Arab Hirak Program

Since 2011, the MENA region has been home to all kinds of popular mobilization from below (hirak الحراك). Whether in the form of protests, demonstrations, sit-ins, or armed revolt, the revolutionary-counterrevolutionary dynamic has traveled across countries in transformative fashion since the eruption of the ‘Arab Spring.’ Waves and counterwaves of bottom-up civic and political activity continually challenge the assumptions of researchers. Such mobilization also prompts adaptations in the behavior of policy and civil society practitioners in a turbulent and inter-connected political region.

The Arab Hirak program seeks to:

-Unpack the specificities of the hirak in various country cases
-Compare the modes and manifestations of the hirak across countries and different contexts of, for instance, violent conflict, poverty and underdevelopment, occupation, international intervention, and/or economic and political dependency
-Untangle the (non-linear) dynamic between the hirak and political change–democratic sustainability in particular–with attention to both progress and setbacks
-Consider lessons and best practices with transferable value for academics (research questions and methods), civil society (activism and advocacy), and policymakers (political discourse and policy)