The events taking place in several of South Mediterranean countries since December 2010 show that multiple deprivations may be powerful drivers of political instability. Though improvements of the living conditions have been regularly principal demands along with civil and political liberties in the demonstrations, one of the main striking facts about this so-called "Arab Spring" is that poverty had not been given the same emphasis in southern Mediterranean countries during the last decades as in other areas of the developing and emerging world.

Although the growing recognition that...