I am trying to understand the revolutions that seem to want to become worldwide that are challenging the status quo in rich and poor nations, in large and small ones. The Middle East is the hot bed of this now and the outcome is not going to be simple or general, but the question becomes "Is there any underlying idea behind the rise of discontent at this time in History?" and "Can it spread to the most powerful nations in the world including the USA?" The answer to the last question is that it already has and the powerful regimes in China and UK have already tried to suppress the discontent.
One could be accused of being Marxist if one places too much emphasis on economics as the cause of the discontent, but when opportunities decrease, people feel unfairly treated, especially if they invested much time for a career that has been denied them. The discontent in Middle Eastern countries such as Tunisia is very much about the fact that the government paid its young men to go abroad and get a good education with advanced degrees, but one they couldn't match with a job when they came home. The pragmatic, competitive, conservative will answer: "Life isn't fair!" and say in effect that there is a risk to be accepted in any strategic move, such as what subject to major in at college, and he would be right except that isn't the end of the story. People with power, governments, business people, etc. get to change their minds and demand flexibility from everybody else, and there is another consequence when the system they manage is not stable or is not fair. It doesn't seem to matter what ideology a nation embraces, weather Socialist or Capitalist, the worldwide depression has undermined their credibility and weakened their ability to respond, and all are now under threat.
A value that is central to the attitudes of Americans toward their institutions is one of fairness and this seems to be a common theme with the discontent elsewhere. The established regimes all over the world are seen as having taken unfair advantage of power conceded them by their people which people are now trying to take back. The driving value behind this there as here is a sense of fairness whose evaluation is made possible by an improved flow of information which vested interests can not control, even as they try to, and is not restricted to obviously corrupt but also special interest misconduct. This is what seemingly unrelated cultural and political systems have in common, and why the present world order is coming apart and why even the most powerful nations are not excepted.
Prices and economic hardships have long been the seeds of unrest and no less now, not even in the U.S. The American system has better success at dealing with crises over fairness than many systems, but it is tested frequently over fairness and could end because of failure to address a crisis in the future. It is not immune from the forces that are toppling other regimes and threaten long established regions.
Right now the price per gallon of gasoline is seen as unfair. People know that the price they pay is being manipulated by the oil companies and the commodities markets. It has to do with decisions made by refiners on how to process crude oil into products and on speculation on the future price of the resource. People are not in the streets over the unfairness, yet, and they change their behavior in a way that could have a negative impact on the economy both in inflation and loss of jobs in a recovery that has not created many jobs, and is just starting to. But they are trying to adjust, and the politicians are just beginning to respond.
Sudden changes in how people think and react are controlled by memes, stuck systems of perceptions that people cling to up until the cognitive dissonance with a set of changes reaches a critical mass. Some seemingly small event, at the time, some event that the powerful dismiss triggers a mass change of perception which literally causes a riot. The price of bread in 1789 Paris France was such an event that triggered the French Revolution. It was the straw that broke the camel's back of a set of seemingly small events, but accumulated grievances that explode in people's minds.
History tells us that the details of each such episode are unique to each, but there appear to be some common threads. One is that a feeling of futility in the present system, of impotence in leadership or loss of faith in the institutions of the state to address problems, leads to the meme shift. This can be experienced as a view that the holders of power are corrupt or unresponsive to obvious need; that there is a disconnect between them and the people they govern even if their political power was seemingly granted by a constitutional structure of governance. If those institutions are now seen as corrupt or ineffective, the high ideals of the Constitutional document are seen as not implemented and tainted.
Sometimes the problem is a kind of institutional entropy. The complexity of traditions added over time may cause the system to become unresponsive as much as overt corruption. A reanalysis of the role of law or a simplification of the statutes governing the system may be needed and indicated as one of the goals of a revolution. So, even though Napoleon abused power and crowned himself Emperor, he did reform French law even if some of the changes were silly.
The US Congress is at a crossroads with respect to this, and more than any of the three divisions of the U.S. Constitutional system. It is charged with a public trust to legislate wisely and with the interests of all the citizens of this country at heart, and yet it is widely mistrusted and vilified, and with the current impetus to slash the Federal budget because of a large public debt, it faces the risk of creating the meme shift that could end it and the Union or cause a revolutionary condition to arise. Of course very few Americans are thinking about revolutionary change, and most revere the U.S. Constitution without understanding it, but that could change and change quickly. 250 years of this system is demonstration that it has the means to avoid such a impasse, at least if you discount the Civil War as challenge to the form of government.
The ability to reach decisions and to act in a timely fashion, to answer the needs of the people, is why the U.S. System has lasted for 250 years, which is longer than most systems in the world, but that success is predicated on compromise for the greater good, even with people you disagree with strongly. It is true that the ultimate failure of compromise on slavery led to the Civil War, or better to Succession of southern states in the Union, and to war. Congress continually faces this problem, of finding a compromise or not, but it acts. What would injure the Union more than anything would be impotence of the government, weather of the Congress to reach agreement over low, or similar inaction in the other branches of government when it is needed. Indeed one of the strengths of out system is the ability to pick up slack when the other branches don't act. So even though Gen Alexander Hiag, had no Constitutional authority to say "I'm in charge" when Nixon resigned, the fact that the passing of power was not undefined and that he stepped up to at least give the appearance of being accountable even if not actually in charge, is a strength of our system, which is why strong man regimes are so vulnerable.
Many of the regimes that are under stress now are oligarchies run by crony capitalists often disguised as monarchies or as constitutionally elected leaders, but the people know that the elections as well as the economic systems are rigged, and even though people pay lip service to open institutions and free markets, they are corrupt and unfair. The great question for America is "Does a lopsided distribution of wealth threaten our egalitarian institutions?" Does the power that wealth brings lead to corruption of our institutions even with the ideals they hold? Not only does this lead to the obvious concern that money buys influence and access to political figures, or even the ability to get political office itself, but weather the distribution of wealth in relative terms, leads to intrinsic disadvantages, and that historically egalitarian institutions are weakened or destroyed by the disparities. The accumulation of wealth has a necessary effect of disenfranchising people. If this is true, than the shifts in wealth in America, which are not yet as great as they are elsewhere would pose a threat to our institutions and stability. One way to look at illegal immigration is that it creates the disenfranchised class that the wealth distribution demands. This would imply that price distributions are controlled by some dependent parameter of the area under the distribution, not independently. So some participant in a market enters and is willing to pay an inflated price. He makes it much harder for the buyers who can only pay a fixed low price to stay in the market. They get out of the market. If their ability to play is limited by their income, and the effort they have to put into mere survival increases, it effectively removes them from political and other civic activity. They also become more prone to illegal activities as they are forced out. This weakens egalitarian institutions.