Abstract
The paper deals with the structural roots of political instability in the Middle East that has been manifested by the Arab Spring throughout the region since early 2011. The roots of the instability are seen in cumulative effects of highly uneven long-term social change in its three main dimensions since 1960s: (1) rapid social and demographic changes, (2) slower and fluctuating economic development, and (3) rigid political subsystem.
The Middle Eastern uneven social change is also under way in a specific (4) cultural and (5) international context. The political instability is thus seen as a consequence of multiple and complex interactions among various dimensions of uneven modernisation process, Islamic political imagination and the international context.
The paper deals with the interactions on the macro-level and with its politically destabilizing consequences on micro-level using selected examples of causal mechanisms. The Middle Eastern uneven modernisation pattern is systematically documented by empirical macro-indicators and is compared with the modernisation process in other post-colonial world macro-regions.