Paulina Reister paulina.reister@gmx.de 2017-08-09 Germany Maastricht University UNDP – Representing China

Topic A: The Democratic Governance in the Post-Arab Spring Era: Developing Trust and Legitimacy

Starting off in Tunisia in December 2010, the Arab Spring revolution unsettled many prevalent political systems in Arabic countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain or Libya. In many areas, these revolts and heavy unrests against political leaders or regimes resulted in bloody civil wars. In some cases, they did not yet end and people are still fighting for change. Reasons to start revolts include police brutality, corruption of the government and a will to democratize the system to have more freedoms. Even though most of the previous dictatorial governance systems were strongly damaged and in a variety of ways overthrown, the change did not unconditionally lead to better living conditions for the country’s people and many of their problems remain unsolved. So far, on...