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Journal of International Security Studies

127 The “Disappointment of Revolution Participants” and the Internal
Fragmentation of “Revolution Coalition”: A Quantitative Analysis of
“Arab Spring” Participants in Egypt and Tunisia
ZHOU Yiqi

[Abstract] Since 2011, the Arab Spring movements that swept across West Asia
and North Africa have exerted tremendous political and social impact on Egypt and
Tunisia. Among all those relevant research agendas, the participants’ assessment of
the movements has become one of the highlights. This paper examines and explores
this issue from the perspective of “disappointment of revolution participants”. It
argues that the “disappointment of revolution participants” is a variable that reflects
the process of fragmentation within the “revolution coalition” after a remarkable
political victory was achieved. The “disappointment of revolution participants” also
embodies political rivalries, economic confrontations, and ideological conflicts
among different political factions at the transformation stage of development. This
paper firstly defines the three above-mentioned conflicts as three variables: support
for democracy, economic status, political Islam and then proceeds to analyze their
relations with the “disappointment of revolution participants” based on the “Arab
Barometers”. The findings of this paper are that in Tunisia and Egypt, a certain
proportion of participants are not happy with the revolutionary progress, though the
two countries differ in the specific variables that affect the participants’
disappointment. As for the variable of support for democracy, despite its significant
impact on the “disappointment of revolution participants” in both Tunisia and Egypt,
the effects in the two countries are diametrically opposed. Concerning the variable
of economic status, it has exerted significant influence on Tunisia but little impact
on Egypt. As regards the variable of political Islam, this paper classifies political
Islam into three dimensions: policy, party and power. These three dimensions of
political Islam display different impacts in Tunisia and Egypt, which reveals the
subtle and complicated relationship between political Islam and the “disappointment
of revolution participants”.
[Keywords] Arab Spring, “Post-revolution” political development, quantitative
analysis
[Author] ZHOU Yiqi, Assistant Research Fellow, Institutes for Comparative
Politics and Public Policy and Center for West Asia and African Studies, Shanghai
Institutes for International Studies (Shanghai, 200233).

（本期英文编辑：张国帅 高静）

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