The Fall of the Arab Spring

Abstract

The topic I would like to address is the trajectory of events in what has come to be known as the Arab Spring. My title—The Fall of the Arab Spring—is deliberately ambiguous as between two di≠erent meanings. In one sense, the optimism of spring has turned to the realism, and perhaps pessimism, of autumn. In another sense, the Arab Spring is in danger of having fallen, and thus my title self-consciously parallels the title of a book I wrote called The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State (2008).