Post-pandemic unrest could mirror 2010s

This week’s 10th anniversary of the fall of the Gaddafi regime in Libya exemplifies how much of the 2010s were a wild period for international politics, with a long wave of political turbulence following the 2008-09 international financial crisis.

The fallout from that period, which left the global economic system teetering on the precipice, was profound, and not only economically. It spawned a seismic period of political volatility, and a key question in the years ahead will be whether the socioeconomic damage caused by the pandemic might create a similar legacy in the 2020s.

To some degree, the political fallout of the 2010s was partially predicted in advance. In February 2009, for instance, Hillary Clinton, then the US secretary of state, argued that “this economic crisis, left unresolved … will upend governments (and) it will, unfortunately, breed instability.”

Yet what wasn’t seen at that time, except perhaps by a few with exceptional foresight, was the way in which this turbulence would ultimately help shape and permeate politics, not only in emerging markets but also in long-established industrialized democracies. This perhaps reached its zenith in 2016 with Donald Trump’s election as US president, who shocked many around the world with his victory over Clinton.

However, much as 2016 might have proved to be a defining year, with the UK also voting to leave the EU, significant political volatility was a feature of the international landscape for much of the post-crisis period. Perhaps most eye-catching of all have been the political revolutions, popular uprisings and protests in emerging markets.

This includes the so-called “Arab spring” that began in Tunisia in late 2010 and spread to include revolutionary changes of power in Libya and Egypt, the situation in Yemen, plus demonstrations and uprisings in countries as disparate as Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco and Oman.

There was also the Ukrainian revolution of 2014, which resulted in the ousting of pro-Moscow President Victor Yanukovych, and the 2011 Azerbaijani protests against the government.

Yet developed countries also have taken political hits, too. In Europe, for instance, millions took to the streets and administrations in more than half of the 27 EU states fell or were voted out of office between Spring 2010 and 2012 alone. Within the core eurozone, 11 of 14 governments collapsed or lost elections during that time.

To be sure, this broad range of political instability has diverse origins, and economic issues are by no means the only driver. Unrest in the Arab world, for example, quite often stemmed from deep-seated political and socioeconomic discontent that predated the financial crisis. Post-2008, however, a number of factors including liquidity crunches, increased food prices and unemployment spikes exacerbated these longer-standing grievances.

In Europe, an economic downturn and austerity measures were central to unrest in numerous countries, especially those most affected by the eurozone crisis. Even here, though, protests tapped into preexisting disquiet; hence the meteoric rise of new groups such as Syriza, which won power in Greece from 2015-19 after being founded as a loose coalition of left-wing parties only a few years earlier.

www.arabnews.com/opinion