10 years ago, a number of Arab countries from Tunisia in North Africa to Syria in the Middle East, erupted in waves of protests expressing the people’s discontentment with their socio-political and economic conditions and particularly with the ruling regimes. However, most states that experienced upheavals and revolutions succumbed to counterrevolutionary forces, as did Egypt, or spiraled into Civil War in the case of Syria, Libya, and Yemen. The fall from the high expectations for democratization led many analysts to conclude that these uprisings were failures, and that elite grasp on power was too strong to break. However, these inflection points profoundly changed their societies, and the renegotiation of state-society relationships is in many ways misperceived.
