The Arab Spring: A Simple Compartmental Model for the Dynamics of a Revolution

TL;DR

This paper presents a simple mathematical model to understand how social media influences the dynamics of revolutions in authoritarian regimes, capturing various stability scenarios and applying them to Arab Spring cases.

Contribution

It introduces a novel compartmental model incorporating social media effects to analyze revolutionary dynamics in dictatorial regimes.

Findings

Identifies four main parameter regions: stable, meta-stable, unstable, and failed states.

Qualitatively captures diverse revolutionary scenarios including Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, China, and Somalia.

Provides insights into the role of social media in revolution dynamics.

Abstract

The self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi on December 17, 2011 in the small Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid, set off a sequence of events culminating in the revolutions of the Arab Spring. It is widely believed that the Internet and social media played a critical role in the growth and success of protests that led to the downfall of the regimes in Egypt and Tunisia. However, the precise mechanisms by which these new media affected the course of events remain unclear. We introduce a simple compartmental model for the dynamics of a revolution in a dictatorial regime such as Tunisia or Egypt which takes into account the role of the Internet and social media. An elementary mathematical analysis of the model identifies four main parameter regions: stable police state, meta-stable police state, unstable police state, and failed state. We illustrate how these regions capture, at least qualitatively, a wide range of scenarios observed in the context of revolutionary movements by considering the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, as well as the situation in Iran, China, and Somalia, as case studies. We pose four questions about the dynamics of the Arab Spring revolutions and formulate answers informed by the model. We conclude with some possible directions for future work.