why were they not
accompanied by relatively quick
and nonviolent outcomes
in the direction
of the regimen change democracy
and social transformations
such as had occurred earlier?
Why was the democratic
transition limited to Tunisia,
and why did the reason why
democratization not occur?
Shamiran had already touched
on one or two of the issues
that we deal with, and you know,
she and I will be compacting
those issues a little bit more,
but just to, again, give
you another overview,
or our audience an
overview, our book deals
with the seven countries that
we feel were most affected
by the Arab uprising, Tunisia,
Egypt, Morocco, Bathane, Libya,
Syria, and Yemen, and we
apply an explanatory framework
of four variables to discuss
the very divergent outcomes,
from this procedural democratic
transition and bargains
that occurred in Tunisia
to the internationalized civil
conflicts and failed states
in Libya, Syria, and Yemen.
We examine the state in
political institutions,
civil society, women's
status and movements,
the nature of international
influences.
Those are our four variables,
our explanatory variables.
So, our framework takes
into account domestic
and geopolitical and forces,
and we show how our four
variables interact to account
for both causes and outcomes.
>> Dan Turello: So, you point
to Tunisia as one of the
at least partial success stories
following the Arab Spring,
and you make the case that,
really, it was the degree
of women's involvement in
civil society, and then,
in the conversation that made
a significant difference.
Can you tell us more about this?
>> Valentine Moghadam: You
know, unlike most of the books
on the Arab Spring protests,
ours includes a feminist
perspective
that fully integrates
the salience of women
and gender issues in both
causes and consequences.
So, we argue that the legal
status and social positions
of women before the uprising,
including the capacity
to organize and mobilize
within civil society
and in political society and
to influence public policy.
These shape the nature
of the protest movements,
whether they were violent or
nonviolent, and their outcome,
and we also argue based on
review of the broad [inaudible]
of the political science and
sociology, that women's advocacy
and activist links to other
actors within civil society
and to allies in political
parties and government agencies,
helps to deepen democratization.
That's a key argument
that we make in the book,
and we make that argument on
the basis of, and in particular,
the experience of Tunisia, and
to a certain degree Morocco.
So, in our analysis
of civil society
and women's organizations
across our seven countries,
we found strength,
capacity, and autonomy only
in Tunisia and Morocco.
For example, Tunisia's two major
women's rights organizations,
some democrat and [inaudible]
emerged in the 1980s.
They were legalized in 1989.
They collaborated with various
civil society organizations,
the Human Rights League,
the Lawyers Association,
the major trade unions, and
let's bring political parties
to achieve various goals,
including free speech,
free elections, and ending
domestic and workplace violence.
They were sort of fortunate,
in that the Ben Ali
regime presented itself
as a champion of women's rights.
And so, various reforms actually
were possible in Tunisia
in the 1990s and
into the new century.
>> Dan Turello: One of the
organizations that you mention
in the book is a
national dialogue quartet,
and this was a group that won
the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015.
Now sometimes, organizations,
individuals,
who win then the Peace
Price don't always fare
so well after they've won it.
So I was wondering if you
could tell us a little bit
about what it is that they did.
Why they were awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize,
and how are they still involved
in the life of the country now?
>> Dan Turello: You
know, Tunisia is going
through a little bit about
political turmoil these days,
and the civil society
organization and some
of the political parties are
taking different positions
on the subject.
We might come back
to that in a moment
if you want some more details on
the current political situation,
but there was a serious
political crisis in Tunisia
in the summer of 2013.
Two left wing political
leaders had been assassinated.
And a large opposition movement
formed with daily protests
and demands that there be
accountability, prosecution,
and that the government
[inaudible]
for civil society
organizations at the initiative
of the major trade
unions of the [inaudible].
Now the [inaudible] is very
large, very influential,
and has a great deal of
legitimacy in the country.
And it forms a coalition
with three other civil
society organizations,
the employer organization
[inaudible], which, by the way,
was led by woman, the
Human Rights League,
and the Bar Association.
This group came to be known as
the National Dialogue Quartet,
and it played a major role in
calming the political crisis
in the summer of 2013.
And as I said, two
political leaders [inaudible]
from the [inaudible] left wing
party had been assassinated.
And people were very
angry about this.
They felt that [inaudible]
the Islamist party,
which was leading a coalition
government with two other,
as it happens, secular parties,
that they had encouraged
and fostered the kind of
environment in Tunisia
that had emboldened
extremist Islamists
who were harassing unveiled
women, harassing secularists
and professors at universities,
and disrupting artistic
cinema showings, and then,
finally who was murdered,
these two political figures.
So, daily, angry protests could
have brought down the government
and could've derailed
the transition.
It was at that point the four
civil society organizations
at the instigation of the
[inaudible] came in to mediate
and to come up with a
solution to the crisis.
The decision was that the
government would continue
to operate until the
competition was formed,
and then it would resign.
The expectation was that this
would happen in October of 2013.
As it happened, the work wasn't
done until January of 2014.
At that point, the
government did resign,
and a new technocratic
government led
by [inaudible] came in and then
prepared for the next election.
So, this was, really, a very,
very impressive move on the part
of -- for a major civil
society organization in Tunisia
and for their ability
to calm the storm
and to enable the democratic
transition to continue.
They were nominated,
rightly nominated for,
and received a 2015
Nobel Peace Prize,
and I think that they are
a model for many countries.
Not just in the region, and
what role they will play
in calming the current political
situation with the turmoil
in Tunisia, something that
we can talk about later on,
and I'm very curious to see,
you know, what they'll be doing.
>> Dan Turello: We're going to
talk about some of the countries
that have not fared as
well, but before we do that,
let's zoom out a little bit.
There was a section in your book
in which you discuss
democratization movements
from a global perspective,
and you interact with some
of the theorists and you go
all the back to [inaudible].
You talk about folks like Sam
Huntington and Mark [inaudible].
Some of these folks are
arguing that the need
to be certain preconditions in
place, in order for democracy
to really take hold
in a country.
What's your take on this?
How do you see this?
>> Valentine Moghadam:
Dan, we absolutely agree
with all the theorists from Jon
Stewart Nill [assumed spelling]
to Samuel Huntington and to,
you know, some of the other --
You know, Shamiran and I, read,
you know, a huge literature
on the subject, and of course,
I had read that literature
before my previous book,
and various scholars
highlight one or another
of these prerequisites or
preconditions for, you know,
what they might call sustained
democracy, effective democracy,
robust democracy, etc.
So, what are these?
You know, rising
educational attainment.
The presence of large,
modern middle classes
or large modern working classes,
institutional development,
and the participation of women
with democratic aspirations,
and of course, we discuss this
at great lengths throughout our
book in the various chapters.
So, we have come
to the conclusion,
and we make this argument
in the book and we agree
with democracy scholars,
[inaudible] and others,
that successful democracies
emerge from strong
and healthy societies that
include local authorities,
political parties, trade unions,
professional associations,
and other civil society
organizations with a commitment
to citizenship rights.
And you know, the presence
of these three conditions then
paves the way for the expansion
and codification of deeper and
more extensive life for women,
for minorities, for other
excluded social actors,
through a rights-based
model of state building,
and that's what we saw
emerging in Tunisia
in 2011, 13, 12, 13, and 14.
So, you know, but we agree
with scholars who [inaudible]
and others, who state
that modernization increases
ordinary people's capabilities
and willingness to struggle for,
you know, democratic freedoms.
So, you have to have a
certain base of, you know,
economic development,
social structural
development and so on.
Because that then
places more resources
into the hands of
ordinary people.
You know, enhancing their
capacity for collective action,
and therefore, to push
for effective democracy
is what we saw in Tunisia.
But people must believe
in freedom.
And this is important,
because there is a certain
instrumentalist approach to
democracy, whereby in surveys,
you will find public stating
that they believe in democracy.
They value democracy.
They prefer democracy
as a political system,
but if you look at some
of the responses to some
of your questions, such as what
about equality for, you know,
different types of
Muslims or non-Muslims,
for Christian citizens, for
Hindu citizens, you know,
etc. For women equal
rights for women.
There will be some
hesitancy there.
And so, this kind of more
robust type of democracy is one
in which people and their
institutions believe in
and are committed to civil
rights, political rights,
but also, the socioeconomic
rights and prosperity, which,
by the way, is what
the protesters Tunisia
and Morocco were coming for
and which they did not get,
which is actually what
precipitated the political
turmoil and crisis in Tunisia.
It was the fact that, yes, we
have civil and political rights
and liberties into, but various
governments, 10 in 10 years,
were not able to respond to
those initial demands for jobs
and bread and dignity.
>> Shamiran Mako: Yeah, I think
to add to that, as well is,
you know, while we agree
with the literature one
of the other things that we
point to that I think is central
to our analysis is the fact
that there are endogenous
and exogenous factors and forces
that also affect
democratization trajectories.
And I think, oftentimes,
you know, from [inaudible]
to Benjamin Moore to
Samuel Huntington,
there is such a strong emphasis
on the domestic conditions,
and the ways in which they play
out absent these external
influences in the case
of Western Europe, North
America, and so on.
And so, one of the things
that we highlight is
that to actually understand
these developments, what happens
in the regions that assure
you have these mass protests
and you do have people
coalescing
around very common grievances,
socioeconomic, you know,
the lack of socioeconomic
development,
the lack of political
representation,
really repressive regimes, but
at the same time, there are kind
of external -- the external
environment has a pretty big
role to play in how
democratization plays out
and determining
which transitions become
successful in which don't.
And I think this is a salient
factor that we look at,
this kind of interaction
between what's happening
across the region and the kind
of broader international factors
and forces that affect, you
know, both Democratic confusion
but also, sometimes, kind
of blocking democracy
in that sense, and if
we look at, you know,
for foreign aid allocations,
especially military aid
that at time trump economic
and social development aid
and especially we see this
post 9/11, which we'll talk
about a bit later, and
I think this kind of --
in that way, there are these
important preconditions.
But one of the things that
we show in the book is
that in the case
of Bernina Region,
as a region that has
pretty robust history
with external interference.
You know, think about in 1953 in
Peru in Operation Ajax in Iran,
for example, where you have,
really, kind of external factors
and forces in states
that at times actually
impede democratization.
And we see this happening
on many different
levels across the region.
You know, if we look at, most
notably, places like Libya,
Syria, and Yemen, you have
these external interventions
that actually, you know, in
many ways make the uprising
and their trajectory
a lot more violent.
That then leads to all
sorts of civil wars
and in some cases
internationalized civil wars.
But in other cases, too.
If we look at, Val had
mentioned, Tunisia, Morocco,
and Egypt where you didn't
have these pretty sustainable
and robust external meddling,
but at the same time,
through different ways and
through different channels,
both Western states and the
United States and the EU,
especially, with its different
neighborhood policies,
have actually impeded
democratization, as well.
And as, you know, that sort
of leverage through aid
and especially with military
aid, has had an impact
on these transitions, as well.
And so, this is one
of the kinds of things
that we nuance in the book.
And I'm sure, preconditions
matter and they're important,
but in cases of the
global South,
you do have this external kind
of leverage and impediment
that changes what happens
domestically but also changes
on the regional level some
of the outcomes that we see.
>> Dan Turello: So,
I want to move
in a slightly different
direction and open
up a time capsule and
take us back to 1997.
Ninety-seven was the year
that Fareed Zakaria published
a piece in Foreign Affairs.
It was about illiberal
democracies, and I'm going
to quote from that article.
He says, he argues that in
many parts of that world,
referring to the Middle East and
North Africa, such as Tunisia,
Morocco, Egypt, and some of
the Gulf states, were elections
to be held tomorrow,
the resulting regimes would
almost certainly be more
illiberal than the
ones now in place.
That was 1997, a lot
has changed since then.
Zachariah was depicting
this tension
between political
participation on the one hand,
increased democratic
participation,
versus civil rights,
constitutional liberties,
freedom of the press, human
rights, is this still a tension
that you see in the region?
Is it a profitable lens through
which to view the countries
that you're interacting with?
>> Shamiran Mako: I think one
of the things to think about.
I assigned that essay,
and we have, you know,
I have my students kind of
rip it apart in some sense.
I think there's something
to be said
about a more substantial
emphasis on democracy, right?
That you have democratic
structures and governance
that are there that protect,
for example, civil liberties.
Civil liberties include
protection for minority rights,
includes, you know, things
like approve media and things
like that, and a lot kind of
more substantial developments.
But at the same time,
I think one of the ways
in which Zakaria falls
short of kind of thinking
about why we don't see
this kind of mass diffusion
of either democratization
or democratic states
in the region is really,
if we think about the level
of external interference
and intervention.
And that has been really crucial
to both studying the history
of autocracy in the region,
and it's kind of it's kind
of stickiness, in a sense, and
at the same time has been part
and parcel of how both the
EU member states, but also,
most notably, the US, has
leveraged all sorts of influence
to kind of maintain these
US strategic interests
in the region, and I
think without taking --
this is something that, you
know, we had alluded to earlier.
Without thinking about
this history, but also,
how the international
environment really shapes
whether or not democratization
is possible is something that's
absent in that essay.
And I think if we look,
especially, in the history
and trajectory of, for example,
really militarized and course
of foreign aid allocations
after 9/11,
this picture becomes
a lot clearer, right?
Where you see, for example,
increase in military aid
to places like Morocco.
Why? In response to this kind
of mass migration crisis,
forced migration crises that
ensues as a result of the wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And of course, with that, the
kind of political instability
and turmoil and the absence of
security in places like Libya
and Yemen and Syria
that after 2011,
increases this wave
of forced migration.
And so, I think one of the
ways in which we tackle
that in the book is that you
do have these preconditions,
and these preconditions
are certainly important,
but one of the things that
nuances and kinds of acts
as a counter factual to
that argument is the fact
that you have pretty strong
international forces that,
at times, have subverted
pro-democracy movements,
and one of the kinds of ways
that I began this question
certainly in my work, but also,
in the ways in which I teach it
and teach that essay and reflect
on that essay is look what
happens in 1953, right,
in the coup against
Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran,
where you have the first
democratically elected
government at the
height of the cold war
that nationalizes the
Iranian oil company,
and that becomes a key strategic
threat for Britain and the US.
And what do you have?
The CIA's first coup
that successfully topples
a foreign government,
a democratically elected
government, that really,
for decades, changes the
trajectory of development
in Iran but at the same
time, actually changes
and pivots American foreign
policy both through covert
and kind of direct
action in how it engages
with potential threats
that arise from society,
though they may be kind of
democratic forces, but then may,
at the same time, kind of
undermine its interests, right?
And so, I think,
kind of caveating
that with this counterfactual
is really important
for thinking about, sure,
you have a liberal democracy,
and democracy can't
thrive without this kind
of important dimension of
respect for civil liberties,
because that's what makes
democracy substandard, right?
It's not just a numbers game.
But at the same time,
there's this kind
of dimension that's really
important for thinking
about how the region,
the kind of robustness
of authoritarianism
and autocratic roles
in the region, in general.
>> Dan Turello: So, a
couple final questions.
There's always going to be a
large number of organizations,
governmental, nongovernmental,
that are interested
in promoting democracy
and human rights.
Ten years after the Arab Spring,
what lessons have we learned?
>> Shamiran Mako: I think if we
look at, for example, you know,
one of the things that we do
in the book is we dig deep
into this question of official
development assistance,
what it's been over the past
two decades and how it changes,
like from the 1990s into
the kind and most notably
in the early 2000s
and after 9/11,
in that there was an
exponential amount of money
that was donor allocated
between the European Union
into North African
states, so Tunisia
and Morocco, most notably.
But also, foreign aid, as I
just mentioned between Egypt
and the United States.
And when we look at this kind
of book in the changing nature
of foreign aid allocations, as
well as the kind of outcomes
that we see of foreign aid
spending over the past couple
of decades is that we really
don't see much in terms
of foreign aid as
having a positive effect
on changing socioeconomic
conditions
for citizens across the region.
And Aaron Schneider [assumed
spelling] has kind of touched
on this question
of why foreign aid
and democracy promotion
programs [inaudible] work.
And much of that
reflects both the lack
of conditionality constraining
how regimes kind of co-op
and use foreign aid
allocation, but also,
this kind of growing
emphasis on securitized aid,
especially after 9/11, which
changes with the nature of aid
and the ways in which
it's allocated.
But also, changes these kinds
of bilateral partnerships
with key autocrats in the region
that continue to kind of act
as guardians of keeping
Islamicists at bay.
Of keeping migration at bay, and
really, in some ways, subverting
and suppressing dissident
movements
that were emerging from, you
know, society in response
to later socioeconomic
development and other factors.
And so, in many ways
foreign aid didn't do much
for the region except
sustain, you know,
these repressive
regimes hold on power.
And at the same time,
you know, a prime example
of that is the coup in
Egypt in 2013, right?
The Obama administration
withholds aid, and there's a lot
of hope that that would
continue in, you know,
in a way to pushing the military
to reinstate civilian rule.
That doesn't happen over
a one-year time period.
And foreign aid is
then reinstated
in 2014 and 2015, right?
The same kind of aid allocations
that are going to Egypt,
and it signaled that
at the end of the day,
these securitized interests
and securing, you know,
geostrategic kind of spheres
of influence, both by the EU
and the United States as
the two largest donor bodies
in the region, really doesn't
change, and it doesn't change.
It doesn't reflect the
kind of societal forces
that are challenging
these regimes
that these countries have a
lot of leverage and sway with.
>> Dan Turello: One final
question for both of you,
and that's what questions
are you not being asked
that we should be asking?
What questions and
had not asked?
What questions are other folks
not asking about your book that,
perhaps, we actually
should all be talking about?
>> Valentine Moghadam: You
know, one of the questions that,
actually you did pose, which I
thought was, and I think both
of us thought was, you
know, a very pertinent one.
It has to do with the article
that [inaudible] wrote recently
about Mother Nature
but also about youth.
And, you know, Mother
Nature certainly is a factor
in the travails of the region,
as [inaudible] throughout the
globe, including Louisiana
in other parts of
the United States.
And hence, we have the, you
know, this climate summit going
on in Scotland as we speak.
Parts of the Middle East
and North Africa region,
which were always taught
in the long summer months
are now seeing extreme rising
temperatures that are now
absolutely intolerable.
But you know, it's a region that
because of some of the issues
that we discuss in the
book, because of some
of the issues that, you know,
Shamiran was just
talking about, as well.
The countries that should be
cooperating with each other,
with respect to sharing water
and other depleting
resources, are not doing so.
And you know, the region is
the least internally integrated
of any world region, in terms
of trade, cooperation, etc.,
other than within the
[inaudible] operation
council countries.
Climate change has certainly
adversely affected the region
and oil extraction has
been a major culprit.
There are some green projects
here and there in Morocco
and Iran, for example,
but nothing substantial,
and meanwhile, what's
going on in Israel?
Israel is clearing out
deep-sea exploration for oil
and gas off its Mediterranean
shore.
So, you know, I'm hoping that
the ongoing Climate Summit
in Scotland might finally bring
about some real commitment
that hadn't been
the case before.
But there was also this
question of the youth vote,
and there was a great deal
discussion about the youth vote
at the time of the protest, back
in 2011, that in other words,
all this sort of
backlog of, you know,
fertility increases have
resulted in this huge population
of young people, and they were
without jobs and they were
without prospects,
and therefore,
you have these protests.
It's a little bit like the,
I guess the analogy
would be the anti-war,
the Baby Boom generation
in the United States
and anti-war protest
of the 1960s.
But the youth vote is changing.
There is no longer a real
youth vote in the region,
and certainly, not in the
same way we thought happening
in 2011.
It is a less salient factor in
the regions political fortunes,
although, you know, young
people are still largely,
they have very high
rates of unemployment.
But the sociodemographic
profile, it's changing
in the region, in all but
just a handful of countries,
the higher age at first
marriage, much lower fertility.
In fact, quite declining
fertility at replacement levels,
and in some parts of Iran,
below replacement levels.
So, this means that
in the near future,
there will be a smaller
population of employed
and salaried people,
who can then care
for the growing elderly
population,
and we see these
trends in Iran, Lebanon,
Turkey, Tunisia, and Qatar.
And in Iran, in fact,
only 10 years ago,
the authorities ended the
state-funded family-planning
program, which has contributed
to declining fertility rates
and smaller family size,
including the provision
of seminars and framing
and [inaudible]
and so on and so forth.
So, you know, there is an
environmental movement in some
of the countries in
Iran and Tunisia,
but and maybe we will see,
you know, the equivalent
of a sunrise or even an
extension rebellion movement
in some of the countries,
but we're not there yet.
>> Dan Turello: Val, Shamiran,
thanks again for being
with us today and congrats
on this remarkable book.
Again, it's after The Era of
Uprising Progress And Stagnation
in the Middle East and North
Africa, published this year
by Cambridge University Press.
Thanks and hope to see you soon.
>> Shamiran Mako: Thank you
so much for having us on.
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