Solving the Pan-Arab Crisis

While reports of uprisings across the Arab world concentrate on popular demand for democracy and liberty, such ideals are insufficient to account for why autocratic regimes have been tolerated in the region for decades. More immediate material realities, such as the price of food and an unemployment crisis facing the younger generation, serve better to explain the current crisis, says Columbia economics professor and U.N. advisor on the Millennium Development goals Jeffrey Sachs: “If democracy is to take hold and flourish in Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere in the Arab world, the new reform-minded governments must make the youth unemployment crisis their highest priority.”