Abstract (EN)

Revolutions and political crises in the Maghreb and the Machrek The sociology of revolutions and regime change is still divided between analyses centered on the long term of social and political structures and those focused on the short term of transient constellations of events and the collective mobilizations associated with them. The sociology of the political crises that the Arab worlds have gone through since 2011 does not avoid these divisions and is still overshadowed by geopolitical or culturalist approaches. This article, which also serves as the introduction to this issue, provides a tentative basis for a sociology of such crises that would articulate better the long and the short term, contingence and structure. It tests several hypotheses: the triggering role of ill-adjusted aspirations; the decisive role of the old opposition networks; the importance of geographical variables; the social distance between the actors and the beneficiaries of the revolution; the ambivalent relationship between the revolutionaries and the State. The article also suggests that the notions of revolutionary capital and revolutionary field are potentially useful and asks whether field theory could help the sociology of political crises avoid the pitfalls of finalism and the excessive autonomization of situational logics and individual calculus.