ABSTRACT
This chapter offers the dynamics opened up by the recent Arab uprisings. It unpacks the challenges and opportunities that emerge from current processes unfolding in the Arab world of authoritarian regime breakdown, of democratic transitions, of domestic upheavals and of societies reconstituting and reimagining themselves. The chapter also examines the impact of the Arab uprisings on the states and societies of the Arab world, the new role of very different Islamist groups in Arab politics, and the concomitant struggles over alternative visions of the political, moral and social orders. One of the most salient effects of the Arab uprisings is the end of a political and ideological order built on the ruins of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the loss of Palestine. Transitional justice can help in reinventing societal stability predicated on trust and justice, even in the face of fundamental disagreements about the bases of justice in many countries.
