Middle East futures: Decade(s) of defiance and dissent

By James M. Dorsey

An earlier version of this article appeared in Orient.

If the 2010s were a decade of defiance and dissent, the 2020s promise to make mass anti-government protests a fixture of the greater Middle East’s political landscape. Protests in the coming decade are likely to be fuelled by the challenges Middle Eastern states face in enacting eco…