Arab Spring: What Lead Decades Old Autocracies to Fall

The revolutions of the Arab Spring appeal deeply to us as Americans. The armed revolution in Libya mirrors the history of our own revolution against the British Empire, from the scrappy armed militias squaring off with a well trained and equipped army to the intervention of a foreign power that lead to victory. There lies a spiritual kinship between the Egyptian protesters who sought to end a corrupt order peacefully and the men and women of Birmingham who chose nonviolence to advance equality, even in the face of brutality. However, not all Arab autocracies have fallen to pro-democracy protests and thoroughly understanding the factors that lead to new regimes in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia may guide our foreign policy towards correctly responding to similar situations in the future. In an attempt to future understand these factors, this article analyzed research regarding the impact of the global economic recession, social media, the internet, grass roots organizations, and other factors that have been though to play a role in the Arab Spring revolutions