Arab Spring, three years later

The struggle for self-determination, transparent government and human rights remains evident across the Middle East, albeit in multiple forms and patterns. Hegel writes in the Philosophy of Right that, “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.” In other words, we cannot know whether these struggles will yield a democratic future at this point in time. We can only know when we look back in time.

But we do know that the struggle for democracy in and across Europe took centuries, as did the cultural shift which allowed the separation of identities based on local and/or religious affiliations from identities based on equal citizenship, with its distinctive rights and duties. In a wired age, parts of this formation process may well be cut short. But there is every reason to expect that conflict and struggle are the norm in the brokerage of a new political order. 

openDemocracy: The Arab Spring and the changing balance of global power, February 26, 2014