Young People and Social Change in South and East

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Aug 23, 1989 - Education to employment transitions in South and East ... what changes in social values and norms among young men and women in relation ..... class of '89 and its successors, and conditions in other countries of ... Eastern Europe in 1989-90 were expecting not less but better social protection, health.
Young People and Social Change in South and East Mediterranean Countries Edited by Siyka Kovacheva

Results from the project ‘SAHWA. Researching Arab Mediterranean Youth: Towards a New Social Contract’

Plovdiv Paisii Hilendarski University of Plovdiv 2017

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement N 613174 and administrative support from the Department for Scientific Research of Plovdiv University.

Authors: Siyka Kovacheva Ken Roberts Stanimir Kabaivanov Boris Popivanov Plamen Nanov Gergana Dimitrova Radka Peeva

© Siyka Kovacheva – editor, 2017 © Plovdiv University Press, 2017 ISBN 978-619-202-277-8

CONTENTS

Introduction to the Project ..................................................................................................... 5 Young people’s roles and experiences during transitions and transformations in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union: implications for researching and interpreting the Arab Spring and its aftermath ............................................................... 8 Recruitment of youth political elites during transformations in Central and Eastern Europe and the Arab-Mediterranean Countries: A comparative approach .........................30 Modernisation theory meets Tunisia’s youth during and since the revolution of 2011 ...... 49 Education to employment transitions in South and East Mediterranean countries ............ 71 Use of free time by young people, and social inclusion and exclusion in Lebanon ..............87 Youth policy in Arab Mediteranean countries in comparative perspective .......................104 Appendix. Word Clouds of Stakeholders’ Discussions ........................................................132 Conclusions and Policy Recommendations .........................................................................135

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INTRODUCTION TO THE PROJECT Siyka Kovacheva and Radka Peeva

We, a group of sociologists and social anthropologists from the European Sociological Association, started to design the SAHWA project1 with great enthusiasm in 2012, in the aftermath of the ‘Arab Spring’ – the popular revolt that swept across Southern and Eastern Mediterranean. We were interested to see how the revolutionary wave will develop and what kind of social change it will bring to the peoples in the region hoping that it will lead to a democratization similar to the events of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe. The objectives and ambitions of the research team grew significantly along the way and we applied for funding in the last call of the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission. The good news about the success of our application came when we were in Tallinn, Estonia, in June 2013 when we met at the 12th Nordic Youth Research Symposium (NYRIS) 'Changing Societies and Cultures: Youth in the Digital Age'. Personally, we were interested whether the concepts we used to analyse youth in Western and Eastern Europe such as youth participation and social movements, youth transitions and youth lifestyles would work in the completely different social context of North Africa. The project started officially in January 2014 bringing together fifteen partners from Europe and Arab countries to research youth living conditions, values and practices in five South and Eastern Mediterranean countries (SEM): Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon. The research aimed to take into account the different social models of how youth was constructed (Kovacheva and Wallace, 1998) in South and East Mediterranean countries building upon the different perspectives of stakeholders, scientists and youth themselves. To highlight the multiple transitions that both Arab youth and their societies were experiencing, we chose to focus on three main domains: youth opportunities in education and employment, youth empowerment (political mobilisation and forms of engagement), and youth cultures (values and life styles) with international migration, gender, comparative experiences in other transitional contexts and public policies and international cooperation as crosscutting issues (See Figue 1). The coordinator of the project was CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs).

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The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 under grant agreement n° 613174 for the SAHWA Project (www.sahwa.eu).

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The research questions were defined in the following way (Sanches et al, 2014: 20-21): • what factors, conditions, productions or values are specific for the social construction of youth in Arab-Majority Mediterranean societies, • what forms of protest Arab youth used to express their hopes and aspirations, whether social markers such as marriage and military service remained significant, • what changes in social values and norms among young men and women in relation to work, family, politics, participation and religion are taking place in today's Arab Mediterranean countries and how does youth agency contribute to making these changes visible; • what are the changes in the structure of opportunities and constraints in youth transitions from education to employment and from parental family to a family of their own in the changing societies of Arab Mediterranean countries, • what are young people’s experiences and aspirations for their social integration during the socio-economic transformation of their societies and what should public policies (locally, regionally and internationally) do to support young people in their transitions while empowering them and giving space for their own agency’ • How does youth political participation in new forms and meanings contribute to the empowerment of the young generation in its ability to influence the societal transformations in the region?

Figure 1. SAHWA Research Design

The design of the project built upon a mixed method approach (Brannen, 2005; Bryman, 2012), using a quantitative survey and a variety of qualitative methods. The survey was conducted in 2015-16 using a fully structured questionnaire available in Arabic, French and 6

English with representative samples of 15-29 year olds in Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia. By the end of 2016 we had a very rich data set comprising of 10000 filled-in questionnaires. The ethnographic fieldwork was carried out by the local partners in the five SEM countries and resulted in a set of 25 focus groups, 24 life stories, 11 narrative interviews and 11 focused ethnographies fully transcribed in Arabic and extensive summaries translated in English. In this book we include 6 papers written by researchers from Plovdiv University in cooperation with other project partners. In the final part Conclusions, we summarise the main findings and the policy recommendations based on them. While analysis and reflection are still going on we think that those first results are worth presenting and sharing with all those interested in the study of youth and social change.

REFERENCES Brannen, J. 2005 ‘Mixing Methods: The Entry of Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches into the Research Process, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 8(3): 173-184. Bryman, A 2012 Social Research Methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CIDOB 2017 SAHWA Final Report. Barcelona. Sánchez García, J., Feixa Pàmpols, C. and Laine, S. 2014 Contemporary youth research in Arab Mediterranean countries: blending qualitative and quantitative methodologies, SAHWA Concept Paper, CP/01-2014. Wallace, C. and Kovatcheva, S. (1998) Youth in Society. The Construction and Deconstruction of Youth in East and West Europe. London: Macmillan.

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YOUNG PEOPLE’S ROLES AND EXPERIENCES DURING TRANSITIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS IN EASTERN EUROPE AND THE FORMER SOVIET UNION: IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCHING AND INTERPRETING THE ARAB SPRING AND ITS AFTERMATH Ken Roberts and Siyka Kovacheva

INTRODUCTION 2011 was the year when young people were prominent in a series of uprisings – the Arab Spring, the Indignados, and the Occupy movement. This paper does not focus on any of these recent events but addresses earlier uprisings in Eastern Europe and what is now the former Soviet Union in 1989 and during the two decades that followed. The paper lays-out the mixtures of transformation and transition, revolution and regime change, that followed these uprisings, the roles played by young people, and how young people’s lives changed and did not change in the aftermaths. The paper does not aim to give a full account of the causes and consequences of the revolutionary events in 1989. The intention is to identify benchmarks for comparison and to envisage possible longer-term outcomes on young people’s lives from the uprisings of 2011. More specifically, we ask how the events in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have added to our knowledge about the formation of new political generations, and identify questions that remain to be answered through studying the Arab Spring and its aftermath, which was by far the most spectacular and has become the longest running of the uprisings of 2011.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Political generations Karl Mannheim (1893-1947) is best known as a founder of the sociology of knowledge, but he also became and continues to be the start-point for discussions about political generations (see Mannheim, 1952). Reflecting on his own experience in Europe between the world wars, Mannheim argued that new political generations were formed in times of major historical change, when upcoming cohorts found that the policies and thinking of exist8

ing political elites were simply not in accord with their own experiences and views of the world. Mannheim believed that every cohort was influenced profoundly, with lasting effects, by events and issues that it confronted when first becoming politically aware, that is, typically during youth. These ‘formative experiences’ allowed them to form a ‘generational consciousness – a distinctive pattern of interpreting and influencing the world’. Afterwards they knew whose and which sides they were on and could respond to new events and issues accordingly. Mannheim argued that in periods of major historical change the upcoming cohort was likely to reject the politics of their elders and become available for recruitment by new political movements, parties or party factions. New political generations were always likely to be divided into different factions by their differing geographical and social locations and actual or potential involvement in social movements and intellectual and cultural currents at the time. Mannheim’s main inter-war examples were from the then ascendant communist and fascist movements. In time, he believed that each new generation would replace older political elites and govern its country in a different way. Thus a new political era would dawn which would last until further historical change led to the formation of yet another new political generation.

Post-war generations Such a new generation was formed in the West after the Second World War, after Mannheim’s death. The baby boomers, at that time described as the first members of a postscarcity generation, were the vanguard cohort (see Inglehart, 1977). Their arrival in politics was announced in the student movements of the 1960s. Since then, despite regular announcements of the arrival of generations Y, Z, ecstasy, and the internet (see, for example, Milner, 2010; Reynolds, 1999; Wyn and Woodman, 2006) (which have simply been cohorts with distinctive new experiences during their youth) there does not appear to have been a successor political generation in Western countries (see Majima and Savage, 2007), though the series of movements resisting neo-liberalism that began in the 1980s – AntiGlobalisation, the €1000 Generation, then the Indignado and Occupy movements of 2011 – could signal a new generation’s birth. We know far less about the formation of political generations in Eastern Europe in the mid-20th century than in the West, but in all the East European countries there must have been generations led by the first cohorts who grew up with no personal experience of any system other than communism. These generations included the builders of communism. They were expected to play the role of transformers of society and creators of the ‘new socialist person’ (Pilkington, 1994; Wallace and Kovatcheva, 1998) and the builders of communism included many true believers. However, there were clearly dissident factions in the countries that became communist after 1945, and in 1989 these factions led the successful ‘revolutions from below’ in East-Central and South-East Europe. Communism in most Soviet republics was ended differently by ‘revolutions from above’. These changes are described in more detail below.

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Theoretical developments after Mannheim’s work Subsequent research has confirmed Mannheim’s claim that cohorts are profoundly and permanently influenced by issues and events that occur when they are first becoming politically aware (see, for example, Schuman and Corning, 2000). However, Mannheim’s ideas have been built on in several important ways. First, we now know that a cohort’s basic political outlook can continue to develop until those concerned are in their 30s (Burnett, 2000). Second, a new generation may not make its main impact on politics until cohort replacement has made its members into a critical mass of voters and politicians, which may take several decades. Third, the eventual political impact of a new generation will not necessarily be by implementing policies that its members advocated when they were teens and 20-somethings. All political generations necessarily respond to, and may revise earlier ideas in the political, economic and ideological circumstances that prevail when the generation achieves political power. The baby boomers in Western Europe benefitted from the full employment, strong and steady economic growth, rising living standards and the welfare states that were created after the Second World War, but the relevant policies were implemented by members of the generation formed between the world wars, when young people were being attracted into communist and fascist movements. The baby boomers were the source of the student radicals of the 1960s, but as a mature political generation they became the authors of neo-liberal politics. Thus we should not expect current cohorts of young people, whether in Eastern or Western Europe or the Arab countries, if they form and mature as new political generations, to act on what they sincerely believe today.

TYPOLOGY OF REVOLUTIONARY CHANGES IN EASTERN EUROPE In order to understand the historical events that led to the collapse of communism in East Central Europe and the former Soviet Republics and whether they played the role of ‘crystallizing agents’ for the formation of a new political generation it is necessary to examine how the revolutionary changes unfolded and what social transformations were instigated. In the turmoil of 1989 and the mass protests spreading to the states in Central Asia we distinguish three types of revolutionary events: the ’velvet’ revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989 or soon after, the changes in Serbia and the Western Balkans, and the ‘colour revolutions’ and other uprisings after 2000. These are divided on the basis of the character of the regime downfall (peaceful or violent) and the character and extent of the wider social changes that followed the shift of power. The terms ‘velvet’ or ‘gentle’ used for naming the revolutions in East Central Europe indicate the non-violent character of the mass protest actions that led to the breakdown of the communist system. Although there were human lives lost in some of the events, the protests that were named after different flowers and colours in some of the former Soviet Union member-countries were also basically non-violent. In the former Yugoslavia republics in the Balkans the changes followed bloody wars and NATO military interference although the aim of the latter was to push out Serbian army out of Bosnia and then Kosovo rather than to oust the Serbian dictator in power. If we follow Theda Scocpol (1979) in understanding social revolutions as rapid, fundamental transformations of the political and economic institutions of a society and of its class structure, a result of class based revolts 10

from below (p. 4), then it is only the 1989 social upheaval that meets this definition. According to Scocpol, in a social revolution political and social changes are mutually reinforcing in transforming the dominant social order and with it the lives of all citizens of the country. The other mass mobilisations in Eastern Europe and Central Asia in 2000 and beyond are better defined as a regime change which constitutes a change in the political institutions, often only a replacement of an autocratic leader, but this power shift is not accompanied by a wider substantial change in the social structure and economy.

The Velvet Revolutions The events of 1989 were unexpected: neither social researchers, nor the international community, nor even the leaders of the change movements in Central and Eastern Europe, anticipated the enormity of the changes that were to occur between June and December 1989. The events of that year suddenly transformed the futures ahead of the youth of 1989. All subsequent cohorts of young people have experienced a youth life stage that would have been very different had the events of ’89 not occurred. Young people today in East-Central Europe include children of the youth of ’89. For today’s youth, the conditions in which they live are simply normal: 1989 and what their countries were like before then are history, learnt about from elders, teachers, books and other media. The televised fall of the Berlin Wall amid street partying (on the Western side) was the iconic event of 1989. The fall of the Wall was iconic, especially for those who remembered it being built, but it was neither the beginning nor the end of the history-making events of 1989. It was not decisive, and it was certainly not among the trigger events. These had occurred months before, to the east of the German Democratic Republic, in Poland. In 1980 a ‘free’ trade union, Solidarity, had been formed in Poland, and it refused to die or even go underground despite the imposition of martial law and the imprisonment of its leaders. The eventual triumph of Solidarity became more likely following changes in its more powerful Eastern neighbour, the USSR. During the early-1980s there were several changes of leadership in the Soviet Union following the death of Leonid Brezhnev in 1982. He was succeeded by Yuri Andropov, who died in 1984 and was succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko who died in 1985. At that time the mortality rate among Soviet leaders was spectacular. A younger leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, assumed office in 1985. He was evidently a different kind of communist from any leader previously encountered. Gorbachev believed that he was reforming communism with his policies of glasnost (freedom of expression) and perestroika (restructuring). He believed that facing real competition in elections would pressure communist elites to become more effective, and hence more popular. Gorbachev let it be known that in the event of the regimes in Soviet satellite countries losing popular support, the Soviet army would not sustain them. This message was supposed to re-energise the regimes, and communism. It certainly created a new context in Poland. All the leaders of Solidarity were released from internment in 1986, and in February 1989 Solidarity was involved in roundtable discussions with the Polish communists. The outcome was agreement that there would be free elections later that year. These elections were held on June 4th. There were no trustworthy opinion polls ahead of these elections whose outcome surprised everyone: Solidarity won all but one of the seats in the Sejm that were up for election. Thereafter the Polish communists abdicat11

ed, and during autumn 1989 they reconstituted themselves as social democrats. By the end of June Poland had a Solidarity government and was no longer communist. This demonstrated that change was possible. June 4th was the true history-making date in Europe in 1989. After then the ‘dominoes’ started to tumble. Hungary’s communist regime had already begun market reforms, and small profit-seeking businesses were operating openly and legally in the late-1980s. On August 23rd 1989 Hungary opened its western border, meaning that it allowed citizens of communist countries to pass through without exit visas. This led to the Trabant exodus. East Germans began loading as many possessions as the cars would carry, then motoring through Czechoslovakia into Hungary then into Austria and from there into the Federal Republic of Germany. August 23rd 1989 is the date when the Berlin Wall, and the physical barrier along the entire border between the Federal and Democratic German republics, was decisively breached. On September 4th there was a massive street demonstration in Leipzig against the communist regime. This was followed by similar demonstrations in other East German cities, culminating on November 9th when East Germany began to permit free movement through the Wall itself. The partying on and around the Wall, and the Wall’s partial destruction, were from the western side. By then Hungary was officially post-communist. Soon afterwards Civic Forum was organising sustained street demonstrations in Prague and before Christmas a dissident playwright, Vaclev Havel, had become Czechoslovakia’s first post-communist president. On November 10th Bulgaria’s Todor Zhivkov, the longest serving leader of a Soviet bloc country (36 years), was peacefully ousted from the state and party leadership freeing the public space for mass demonstrations and roundtable talks leading to the adoption of a new constitution. The year ended with the only violent revolution of 1989 when the Ceausescus were summarily tried and executed in Bucharest on the Western Christmas Day. The tide of change continued, but at a slower pace. The first free elections in East Germany were in March 1990, a unification treaty was signed in May, and unification was accomplished in October. In June 1990 there were free elections in Bulgaria. The ‘Singing Revolutions’ in the Baltic States were also part of the 1989 transformation wave in Eastern Europe. These were a series of mass demonstrations in 1987-1991 claiming the restoration of the countries’ independence from the Soviet Union. Mostly peaceful, they were ignited by singing national songs and religious hymns at music festivals in the region. These symbolic actions acted as vehicles of ‘formative tendencies’ and ‘integrative principles’, if we use Mannheim’s terminology again The most spectacular symbolic act was the 600 km long human chain on 23rd August 1989 that linked the three Baltic capitals of Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn. The collective strife for freedom in the Baltic States grew into more confrontational protests until, on December 26th 1991, the Soviet Union was formally disbanded. The former Soviet republics Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan were also claiming independence. The other members of the USSR had independence thrust upon them when Russia quit the union. This followed an attempted coup against Gorbachev by Soviet generals who were seeking to prevent the further collapse of the system that they had been trained to defend. The attempted coup failed when Boris Yeltsin, then President of the Russian Federation, led a mass street demonstration and confronted the tanks in Moscow. Yeltsin subsequently denounced Gorbachev as an ineffective reformer, brought an end to the Soviet 12

Union and thereby eliminated Gorbachev’s position and power base in the Soviet Communist Party. In March 1992 Albania’s communists were defeated in elections. This was the last of what can be described as velvet revolutions, and on January 1st 1993 the Czech Republic and Slovakia completed their ‘velvet divorce’. The 1989 revolutionary events had some important characteristics in common: those outside the USSR, and also those in the Baltic States, were true revolutions, instigated from below, by the people, which led to total transformations of the countries, and remarkably they were all accomplished peacefully.

Transitions in Serbia and the Western Balkans Change proved most protracted, and bloody, in Yugoslavia, which was surprising in so far as pre-1989 Yugoslavia was the communist state that was most open to and involved in Western systems, but underlines the extent to which nationalism rather than enthusiasm for market reforms was the driving force in 1989 and subsequently. Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence in June 1991, followed by Macedonia in September the same year, then Bosnia and Herzegovina in March 1992. There was prolonged fighting between Croatians and Serbs in Croatia, and between Croatians, Muslims and Serbs in Bosnia. By the time that military action ceased in these republics (following international intervention in Bosnia), Kosovo had become an issue. A Kosovo Liberation Army, which won the support of the West, was pressing for independence, and was under attack from Yugoslavia (Serb) forces. By 1999 NATO was bombing Serbia, and Kosovo became a de facto NATO protectorate. The contested elections in the remaining state of Yugoslavia on September 24 2000 led to demonstrations and a general strike. The nearly half a million strong protest demonstration In Belgrade on October 5th brought the sole classic revolutionary scene in the entire chain of events since 1989 with the storming of the parliament building in Belgrade which was set ablaze. These events were named the Bulldozer Revolution after the use of an engineering vehicle against the RTS building, the Serbian State Radio and Television, which was considered a symbol of Milosevic’s rule. What followed was the ousting of the autocratic president and the full break-up of Yugoslavia which was completed with the formal independence of Montenegro (June 2006) and Kosovo (February 2008). The revolutionary events in the former Yugoslavia are often viewed as a continuation of the democratization wave that started in 1989 and spread to Asia and other East European countries after 2000 (Thompson and Kuntz, 2004; Vejvoda, 2009). Nevertheless, these events have some specific features that separate them from the rest. The crackdown of the authoritarian regime and the surrender of the Serbian dictator on October 6 2000 came after four wars and two NATO military operations against Serbia in 1995 and 1999. Chauvinism and appeals to ethnic solidarity were a much stronger force for the Yugoslav breakdown than in the gentle revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe 10 years before. The civic protests which challenged Milosevic’s regime throughout the 1990s were met by much harsher responses from the authorities including mass arrests, conscription and harassment of activists and assassinations of political figures of the opposition after the NATO bombing campaign in the spring of 1999. Protestors, despite their growing numbers, became successful only when key personalities from the secret police, the army and paramilitary formations withdrew their support for the regime. The social change that followed 13

involved a slow process of democratization which was not quick to spread in other domains of public life.

The Colour Revolutions The revolutionary events in Serbia in 2000 are often projected as trend-setting for the ‘Colour Revolutions’ in some post-Soviet states in the mid-2000s with elections acting as the trigger for mass protests (Bunce and Wolchik, 2006; Baev, 2011). The name comes from the fact that most of these civic protests used a specific colour or flower in their symbolic interpretative frames. Although similar to the ‘Velvet Revolution’ in Czechoslovakia and the ‘Gentle Revolutions’ elsewhere in Eastern Europe in their largely peaceful character, the Rose Revolution in Georgia (2003), the Orange Revolution in Ukraine (200405), the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan (2005) and the mobilisations in other former Soviet Republics were significantly different in many important ways. The revolts in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the new Eastern Europe were narrowly political in nature, linked to disputed elections, insisting on freer and fairer elections, and leading to the replacement of autocratic leaders but not to radical social transformations. Quite often an authoritarian regime was replaced by a quasi-democratic or equally autocratic one and resulted in no major economic or social restructuring. Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution of 2005 followed just one year after, but should really be considered separately from the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. All three revolutions were against allegedly corrupt regimes which had massaged election results, but the Kyrgyzstan revolution was not the work young people so much as replacing a president from the north with one from the south of the republic, and lives were lost during the confrontations in Bishkek to which demonstrators from the south had travelled. There was a further revolution in Kyrgyzstan when more lives were lost in 2010 when a president from the north was elected. This was followed by communal violence in the south between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in which several hundred (mainly Uzbeks) were killed and thousands fled (temporarily) across the border into Uzbekistan. This was a repetition of the communal violence that had erupted in 1991 when the Soviet Union disbanded. Many young people were involved in these events, but the events were not led or instigated by young people, and the main confrontations were not between generations.

Subsequent mobilisations End of story? Almost certainly not. Neither the Velvet, nor the Colour Revolutions nor the revolutions in Kyrgyzstan in 2005 and 2010 can be heralded as having put an end to social change in the respective countries. In Bulgaria mass protests and student occupations of university buildings continued well into the first half of the 1990s and street demonstrations and road blockades toppled the governments in office in 1997 and 2013. Civic campaigns in the second half of the 1990s against Vladimír Mečiar’s government in Slovakia finally led to his defeat at the 1998 elections. Rallies and occupations of public buildings in a series of anti-government protests shook Hungary in 2006, triggered by a pre-Wikileak scandal caused by the release of the Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány's speech in which he confessed that his Party had lied to win the 2006 election. In Slovenia in 2012 protests erupted in Maribor and then spread to other cities and towns in 2013 accusing members 14

of the political elite of corruption and demanding their resignation and prosecution. In Bosnia and Herzegovina throughout 2013 young mothers, unemployed youth and disaffected citizens protested against widespread poverty, political stalemate and high level corruption. The civic unrest turned violent in the February-March 2014 when angry workers in Tuzla and other cities joined the demonstrations against dubious privatization deals setting government offices on fire. In the North and South Caucasus there are sometimes frozen, but always liable to become hot, conflicts. Russo-phile Transdniester remains de facto separate from the rest of Moldova. The destinies of Belarus and Ukraine remain unclear. In 2014 Ukraine became the site of sustained and bloody demonstrations in Kiev. These demonstrations in Kiev had begun in November 2013 when President Yanukovych rejected a trade deal offered by the EU in preference for a deal with Moscow which offered financial aid and gas at favourable prices. The initial demonstrators were pro-EU Kiev residents and students. Later they were joined by Ukrainian nationalist groups from the west of the country, demanding that President Yanukovych and his government stand down. On February 20th and 21st 2014 the demonstration in Kiev turned violent. Security forces are alleged to have been fired on by armed demonstrators. The instruction to snipers within the security forces may have been to target snipers from within the crowds, but the firing was clearly less discriminate and by the end of February 21 there had been over 80 deaths. During February 22 the bulk of Yanokovych’s security forces melted away and the president fled the capital, eventually to Moscow. The Ukraine parliament voted to strip Yanukovych of the presidency, assigned the Speaker as interim president, then appointed a new government which was recognised by the EU but not by Moscow. During March 2014 there were pro-Russia demonstrations in Crimea, leading to a referendum on March 17th in which over 90% of those who voted supported Crimea joining the Russian Federation, to which Russia’s Duma assented on March 19th. Subsequently there were pro-Russia demonstrations and occupations of some government buildings in towns and cities in East Ukraine, and somewhat fewer and smaller pro-Ukraine demonstrations. Violence continued in towns in the east of the country well into the summer of 2014 despite the presidential election held on May 25, and the peace plan followed by a ceasefire with pro-Eussia paramilitaries declared by Poroshchenko, the newly elected president. On June 27 the leaders of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova signed association agreements with the EU in Brussels. Nation-building is still tentative in all the new (post-1991) multi-ethnic independent states in the region. Market reforms and multi-party political systems have probably become secure in countries that have already joined the EU, but Mongolia and Ukraine remain the only ex-Soviet republics (apart from the Baltic states, which are now EU members, and Moldova where the president is elected by the parliament) where a president has lost office as a result of defeat in an election. The main actors in the recent mass mobilizations were not the youth of 2013 and 2014, but these actors had been young people earlier in their own lives. In 2013 and 2014 they were responding to situations that had arisen at that time, but most likely with political orientations that had been formed during earlier critical events, very likely events that had occurred when they were young, possibly around 1989-1991.

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YOUTH REVOLTS? We know little about young people and their political culture in East-Central Europe in 1989. This is because the events of that year were unanticipated. Had they been forecast with confidence, we can be sure that young people’s attitudes and involvement would have been monitored before, during and after. There were few studies of young people in the years immediately following 1989. Youth research institutes in Eastern Europe at that time were crippled by shrunken budgets, and some simply disappeared along with other communist state and party apparatuses. We know that there were plenty of young people on the streets, taking part in demonstrations, partying around the Wall in West Berlin on November 9th and in Wenceslas Square throughout the autumn of 1989. Young people were singing in support of independence in the Baltic States in 1990 and 1991, rock dancing in Slovakia in the summer of 1998, and marching in Belgrade under the slogan Otpor in 2000. Youth groups were very visible in the first two colour revolutions, in Kmara in Georgia and Pora in Ukraine. There were less successful but comparable youth movements in Belarus (Zubr), and Yokh in Azerbaijan. In 1989 young activists were prominent in calls for a change of leadership in Armenia in order to prosecute the war with Azerbaijan more effectively (the Soviet era leaders were eventually replaced by a Karabakh Committee). The links between youth protests including cultural inspiration, political encouragement, and activist training prompted analysts to speak about the formation of a transnational movement in the former Soviet Republics (Beachain and Polese, 2010; Bunce and Wolchik, 2006). The colourfulness of young protestors’ symbolic actions in public spaces – singing, graffiti drawing, staging comic scenes caricaturing political leaders – succeeded in winning high media attention. The television broadcasts from one country to the next provided inspiration for young protestors evoking ideological frames and protest tactics. The power of young people’s symbolic gestures was multiplied by the mass media often making them more effective in influencing public opinion than mass rallies and party membership (Wallace and Kovatcheva, 1998). However, these were not true youth revolutions. The squares of ‘89 were boiling with mixed crowds – young and old dissidents, actors and workers, politically determined, freedom aspiring and just curious citizens. The main instigators of the political changes in 1989 were from the class of ’68 rather than the class of ’89, and before long nearly all the young activists had become inactive: they had gone back to their schools or their jobs (if they had jobs) and to their homes, pre-occupied by coping with the new rigours of everyday life, and simply survival in some cases. The opponents of the revolutionary events in the region often explain the revolts in terms of foreign stimulation and support, presenting them as attempts by the Western powers to expand their sphere of influence. The US administration as well as other national governments, various international organisations and individuals such as the American millionaire of Hungarian origin, George Soros with his Open Society Foundation, or the Professor of Political Science and founder of the Albert Einstein Institutions Gene Sharp, have been accused of planning, directing and funding the protests to serve Western geopolitical interests. For example the mobilisation of youth during the Colour Revolutions has been defined by Russian and Chinese analysts as ‘revised tactics for subordination’ (see Wilson 2009). The focus of criticism on young activists as proponents of foreign influence was also apparent during the student protests against Milosevic in Serbia (Jennings 2009). Such 16

interpretations are based on assumptions that young people lack experience and knowledge and are easily manipulated in politics (See Wallace and Kovatcheva 1998). Examining external variables in the social transformations since 1989 is not the aim of this paper. It will suffice to say that they included a wide array of forms: direct funding for civil society organisations, provision of equipment and goods, consulting, training and polling, media assistance, and in the case of Serbia, economic and trade, diplomatic and legal sanctions and military intervention. Such aid provided opportunities to be used by the insurgents but had a negative impact as well when used by the authorities to create public mistrust toward protest leaders and civic participation more generally. Yet the often pointed at Western influence was not the only foreign factor playing a role in the revolutionary events. Very significant in all the types of revolutions in the region was a process called diffusion (Bunce and Wolchik 2006) of protest ideas, tactics and institutions from the revolt in one country to the mobilisation in another. The external donors might have supplied some necessary resources in the struggle for democracy, exploited more or less successfully by the activists in the campaigns but the internal structural causes of the revolutions and the masses that pressed the autocratic governments to step down were the most important factors in the events of 1989 and later. Their weakness vis-à-vis the strongholds of autocratic power is the decisive reason for the failure of mobilisations in other countries in the region such as the protests in Belarus in 2006 against President Lukashenko (‘jeans revolution’) or those in Moldova in 2009 (‘grape revolution’).

CHANGE AFTER 1989 AS EXPERIENCED BY YOUNG PEOPLE Intergenerational disparities Twenty-five years after the gentle revolutions in East Central Europe, huge intergenerational differences in knowledge and experiences are evident. The class of ’89 and its predecessors may always judge the present using communism as a benchmark. For them, all post-communist political regimes will have earned some merit simply by being not communist. The events of 1989 demonstrated how narrow and shallow genuine support for the old system had been in East-Central Europe. However, the class of ’89 and its immediate successors will have been the last cohorts to be able to use personal experience of life under communism as a yardstick. These cohorts’ youth life stage transitions were caughtup in the whirlwind of change that followed the collapse of the old system, whereas by the mid-1990s there were already cohorts of school-leavers who had never engaged personally with any wider society in which people did not have a choice of political parties, from which it was impossible to travel to the West, where one was not surrounded every day by consumer advertising, and where it was necessary to search and compete for jobs. None of this has been new and exciting for them. It has been just mundane normality (see Markowitz, 2000, for evidence from Russia). The countries have continued to change, but much more slowly than in the early-1990s. The changes will be hardly perceptible for young people in today’s Eastern Europe.

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There are historical parallels. The post-scarcity cohorts who grew up in the West after the Second World War took full employment and progressively rising standards of living for granted. It was only their elders who had lived through the ‘hungry 1930s’ and the subsequent war who experienced the post-war conditions as improvement (see Inglehart, 1977). Today’s young East Europeans have cognitive knowledge of communism and few would choose to restore the system even if this was possible, but their benchmarks in appraising their own lives are more likely to be the lives of their parents, from here-on the class of ’89 and its successors, and conditions in other countries of which they have some experience, and these other countries are now likely to include pre-2004 EU member states. Differences within and between post-communist countries have widened since 1989. Until then they all had basically the same communist education, economic and political systems, and their citizens led a common socialist way of life. Differences were widening throughout the 1990s and have since been consolidated. This applies to differences between and within countries. Career groups that were formed in the new labour markets in the 1990s have been developing into new social classes. Political processes and cultures have stabilised.

Labour markets and economic cultures Some members of older age groups survived the shock-therapy of the early-1990s without damage to their lifestyles or life chances. Some exemplary communists were reborn as good capitalists. However, far more lives were damaged beyond repair as enterprises closed, up to 50 percent was ripped from living standards and savings were decimated by hyper-inflation. Status earned under the old system was lost. The real value of retirement pensions shrank alarmingly. Dismay and anger were likely to be directed at the countries’ new political leaders. People said that the communists had at least been serious politicians. The short-term outcomes of the revolutions of 1989 were not what most of those who had supported change had either hoped for or expected, though many expressed willingness to make sacrifices if, in the long-term, their children and grandchildren would benefit (Roberts and Jung, 1995). Yet in the short-term elders were often distressed by young people’s uses of their new freedoms. Elders knew that it had become more difficult to obtain employment than when they were young. Young people’s plights attracted sympathy, but many of their elders were confused and dismayed. They were alarmed at how town and city centres and neighbourhoods had become unsafe with unsupervised groups of young men (and somewhat fewer young women) just hanging about. Young people were often accused of having ‘no values’ (Riordan et al, 1995) and their apparent materialism was deplored – their willingness, it often appeared, to do whatever was necessary to make money then spend it ostentatiously (Magun, 1996; Saarnit, 1998; Zuev, 1997). As explained above, the revolutions of 1989 were not instigated by young people. The young simply joined in the demonstrations and celebrations. The leaders were from the classes of ’68, not ’89. Poland’s Solidarity was led by a middle-aged electrician. Czechoslovakia’s Civic Forum was led by an ageing playwright. The first democratically elected president in Bulgaria in 1990 was a philosopher known for his sam-izdat publications during communism. It has become easy to forget that the aims of the change movements did not 18

include dismantling welfare states in the name of reform or selling enterprises to foreigners (subsequently called foreign direct investment). People celebrating in the streets of Eastern Europe in 1989-90 were expecting not less but better social protection, health care and education (Ferge, 1997; Kovacheva, 2000). The change movements were not procapitalism. Rather, they sought moral rejuvenation, national liberation and real socialism – countries run fairly by and for their own citizens. In Poland there were hopes that the newly independent, overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country would re-moralise a decadent Europe. Materialistic young people were betraying such hopes. Researchers were speaking of ‘generational inversion’ (Mitev, 1998) – the young tended to accept reality and act pragmatically, the old craved for unfulfilled high ideals. In practice, young people’s mind-sets were more complex than the condemnation suggested. The top values of the majority were family followed by friends. Many depended on these relationships for food and housing, chances to earn money, or, as some put it, simply to survive the 1990s (see Roberts et al, 2000). Most left school or college with a strong desire to obtain employment that corresponded with their specialties – the occupations for which they had been educated and trained. Communism had adopted a version of the German system of education and vocational training, and its ethos survived into the early years of post-communism. Ideally, young people wanted to work with and earn respect for their skills and knowledge. Many of those with vocational and university education adopted a ‘waiting attitude’, staying unemployed while supported by their parents or willing to ‘do anything’ to earn money in the hope that, once their countries’ transitions were over, there would be plenty of jobs corresponding to their qualifications and aspirations (Roberts et al, 1999; Kovacheva, 2001).

Social inequalities That said, money had become more important than formerly, and everyone in Eastern Europe realised this. Income inequalities were widening. Under communism it had been difficult to spend the money that one earned. The system systematically bred shortages. It was an economy of queues and waiting lists. In the new market economies anything could be bought, more or less immediately, provided one was able to pay, and consumer advertising was ubiquitous. It was also the case that, in the early-1990s, ‘business’ was the new glamour career. Young people were excited by the prospect of working for themselves, developing businesses and, as a result, becoming wealthy. Most made some effort to do business. In most cases this meant trading – sometimes just on local streets, but sometimes more adventurously by shuttling across country borders. Cigarettes were the most common merchandise. Some young women celebrated their new freedom to sell their own bodies. Sex work (briefly) became a status occupation in certain sub-cultures. Meanwhile, other women (again briefly) celebrated their new freedom to ‘live normally’ as fulltime housewives. However, it was not young people’s own preferences but circumstances dictated by economic restructuring and labour market processes that shaped the careers of the ‘pragmatic’ young East Europeans in the 1990s. The reforms divided them into three broad career groups.

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• First, there were those who obtained jobs soon after completing their full-time education then remained continuously and fully employed, though not necessarily in the same jobs or with the same employers. Members of this group were usually well educated and from privileged family backgrounds, with jobs in the state sector or in Western-linked businesses, or self-employed, or working in substantial private businesses, often family owned. • The second group became long-term unemployed. These were typically young people graduating secondary schools without vocational qualifications and the rising group of early school-leavers, mostly from disadvantaged and often ethnic minority family backgrounds, living in deprived, often rural areas or in one-industry towns where the main enterprise had closed. • The third group, the largest in many places, can be described as under–employed. Their experiences were diverse, but located them somewhere between the fully employed and the straight-forward unemployed. Some practised ‘survival selfemployment’. Some of these, and others who had an employer, were in and then out of work, then in work again. Their jobs were often unofficial, without a contract, and officially or de facto temporary. The work could be seasonal, in agriculture or tourism-linked. Many of the jobs were part-time, or nominally full-time jobs which paid less than a proper full-time salary. The new private sectors were the source of most of this employment. Commerce was faster to open shops, bars and restaurants than to revive coal mines and steel mills. Anyone who has been involved continuously in youth research in Eastern Europe since 1989 will have encountered a series of surprises. An attraction of the field has been that findings have been difficult to predict. One surprise has been the speed with which upcoming cohorts experienced their new, post-1989 circumstances as simply normal while researchers were still grappling to understand this new normality. A further surprise has been how labour markets and terms and conditions in different types of employment have changed, and the ways in which they have not changed, since the mid-1990s. It then seemed reasonable to expect that as the economies recovered from shock-therapy, then grew continuously and strongly from year-to-year (as happened in most of the countries), the fully employed career group would expand while the other career groups contracted and eventually disappeared, thus the main divisions among young workers would be by their types of occupations, as in the West (up to now). The relative sizes of the career groups have always varied from place to place. The fully employed group has invariably been largest in capitals and other major cities. But everywhere the relative sizes of the groups appear to have remained little changed since the mid-1990s (see Roberts et al, 2008). The benefits of economic growth have led mainly to improvements in the terms and conditions of employment of the fully employed who have developed into their countries’ new middle classes. In Russia it is estimated that just a fifth of households have become better-off (often much better-off) than under the old system (National Research University Higher School of Economics and Expert magazine, 2011). The family-household is the unit that is classed for purposes of consumption, and new middle class households’ standards and styles of life are typically supported by more than one stream of income. Jobs may be in the public or the private sector. Public sector salaries have recovered since

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the early-1990s. Other middle class incomes are from self-employment in substantial and enduring private businesses (Roberts and Pollock, 2009, 2011b). Today, members of the class of ’89 include members of the first generation of new middle class parents, and they typically adopt strategic approaches to their own children’s education. They ensure that their children attend good nurseries, elementary then secondary schools. Private education is most likely to be used selectively, depending on whether standards at public schools are considered satisfactory. Formal schooling is usually supplemented with private coaching at crucial stages, like preparation for university entrance examinations. Parents ensure that their children acquire useful skills including competence with ICT and foreign languages. The parents invariably expect their children to progress through higher education, and possibly to gain some experience in a foreign (invariably Western) country. They will always use the ‘connections’ that they, as middle class parents, possess to open doors for their children (see Kovacheva, 2006; Tomanovic, 2012).

New aspirations The new middle classes are minorities of the populations in all East European countries (Tilkidziev, 1998) but everywhere this has become the new class of aspiration. The workers’ state is no more. The working classes have been demoted and degraded. Young people today do not prioritise business or employment in a specialty. Rather, they aim for the middle class. Where expansion has been unregulated, swollen higher education systems flood the labour markets with graduate middle class wannabes. Those who are unable to obtain middle class employment and achieve middle class lifestyles at home have two options. They can migrate in search of the Western way of life. This traffic continues, usually still intended as pendulum migration in the first instance, though those concerned may eventually become part of long-term diaspora. Westward migration is now much easier (it is legal) for young people from post-2004 EU member states, and there are now crossborder networks of friends and relatives to facilitate the flows. The alternative is to stay at home and wait for the arrival of the great global market economy (see Roberts et al, 2005). By the end of the 1990s ex-communist countries were much more different from one another than had been the case in 1989. National cultures – histories, languages, literatures etc – had been revived and were being transmitted in education. In some cases national histories that had been interrupted by communism had been resumed. There were huge differences in the extent to which countries’ economies had recovered. Generally, it had proved an advantage to be preparing for membership of the EU, and preferably to be located next to the border of the pre-2004 EU. East-Central European countries have now regained their pre-Second World War position as middle Europe, at the very heart of Europe. Slovenia, with a population of under two million, nestling next to Italy and Austria, has been an exceptional success story. Countries with natural resources, especially oil and gas, for which global demand has been strong and rising, have been able to benefit. Resources that could have benefitted the entire Soviet population have benefitted mainly Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan. Oil and gas are the reasons why salaries are now four times higher in Kazakhstan than in its Central Asian neighbours, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. 21

Differences within countries have widened. Capital cities are always exceptional in the opportunities in their labour markets. These are always the main centres of government employment, entertainment and retailing, the most likely bases for the headquarters of major businesses of all kinds, and where international NGOs and foreign delegations are based. Outside the capitals the countries have new economic wastelands – rural regions where agriculture has been privatised and all the factories that communism opened have closed, and single industry towns where the single industry stopped or downscaled dramatically as soon as communism ended (for examples, see Roberts et al, 2005). Other towns have boomed following inward investment that has revived a car or domestic appliances plant, for example. Young people’s job prospects now depend greatly on exactly where they happen to live.

The new political generation Most members of the class of ’89 can have played no direct part in the momentous events of that year. Unless they were at university or lived in capitals or other major cities, they are unlikely to have taken to the streets at any stage. We know that for many families the changes simply happened, maybe with their tacit approval, while they continued with their lives as best they could in their homes, workplaces and schools (see Roberts, 2012). It is impossible to offer any reliable estimate of the proportion of young people who became involved in any political activity during 1989, but there was confidence at the time that the advent of ‘true’ democracy would lead to an upsurge and a broader blossoming of civil societies in all the East European countries. Young people would have a choice of political parties. They would be able to speak their minds and associate freely. Above all, they would be able to participate in rebuilding their countries thereby building their own lives while helping to make history. A surprise for researchers was that the expected high level of interest and active engagement in politics did not happen which prompted some to speak about ‘the strange death of civil society’ (see Lomax, 1997) and the fruitless attempts to build a ‘civil society without citizens’ (Mihailov, 2004). Perhaps it is more accurate to say that subsequent political activity by young people has not been in the ways that were expected – joining and becoming active members of the political parties that contest elections. Nearly all those who were on the streets in 1989 soon joined those who had remained throughout in their homes, schools and workplaces, and most have remained politically inactive ever since except during short-lived explosions of protest some of which have led to regime change (see below). Most young people have known how they want their postcommunist countries to develop. They have been virtually unanimous. They admire the West – its democratic politics and its standards of living. These are the kinds of societies that they want their own countries to become. In the early-1990s the youth of Eastern Europe were the continent’s most enthusiastic Europeans, eager for their countries to become full members of the EU (see, for example, Kovacheva, 1995; Mitev, 1998; Niznik and Skotnicka-Illasiewicz, 1992). Membership of the EU and other Western-based international organisations has had their overwhelming support, and all post-communist leaders in Eastern Europe (west of Ukraine) have endorsed these goals. The problem for their citizens, young and old, has been the slow (if any) pace of change in their own lives. It took 22

very little time for young voters to grow disillusioned with their new post-communist political elites. The context was the big problem: the countries’ economies imploded and living standards fell alarmingly. Politicians rapidly became figures of ridicule and contempt. Hence, before long, the return of ex-communists to power in some of the countries. Young people were unimpressed by the squabbling of politicians in democratically elected assemblies. They soon became suspicious of politicians’ real motives, especially when politicians’ lifestyles were grossly out-of-line with their official salaries. By the mid-1990s most young people felt that most politicians were in politics to serve their own interests rather than to serve their countries (Mitev, 2005; Roberts, 2009; Roberts et al, 2000). Young people in Eastern Europe are not politically apathetic. Most have strong opinions, but these typically include contempt for all politicians and a determination to remain personally disengaged from formal politics while seeking private solutions to their own problems using private resources. Attitudinal surveys in the region show a continuing dislike of organised activities but a growing inclination to get involved in less structured and more informal networks and friendship circles on ecological, educational or consumer issues (Hoikalla, 2009; Kovacheva, 2005; Spannring et at, 2008). The strong opinions that young people express sometimes appear contradictory. They will say that they are pro-democracy then almost in the next breath argue that their country really needs a strong political leader. The most popular and trusted politicians in the ex-Soviet Union include some of the most authoritarian presidents (see Dafflon, 2009; Lillis, 2010a, 2010b; Roberts and Pollock, 2011a). The atypical young people who have joined political parties since 1989 are an important group not on account of their size, which is tiny, but because they have been slowly replenishing their countries’ political elites. These are now composed of mixtures of pre- and post-1989 entrants to politics. In Hungary the group of university students that formed the anti-communist Alliance of Young Democrats in 1988 soon became part of the new political elite, changed their political orientation from liberal to conservative and won the country’s parliamentary election in 1998. Most young political activists in Eastern Europe since 1989, as under communism, have not been just enthusiastic supporters but have been at least interested in the possibility of building political careers. This has not necessarily meant becoming an elected politician, the first step towards which has been inclusion on a party’s list of candidates. From this position there have been good chances of election to a parliamentary assembly where the party has a chance of gaining a share of power. However, a political career can also be built by joining the ‘new nomenklatura’, that is, the class of political appointees. These positions may be in public administration, a public service or a business in which a government has a stake. Activists whose roles in their parties become known can soon find themselves being approached by members of the public seeking assistance from politicians in registering a business, solving a tax problem, obtaining a health and safety or fire certificate, permission to build or whatever. There has been an understanding that any such assistance will not be provided without compensation. Such arrangements may operate on a long-term basis, and these arrangements (of which many citizens or members of their families have some personal experience) corroborate suspicions that the countries’ entire political classes are corrupt. Whichever party they belong to, and whether they are young or old, they are all politicians. Throughout Eastern Europe the initial new recruits to politics after 1989 were more likely to have been nurtured in the communist parties than anywhere else (for example, see Zhuk, 2010). Where else might they have obtained appropriate experience? 23

Voters in countries that have joined the EU can use their votes to dismiss their governments and promote different parties and politicians into power, but, they ask, what difference does this make? There appears to be just an exchange of positions within the same political class. In countries that have opted for so-called managed democracy (or had this imposed from above) protestors have taken to the streets enraged by the alleged falsification of election results (further evidence, if any was needed, of the corruption of politics). However, all the colour revolutions were actually triggered by splits within the countries’ political classes. The usurpers were current or former insiders. After the revolutions politics continued as before (the business of the political classes), and young people returned to their families, schools or jobs (as in 1989) and soon recovered their anger. Actually it is difficult to eliminate vote rigging in countries where public officials who run elections believe that their jobs depend on the re-election of the incumbent, and that their career prospects depend on demonstrating impressive support in the cities, towns or districts for which they are responsible. The colour revolutions were not true revolutions as had occurred between 1989 and 1991. Subsequent successful uprisings have led merely to regime change.

CONCLUSIONS The uniqueness of the Velvet Revolutions The revolutions of 1989 have features that are still unique. There had been and still have been no other transformations or transitions from communism instigated ‘from below’. Prior to 1989, the official view was that the countries were heading towards a golden age of true communism which would be global, when scarcity would end, and states could wither away. Unofficially researchers thought that change could come either from the outside (Zhelev, 1982) or with the slow formation of a new elite (Konrad and Szeleni, 1979; Zaslavskaya and Rivkina, 1991). Despite the opening up during Russia’s ‘perestroika’ when numerous misdoings of the communist regimes became widely known, the feared or desired total transformation was not foreseen anywhere or by anyone to be as near as the late1980s. The system came to an abrupt end in 1989 in Eastern Europe through challenges from within, from below, by the people. These changes had overwhelming support from, but they were not instigated by the youth of 1989. The leaders’ aim was national liberation rather than the wholesale dismantling of socialism. Joining a global market economy became the sole option open to the new governments when their countries’ economies collapsed. This goal certainly had the support of young people for whom it meant the Western (or more specifically American) way of life flooding into their countries. Their aim was not to become part of Europe. The countries were already in Europe, as was Russia. The events of 1991 in the USSR (the Baltic states and the South Caucasus apart) were revolutions from above, the result of splits in the communist elites. Old rulers were not usually replaced by newcomers to power. The exceptions were the Baltic states and Georgia whose first president following independence (Gamsakhurdia) was from outside the old communist elite, but he was replaced by the end of 1992 by Shevarnadze, a former USSR foreign minister. Young people were not especially prominent when the ex-Soviet republics celebrated independence in 1991. 24

It was different in the later mobilisations that led to the toppling of Milosevic in Belgrade in 2000 and the colour revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine in 2003 and 2004/05, but in each of these cases the outcome is better described as regime change rather than a revolution or transformation. By the end of the 1990s all the ex-communist countries’ new cohorts of young people (who had become politically aware under post-communism) were thoroughly disillusioned by the performances of their countries’ ‘democratic’ politicians, many of whom had managed to become part of their countries’ new rich, and young people were frustrated that, rather than enjoying the Western way of life (by then, assumed to have been the aim of the change movements in 1989), their living standards were typically inferior to those that their families had experienced under communism. The youth mobilisations of 2003-2005 which led to regime change in Georgia and Ukraine, but not in Belarus or Azerbaijan, had more in common with subsequent mobilisations of Western youth and in the Arab Spring than was the case in 1989, though digital technologies played no part in any of the mobilisations in Eastern Europe and the ex-USSR up to this point. We must also note that the rebellions in Belgrade, Tbilisi, Kiev (and Bishkek) rallied behind leaders who until recently had been part of the regimes that they were challenging. A further point to note is that these later outbreaks of rage subsided just as rapidly as the youth of 1989 had returned to their homes, schools and jobs. This did not mean that their anger at the failure of ‘reform’ to deliver Western standards of living, or their feeling that politicians were endemically corrupt, had subsided. The predominant feeling among youth in Eastern Europe and the ex-USSR remains that neither the market economy nor democracy are yet working properly. Unlike some participants in the Arab Spring, the Indignados and the Occupy movements, they have not sought alternative forms of an economy or versions of democracy suited to the digital age.

Implications and questions for future research Questions that remain to be addressed in further research are: what are the similarities and differences in the roles that young people played in the revolutions and mass protests in Europe and Central Asia since 1989 and in the ‘awakening’ of Arab youth in 2011 and since? What are the effects of the societal transitions and transformations on young people’s living worlds and on the construction of a generational consciousness in the Arabmajority Mediterranean countries? Have the members of the class of 2011 developed as a new political generation? The analysis in this paper allows us to draw lessons to consider when answering these questions: First, future studies of challenges to incumbent regimes need to exercise caution before describing these events as youth revolts or, if successful, revolutions by the young. Even if young people have an over-riding presence in the demonstrations in squares and in front of parliaments and presidential buildings that topple regimes or produce reforms, investigators need to explore whether these final events were outcomes of prior steps and whether young people were the original instigators. Second, while youth movements may often act as ‘the gateway’ to great social transformations (Leccardi and Feixa, 1989), researchers need to be sensitive to the possibility, in25

deed the likelihood, that the outcomes of revolutions may not correspond with the change movements’ original aims. This sensitivity is essential because all parties who have been involved at all stages in the changes will have vested interests in claiming that the changes are what they sought all along. Third, it is unlikely ever to be the case that all young people participate in change-making events. It is unlikely that young people are ever unanimous in seeking change rather than preferring stability, or, if changes happen, their preferred outcomes. Everywhere young people are divided by gender, location, class origins, education, class destinations (anticipated or achieved), ethnicity and religion. Which divisions are especially significant will vary by time and place. It is always necessary to ask exactly which young people took part in particular actions and sought specific outcomes. Fourth, the outcomes of any changes are unlikely ever to be the same for all categories of young people. Outcomes will always be filtered through some combination of the divisions listed above. Fifth, when studying the formation of a new generation and the differences in values and activities between societal generations, researchers should not overlook the family as a unit of integration and continuity. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia young protesters opposing the old regimes and elites were tolerant and supportive of their parents in the home, and vice-versa, even when the views of the generations differed. Informal family networks played a role before and after the revolutions providing young people with support and options that had otherwise been closed by the political and economic changes. Sixth, it is useful to study the role of mass media in opening political opportunities for youth mobilisation. While in the Velvet Revolutions there was radio (e.g. Radio Free Europe) and television broadcasting, protest events later and most prominently in the Arab Spring occurred in the era of social networking sites. Social media in today’s mobilisations ease the creation of agreed symbolic frames of meaning of the events, as well as the transnationalisation of interpretative frames and protest actions. Seventh, researchers must be sensitive to the fact that by 2014 there will be young people who have become politically aware and active post-2011 and for whom the events of that year are history that was made and experienced by others. Very rapidly these young people will swell in number. Finally, we must recall that 1989 would not have happened without Gorbachev whose reforms were intended to revitalise and boost support for communism. This did not happen. Poland’s communists were humiliated on June 4th 1989 then simply abdicated in other East-Central European countries. Elsewhere, most notably in North Africa and other Arab states, and probably in Ukraine during 2013 and 2014, we have seen more recently that events that signal the awakening of a new political generation may simultaneously re-activate older generations.

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RECRUITMENT OF YOUTH POLITICAL ELITES DURING TRANSFORMATIONS IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE AND THE ARAB-MEDITERRANEAN COUNTRIES: A COMPARATIVE APPROACH Siyka Kovacheva, Plamen Nanov, and Stanimir Kabaivanov

INTRODUCTION In 1989 the rising wave of democratization in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) prompted the American scholar Fukuyama (1991) to predict ‘the end of history’. The disintegration of the Warsaw pact followed by that of the Soviet Block opened the road toward freedom, democracy and a market economy to the countries east from the Berlin Wall. The enthusiastic crowds filling the main squares of East European cities rejoiced with optimistic expectations. The positive predictions though missed the economic difficulties, political crises and demographic decline in the first decades of the transition. Yet with varying degrees of depth and speed, the CEE countries succeeded to break with the communist regimes relatively peacefully, establish more or less stable democracies and functioning market economies and join the European Union. The 2011 uprisings in the Arab Mediterranean countries (AMC) twelve years later was met with similarly bright hopes. It seemed that ‘the third wave of democratization’ (Huntington, 1991) had finally reached North Africa and would put an end to the authoritarian regimes in the region, oust the dictators from their golden palaces and bring a long-due prosperity to the people living in the AMCs. Seen from Eastern Europe, the task in the AMC region seemed even easier as market economies were already in force and the needed economic transformations were less radical than they were in the countries with centrally planned economies. Nonetheless, such expectations faded even sooner and by mid-2016 the AMCs with the uncertain exception of Tunisia have returned to the same or even more undemocratic political realities than before 2011. When the protests were spreading in the AMC region and the ostensibly stable regimes proved vulnerable to mass discontent, many scholars pointed at the resemblance between the events in Eastern Europe in 1989 and those in the AMCs in 2011 (Voeten, 2011; Way, 2011). A few years later however even more analysts (Goldstone, 2012; Maogoto and Coleman, 2014; Durac, 2015) engaged in explaining why the results of similar awakening moves were so different. The explanations of the diverging paths in the two regions most often start with the different cultural contexts preceding the mass mobilizations, and the 30

dissimilar processes of modernization underway. Other arguments arise from the political opportunities and constraints both inside and outside of the revolting countries, including the role of international powers such as the USA, EU and the rich Arab states in the Middle East. Yet other explanations take into account the social forces, their strategies and actions in challenging power-holders. What we try to do in this paper is not to provide an allencompassing explanation of the character of the social changes in the two regions but to scrutinize one single aspect – the process of elite recruitment, reproduction and replacement before and after the two great mobilizations focusing on the elite in formation – the young people actively engaged in the pursuit of power. Our analysis is based on literature review, as well as on analysis of empirical data. We build upon studies of young people in Eastern Europe such as the one of the student movement in Bulgaria in the early 1990s (Kovacheva, 1995a). The major source of data on the role and experiences of youth living in the AMC is the SAHWA project (2014-2016) funded by the 7th Framework Program of the European Commission. We use the rich qualitative data set from the ethnographic work conducted by our local partners in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon and quantitative data from representative surveys with 2000 young people in each of those countries carried out in 2015-16. The main research questions in this paper are: How can we explain change, as well as continuity, in the recruitment of youth political elite during social transformations? What roles did youth political elites play in democratic transitions and mass mobilizations as experienced in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the AMC countries in 2011? Given the diversities not only between the two regions but also within them between the constituting countries, it is impossible to create a universal model of youth elite recruitment without taking into consideration the specific social situation in specific historical time. Thus our conclusions are inevitably non-exhaustive and should be viewed as a step towards the understanding of the role of young people in social change in different socioeconomic, political and cultural contexts around the world.

YOUTH POLITICAL ELITE IN THE MAKING – THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK The process of elite formation is strongly influenced by the existing state and economy structures and the dominant culture in societies under study. In academic literature elite recruitment has been studied from different theoretical perspectives, each focusing on different processes: Weberian (authority types), modernization (institution building) and Marxist (political economy). Major questions whose answers have been sought since the classic theories of Mosca, Paretto, and Michels concern the configuration and reproduction or replacement (circulation) of different elite types and how these are enacted in different societies and historical circumstances. There is a broad consensus, that the elite role in strengthening or changing the dominant structures is not only a manifestation of the will of political actors but is constrained by ‘path dependency’ (Stark and Bruzst, 1998; Mahoney, 2000). The forms of recruitment and subsequent role of the political elite are shaped by the burden the past, that is, the historical legacies and durable inheritances from the old regime which serve as building blocks of the new regime. Another strong impact factor, without which the process of elite recruitment in both CEE and AMC region 31

today cannot be understood, is the process of globalization – the role played by international institutions and foreign political and economic networks. The political developments in both regions in the past decades represent highly complex processes of interplay between agency and structure and the study of the formation and role of the political elite should address both sides of the dichotomy. While state institutions are the primary channels for political actions, groups and individuals play a significant role in the political process with the decisions they take and the resources they mobilize for their implementation. Political elites in a given country are heterogeneous not only in their social background and ideological orientation but also in their access to power. Perthes (2004:5) introduced the term ‘politically relevant elite’ to denote the ‘stratum… who wield political influence and power in that they make strategic decisions or participate in decision-making on a national level, contribute to defining political norms and values (including the definition of “national interests”) and directly influence political discourse on strategic issues’. Youth political elites are part of the politically relevant elites in their quality of elites in the making that are supposed to inherit the old ruling and counter elites. The emerging elites act as guarantees for the reproduction of the political system and its stability. At the same time, due to their specific social status in-between the main life domains of education, labor and housing markets, politics and culture, young people have a potential for political innovation and rejuvenation of society (Mitev, 1988). They acquire political relevance not only through their recruitment into the ruling political elite but also as a result of their own political agency and public actions in search of identity. Experiences of major historical events during the period of youth might lead to the formation of specific political generations with their own worldviews and preferred forms of political behavior (Mannheim, 1952). From an analytical perspective two questions in the study of youth elites seem to need pertinent answers. The first one concerns the channels for recruitment of youth political elite which vary in different social contexts. Elections and appointment in the state administration are the two obvious entry points which however do not explain the selection mechanisms hidden behind. Family background either in the more direct form of openly declared inheritance or the more subdued influence of the family economic, cultural and symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1986) is one of the main recruitment mechanisms. Gaining political skills through participation in different state institutions such as the legislative bodies are another significant channel (Perthes, 2004). Hooge and Stolle (2005) point at the youth wings of political parties which play an important role as socializing vehicles and vehicles for recruitment for the political parties. They are social agents for partisanship, ideological orientation and organizational learning processes for the new upcoming political generations. A contrasting channel are the experiences from mass mobilizations which may also bring about to the formation of individuals and groups that can challenge and replace the incumbent elite or be co-opted in it. A second question is about the conditions for replacement of the old elite and its willingness to prevent or allow the entry of new elites into power. One argument focuses on the ability of the regime to keep its capacity of patronage and to provide access of the political and other institutional elites to wealth and power. Way (2011) points at the strong parti32

san ties among the ruling elite in the face of revolutionary threat and in particular the ties between the political rulers and the security forces. In countries with ‘sultanistic’ regimes (Chenabi and Linz, 1998) the strength of the elite comes from the family ties and the expectations and training of the next family generation to keep hold of power. Under the conditions of established democracies, the change of the ruling elite might be seen as the best way to preserve the regime during crisis while at the same time providing the old elite with new opportunities outside of the domain of politics. Participation in successful social movements often capitalizes in gaining access to elite positions in the subsequent social transformation. In the next paragraph we look for answers to these questions first in the developments in CEE around 1989 and then in AMC from 2011 on.

CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN THE FORMATION OF YOUTH POLITICAL ELITE In this section we present an overview of the channels for recruitment of young people into the political relevant elites in the two regions and the role that mass mobilization play in the process of elite circulation.

The case of CEE In the course of the past century the CEE countries experienced at least two turning points in the formation of the political elite: the so called ‘socialist’ revolutions in the 1940s and the ‘gentle’ revolutions in 1989. The communist context of elite recruitment varied in the countries in the region according to their political traditions and economic and cultural developments before the establishment of the one-party regime. Still some common features could be discerned due to the forced unification within the Soviet Block. Thus in the initial period after World War Two, there was a radical replacement of the old national elites with new political leaders for whom the commitment to the communist ideology and the fight against fascism and imperialism acted as significant sources of political capital. However, since the 1970s there was a gradual replacement of the old political cadres with a more competent and professional generation with technocratic skills (Staniszkis, 1991; Bundzulov, 2008). An accompanying process was the ageing of the political elite following the model of the elderly Soviet leaders. The totalitarian character of the communist political system rendered a subordinate role to the youth elite – that of a ‘transmission belt’ of the will of the ruling Party to the young (Mitev, 1985). The main and in many countries the only one youth organization – the Communist Youth League (Komsomol) was built upon the model of the Communist Party and acted as a school for its leaders on the road to a political career. Instead of presenting and defending youth interests as a social group, the Komsomol often had to fight against spreading youth fashions and subcultural activities which were defined as ‘alien’ to the communist ideology and conducive of ‘imperialistic’ influence. This important role of youth leaders determined their careful selection by the party cadres based on full loyalty to the Party. In practice the leading positions in the youth organization were acquired mainly through family connections – the networks of patron-client relationships (Mozni, 2003). A notorious example was the appointment of Lyudmila Zhivkova – the daughter of

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the first secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party as Head of the Committee of Culture (equal to ministerial rank) at the age of 33 in the otherwise gerontocratic elite in Bulgaria. The membership in the Komsomol was considered a precondition for political reliability and its lack closed the door not only into the political elite but also to studies at the university, to jobs in administrative positions in the state owned economy and even to leisure facilities or travel abroad which was anyway limited to the countries – members of the Soviet camp. While proclaiming gender equality in ideology and law, the youth organization promoted mostly men to the higher ranks of the organization (Kitanov, 1981). Young women had to take the responsibility of the triple role attributed to them by the Party: productive workers, mothers and lower-rank political activists (See Kjuranov, 1978). The formation of a counter elite in the face of the dissident movements in countries such as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia was well developed while in others such as Bulgaria and Romania it was harshly repressed by the state control apparatus and young people were discouraged to join by adult dissidents in order not to ruin their chances for education and work (Wallace and Kovatcheva, 1998). The ‘Gentle revolutions’ (’velvet’, ‘singing’) in CEE in 1989 were largely peaceful citizens’ mobilizations resulting in the change of the political regime and the economic system. These were not truly youth revolts (Roberts, 2015) as they were composed of members of different social strata and diverse age groups and the leading role was allocated to established (and older) dissidents. Nevertheless, young people were highly visible in the street protest scenes which were transmitted by the electronic media all over the region and beyond and acted as a spillover of discontent and hope for change. High school and university students were the leading social group among youth. In countries such as Bulgaria where the political change was realized ‘from above’ and proceeded more slowly, young people organized strike committees and independent student unions insisting upon the radicalization of the change (Kovacheva, 1995a). The regime change did not result in a revolutionary break in the political elite. The new elite was composed of four main groups: former communist nomenclature, dissidents, representatives from the pre-communist elites and people from the ‘street protests’ (Bundzulov et al, 2008) Research into the composition and mobility among the elites in CEE (Szelenyi and Szelenyi, 1995) found empirical evidence for both reproduction and circulation processes. Thus while the old political elites in Hungary and Poland shrunk somewhat with some individuals experiencing downward mobility and many more joined the ranks of the new technocracy, still in both countries a quarter to a third of the new political elite had held elite jobs prior to the transition. About a fifth of the new power-holders had been non-elites before 1989 and they were mostly recruited from the middle strata and not from the bottom of the communist social stratification. A significant group among the new political elite were humanistic intellectuals. The rejuvenation of the democratic politics in CEE was strongly felt in the first years after the regime change. In Hungary a youth party was formed and many young people entered the new democratic parliament as MPs. The Communist youth organizations in most countries were quickly abolished or dissolved themselves and their cadres sought political engagement in the reconstituted communist parties or left politics altogether to pursue careers in business and other sectors of the economy (Kovacheva, 1995b). The new youth 34

leaders came from outside the official youth organizations and acquired experience in the course of the mass spontaneous actions. Some of them joined the ranks of the newly formed or restored parties and their involvement in the mass demonstrations acted as a significant political resource. A key role for the recruitment of young people into the political elite after 1989 played considerations of personal or political loyalty rather than meritocratic criteria – what Szelenyi and Szelenyi (1995: 632) called ‘administered circulation’. Interviews with young people who joined the parties that were re-constituted from the pre-WWII politics in Bulgaria argued that they were led by the desire to restore ‘traditions’ and claim their political ‘inheritance’ from the past (Krasteva, 2010). Those who entered the ranks of the reformed communist party insisted upon continuity and stability. On the contrary, participants in the student chains around the parliament in Bulgaria in 1990 and the two subsequent nation-wide occupations of university buildings framed their protest by the desire for a total replacement from power of all those ‘who had lived in slavery in order a true democracy to be born’ (Kovacheva, 1995a: 39). Besides their concern with a new morality in politics, the protestors viewed their collective actions as a search for selfexpression and individualization. As one of the interviewed leaders explained in his interview: ‘We were tired of being equal with faces as grey as the concrete roads and buildings around us. We wanted to be recognized as still alive, with various faces and thoughts behind them’ 24 years old man, member of the student strike committee in Plovdiv, 1994 (ibid: 42). Cultural contests were consistent with political and economic confrontations and gave birth to strong age and gender stereotyping in the representation of the protests (Kovacheva, 2000). The competing sides used negative images of the opponents – ‘the old red woman’ for the supporters of the transformed communist party and ‘the young blue hooligan’ for the newly formed parties. Not only in Bulgaria but also in Hungary, Slovakia and elsewhere in CEE the promotion of democratic politics mingled with conservative gender ideologies (Corrin, 1992; Einhorn, 1993). After the democratic consolidation of the multi-party political system in CEE countries and their accession to the European Union, the reproduction of the political elite became the dominant trend often at the expense of lack of enough openness to prevent counterselection. Today young people in the region are less visible in politics, less interested and less active on the political scene and more heterogeneous in their political beliefs (Roberts, 2009; Amna and Ekman, 2013; Hurrelmann and Weichert, 2015). The channels for recruitment into the political elite are mainly the youth sections of the established political parties as well as the numerous youth associations that became a target group for training and recruitment by various mostly Western political foundations. While the symbolic capital of the young being ‘non-routine’ and ‘non-corruption’ is still often mobilized by recruiters, the educational credentials, technocratic and organizational skills have grown in importance. A prominent example of the new wave was the entry into politics of the so called Yuppies in Bulgaria – young people with diplomas from prestigious Western universities and experience from jobs in large international companies who were invited to become ministers in the former King’s government in Bulgaria in 2001-2005. Since the beginning of the new century most youth leaders have started presenting themselves as profes35

sionals rather than as following a ‘calling’ in Weberian terminology. Another ‘shortcut’ into the political elite is the formation of populist parties with ‘cash and carry’ (pragmatic) young politicians (Krasteva, 2010). The youth political elite in CEE has been attributed an important role in the official public discourse both before and after 1989. The citizens’ mobilization, including that of young people, during the 1989 revolutions in the region induced the regime change and allowed a wider elite circulation and some rejuvenation of the politically relevant elite. For the majority of youth twenty-five years later the main concerns are focused on their own life course transitions and they search for other forms of self-expression and public engagement. The aspiration to get into the political elite is of interest to a few among them.

The case of AMC The social context of youth elite recruitment in the AMC counties is very different in terms of demography, politics, culture and economy from that of CEE in the period before and after the revolutionary wave in 2011. In addition, the five South and East Mediterranean countries in the SAHWA project are a diverse group in their colonial past, post-colonial development and present-day situation. In this section we focus more on the processes in Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco – the countries which experienced protest mobilizations in 2011. The wave of social change fostered by the end of WWII which swept through CEE establishing communist regimes washed over the AMC region as well, however with contrasting consequences: creating conditions for gaining independence from the colonial powers, building autonomous states and managing wider social modernization. A common trend in both regions however was the rejuvenation of the political elite. The nationalist movements dominated by the burgeoning middle class in Tunisia and the army in Egypt became the new political actors in the process of state formation. The first generation of political elite was largely recruited on the basis of its political capital of having participated in the movements for independence, was of a younger age and of a more modest social origin – party politicians and military officers. However, the traditional elite – the landed upper class – continued to be part of the politically relevant elite resisting the reforms (Allison, 2015). With the development of the market economy and mass education in the 1970s and 1980s, new social strata started to feed up the political elite – the higher status layers of the bourgeoisie with technocratic and administrative skills (Sumpf, 2014; Hinnebusch, 2015). In Egypt and Tunisia the elite became more urban and better educated. Morocco, however, persisted in keeping the highest political positions for the traditional elite coming from the rural notability with clientele connections to the royal family. The absence of significant developmental programs devalued technocratic skills and the rise of young educated generation was feared for its radicalism and eventual mobilization against the regime. Protests were prevented not only by repression but also by patronage (Storm, 2014). It was only after the two attempted military coups in the 1970s that the Moroccan political system started to liberalize and allow some activities of opposition parties. The two decades before the 2011 uprising in the AMCs were a period of significant ageing of the politically relevant elite and stagnation of the process of elite replacement in the region. The neoliberal trend in the development of the economy was matched with a rising 36

foreign debt and creditor pressures for austerity. The privatization largely took a crony form allowing the ruling families and other members of the political elite to take unsecured loans from the banks and buy state property often not paying back the loans. Analysts have paid attention to the role of middle class in the region as a social stratum not only with some political influence but also ‘with an incentive to translate political participation into political influence’ (Sumpf, 2014). This is not a homogeneous group and its members vary along numerous dimensions, for example, urban-rural divide, modern or traditional professions, gender, national or immigrant origin. Two specific groups in the composition of politically relevant elite in AMC were the Islamists and the army leadership. While the catholic religion also played a role in the accumulation of discontent against the communist regime in CEE, mainly in Poland, the role of Islam in the AMCs was much stronger and with greater political consequences. Islam gained importance through the development of national identity in opposition to Western powers and in the last decades of the 20th century it acted as an expression of the discontent of the poorest social strata marginalized from the economy and politics (Sika, 2012). The army is another specific social group with a significant place among the political elite in the AMC countries. The army and the security forces provided a strong support for the communist rule in Eastern Europe and their new stance of non-interference in the events of 1989 was a precondition for the spread and success of the anti-communist movements. In the AMC the role of the military elite is more complex and diverse. Thus the Egyptian Army is much stronger and politically active, while the Tunisian Army is smaller in size and largely apolitical. The politically relevant elite among the army is also diverse – in Tunisia the army elite is more technocratic than the one in Egypt which tends to rely on its political capital and anti-Islamist stand. In most countries there were attempts to co-opt trade union and opposition party leadership in order to endorse privatization laws which increased the numbers among the aspiring elite groups – a process named by Hinnebusch (2015) as ‘elite overproduction’. The limited opportunities for new elite recruitment were among the significant factors for the discontent resulting in the 2011 uprisings, together with the mass impoverishment and unemployment particularly among the young population. Considering the role of young people in politics in the period before 2011, we can say that apart from the national liberation struggles and the first post-colonial generation of politicians and state builders, youth was largely excluded from power and invisible on the political scene. Elite recruitment among the young was based on family economic, social and cultural capital. The young were not seen as possessing the necessary administrative skills for the institution building during the state formation and the educated youth were considered suspicious and possibly rebellious or at least not enough obeying to authority and tradition. The main (and largely accepted as legitimate) mechanism for recruitment into the countries’ top positions was the preparation of the ageing leaders’ offspring. The notorious examples of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, Gamal Mubarak, Bashar al-Assad, Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh demonstrate that this was true both for the monarchies and the republics in the region. Elite circulation was induced once again with the mass mobilization wave rising in the AMCs in 2010-11 against the irresponsible authoritarian political regimes. The opening of political opportunity structures made youth visible on the political scene and young people in the AMCs filled in the squares in Tunisian, Egyptian and Moroccan cities, which was reminiscent to the events in 1989 in CEE. The 20 February Movement in Morocco empow37

ered thousands of youth activists to take to the streets. In Egypt the protests gathered both marginalized and well educated, middle-class ‘Facebook’ youth, unorganized and organized groups such as the Youth of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Youth of Kefaya, the Front of Coptic youth and young people from the Tomorrow Party, the Democratic Party, the Labor Party, and the Wafd Party (Durac, 2015; Korany, 2015). Not only the physical spaces in Arab cities but also the virtual spaces of the new social media became ‘discursive territories’ (Christensen and Christensen, 2015) for youth selfexpression, identity formation and political communication. Young people‘s postings on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs influenced political debates in the region, communicated political messages and were used as tools for organizing gatherings and other protest actions (Khalil, 2012; AlSayyad and Guvenc, 2013; Markham, 2014). As in CEE in 1989, the international media magnified the power of the mass mobilization in the Arab cities spreading protest well beyond its initial locations. However, while the interplay between traditional and new media fostered the creation of agreed symbolic meaning of the events, it did not reach to all young people in the AMCs, nor to all public spaces and geographical territories in the countries starting the protests. And again similar to the Gentle revolutions in CEE, many other groups, besides youth, took part in the uprisings: the workers’ movement which was particularly strong in Tunisia, the urban middle classes such as the Kefaya movement in Egypt, liberals, leftists (Beinin, 2014; Sumpf, 2014; Boubekeur, 2016). These movements remained separate, often acting in competition with one another, prone to internal fracturing and not able to create ‘collective identities’ and coherent ‘action frames’ which classical social movement theorists (MacAdam, 1982; Tilly, 1998) consider a precondition for the rise and success of a social movement. The movements did not have clear ideological inclinations and their slogans contained general references to human rights, democracy, justice (Sika, 2012). These features of the Arab uprisings of 2011 prompted scholars to question the utility of using the social movement theory (Durac, 2015) or to name them ‘nonmovements’ (Bayat, 2010). What is important for our analysis in this paper is that despite the mass mobilization, a notable change in political leadership to a certain extent could be observed only in Tunisia and Egypt, while in Morocco the king responded with a power-sharing initiative and the political elite continued to hold on power. In the course of a few years after the uprisings deep divisions opened up between the power holders in the state, the secular oppositions and the Islamic forces which gradually reversed the processes of democratization. In Tunisia democratization went further because of the historic traditions of trade union power, less were the democratic changes in Egypt due to the obstruction of the military dominated state and least in Morocco where the monarch’s ruling offered only semi-pluralistic practices. In Egypt after the overthrow of Morsi in 2013 the political elite was challenged again and some of the leaders of the 2011 uprising were arrested such as Ahmed Maher and Alaa Abd El Fattah and Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide faces numerous accusations in court (Gonzales, 2016). In addition, some well-known members of the political elite from the Mubarak era have been reinstated, as Asseburg and Wimmen (2016) point out. At present another group is highly visible among the youth elite – what Sukarieh (2012) name ‘Young Global Arabs’. Similar to the Yuppies in CEE, they have been educated in the West or in the few prestigious universities in the AMC region, they own local businesses 38

and/or work as heads of NGOs. The channel for elite recruitment seems to have moved back to the family capitals, however, with an increasing role of the cultural capital. Antonakis-Nasrif (2016) also highlights the role of the highly educated professionals with experiences from working abroad and contacts with international organizations in the political life in post-revolutionary Tunisia. In Egypt the military and in Tunisia the trade union federation started to act in the name of ‘restoration of peace and order’, a role similar to that of the Moroccan king (Kerrow, 2014). The growing terrorist threats in the region further strengthen the positions of the traditional autocracies among the political elite insisting upon preserving the ‘prestige of the state’ (Mousa, 2014) and bringing the promise of peace, stability and prosperity. Corruption is another challenge to democracy in the region and its scope has been widened in Tunisia with the formation of the new coalition which Ghiles (2016) describes as a deal between the old and the new elite aiming to avoid a more radical break with the inheritance from the Ben Ali family.

POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT AND YOUTH ELITE RECRUITMENT: NEW EVIDENCE The SAHWA survey did not aim to measure the degree of reproduction or circulation among the politically relevant elites in AMC and the object of research was the general youth population (15-29 year old). The design included a structured questionnaire delivered to young people from a representative sample of the households in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon. About 2000 filled in questionnaires in each of the five countries were collected and analyzed using SPSS. The questions covered various topics relevant to youth lives. In this section we discuss the data about young people’s forms of political behavior, and their aspirations and expectations about politics. We then compare these results with the qualitative data collected via focus groups, narrative interviews, life stories and ethnographic observations conducted by the local teams in three sites in each country. Even in Tunisia – the country which sparked the fire of discontent that spread over the region in 2011 – only a tiny minority in the survey sample declare to have taken part in political activities at the time and the survey team in Egypt, the other country which experienced mass political mobilization, indicated a widespread reluctance among respondents to speak about their own participation in the uprising and seemed to ‘fear to announce that they are affiliated to a certain political or social group’ (National Case Study, Egypt 2016, p. 16). The survey data sets reveal that involvement in political activities which provides young people with necessary experience and skills for the entry into the politically relevant elite in their countries is not wide spread. Avoiding the term “membership”, the questionnaire used a wide indicator of engagement – “belonging to a political party and a political movement as a participant, donor, volunteer or sympathizer”. Between 3% and 16% of the surveyed youth declare such forms of involvement in the activities of a political party and similar but lower are the shares of the active supporters of political movements. Figure 1 demonstrates significant country differences in the level of political engagement with youth in Morocco and Lebanon being most active. 39

Figure 1. Forms of active involvement in institutional politics among youth in AMC (%) 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Egypt

Algeria

Tunisia

political party

Lebanon

Morocco

political movement

Youth Survey 2016 Participation in unconventional or protest politics can also serve a route for youth entry into the politically relevant elite. Involvement in non-institutional politics is somewhat more common among youth than that in institutional politics. Figure 2 compares the rate of participation in various forms outside political parties among youth in the five countries. The young respondents in Algeria report the highest shares in these non-institutional channels: 20% have joined strikes and 19% demonstrations in the past year, followed by the young in Morocco with 17% for demonstrations and 16% for strikes. Those forms are very rare among young people in Egypt and Tunisia and the shares of those actively involved cannot reach 5% for the past twelve months. Lebanese youth take a middle position. Violent actions are the least common form in all countries. The new social media are used for political information and mobilization most often in Lebanon with 11% of young people having engaged in such activities via the Internet over one year period. We should note however that this form does not replace the other forms of active engagement in non-institutional politics and comes third overall. The comparison between the forms of non-institutional participation in the five countries suggests a situation in which the countries with higher involvement in the 2011 events such as Egypt and Tunisia have much lower levels of this kind of participation than the countries which did not experience a revolutionary wave at this time – Algeria and Lebanon. Besides the fear from openly claiming political participation a probable explanation is young people’s disappointment with the low efficacy of such form of political activities five years after the events.

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Figure 2. Forms of active involvement in non-institutional politics among youth in AMC (%)

Youth Survey 2016 Active participants in political life in AMC are mostly men, living in urban areas, living independently from their parents. Among the older age group – over 20 years of age those who have participated in protest activities during the events of 2011 in Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco and continue to be politically active at present form a distinctive group. They tend to be young people with higher education, working in stable employment in the official economy and not the unemployed and the informally employed. Those who have grown up in families where political issues are discussed ‘often’ and ‘very often’ tend to get involved in various forms of political activities although the significance of this factor is not so strong as that of young people’s own education. All in all, the life transitions of the activists in politics are more successful than those of politically inactive youth (Roberts et al, 2016). Civic organizations are more popular among young people in AMC. Up to 40% of the survey samples in AMC participate, sympathize, donate money and do voluntary work for non-governmental organizations. The proliferation of youth NGOs in the region was confirmed by the fact that as many as 153 youth groups responded to the call of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces in Egypt to participate in the ‘national dialogue’ (Korany, 2015). The qualitative data shed light on young people’s understandings of politics five years after the protest wave in AMC. In their own words, young interviewees explain their dislike of getting involved in politics. In a focus group discussion in Tunisia (TN FG 4, p. 6), the general opinion was that after the ousting of Ben Ali politicians were not dealing with the pressing problems in the country and had neglected the issues for which people revolted; they had not kept their promises. In his biographical interview, a Tunisian young man (TN_LS_5e, male_19 years) was highly vocal about his disaffection with politics for he was 41

sure that no matter what his personal opinion was, the politicians in Tunisia ‘will do what they want!". The focus group members in Algeria stated that politics was still ‘a confiscated sphere’ for the majority of youth and their personal involvement did not matter. Elections were only a pretense for democracy and a means for reproducing the elite: ‘We know the winning candidate and party in advance’ (National Case Study, Algeria 2016). The Moroccan report (National Case Study, Morocco 2016) also denotes young people’s disinterest in politics and distrust in politicians and political institutions. Despite youth participation in the February 20 Movement, young people are still perceived by the ruling political elite (and the population at large, according to the report) as immature and irresponsible. The young participants in the ethnographic study commonly referred to those in power as ‘them’ in opposition to ‘us’ (ordinary people). Many interviewees spoke about their disappointment with the ruling parties even when they had had high expectations before these parties came into power. Governments in the region have introduced programs for recruiting well educated young people and training them for managerial positions in politics and economy, such as the Presidential Leadership Program in Egypt in 2015 (Korany et al, 2016). The young people however often evaluate the measures introducing quotas for youth participation in governance as mere ‘diplomatic schemes’ used by the ageing political elite to allow only secondary roles to active youth (National Case Study, Algeria 2016). Young people believe that their representatives in the political institutions get their positions through clientelism and connections (maarifa) and care only for their own personal interests. There are also youth cooperation schemes funded by the Council of Europe, and other international or foreign country sources which have difficulties reaching young people with fewer opportunities (Göksel and Şenyuva, 2016). Foreign programs for political training in particular, such as the Tunisian School of Politics, do play a role in developing skills and gaining experience relevant for recruitment into the political elite, However, they do not enjoy a high confidence among Arab Mediterranean youth who widely believe that they profit ‘the rich and the powerful” (Laine et al, 2016: 15). Then who are those among youth who are interested in politics, get involved in some forms of political participation and aspire to become members of the politically relevant elite in their countries? In the ethnographic data set there is one focus group of politically active young people in Tunisia. Their views provide insights for understanding youth political elite and the ways young people get engaged into politics. In this focus group only one out of seven activists claimed to have been influenced by his father’s commitment to politics. For the rest, it was a particular type of family socialization encouraging autonomy that played a role in their taking an active political stance. Another significant factor for many was education in general and more specifically the opinions of respected teachers and the knowledge of foreign languages which allowed access to Western music, culture and information more generally. I discovered American rap which expresses protest, then Rock, which is very rebellious to society, to the State, but also to religion and family, in a word, to anything that oppresses! (TN_FG_1, p. 3).

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The SAHWA documentary film also shows that young people’s creative involvement in arts (music, cinema) becomes a way of taking an independent perspective on political issues and for criticizing the government, be it in Tunisia, Egypt or Lebanon. The young man from Alexandria who was involved in film making was very critical of the role of the army in public life in Egypt which in his opinion tried to engulf all spheres of public life. The army has an economic monopoly… Army pumps are now extinguishing fire [because there is no civil service fire department in Egypt]… I am so worried that if the market doesn’t produce movies, the army will start doing it instead… To protect the cinema, the army will start to produce movies’ (SAHWA documentary film, 35:15 minute on). Four of the young people in the focus group have taken part in the 2011 revolution by joining the demonstrations and strikes, posting or sharing photo and video material and expressing opinions online. Two of the active focus group participants who were too young to get involved personally in the events explained that still it was the 2011 popular revolt which prompted their interest in politics and they became active after that. Another political event, the assassination of the prominent politician Chokri Belaîd, was a turning point for a 16-year-old woman in her relation to politics. She accepted the values and ideology of the victim and could quote from memory parts of his media interviews and speeches. The active young people were disappointed with the present day developments in Tunisia. One of them shared his frustration: Since 2011 nothing has changed, nothing took place actually. The senior responsible arrives in Gafsa, makes a tour of the city, and then says: ‘everything is fine’. No! …the only new thing is the opening of the mall Carrefour. (LS-TN-3e-M-26, p. 8). He decided to withdraw from political activism altogether, but the others in the group persisted in trying to influence politics from the outside – through their involvement in civil society. We could define this group as a counter elite in the making on the basis of their public engagement (in organizations or through arts) which they perceive as a means for criticism and pressure on the ruling political elite. In the words of the young rapper from the Tunisian report: ‘I address the power, I tell them that they should move on and change things’ (National case study, Tunisia 2016, p. 13). The ethnographic studies confirmed the role of youth centres for elite recruitment. The Tunisian report underlines the significance of young people’s engagement in the activities of youth centres which provide information, raises awareness about various topical issues and directly form groups of “youth leaders” (National Case Study, Tunisia, 2016: 10) who are then invited to take part in various national and international meetings. Another significant finding from the qualitative study is that if it is difficult for young men to influence politics in AMC it is twice more difficult for young women to do so. Even though women were present in the protests in Egypt, El-Sharnouby’s (2015) analysis of the protest imagery made evident that the image of young protestors had masculine connota43

tions rendering centrality to the notions of manhood and responsibility. After the uprisings, political power remains a sphere for men mostly, as the Tunisian National Case Study (2016) demonstrates, while women who have political opinions get involved at best in NGOs and trade unions but not in political parties. Emblematic is the story of a young woman who tried to voice support for the Palestinian cause while still at school. This was met by harsh reprisal by the educational authorities and a slap in the face by her father. Similar observation is reported in the Algerian national case study (2016) – the socially recognized place for women is their home where they are protected by their parents and husbands.

CONCLUSIONS The ‘end of history’ proclaimed by Fukyama did not materialize either in Eastern Europe or in North Africa by 2016. Comparing the elite formation in CEE twenty-five years and in AMC five years after the mass mobilizations highlights more differences than similarities. The changes in the functioning of the economy, the political regime and elite replacement were more radical and substantial to the North than to the South of the Mediterranean. Both internal and external factors prevented significant democratization in the AMCs and the reproduction of the political elite and of the mechanisms for its recruitment were among them. While in both regions the protest movements created a window of opportunity for elite replacement, it was largely averted by means of repression and cooptation. Youth as a political elite in the making were not given a real access to power. Stronger patriarchal traditions in the family and public life in AMC countries still produce distrust in society towards the abilities of the young to take responsible decision and participate in governance. While political leaders in the AMC now pay greater attention to the young generation and the problems in their social integration, offering quotas and training to get into state administration, the young people remain disillusioned from political participation and distrustful of politicians and political institutions. They turn to other forms and spaces of self-expression while being concerned with the barriers they face in the search for personal autonomy and social justice. Describing the present day low interest of young people in the AMCs in politics and distrust in institutional forms of political participation, we should recognize that the picture of the mass attitudes towards state institutions among East European youth is not that different. Since we do not have truly comparative results from empirical studies with the same methodology in both regions, we cannot measure the scope of the difference. What we can argue as a reliable result from the analysis in this paper, however, is that the openness of the political elite to young recruits is a measure of democracy in itself. Skillful negotiations between incumbent and counter elites, the forms and levels of international support are significant factors for social change but they cannot replace the rejuvenation role that that young people’s entry among the politically relevant elites in their countries plays on the path to social transformation. Another conclusion from a research perspective is that there should be more attention to the processes of recruitment of youth political elite when studying the functioning of political systems and that a greater sensitivity is needed to all forms and spaces of youth participation in public life.

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Mannheim K (1952), ‘The problem of generations’, in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, London: Routledge. Maogoto, J. and A. Coleman 2014 ‘The Arab Spring’s Constitutional Indigestion: Has Democracy Failed in the Middle East?’ Liverpool Law Review, 35: 105-134. Markham, T. 2014 ‘Social media, protest cultures and political subjectivities of the Arab spring’, Media, Culture & Society, 36(1): 89 –104, DOI: 10.1177/0163443713511893. Mitev, P.-E. 1988 Youth and Social Change. Sofia: People’s Youth Press. Mitev, P.-E. 1985 Youth – Problems and Studies. Sofia: People’s Youth Press. Moroccan country report, SAHWA. Mousa, A. 2014 ‘The Problem with Arab Political Elites’, Opinion (The English Editions of Asharq Al-Awsat), April 28. Perthes, V. 2004 ‘Politics and Elite Change in the Arab World’, in V. Perthes (ed.) Arab Elites. Negotiating the Politics of Change. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, pp. 1-34. Roberts, K. Youth in Transitions. Eastern Europe and the West. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Roberts, K. 2015 ‘Youth mobilisations and political generations: young activists in politicalchange movements during and since the twentieth century’, Journal of Youth Studies, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2015.1020937.20162016 Roberts, K., S. Kovacheva and S. Kabaivanov 2016 ‘Modernization theory meets Tunisia’s Young during and since the Revolution of 2011’, paper prepared for WP7 of SAHWA project. Sahwa documentary film ‘Khamsa’. http://www.sahwa.eu/EVENTS/SAHWA-events/SAHWADocumentary-is-available-online (accessed 7.10.2016) Sika, N. 2012 ‘Youth Political Engagement in Egypt: From Abstention to Uprising’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 39:2, 181-199, DOI: 10.1080/13530194.2012.709700 Staniszkis, J. 1991 The Dynamics of Breakthrough in Eastern Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press. Stark, D. & Bruszt, L. 1998 Postsocialist Pathways. Transforming Politics and Property in East Central Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Storm, L. 2014 Party Politics and the Prospects for Democracy in North Africa. Boulder: Lynne Riener Publishers. Sukarieh, M. 2012 ‘From revolutionaries to terrorists: The emergence of “youth” in the Arab world and the discourse of globalization’, Interface, 4 (2): 424 – 437. Sumpf, D. 2014 ‘The Middle Class in the Arab Region and Their Political Participation – A Research and Policy Agenda’, UN-ESCWA Economic Development and Globalization Division Working Paper Series. Szelenyi, I. and S. Szelenyi 1995 ‘Circulation or reproduction of elites during the postcommunist transformation of Eastern Europe’, Theory and Society, 24: 615-638. Tilly, C. 1998 Durable Inequality. Los Angeles: UC Press. Tunisian national report, SAHWA. Voeten, E. 2011 Similarities and Differences between Eastern Europe in 1989 and the Middle East in 2011, available at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-milessquare/2011/06/similarities_and_differences_b029919.php, accessed 8.05.2016. Wallace, C. and S. Kovatcheva 1998 Youth in Society. The Construction and Deconstruction of Youth in East and West Europe. London: Macmillan Way, L. 2011 ‘The Lessons of 1989’, Journal of Democracy, 22(4):17-27

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Data National Case Study. Algeria. (2016) Centre de Recherche en Economie Appliquée pour le Développement (CREAD) / SAHWA research project. National Case Study. Tunisia. (2016) Center of Arab Woman for Training and Research (CAWTAR) / SAHWA research project. National Case Study. Egypt. (2016) The American University in Cairo / SAHWA research project. National Case Study. Lebanon. (2016) Lebanese American University / SAHWA research project. National Case Study. Morocco. (2016) The HEM Business School SAHWA research project. SAHWA documentary film (2016) SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015 datasets from Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon and Egypt. SAHWA Survey – Lebanon (2016). Lebanese American University. SAHWA Survey – Tunisia (2016). Center of Arab Women for Training and Research. SAHWA Survey – Egypt (2016). The American University in Cairo. SAHWA Survey – Morocco (2016). Institut des Hautes Etudes de Management (HEM). SAHWA Survey – Algeria (2016). The Centre de Recherche en Economie Appliquée pour le Développement (CREAD).

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MODERNISATION THEORY MEETS TUNISIA’S YOUTH DURING AND SINCE THE REVOLUTION OF 2011 Ken Roberts, Siyka Kovacheva and Stanimir Kabaivanov

INTRODUCTION Why revisit the Arab Spring? First, because many questions about these ‘events of 2011’ remain unanswered, and the passage of time and additional evidence now available enable these questions to be addressed. Second, because the answers have relevance beyond idle curiosity about what happened in 2011. We shall show that modernisation theory enables us to reframe hitherto unanswered questions and offer answers which have much wider relevance. The new evidence is from a survey conducted during late-2015 and early2016 among a nationally representative sample of 2000 15-29 year olds in Tunisia, the country where the wave of uprisings in 2011 began. The main objectives of this paper are to find out who were the most politically active in 2011 and remain so at present, to outline the values that underpin youth political activism and on this basis, to provide explanations for the paradox between young Tunisians’ overwhelming support for democracy alongside intense disappointment with the outcomes. We justify our selection of modernisation theory as an appropriate framework for setting North Africa’s and the Middle-East’s events of 2011 in global and historical contexts. The following passages proceed by identifying knowledge gaps that remain after all the research and commentary since 2011. We give details of the investigation with which we try to fill some of the remaining knowledge gaps, then present our evidence on exactly how many and which of Tunisia’s young people played direct roles in bringing about their country’s 2011 revolution, together with the similarities and differences between these activists and the rest of their age group. We conclude with evidence that Tunisia’s fledgling democracy is still fragile but is likely to prove resilient, and the implications for modernisation theory of the character of this new democracy and the views of its young adult supporters.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: MODERNISATION THEORY Sociology’s original 19th century theories of what was then called ‘evolution’ claimed that all societies were following the same historical trajectory with European countries at the head. Since then, this ‘all on the same track’ theory has suffered successive apparently fatal challenges, which have all been followed by revivals, the latest in response to the 49

‘events of 1989-91’ when communist regimes fell in Eastern Europe, and all the new independent states that were formed following the break-up of the Soviet Union abandoned communism. Democracy and the capitalist market economy seemed destined to triumph all over the world, which would mean, as the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama (1992) declared provocatively but sceptically, that we have reached ‘the end of history’. However, the strongest support for modernisation theory, the preferred current name for the now well-worn ‘all on the same track’ thesis, is from the World Values Surveys which have noted the same two value shifts over time in all countries where the research has been conducted. The first of these value shifts is from traditional to rational values. The second is from survival or security to self-expression values. The evidence from these surveys shows that history always leaves an imprint, thus accounting for persistent differences between modern societies. Notwithstanding these differences, there are said to be important worldwide similarities in the outcomes of modernisation. Shifts towards rational and selfexpression values are said to exercise reciprocal influence leading to the ‘liberation’ of market economies and demands for democracy, both of which confer greater scope for individual choices and undermine traditional authorities whether monarchies or religions. The evidence from the World Values Surveys indicates that these value shifts always begin among young adults, specifically the better-educated who live in major cities, then spread outwards and upwards throughout all age groups through cohort replacement (Dalton and Welzel, 2014; Inglehart, 1977, 1997; Welzel, 2013; Welzel et al, 2003). However, Fukuyama’s (sceptical) proclamation of the end of history was followed quickly by another American political scientist, Samuel Huntington (1996), counter-predicting a renewed clash of older, pre-communist civilisations, mainly between Islam and the Christian West. This view gained enormous credibility following 9/11 in 2001. However, far less provocatively it has been argued that Asian countries have been pioneering their own versions of market economies and democracy, and also, in any case, that there are significant differences between the American and European versions (Martinelli, 2007). If so, we must recognise the possibility of the emergence of further Middle-East and North African versions. ‘Multiple modernities’ is the rival to the ‘all on the same track’ modernisation theory (Eisenstadt, 2000). It might initially appear that the legacies of the Arab Spring constitute a set-back for modernisation theory. All the countries which experienced the ‘events of 2011’ were already market economies, at least in respect of consumer markets, and throughout the previous decade they had been adopting neo-liberal macro-economic policies, thereby earning the praise of international financial institutions (see Shenker, 2016). None except Lebanon, which experienced only a tepid Arab Spring, could be described as democracies in 2010, and only one of the others (Tunisia) has subsequently created a still surviving (in 2016) multi-party democracy. However, we will show that addressing previously unanswered questions about the Arab Spring leads to a more nuanced appraisal of modernisation theory. Asselburg and Wimmer (2016) argue, and we agree, that the ‘events of 2011’ are best conceived as contested and open-ended attempts at transformation. Democracy has not swept across the entire region, yet there has been change everywhere. There are more active political parties and movements. All the regimes must now contend with pluralism (Cavatorta, 2015). There may be no entirely new regimes containing no old faces, but there has been change everywhere (Rivetti, 2015). Brownlee, Masoud and Reynolds (2015) 50

have observed that although all the attempted revolutions in Europe in 1848 failed to establish democracies at that time, they added impetus to pressure for change that eventually led to the spread of democracy throughout the continent. Tunisia may be leading its region along a modernising path but, if so, could this be towards a distinctly Arabic/Islamic modernity?

Some knowns Some questions about ‘the events of 2011’ have already been answered either by recent history or research evidence gathered at the time or during the intervening years. In 2011 it was plausible to anticipate a North Africa and Middle-East repeat of ‘the events of 1989’ and what followed, though this was always unlikely because the 2011 protests were in countries with no histories of communism from which to depart and were already consumer market economies. None were Western-type democracies. In 2011 this was a plausible outcome, but as noted above and discussed further below, during and since 2011 only Tunisia has taken significant and (so far) lasting steps in this direction. We now know that ‘the events of 2011’ did not signal the birth and mobilisation of a new political generation in North Africa and the Middle-East. We now know that the prominence of young people in the protests owed more to the demography of the countries than the over-representation of the young, and that all age groups were present and all their voices could be heard amid the protests in Tunis and Cairo (Brym et al, 2014; Steavenson, 2015). Surveys have not produced evidence of change over time or differences by age in political orientations that a new political generation would create (Hoffman and Jamal, 2012; Rizzo et al, 2014). It appears that the most recent new political generations in North Africa were formed in the 1970s and continue to recruit new cohorts of young people. In the 1970s these new cohorts became the countries’ post-independence generation. The liberators of the countries were in power and new incoming youth and adult cohorts were dissatisfied with the outcomes (Tessler, 1976, 2015; Tessler and Miller-Gonzales, 2015). Arguably, this dissatisfaction can only have intensified over time, and by 2011 a greatly enlarged new political generation could have swept incumbent political elites aside for ever, but unlike in Eastern Europe in 1989, this has not happened during or since 2011, even in Tunisia. We already know about the ‘condition of young people’ throughout the Arab Mediterranean region in 2011. We know about the demographic surge, the high levels of unemployment and even more widespread informal employment. We know about the pressure on housing (Desrues, 2012; Hammouda, 2010; Murphy, 2012; Population Council, 2011; Roudi, 2011). These conditions have awaited increasingly urbanised and well-educated young people. In some countries by 2011 the university educated were the young adults who were at greatest risk of unemployment (Bogaert and Emperador, 2011; Dhillon and Yousef, 2009). Our new evidence confirms these features of youth’s condition. There have been no changes since 2011, except further deterioration in young people’s job prospects in some countries, especially those in which tourism had become a significant business sector (see Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2015). However, we also know that ‘conditions’ or ‘structure’ can never be a sufficient explanation of outcomes. Actors’ motivations, informed by their own definitions of their situations, always 51

need to be part of an explanation. In the case of ‘the events of 2011’, our best evidence is from research that was conducted close to the events. Most of this evidence is from Tunisia and Egypt and more specifically from Tunis and Cairo, the places where protestors succeeded in toppling incumbent rulers. We know that the protestors were angry, outraged by the repression that they were experiencing and the manner in which all dissent was being brutally suppressed. They were outraged by the widening inequalities in countries where the regimes’ neo-liberal policies had made them darlings of international financial institutions, enriching the rulers and their crony capitalist cadres while impoverishing swaths of their populations, degrading public services, and stripping the people of dignity (Boudarbat and Ajbilou, 2009; Boughzala, 2013; Chomiak, 2011; Fahmy, 2012; Honwana, 2013; Kandil, 2012; Shahine, 2011; Sika, 2012; Singerman, 2013). We know all this, yet important questions remain unanswered. Hence the seemingly never ending attempts (of which this paper is one) to ‘frame the debate’ about the true significance of the events of 2011 (see AlMaghlouth et al, 2015).

Knowledge gaps Our fresh evidence can address some previously unanswered questions, namely: • The socio-demographic profile of the young people who were involved in the protests, and whether they can be treated as a cross-section of their age group. • Whether they had similar or different political orientations from peers who did not join the protests. Were they speaking and acting for their age group? • Was there a disconnect between participating in protests in 2011 on the one hand, and voting in subsequent elections and involvement in conventional politics on the other? • How many protestors in 2011 sustained their political activity over the next five years, up to the time of our survey in 2015/16? We can set answers to these questions in the context of the overall socio-political orientations of Tunisia’s youth, including their trust in politicians and political institutions, their religiosity, their evaluations of multi-party democracy vis-à-vis alternative political systems, and whether they have been abandoning traditional and security values in favour of rational and self-expression values. There are other questions that we could discuss, but will refrain from discussing because our new evidence cannot tell us anything new. So we will not try to explain: • Why the Arab Spring erupted in 2011. Why not in 2010, 2009 or earlier? • Protests had been recurrent throughout the previous decade in some countries. How can we explain the protests gaining sufficient momentum and intensity to topple rulers in two countries (Tunisia and Egypt) in 2011?

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• Was it just coincidence, or was there some connection between the events of 2011 in North Africa and the Middle-East and the intensification of anti-austerity protests in Greece during the same year, the demonstrations of Spain’s indignados (see Castells, 2012) and the Occupy movement that began in the USA then spread to several other countries? During 2011 there were also riots that spread throughout London then into other UK cities (The Guardian, London School of Economics, 2012). We know that new media played a part in the diffusion of protests in 2011 (see Brym et al, 2014; Cardoso and Jacobetty, 2012; Skali, 2013), but the availability of these means of communication cannot have been a sufficient cause of the spread of protests, and we must bear in mind that 1989 happened prior to the advent of any of the new media. However, our evidence enables us to engage in debates about why the protests in Tunisia were able to lead to regime change unlike the weaker or shorter protests in neighbouring Morocco and Algeria, and we will also discuss why the legacies of 2011 have differed from country to country, and more specifically, why only Tunisia has emerged as a still functioning democracy, and why its young people are disappointed with how democracy (which has their overwhelming support) is actually working in their country.

Methods Our evidence is from an interview survey during the winter of 2015-16 with a nationally representative sample of Tunisia’s 15-29 year olds using a fully structured questionnaire which was available in Arabic, French and English. A representative sample of households was approached, and all resident 15-29 year olds became the sample. All interviews were conducted by a same-sex interviewer. Respondents were divided into those living in rural and urban settlements. Age, sex and marital status were recorded together with information on the housing that respondents’ occupied, and their mothers’ and fathers’ education and occupations. The respondents’ own educational attainments and positions in the labour market were recorded. We then addressed a series of questions about each respondent’s political actions (if any) during and since 2010-11, together with their sociopolitical orientations. Details of these questions will be given as the findings are presented. For some purposes, namely all analysis that involves political actions in 2010-11, we use results only from respondents aged 20-29 at the time of the survey, thus excluding those who were not yet age 15 in 2010-11. We commence below with exactly who took part in the actions that led to the revolution that involved the flight of Tunisia’s President Ben Ali on January 14 2011.

YOUTH AND THE EVENTS OF 2011 IN TUNISIA The protestors Who were the young Tunisian activists who set their president fleeing, and forced the incumbent regime to concede contested elections to an assembly that created a new democratic constitution? Not only this, they set in motion the wave of protests that spread across North Africa and into the Middle-East. We asked whether respondents had taken 53

part in each of a series of ‘actions’ in the period leading to and surrounding the flight of President Ben Ali. These actions were: • Participating in party political meetings and other activities. • Making a donation to a party or association. • Collecting signatures or signing a petition. • Participating in night watches to protect a neighbourhood. • Participating, attending or helping in a demonstration. • Joining a strike. • Using forms of violent action for social or political ends. • Participating in election campaigns. • Political participation via the internet. Respondents answered on a six-point scale with a range from every day to never. As explained above, we restrict our analysis here to members of our sample who were age 20-29 in 2015-2016, that is, those aged 15-24 in 2010-2011. We reasoned that the youngest respondents were less likely to have been politically aware and active in 2010-2011. Out of the 1367 20-29 year olds in the sample, just 90 had taken part in any of the above actions in 2010-2011, just 6.6 percent. Only 1.5 percent had been cyberactivists and 2.4 percent had taken part in a demonstration. The action that had involved most respondents had been night watches (4.4 percent). It seems that it was the actions of a rather small proportion of the age group, and probably an even smaller proportion of the entire Tunisia population, that won relatively free elections, sparked the protests that became known as the Arab Spring across the region, and created North Africa’s as yet sole democracy. We also asked whether respondents had taken part in the same list of actions during the last year, 2015-2016, five years on from the revolution. Slightly more (6.7 percent) had been involved in at least one of these activities. So what was different about 2010-2011? Our hypotheses are as follows. First, in 2010-2011 most acted at the same time and in the same place, during December 2010 to January 2011 and mainly in Tunis. Second, in 2011 the protestors persisted and refused to disperse in the face of police charges, brutal assaults, arrests, gunfire and fatalities. Third and crucially, by mid-January Ben Ali’s security forces and colleagues in the regime had decided that the president was expendable and advised him to flee, temporarily and able to return, though this was never to be. If autocrats retain the support of colleagues and their security forces they can hold on until protestors disperse, or fight if a protest movement acquires arms (as in Syria post-2011). The events of December 2010-January 2011 in Tunis show that it is possible for a small proportion of a population who assemble together to feel, and to appear to others, that they are ‘the people’. We will see below that the motivations and orientations of the protestors did indeed represent the aspirations of many more inactive peers, the overwhelming majority of their age group. Some who did not join the crowds contributed to the revolution with sounds, images and lyrics which conveyed the revolution’s mood (Gana, 2013; 54

Skalli, 2012). The activists would have been aware of and sustained by the moral, social and material support that was given at the time. Those who died, including the street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi who self-immolated on December 17 2010, have become revered figures in Tunisia’s history. More males than females had been involved in ‘the events of 2010-2011’ (10.1 percent and 3.3 percent). There was little difference in participation rates between those living in urban and rural areas (6.9 percent and 6.0 percent), or between those from middle class families, measured by mothers’ and fathers’ education and occupations, and the rest (6.5 percent and 6.6 percent). However, those involved in the events of 2010-2011 were the more likely to have become university graduates by 2016 (8.2 percent versus 5.7 percent), and in 2016 a higher proportion of those in permanent, full-time official jobs had been activists five years previously (10.8 percent) than those in 2016 who were in informal employment (5.3 percent) or unemployed (6.2 percent). The protestors in 2010-2011 were then, and in 2016 were still, on relatively advantaged, not disadvantaged, life course trajectories. Roughly a half of our respondents who had taken part in the actions in 2010-2011 had not been involved in similar actions in 2015-2016, while 3.5 percent had acted in 2015-2016 but not in 2010-2011. Just 3.1 percent had been activists in both years. They will probably have joined Tunisia’s long-term grassroots political activists. Elected representatives in Western-type democracies are normally drawn from similar small pools of long-term activists. Other citizens are not required to participate except in occasional elections. Table I. Political participation, 20-29 year olds in 2015-2016 Participated in the ‘events of 2011’ %

Did not participate %

Belong to a political party as sympathiser, participant, 22 donor or volunteer Using or have used activists 28 political blogs or websites Political party to which feel 29 close Always or often vote when 37 elections called Voted in last election 53 Follow political news every 53 day or often Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017)

4 13 14 26 29 36

We asked all 20-29-year-old respondents whether they took part in the set of more normal, non-revolutionary political activities listed in Table I where we divide the sample into the 90 who were personally and directly involved in the ‘events of 2011’ and the rest. The 2011 activists proved more likely than their peers to have taken part subsequently in all the ‘normal’ political actions. Twenty-two percent compared with just four percent of the nonactivists in 2011 belonged to a political party in 2016; 28 percent and 13 percent were using 55

or had used political blogs or visited political websites; 29 percent and 14 percent had a specific political party to which they ‘felt close’; 37 percent and 26 percent said that they voted regularly; 53 percent and 29 percent had voted in the last election; and 53 percent and 36 percent reported that they followed political news every day or often. These findings refute previous suggestions (for example by Honwana, 2013) that the activists in 2011 were rejecting normal politics in favour of alternative ways of doing democracy. Respondents who expressed some degree of support for any political party were most likely to name either Nidaa Tounes (43.1 percent) or Ennahdha (27.8 percent) the current and former post-2011 government-forming parties. The support of the remaining 29 percent was scattered between a large number of much smaller parties. However, only just over 14 percent of the total sample named any favoured party. This is one indication of the fragility of democracy in present-day Tunisia. In combination, supporters of the country’s two main parties accounted for only around 10 percent of our 20-29 year olds.

YOUNG TUNISIANS’ POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND ORIENTATIONS Who are Tunisia’s young political activists? Since being an activist in 2011 predicted all forms of subsequent, normal political activity, it will be no surprise that similar socio-demographic variables predicted political activity in both 2011 and subsequently. The answers as regards subsequent political activity are the same irrespective of the measure of political engagement – voting in elections, feeling close to a particular political party, following political news and all the other indicators in Table I. The predictors are all familiar in political sociology. Those who were politically engaged in 2015-16 tended to be male, living in urban rather than rural areas, older rather than younger with a pronounced leap in activity between late-teens and early-20s, married rather than single, and living independently rather than with their parents. However, there are two eye-catching predictors. The first is various indicators of social class: the classes of families of origin measured by mothers’ and fathers’ occupations and education (which did not predict involvement in the events of 2011), and especially whether respondents had progressed through university. For example, 64 percent of university graduates compared with 23 percent from the remainder of 25-29-year-old respondents had voted in the last election. Compared with participants in the events of 2010-11 (where our numbers are much smaller), in subsequent political activity gender differences are narrower, while differences on all indicators of social class are much wider. The other eye-catching predictor of all forms of political engagement was whether respondents had been brought-up in politically engaged families. This was measured with a question about whether respondents spoke with their mothers and fathers about national political affairs regularly, often, sometimes or never. On our measure, speaking with either the mother or father or both about politics often or regularly, 929 (67 percent of the 20-29 year olds) were from politically engaged families. This was related to respondents having been activists in 2011 (7.6 percent compared with 4.3 percent from politically non-engaged families). Both a politically engaged family background and participation in the 2010-11 events were independently related to our various measures of post-2011 political activity including voting regularly in elec56

tions and belonging to a political party (see Table II). The latter was most common (53 percent) among the activists of 2010-11 who were not from politically engaged families. However, there were only 19 such activists in our sample of whom 10 had become political party members. This was also more common among those from politically engaged families who had been activists in 2011 (15 percent) than among the other groups in Table II (three and four percent). Politically engaged families (according to our measurement) accounted for 68 percent of the sample of young people, but produced 79 percent of youth activists in ‘the events of 2010-2011’, 75 percent of regular voters and 80 percent of current political party members. Young people who participated in the events of 2011 were far fewer in number, and although more likely than non-activists in 2011 to become regular voters and party members, they comprised only eight percent of regular voters and 30 percent of party members. Most of Tunisia’s young adults who were members of a political party in 2015-16, by far an absolute majority, were from politically engaged families, on advantaged life trajectories, and had not been involved in the events of 2011. We allowed respondents to describe themselves as ‘members’ of a political party by being sympathisers, participating in party-organised events, donating or volunteering. Membership of a political party does not have the same meaning across North Africa as in the relatively mature democracies of Western Europe and North America. In North Africa, as in the new democracies of East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, most political parties are top>down creations. They have been formed by caucuses of politicians who then mobilise support rather than built upwards. Members of the public can ‘join’ by doing something in addition to voting for the party like donating, volunteering to undertaking some activity, or even just attending meetings. They may thereby become part of one of the pools from which it is possible to be recruited into a ‘political class’ from which candidates are selected for placement on party election lists, or appointed to jobs on the recommendation on a member, and thereby co-opted into the political class. Table II. Predictors of voting and party membership in 2015-16

Politically engaged family Participated in 2011 Politically engaged family Did not participate in 2011 Non-politically engaged family Participated in 2011 Non-politically engaged family Did not participate in 2011

Percentages voting regularly

Member of a political party

53%

15%

45%

4%

37%

53%

31%

3%

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) We should note in reading the above table that voting in elections and joining a political party are different kinds of political engagement which open different possibilities. ‘Following’ politics in the media and discussing politics with family members, friends, people at work, in streets and bazaars, can help to form public opinion which can make itself felt in elections and place politicians under additional kinds of pressure. Joining a political par57

ty is not just another form of political engagement. As explained above, it can be an early step in a political career. We could very likely strengthen the link between a politically engaged home background and grown-up children’s political participation by tightening our criteria for classifying families as politically engaged. We could require respondents to have spoken about politics ‘regularly’ with both their mothers and fathers. We did not ask whether the respondents’ parents were political party members or held political jobs. Had we done so, links with their children’s political activism and non-activism might well have emerged as even stronger. However, this would have required a much larger sample to yield adequate numbers of activists from politically engaged families in 2011. Using our generous criteria for classifying families as politically engaged, there were just 38 respondents from this group who had been part of the events of 2011 and who were voting regularly at the time of our interviews and just 11 who had become political party members. In any changing society, there will be socio-demographic compositional changes from one family generation to the next. For example, far more of our respondents than their parents had progressed through university. There are also likely to be changes in the ideas that politicians develop into policies with which to seek electoral support, and in the main political parties that seek this support. Between their parents and our respondents coming of age, there had been a revolution in Tunisia’s political system – from autocracy to democracy. Despite this immense change, there was still a powerful tendency for political engagement to be inherited, transmitted inter-generationally through families.

Social and political orientations: activists and non-activists in 2011 We now ask whether the 15-24 year olds of 2011 who played direct parts in that January’s momentous events were representative of their age group not in socio-demographic terms but in terms of their political orientations and ambitions. We shall see that generally this was the case. However, where there are differences these are not in the direction that one would expect to distinguish a group of young Western modernisers. The young Tunisian activists tended to be more conservative (using a Western frame of reference) than the non-activists. This also applied to those from politically engaged as opposed to nonengaged families. According to our evidence, young Tunisians want change. They want to modernise Tunisia, but in a way that does not map neatly onto Western-formulated versions of modernisation. Respondents in our survey were asked to rate three political systems: autocracy (a system led by a strong group that depends neither on parliament nor elections); technocracy (where experts and not a government decide on what is best for the country); and democracy (a regime in which representatives depend on and are accountable to the citizens). Democracy was by far the most popular choice among both activists and non-activists in 2010-2011, though majorities of both also rated technocracy as very good or acceptable (see Table III). We shall see below that the young Tunisians had little trust in the representatives that they elected. Yet in principle, and on the whole, democracy was clearly their preferred political system. On this, protestors in 2010-2011 spoke for their age group. The main difference between activists and non-activists in 2010-1011 was that the former were less likely to regard ‘technocracy’ as a very good or acceptable alternative to democracy. 58

Table III. Views on different political systems, 20-29 year olds Autocracy Very good Acceptable Bad Very bad Technocracy Very good Acceptable Bad Very bad Democracy Very good Acceptable Bad Very bad

Participated in 2011 % 10 6 21 63

Non-participant in 2011 % 6 4 16 74

30 24 24 21

42 32 13 13

72 16 9 3

79 16 4 2

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) Respondents were asked a series of questions measuring their attitudes towards sex equality, government measures to promote sex equality, their religiosity, their support for traditional and security values, self-expression values, and about their levels of trust in 23 groups and institutions. The mean scores on these scales are given in Table IV. Here the sample is again divided between 2011 activists and non-activists, and also according to whether or not they were from politically engaged families. There were only 19 respondents from non-engaged families who had been activists in 2011, so findings from this group are best disregarded. Comparisons between those from politically engaged and other families should be confined to the young people who were not activists in 2011. Comparisons between the activists and others should be confined to those from politically engaged families. There were 13 statements on sex equality. Examples are: ‘The same upbringing should be given to boys and girls’, and ‘Men and women should have the same job opportunities and receive the same salaries’. Respondents answered by totally agreeing, agreeing, disagreeing or totally disagreeing. The mean scores in Table IV are calculated from these answers. The mid-point in the scale is 2.5. Lower scores indicate support for sex equality. The results show slightly more support than opposition to sex equality in all the groups in Table IV. All the means are beneath the mid-point on the scale. Seventy-four percent of the sample scored between 2 and 3, while 24 percent had scores of less than 2 (strongly in favour of sex equality) whereas only 2 percent had scores above 3 (strongly against). Unsurprisingly, females tended to be stronger supporters of sex equality than males. The young activists of 2011 and those from politically engaged families proved somewhat less enthusiastic about sex equality than others in their age group.

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Table IV. Socio-political orientations: mean scores, 20-29 year olds

2.48

Political family Did not participate in 2011 2.27

Non-political family Participated in 2011 2.33

Non-political family Did not participate in 2011 2.21

1.66

1.65

1.66

1.55

2.00

2.11

2.50

2.19

2.09

2.28

2.48

2.41

2.43

2.50

2.76

2.61

3.56 71

3.33 858

4.09 19

3.87 419

Political family Participated in 2011 Sex equality Government promoting sex equality Religiosity Traditional and security values Self-expression values Trust N=

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) The sample was also generally in favour of government promotion of sex equality. They were asked to agree absolutely, to some extent or not at all with government efforts in the labour market, education, political participation and family matters. Low scores in Table IV indicate support for government efforts. All the groups had means of 1.66 or 1.65 (less than the mid-point of 2) except those from politically non-engaged families who were not activists in 2011 who had a mean of 1.55. They were the strongest supporters of government initiatives to promote sex equality. The sample was asked how important they regarded religion in 15 life domains including dress, appearance, food, place of work and marriage. Answers were on a five-point scale with a range from ‘very important’ to ‘not important at all’. Low scores in Table IV indicate high levels of religiosity. Generally the young people were highly religious, and the most religious were from politically engaged families, and especially those who were activists in 2011. On all the measurements examined so far, the young political activists and respondents from politically engaged families tended to be more conservative than their peers, but we must stress that this is within a Western frame of reference, and as argued below, our overall findings query the appropriateness of imposing this frame on Tunisia. If the Tunisian revolution had been instigated by the modernisers encountered elsewhere in the literature, we would expect the young activists and their families to be pro-democracy, more so than others in their age group, to express stronger support for sex equality, to be less religious, and to be abandoning traditional and security values in favour of rational, secular and self-expression values. None of this applied within our sample. Traditional and security values were measured in our survey with three questions which asked respondents about the extent to which statements resembled themselves on a six-point scale with a range from ‘greatly resembles me’ to ‘does not resemble me’. The traditional and security statements were about wanting to be rich; to live in a safe and secure environment and to feel secure; and being a person to whom tradition is important and who follows rules estab60

lished by religion and society. A mean score was calculated for each respondent. There were four questions measuring self-expression values: being a person who considers it important to think of new ideas; a person who wants to be creative, to have a good time and enjoy themselves; a person who wants to have adventures, take risks and lead an exciting life; and being a person who pays attention to the environment and takes care of nature. As with the traditional/security scale, low scores indicate agreement. None of the results, however these are manipulated, fit conventional modernisation theory. Activists in 2010-2011 score relatively high on traditional/security values and also on self-expression values. Those from politically engaged families also score relatively high on traditional/security values and on selfexpression values. Among our young Tunisians, support for traditional/security and selfexpression values did not rise and fall conversely. Those scoring relatively high on one set of measurements also tended to score relatively high on the other. They wanted selfexpression and care of the environment alongside security and respect for traditions. This combination is not inherently incompatible. Politically active young Tunisians and their politically engaged families seek modernisation that may be specifically Tunisian, or it may be more generically Arabic or Islamic. Respondents were asked about the extent to which they trusted 23 different groups and institutions on a 10-point scale on which the lowest score indicated no trust while the top score indicated absolute trust. Table IV gives the mean trust scores, amalgamating all 23 ratings, for each of the four groups that are distinguished. We can see that participants in the events of 2011 were more trusting than non-participants, and those from politically engaged families were more trusting than others. Clearly, the Tunisian revolution was not instigated by young activists who were especially lacking in trust, though all the groups’ mean scores are well beneath the mid-point, and levels of trust might have been different in 2010-11. Table V2 gives the percentages of trust ratings of six or more awarded by the entire sample of 15-29 year olds to each of the groups and institutions about which they were questioned. There is only one group – the people in general – with a percentage above the midpoint of five. Ominously for its democracy, the three lowest scores were awarded to politicians, political parties and elected officials. At the time of our survey in 2016, Tunisia was a low-trust society, and its politicians, political parties, and parliament attracted less trust than anyone else except employers. This, along with the narrowness of support for its two main political parties, indicates the fragile state of Tunisia’s young democracy in 2016. We have further evidence of this fragility. Respondents were asked about their views on Tunisia’s government before and since 2011 (see Table VI). Answers were expressed on a five-point scale with a range from 1 – ‘very bad’ to 5 – ‘excellent’. The mid-point on this scale is 3, and mean scores beneath this mid-point mean that more respondents said ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’ than ‘good’ or excellent’. The economy, and the prevention of crime and maintenance of order, were rated as ‘less bad’ since 2011, but on all the other measurements the situation was rated as worse. The young people believed that citizens were less able to feel free to say what they thought, that everyone was able to join a political organisation or movement of their choice, that ordinary citizens were able to influence the government, that corruption was under control, and that judges and tribunals 2

The answers were given on a scale from 1 to 10, where 0 was no trust and 10 – full trust with 5 being the mid-point.

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were free from government interference. Clearly, despite rating democracy as the best political system, the young Tunisians were not impressed by their own country’s post-2011 version. Table V. Trust scores: percentages scoring 6 or more The people in general National media European Union Legal system Elections Education system Foreign media United Nations Religious leaders Administration in general USA Trade associations and unions Government Local administration Arab League Arab Maghreb Union Parliament Employers Elected officials Political parties Politicians

64% 49 44 41 40 40 37 35 34 31 29 27 26 26 25 25 21 18 18 16 16

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) Table VI. Views on system of government before and after 2011 (mean scores)

Everyone is free to say what they think Everyone can enter/join the political organisation/movement of their choice All ordinary citizens can influence the government Corruption in the political parties and the state is under control. People can live without fear of being illegally arrested The prevention of crime and the maintenance of order are a priority The economy is in good shape and everyone can live decently Judges and tribunals are free from all government interference Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017)

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After 2011 1.22

Before 2011 3.58

1.3

3.66

1.17 1.5 1.54

2.12 1.68 2.08

2.71

1.85

2.74 1.46

1.44 1.86

Table VII. Religion and politics (mean scores) Religion should not influence people’s political decisions It would be desirable for the country for more people with strong religious beliefs to take on representational posts or political responsibility The religious leaders should have influence over the government’s decisions The practice of religion is a private affair that should be separated from socio-economic life

1.64 3.29 3.28 1.68

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) Respondents were asked to agree or disagree on a five-point scale with four statements about religion and politics (see Table VII). Despite most regarding themselves as religious, and despite our measurements showing that political activists rated themselves as more religious than other young Tunisians, most of our respondents wanted politics and religion kept separate. They did not want religious leaders influencing government decisions, or for people with strong religious beliefs to take-on representative posts. It was also despite the sample being more likely to identify themselves as ‘Islamic’ than as Arabs or Tunisians or any of the other groups in Table VIII. Table VIII. Identification with different groups (mean scores: 1=strongly agree, 7=strongly disagree).‘I am….’ Islamic Arab Tunisian Maghrebi Belong to Mediterranean region African A citizen of the world Amazigh

1.26 1.33 1.44 2.92 3.01 3.08 3.53 5.82

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) Some of these findings begin to make sense (to an occidental mind) when set in the context of the young Tunisians’ economic and labour market situations in 2015-16. Tables IX and X divide males then females into three age groups, then give the percentages who occupied different positions inside and outside the workforce. We can see that the percentages in education declined with age from 64 percent to 5 percent among males, and from 76 percent to 6 percent among females. By age 25-29 the largest group of males (34 percent) were unemployed and another 13 percent described themselves as economically inactive. Just 23 percent were either employers, self-employed or in formal (official with a contract) jobs. Among females were largest group of 25-29 year olds were economically inactive (43 per cent) and another 27 percent described themselves as unemployed. This makes it unsurprising that that when asked to select from a list the most important problem facing Tunisia, the most common choice was ‘jobs’ which was followed by ‘terrorism’ (more on this below), then the ‘economic situation’ and then ‘standards of living’ (see Table XI). 63

Table IX. Socio-economic groups by age, males (in percentages) 15-19 %

20-24 %

Socio-economic groups Education 63.7 25.3 Employer 0.0 1.5 Self-employed 1.2 4.5 Formal job 2.1 4.8 Informal job 7.8 15.2 Apprentice 3.3 3.3 Family worker 1.2 4.8 Unemployed 9.6 25 Inactive 11.1 15.8 Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017)

25-29 % 4.8 3.0 7 13 19.4 3.6 2.7 33.6 12.7

Table X. Socio-economic groups by age, females (in percentages) 15-19 %

20-24 %

Socio-economic groups Education 75.7 21.0 Employer 0.0 0.3 Self-employed 0.0 0.9 Formal job 1.0 5.2 Informal job 2.3 9.1 Apprentice 0.0 2.7 Family worker 0.0 2.1 Unemployed 6.3 23.1 Inactive 14.7 35.6 Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017)

25-29 % 6.2 1.1 1.1 7.0 11.3 3.0 1.1 26.6 42.7

Table XI. Percentages saying that the most important problem facing the country was: Economic situation Standard of living Democracy/human rights Education system Health system Corruption Increasing influence of religion on government Morals in society Jobs Housing Criminality and drugs Terrorism Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) 64

15.7 13.2 1.5 6.7 1.7 0.4 1.7 1.8 36.2 1.0 1.2 17.3

TUNISIA’S POST-2011 FRAGILE BUT RESILIENT DEMOCRACY It has become routine to describe Tunisia’s democracy as ‘fragile’ (see Murphy, 2015), but this fragile democracy looks more-and-more resilient with every passing year, with every election. Fragility is inevitable given that the democracy is still less than a decade old. Tunisia was a oneparty state from independence in 1956 until 2011. Since 2011 it has been a functioning multiparty democracy. This is despite presiding over a tiny economy and official labour market relative to the size of the present-day, mainly urban and increasingly highly educated, population. If we are to understand how the change to a multi-party democratic system has been accomplished in Tunisia but in no other Arab Spring country (which apart from civil wars in Libya and Syria, and the formation of IS, is the major legacy of the events of 2010-11), it is necessary to move from youth into political analysis. The outcomes of the revolutions or uprisings throughout the region have always been via country-specific politics. The youth and other movements that coalesced in 2011 played little part in the events that followed. ‘Politically relevant elites’ took the lead roles in subsequent regime changes or regimes’ survival (Asselburg and Wimmen, 2016; see also Staeheli and Nagel, 2012), So it is to its ‘politically relevant elites’ rather than its young people that we must look to explain why Tunisia has become the sole Arab Spring country to replace autocracy with democracy. At least two essential conditions that must be met before a Western-type democracy can function. First, there must be at least two political parties that can command sufficient support to lead a government. These blocs of support are never ready-made by and within civil society: parties need to build support and this is likely to take decades rather than months or even years (Leon et al, 2015). Second, rule by a victorious party must be accepted by its defeated opponents. This should happen if competition for electoral support forces parties that seriously seek power to converge on a middle ground (Lipset, 1960), but this is likely to take decades. Tunisia emerged following the flight of Ben Ali in 2011 with these conditions already in place. It was the region’s lucky country as regards prospects for democratisation. The country already had an Islamic party (Ennahdha) which had been illegal but had existed mostly underground with leaders in exile since the late-1960s, and was able to ‘surface’ and win elections in 2011. This party had always been (prematurely) post-Islamist in being willing to accept democracy together with freedom of belief and expression within (as yet undefined) limits. Its main objective has always been to reclaim Tunisia’s Arab-Islamic identity (McCarthy, 2015). The party of the deposed president, the Democratic Constitutional Rally, was dissolved in 2011 but its politicians and supporters were able to re-form as Nidaa Tounes and win elections in 2014. Both outcomes have been accepted by the defeated party. There are other features of Tunisia’s history which made it better prepared for a transition to democracy in 2011 than any other North African country. Tunisians did not need to fight for their country’s independence in 1956. Unlike in neighbouring Algeria, a Tunisian army did not need to fight European colonists for independence and thus feel able to claim a subsequent right to rule. Also, the two conditions identified by Brownlee, Masoud and Reynolds (2015) as essential for the long-term survival of North African and Middle-East autocracies were not present in Tunisia in 2011. There was no traditional ruler with traditional legitimacy. Tunisia became independent with no constitutional role for its former monarch (bey) unlike Morocco in 1956 and Egypt in the 1920s, and unlike Libya which was 65

handed by the United Nations to King Idris in 1951. Brownlee et al.’s alternative condition – substantial oil ‘rents’ – was also unable to prop up a Tunisian autocrat. However, Tunisia’s democracy must be considered fragile, a work in process. Ennahdha and Nidaa Tounes may each be willing to participate in a government led by the other, but together they deny political power to substantial sections of Tunisia’s population who were among the protestors in 2011, mainly the working and lower classes, the entire population in the country’s south, and radical Islamists (see Antonakis-Nashif, 2016; Berman and Nugent, 2015; Boubekeur, 2016; Merone, 2015; Murphy, 2015). However, these groups’ problem is their lack of voter appeal. The Front Populaire Unioniste, a Marxist pan-Arabic party, was the choice of only 8.9 percent of our respondents who ‘felt close’ to any party, just 1.3 percent of the total sample. Hizb-ut-Tahrir, an international movement that seeks to restore the caliphate, was the choice of just 1.8 percent of respondents who felt close to any party, a mere 0.3 percent of the sample. No-one named Ansar al-Sharia which is listed as a terrorist organisation by the Tunisia government and the United Nations. Up to 7,000 young Tunisians are estimated to have left to train with IS since 2011, more than from any other country outside Syria and Iraq (Bendermel, 2015). It seems a paradox that the most democratic Arab-Islamic country in North Africa and the Middle East has been a major source of IS recruits. Tunisians train initially in Libya, then may move to Syria or Iraq, but some return home. In March 2015 an attack in Tunis’s Bardo museum left 22 dead. Then in June 2015 there were 38 fatalities during an attack on a beach resort near Sousse. Democracies can cope with terrorism. Tunisia’s army is not going to take control of the country. The military has never sought a political role. However, as we have seen, ‘terrorism’ follows only ‘jobs’ in young people’s judgements of their country’s biggest problem. Even so, Tunisia’s major parties need to widen their appeal, their bedrocks of reliable support, or alternatives need to grow. Only 10 percent of our sample ‘felt closer’ to Ennahdha or Nidaa Tounes than to any other party. The support of these ‘major’ parties is still narrow and shallow. Moreover, young Tunisians do not trust the politicians who they elect. Activists of 2010-2011 were a minority among the people in their age group who had subsequently become members of political parties. They and other voters may have been aware of the extent of elite reproduction across the generations. Our research testifies to the dominance of those from politically engaged families among young Tunisians who had become party members. There will also be disenchantment over the failure of post-2011 governments to tackle the chronic job deficit. Turnout in elections has been low outside the North-East where Tunis is located, and also among Tunisians everywhere who are not university educated (see Berman and Nugent, 2015). Tunisia’s democracy is proving resilient, but modernisation, including democratisation, must be regarded as an ongoing process rather than an accomplishment of 2011. Moreover, the combination of changes sought by most young Tunisians may not be realisable in a 21st century global context.

CONCLUSIONS Even so, modernisation theory needs to accommodate Tunisia and other North African and Middle-East countries. The 2011 revolution in Tunisia was progressive in intentions and outcomes. It was not stepping back, seeking to recover past glories. Yet the intentions 66

and outcome represent a kind of modernity that the West may not recognise. Apart from filling-in former unknowns about who took part in the actions that led to Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, and the ways in which those who took part did and did not represent their entire age group, our evidence adds further weight to the ‘multiple modernities’ side in the debate about 21st century global trends (see also Goskel, 2016). Tunisia’s young citizens are pro-democracy even if at present they have poor opinions of the politicians who they elect, and many regard rule by experts, technocracy, as an acceptable or even a ‘very good’ alternative. Many, though not all, will accept equal opportunities for men and women and want their government to act accordingly, but they may still expect the sexes to play different roles in society. Young Tunisians, especially those who want change and who are politically active, are highly religious. They are rejecting previous rulers who have been willing to discard or ignore their country’s Islamic history and character. Consumer market research shows that young modern Moslems all over the world treat their faith and modernity as progressing hand-in-hand. They take their religion more seriously than ‘traditionalists’, and the internet is strengthening their engagement with the ummah (the global Islamic community). They see their religion as a prism through which to embrace modernity, and vice-versa (Janmohamed, 2016). In Tunisia, they want to live in a country whose Islamic and Arabic identities have a high profile. Young people want to express their creativity, including their religious beliefs, and to be free to develop new ideas, but they consider economic security equally important. Governments and maybe democracy in Tunisia are likely to be judged by whether they can deliver these outcomes plus jobs that match the aspirations of educated youth, and lift the population out of poverty. This combination of popular aspirations will be difficult to fulfil whichever politicians are in power.

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EDUCATION TO EMPLOYMENT TRANSITIONS IN SOUTH AND EAST MEDITERRANEAN COUNTRIES Ken Roberts, Siyka Kovacheva, Stanimir Kabaivanov INTRODUCTION Much has been written about youth in South and East Mediterranean (SEM) countries, and throughout the wider North Africa and Middle East (MENA) region, since the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011. Virtually all commentators have named young people’s difficulties in making transitions from education to employment as part of the contributing context if not the main cause of eruptions that shook rulers throughout the region and toppled regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen. ‘Massive’ levels of youth unemployment have been routinely cited as indicators of young people’s difficulties. Unemployment is an internationally understood condition, and claims about massive levels throughout the MENA region are re-cited from publication to publication until accepted as established facts (as, for example, in Honwana, 2013; Noueihed and Warren, 2013). Unemployment is said to be the biggest problem facing Tunisia’s youth (Boughzala, 2015). In Egypt, by 2011, it was claimed that political stability had ceased to mean security and had become a guarantor of ‘no future’ (Shahine, 2011). Poor quality education (Assad and Baroum, 2009; Dhillon et al, 2009), coupled with swaths of poor quality jobs in the countries’ informal economic sectors (Chabaan, 2009; Hammounda, 2010), are also cited as part of the nexus of difficulties that impede young people’s progress from education to work and towards adulthood more generally. It is claimed that throughout the region youth is now normally followed by a new life stage of ‘waithood’ as adulthood recedes towards an unspecified point in the future (Dhillon and Yousef, 2009). It is surprising how little we really know about youth labour markets in this world region. Even surveys of representative samples offer just snapshots which identify, for example, the proportions of an age group who were unemployed at a specific point in time (for example, Hammouda, 2010; Population Council, 2011). These reports do not distinguish long-term unemployment from brief episodes between jobs, or between leaving education and first jobs. They do not track whether levels of unemployment subside, or whether the quality of young people’s jobs improves as they progress towards adulthood. Our evidence, from surveys in 2015-16 of nationally representative samples of 15-29 year olds in five SEM countries, offers another cross-sectional snapshot, but we will show that the age range covered enables us to introduce a longitudinal dimension, to identify typical youth labour market biographies, together with the associated career routes and career groups. We can thereby specify which young people experience specific impediments to their progress, their typical responses and the outcomes. The large total size of our combined samples (around 10,000) also allows us to distinguish how typical career routes vary by gender, and according to indi71

viduals’ family and educational backgrounds. We will demonstrate that established Western social science concepts and methods prove fit for our purposes which include showing how configurations of young people’s circumstances and their typical responses bear the imprint of the region’s distinctive Islamic and Arabic histories and cultures.

METHODS As stated above, our evidence is from surveys in 2015-2016 of nationally representative samples of approximately 2000 15-29 year olds in each of five SEM countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon), all the littoral Arab majority states except Libya and Syria where conditions at the time made survey work impossible. The surveys were overseen by local social science partners who contracted the fieldwork to survey organisations. Respondents were members of the target age group who were resident in representative samples of households. All respondents were interviewed at home, by same sex interviewers, using a standardised questionnaire which was available in English, French and Arabic. In Lebanon, refugees from the war in neighbouring Syria who were mostly living in camps, estimated at around 1.25 million, approximately a fifth of the country’s population, were not included in the survey. The interviews included questions about each respondent’s family background (parents’ education and occupations) the respondents’ own education, and their labour market careers if they had completed their education. Whether respondents were married, ‘in a relationship’ or single, and whether they were living with their parents or elsewhere, were also recorded. Employers, the self-employed, employees, apprentices and family workers were asked about their monthly incomes. Answers in the local currencies were subsequently converted into € at purchasing power parity (ppp). Individuals without earned incomes were asked about their sources of money for personal spending. We proceed below by presenting our evidence on movements with age out of education into different types of earning, unemployment and inactivity (in the labour market). We then focus on unemployment rates, then the quality of the jobs held at the time of the survey, histories of job changing, and the relationship between the samples’ educational attainments and their labour market biographies. We move on to how educational achievements and labour market prospects varied by social class family origins, the main class divisions among respondents’ parents, and how these were being partly reproduced and partly changed within our samples. Although the surveys captured snapshots of respondents’ situations, opinions and attitudes, the young people also described their biographies, and by conjoining the evidence from different age groups, we are able to give our findings a longitudinal dimension and set specific experiences of jobs and unemployment in their biographical contexts, thereby identifying different career groups and routes.

Unemployment Unemployment is a risk faced by labour market entrants throughout the SEM region. There are job deficits that all socio-demographic groups must negotiate. Our surveys show that rates of youth unemployment varied from country-to-country, then differed by gender, educational attainments and social class backgrounds. However, the overall rates were not particularly high by current global and European standards. 72

Table I. Positions vis-a-vis the labour market in age groups (all countries) a. Males

Education Employer Self-employed Employee Apprentice Family worker Unemployed Inactive N=

15-19 % 69