ABSTRACT
The prevailing perception of the uprisings that swept the Arab world in late 2010 and early 2011 is that they have failed to bring about a long-awaited transition to liberal democracy in the region. The question has shifted from whether the socalled “Arab spring” overturns accepted wisdoms about the Middle East to “why did the ‘Arab Spring’ yield so modest a harvest?”1 Posing the question in this way returns the study of comparative politics in the Arab world to the status quo ante the uprisings: a debate alternating between searching for faint signs of
“democratic transition” on the one hand, and the attempt to understand an apparently resilient authoritarianism on the other.2
