ABSTRACT
The Arab Revolutions have generated a renewed interest in the role of civil society in the Arab region. The unpredictable revolts and uprisings that have shaken the region have forced sociologists and political analysts to investigate not only the reasons behind the revolutions, but also the different actors that started and are leading them. In the Arab Revolutions, civil society organizations such as NGOs have demonstrably played little role. Instead, the uprisings were associations of ‘loosely organized’ people from the decentralized networks who did not only ignite the Revolutions but also led the whole progress to its fundamental changes. Therefore, this chapter calls for rethinking, reconceptualizing, and recontextualizing the notion of civil society to broaden its definition to include ‘civil’ and ‘un-civil society,’ informal politics, ordinary citizens, and moral codes of conduct based on socio-cultural norms, history, and traditions of the Arabs. Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions will be reconstituted as case studies to analyze the failure of civil society arguments in explaining the transition.
