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The author is grateful for helpful suggestions and feedback from Salma al-Shami, Mert Arslanalp, Nathan Brown, Rami Gabriel, Jordan Gans-Morse, Jeff Goodwin, Raja Halwani, Amaney Jamal, Yanna Krupnikov, Ellen Lust, Marc Lynch, Quinn Mecham, Lexi Neame, Stephen Nelson, Jason Seawright, Jillian Schwedler, Mark Tessler, Scott Wiener, Jessica Winegar, Yael Zeira, participants in the Northeast Middle East Politics Workshop, and the IMES Ph.D. Student Roundtable at George Washington University. She also thanks Jeffrey Isaac and the anonymous reviewers from Perspectives on Politics for valuable comments. All errors are her own.
All books about all revolutions begin with a chapter that describes the decay of tottering authority or the misery and sufferings of the people. They should begin with a psychological chapter, one that shows how a harassed, terrified man suddenly breaks his terror, stops being afraid. This unusual process, sometimes accomplished in an instant like a shock or a lustration, demands illuminating. Man gets rid of fear and feels free. Without that there would be no revolution.
Ryszard Kapuscinski, Shah of Shahs, 1985
What explains the sudden wave of popular protest that swept across the Middle East and North Africa in 2011? Much attention in recent scholarship on social movements has focused on the microfoundations of resistance, usually following one of two approaches. Explanations that conceptualize individuals as utility-maximizers contend that people protest as an instrumental means to other ends. They elaborate the structural and strategic conditions under which people participate because they expect it to yield a favorable ratio of costs to benefits. Alternatively, explanations that see individuals as driven by values suggest that people protest in the name of deeply held beliefs, if not the inherent benefit of voicing dissent. They trace the social processes that elevate such values, often regardless of protest's prospects for success.
Both strategic thinking and value commitments play powerful roles in the politics of social change. Yet it is unclear how individuals deliberate between the two when each recommends a competing course of action. This question comes to the fore in the recent Arab uprisings. For decades under authoritarian regimes, many citizens in the Arab world did not engage in public dissent for fear of danger and doubt about its ability to produce...