Abstract

The present study is to investigate the economic causes of revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. The main question raised in the present study is that what are the causes of the occurrences of recent movements in these two countries? The present study, using Robert Gurr Relative Deprivation Theory, investigates the role of economic policies of governments of Bin Ali and Mubarak in creating the new middle class and enhancement of the relative deprivation level in these countries which finally resulted in revolutionary movements in 2010 and 2011. Because the Relative Deprivation Theory is a psychological one, along with making open economic policies and concurrent political limitations with the development and expansion of international communication networks, an appropriate ground was provided for Arab young people to feel relative deprivation in different political, economic, and social domains in one way or another and represent their protest and anger via revolutionary movements. This revolutionary rises and movements got gradually expanded into other Arab countries and paying attention to the non-democratic structure paved the paths for the Arab heads’ worries so that they apprehensively started to make policies for eliminating unemployment, corruption, and poverty.