African Transitions in the Arab World, 1991-2011: The Spring Wind on the Tools of Transitology

The comparison between the process of transition in Sub-Saharan African in the 1990s and of the Arab Spring movements since 2011 enables us to draw up a critical but balanced assessment of “transitology”. What was learnt from the African transitions has made us reassessing the tools of “transitology” and, more precisely, the sequential division and place and role given to elections. We shed a different light on the usual interpretation of the “Arab Spring”.