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Developing the Methods of Estimation and Forecasting the Arab Spring Events
An assessment of current state and forecast of social instability in the Arab world in the context of the Arab Spring processes is a very important and relevant task, but it is also very challenging. Respective difficulties are related to the variety of factors affecting social instability, to individual peculiarities of historical, cultural, socioeconomic and political processes in the region. The complexity is also associated with the fact that different experts who make predictions of possible dynamics of instability often evaluate the significance of various factors very differently. In this article we have identified a set of factors that allow evaluating the current state of social and political destabili-zation in the countries of the Arab Spring. These factors of instability act in long and medium term creating grounds for discontent with the existing situation among the population and elites. With respect to the Arab Spring the most significant factors have turned out to be the following: the ability/inability of the government to reduce social ten-sions, the presence/absence of ‘immunity’ to internal conflicts as well as the internal contradictions level (especially the intra-elite conflict). Such indicators as structural and demographical characteristics and the external influences appear to be less significant as predictors of the actual level of the sociopolitical destabilization within particular Arab Spring countries in 2011. However, the demographic structural factors turn out to be very important if we consider fundamental factors of the Arab Spring in general. It should be also mentioned that the significance of the external influences indicator notably increases while accounting for the death toll that resulted from the destabiliza-tion in respective countries