Between organization and spontaneity of protests: the 2010–2011 Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the role of social groups in mobilizing resources for protests in repressive contexts. In particular, it examines the impact of organizations and informal groups on individual engagement in the protests developed in 2010 in Tunisia and in 2011 in Egypt. The empirical analysis draws on the following data sources: the second wave of the Arab Barometer (2010–2011), two focus groups in Egypt conducted between 2011 and 2015 with members of trade unions and of Popular Committees who had participated in the 2011 protests in Egypt, eight semi-structured interviews conducted in 2017 to workers in Tunisia who had engaged in the 2010–2011 protests, and interviews conducted in January and February 2011 to 100 women in Tunisia within a study tackling police violence against women during the Tunisian uprisings.

Findings show that both in Egypt and Tunisia protests were neither spontaneous nor fully organized as formal organizations and informal and spontaneous groups strictly interconnected in sustaining protests. In Egypt, established Islamic charity networks provided the structural basis for Popular Committees to engage in the 2011 protests and the initially spontaneous workers’ groups, institutionalized through the legalization of EFITU, were crucial for national wide protests occurred throughout 2011. In Tunisia, the major trade union UGTT was essential for mobilizing workers in the initial stages of protests but was backed by informal and spontaneous groups of workers during the process of protest diffusion.

Results remark that the 2010–2011 Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings were therefore well-grounded on intermediate mobilizing structures capable to survive in the interstices of an authoritarian context. Findings suggest to consider that, in repressive context, spontaneous groups and more established and formal organizations continuously switch from one form to another, overlap, and transform themselves faster than they would do in democratic contexts.     

Bootstrap Determination of the Co‐Integration Rank in Vector Autoregressive Models

This paper discusses a consistent bootstrap implementation of the likelihood ratio (LR) co‐integration rank test and associated sequential rank determination procedure of Johansen (1996). The bootstrap samples are constructed using the restricted parameter estimates of the underlying vector autoregressive (VAR) model that obtain under the reduced rank null hypothesis. A full asymptotic theory is provided that shows that, unlike the bootstrap procedure in Swensen (2006) where a combination of unrestricted and restricted estimates from the VAR model is used, the resulting bootstrap data are I(1) and satisfy the null co‐integration rank, regardless of the true rank. This ensures that the bootstrap LR test is asymptotically correctly sized and that the probability that the bootstrap sequential procedure selects a rank smaller than the true rank converges to zero. Monte Carlo evidence suggests that our bootstrap procedures work very well in practice.     

Research into work stress in Italy: A review

This paper reviews the development of stress research in Italy from the late 1960s onwards. It focuses on 1975 as the year when the first real studies on work stress were published, and interest was kindled in the psychological factors which affect physical health and in the physiological correlates of work stress. Much important work in these aspects of occupational health was started at this time at the Clinic of Work in Milan and at the University of Perugia. By the 1980s, Italian psychologists were also showing considerable interest in work stress, and the more psychological literature had begun to exceed that of a medical and physiological orientation. Despite this progress, stress research in Italy is still in its infancy, and the recognition of stress as an issue for management and trade unions is weak.     

Devaluation expectations and the unit root hypothesis: The Italian Lira in the European monetary system

Summary In several studies the unit root hypothesis of EMS exchange rates is analysed within the context of devaluation expectations estimation. By means of bootstrap inference it is shown that these procedures are not compatible with standard Dickey-Fuller significance levels and may lead to a wrong rejection of the null hypothesis. In the case of the Italian Lira/Deutsche Mark exchange rate, the hypothesis of a unit root is not rejected and expectations can be modelled by means of a reflected Brownian motion. The estimated devaluation expectations are related with some macro variables which provide evidence for the structure of expectations. This research has been partially supported with 40% and 60% MURST grants. The author wishes to thank the Bank of Italy for the exchange rates and the interest rates data and Ulf S?derstr?m for providing macroeconomic indicators. Useful suggestions from Riccardo Cesari, Michele Costa and two anonymous referees are gratefully acknowledged.     

Exploring theoretical frameworks for the analysis of fertility fluctuations

Analysis of scientific debate on the determinants of procreational choice leads the author to identify four main decisional logics: primary adaptation, economic rationality, norm internalization and identity reinforcement. Revisiting the classics supports the hypothesis of a bipolarity of strategical principles governing fluctuating reproductive behaviour. In particular, dialectics between the two endogenous strategies — economic rationality and identity rationality — suggests the use of the Volterra-Kostitsin predator-prey model as a metaphor to account for fertility waves.     

Look What's Back! Institutional Complexity,Reversibility and the Knotting of Logics

Through a comparative historical study of community pharmacy in the UK, Italy, Sweden and the USA, the authors examine what happens to institutional arrangements designed to resolve ongoing conflicts between institutional logics over extended periods of time. It is found that institutional arrangements can reflect the heterogeneity of multiple logics without resulting in hybridization or dominance. Because logics remain active, similar conflicts can reappear multiple times. It is found that the durability of the configurations of competing logics reflects the characteristics of the polities in which fields are embedded. The dominance of any societal institutional order leads to more stable field‐level arrangements. The authors suggest that the metaphor of institutional knots and the related image of institutional knotting are useful to capture aspects of this dynamic and to foreground the discursive and material work that allows multiple logics to coexist in local arrangements with variable durability.     

The Law of Large Demand for Information

An unresolved problem in Bayesian decision theory is how to value and price information. This paper resolves both problems assuming inexpensive information. Building on Large Deviation Theory, we produce a generically complete asymptotic order on samples of i.i.d. signals in finite–state, finite–action models. Computing the marginal value of an additional signal, we find it is eventually exponentially falling in quantity, and higher for lower quality signals. We provide a precise formula for the information demand, valid at low prices: asymptotically a constant times the log price, and falling in the signal quality for a given price.     

Open Cosmopolitanism and the World Social Forum: Global Resistance,Emancipation, and the Activists’ Vision of a Better World

The World Social Forum (WSF) is the world’s largest activist network to date. Its global, regional, national, and thematic events have gathered since 2001 millions of participants and thousands of civil society and social movement organisations. Its cosmopolitan vision is built on resistance to the planetary domination by neo-liberal globalisation. This paper unpacks WSF’s cosmopolitan project and reflects on its vision of emancipated individuals, convivial communities, and a just planetary society in harmony with the environment. In its open organisational space, WSF’s cosmopolitan project develops while in the process of political action rather than prior to that. At the same time, power dynamics, ideological cleavages, and pragmatic concerns about organisation and strategy challenge WSF’s ability to pursue its goals. However, it is these internal tensions that make WSF’s cosmopolitan project both more difficult to achieve and more realistic than claims of universal unity among all its participants.