Are the Arab revolts a megatrend?

Some people recently asked me whether the revolts in the Arab countries can be considered as a megatrend. My answer might have disappointed them: no.

I have a couple of rules when looking at megatrends, let’s see if they pass the test with regards of the Arab revolutions:

1) does it last for more than 5 years? Regardless of the outcome, there are good reasons to believe the revolution in itself won’t last for multiple years. There’s an important distinction to be made here: while the consequences of the revolt will probably last for multiple years, the revolt in itself will likely not.

2) does it have an impact, is it disruptive? Here the answer is a clear yes, the events in Northern Africa and the Middle East clearly provoke a shift in society.

3) does it impact a substantial part of society? This one is less clear. The Arab revolts directly impact the populations of these countries, of course, but it’s the consequences (at a geopolitical level) that will have a more general impact, not the event in itself.

4) does it look inevitable, could it easily be reversed? Theoretically, it could, and the ultimate outcome within a few years could still be a return to the ‘old order’.

For all these reasons my answer is ‘no’ to the question whether this is a megatrend, but obviously it is a very important event that will have consequences well into the next decade.

And, as often, this event can in itself hide an underlying trend. Looking at it from a longer perspective, and combining the events in the Levant with what happened in Russia, in Eastern Europe and in some countries in Asia, a trend is emerging: populations are making themselves heard, and are getting organized to make things change according to their will. Both these elements can in themselves be seen as a consequence of the ‘global grid’, since it’s the ease of communicating with each other and the increased knowledge of what happens globally, that might have initiated these movements.

The underlying trend might be a general movement towards more democracy, although this democracy might reveal pretty different then the concept we have of it now. An Arabic democracy is likely to be different from a Western one, just in the way that China is inevitably moving towards its own way of democracy. Fukuyama’s vision of ‘The End of History’ has never been further away…