The impact of the Arab Spring on conflicts in the MENA region: Findings from count data analysis

The Arab Spring (AS) that started in 2011 was assumed to reform the prevailing regimes and bring socio-economic improvements in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. However, the expected positive transformation of AS in the social, economic, and political domains have not been attained effectively. According to many researchers, the revolutions in the cases of Libya, Yemen, and Syria, particularly, failed to achieve the expected outcomes. The AS impacted various aspects of socio-economic life in the countries where revolutions took place. One of the impact areas was conflicts in the MENA region. This study aims to analyze the impacts of AS on conflicts in 16 countries in the MENA region utilizing count data analysis for the period 2000-2020. The study specifically deployed a zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) estimation on the data obtained from Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) database. STATA software was used in data management and analyses. Our results indicate that the number of conflicts significantly increased after the Arab Spring, after having controlled for GDP per capita, democracy score, unemployment rate, ethnic fractionalization, religious fractionalization, corruption score, and religious fractionalization.