Saudi Arabia & the United Arab Emirates: Spearheads of the Counterrevolution?

The Arab Spring uprisings were shaped by large popular protest movements, but were immediately confronted with strong counterrevolutionary tendencies. Are the resource-rich Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) the leaders of the counterrevolution? Or is their role in regional politics more ambivalent, as their anti-regime interventions in Libya and Syria would suggest? What are the future prospects for Saudi Arabia and the UAE, at the eve of a new generation of leaders like Muhammad bin Salman and Muhammad bin Zayed?

Panelists:
Dr. Thomas Richter – GIGA Institute for Middle East Studies, Hamburg
Dr. Jane Kinninmont  – Impact Director, European Leadership Network, London

Chair:
Prof. Dr. Amal El-Obeidi – Academy in Exile, Free University Berlin

Venue:
The event will take place online on the platform zoom. Registered participants will receive the login data by E-Mail ahead of time.

Please register by sending an E-Mail to anmeldung@boell-hamburg.de

We work hard to make our offerings inclusive and easily accessible. Please don’t hesitate to contact us in case you need assistance!

About the lecture series:
Ten years ago, popular uprisings challenged authoritarian systems across the Middle East and North Africa. The Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 and their aftermath, together with the Green Movement in Iran (2009) and the Gezi-protests in Turkey (2013), appeared to form part of a regional protest cycle. A decade later, these uprisings seem to have hardly left any traces, and their memory is eclipsed by other events.Over the course of this semester, we will look back at the events of the Arab Spring in its broader regional and international context. What were the root causes for the uprisings? What were the results? Why did they largely fail? To what degree are current protest movements in countries of the Middle East and North Africa related to the Arab uprisings of 2011?

The lecture series is jointly organized by Heinrich-Böll-Foundation Hamburg and the University of Hamburg, the Leibniz-Institute for Global and Regional Studies (GIGA) and Academy in Exile.

With financial support by Landeszentrale Politische Bildung Hamburg

10 Years After the Arab Spring: Protest Cycles in the Middle East and North Africa in Context: Complete Program