ABSTRACT
The events of late 2010 and early 2011 in North Africa have ushered in profound changes in political processes in the Arab world and in our understanding of them. Not only did they give the lie to a widespread assumption amongst policy analysts and, to a lesser extent, amongst academic commentators, that these processes differed fundamentally from what has occurred elsewhere, but they also demonstrated that popular ambitions in the Arab world differed little from those elsewhere as well. Ironically enough, in view of the endless analysis of politics in the Middle East and North Africa in recent years, commentators turned out to be generally ill-prepared to respond to these momentous events.
