ABSTRACT
Over the course of 2011, the authoritarian order of the Middle East would be shaken by the angry protests Bouazizi's death sparked. Media coverage portrayed autocratic Arab regimes as falling dominoes fanning out from Tunisia. Indeed, by year's end, dictators in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen had been toppled. The pace, process, and outcomes of the Arab uprisings have necessarily differed from one country to another. What remains certain is that the region as a whole changed profoundly. Western observers tended to make sense of the momentous events of 2011 by drawing compelling analogies with European history. Nepotism and impoverishment were shared concerns that resonated widely across the Arab world prior to 2011. But the navigation of successful political and economic transitions in individual countries required both a complex balancing of various revolutionary interests and the removal of entrenched countervailing forces. The growing influence of Islamist parties in the wake of the Arab uprisings surprised some observers.
