A question that immediately arises when attempting to analyze the events underway in the Arab region is how to describe them. The most satisfactory formula is "revolutionary process": this emphasizes the potential of the uprising without passing final judgment on its results, and underlines the fact that what was set in motion by the December 2010 demonstrations in Tunisia and has gradually spread throughout the region is still far from complete.
The uprisings in the region are not limited to their democratic political dimension in the face of regimes that are all, to varying degrees, "authoritarian". The deep-rooted driving force behind the events is the stalemate in development affecting the economies and societies of the Arab world. This is illustrated both by the particularly low average growth in GDP per capita in the region over the last few decades, and by the record unemployment rates that characterize the Arab world as a whole, particularly among women and young people, with an over-representation of graduates among the unemployed.
These socio-economic factors are at the root of the social discontent that the anti-democratic or despotic practices of the regimes in place have considerably exacerbated, to the point of explosion. The reason for the stalemate lies in the specific nature of the region's dominant mode of production. The Arab crisis is a response to a stalemate that goes back much further than the current global economic crisis, even if the latter has exacerbated it. What is blocking development in the region is, first and foremost, the predominance of rentier, patrimonial or neo-patrimonial states, in a general climate of arbitrariness and insecurity that inhibits long-term productive private investment and favors short-term profit-seeking through speculative operations. This reality of the private sector, combined with the reabsorption of state investment as part of the global domination of the neoliberal paradigm over the past thirty years, explains the regional crisis.
Regional and international political factors have added to this socio-economic picture. The region's oil wealth has determined the fact that it has found itself at the center of particular attention from the powers that have had the privilege of accessing these resources before anyone else. Both Great Britain in the smaller Gulf monarchies and the United States in the Saudi Kingdom have consolidated ultra-archaic socio-political systems in order to perpetuate their control. However, the George W. Bush administration has broken with this tradition of stabilizing archaic regimes, in the belief that it has learned its lesson from the attacks of September 11, 2001. The invasion of Iraq in 2003, followed by the administration's "democracy promotion" campaign in the region, further destabilized the region.