A Crisis of Governance Causes Turmoil Across Arab World, Williams Says

Authoritarian structures have crumbled in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen, and civil war rages in Syria due to a crisis of governance affecting regimes both conservative and radical, according to Michael Williams, distinguished visiting fellow at the Royal Institute for International Affairs and a governor of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London. Williams’ lecture on 5 April, entitled “Arab Spring, Arab Winter: Tumult in the Middle East,” was hosted by CEU’s new School of Public Policy and attended by the ambassadors to Hungary of several North African and Middle Eastern countries.

“No country from Morocco to Oman has been untouched by this extraordinary political tumult,” Williams said, noting that the deposed leaders of Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt, and Libya had ruled for a combined 125 years. “The overthrow of despots is but one aspect of a political process of extraordinary significance.”

The sudden and almost simultaneous nature of the uprisings indicates that they have common causes, Williams said, such as “an absence of representative government, an aging and corrupt leadership, police brutality, high unemployment and discontented youth.”

Williams, in addition to his post at Chatham House and SOAS, is also an International Trustee of the BBC and a member of the UK House of Lords. He was special adviser to two UK Foreign Secretaries, Robin Cook and Jack Straw. From 2005 he was director for the Middle East and Asia in the UN Department of Political Affairs in New York. In 2007 he was appointed undersecretary general for the Middle East based in Beirut.

The event was opened by SPP’s Dean, Wolfgang Reinicke, and moderated by Aziz al-Azmeh, university professor at CEU’s School of Historical and Interdisciplinary Studies.