Beyond Crisis Management: Governments, Academics, and Strategic Thinking about the Arab Uprisings

The Arab uprisings prompted the promise of a grand rethink of Western policy towards the region, but four years on there is still a lack of new thinking about new Western strategic approaches to the region, as policymakers have been stretched by the need for immediate, emergency responses to the subsequent series of interconnected crises. This paper lays out some of the differences and overlaps between academic researchers and government policymakers in terms of their interests and approaches. It goes on to identify some of the research that helped to explain – and sometimes presage – the uprisings, and the gaps that became evident in policy analysis. It considers how research interactions have changed as a result, but also how changes to policymakers’ research approaches or analytical frameworks have been limited, as policymakers have been preoccupied with short-term responses to pressing conflicts and crises. Given the different timescales that governments and academic researchers work to, much of the research on the Arab uprisings is only being published now, at a time when the policy agenda has largely moved on to counterterrorism and stabilisation. Yet it remains vitally important to understand the causes of the 2011 unrest, especially as many of the same grievances persist and continue to drive challenges to the status quo, even if these now take different forms to the large-scale, coalition-based and largely peaceful mass protests seen in 2011.