Publication

This paper argues that the violence in Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria that followed the Arab Spring was neither pre-ordained nor generated by sectarianism previously held back by authoritarian regimes. The author says that while existing grievances and victimization certainly created dangerous environments for contentious politics, it took political decisions to ignite the violence. He then goes on to talk about what this means for European policymakers and says that the most obvious lesson is that there is no reason to acquiesce to or support authoritarian rule as it only suppresses ethnic and sectarian conflict: it does not make it disappear.