Economic Opportunity and Inequality as Contributing Factors to the Arab Spring: The Cases of Tunisia and Egypt

Thesis advisor: Ali BanuaziziThesis advisor: Jennifer L. EricksonThis study will take an economic historical approach to the Arab Spring in an attempt to discover why citizens across the Middle East and North Africa rose up against their respective governments and demand change. The study will focus, more specifically, on Egypt and Tunisia where the revolutions were successful in overthrowing Ben Ali and Mubarak. It will be shown that the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia as well as regionally was primarily the result of decades of economic stagnation and regression for the vast majority of citizens as well a notable increase in the levels of education across the populations. A plethora of concrete statistics, including but not limited to the Gini coefficient, unemployment rates, and GDP per capita, all combine to show that the Middle East and North Africa was not only a highly unequal place but also one where citizens found ample reason to demand meaningful change.Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2015.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Political Science