ABSTRACT
What are the consequences of the Arab uprisings for democratization in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) area? The Arab uprisings that began in 2010 had, as of the end of 2014, removed four presidents and seemingly made more mobilized mass publics an increased factor in the politics of regional states. It is, however, one thing to remove a leader and quite another to create stable and inclusive “democratic” institutions. Themain initial problem of the Arab uprisings was how to translatemass protest into democratization and ultimately democratic consolidation. Yet, despite the fact that democracy was the main shared demand of the protestors who spearheaded the uprisings, there was, four years later, little evidence of democratization; what explains this “modest harvest”, as Brownlee, Masoud, and Reynolds1 put it?
