Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-314) and index.

Theorizing the Arab Spring -- Lineages of repression -- Breakdowns a nd crackdowns -- Post-breakdown trajectories -- Why breakdowns did not always produce transitions -- Limits and legacies of the Arab Spring.

Several years after the Arab Spring began, democracy remains elusive in the Middle East. The Arab Spring that resides in the popular imagin ation is one in which a wave of mass mobilization swept the broader Mid dle East, toppled dictators, and cleared the way for democracy. The rea lity is that few Arab countries have experienced anything of the sort. While Tunisia made progress towards some type of constitutionally entre nched participatory rule, the other countries that overthrew their rule rs - Egypt, Yemen, and Libya - remain mired in authoritarianism and ins tability. Elsewhere in the Arab world uprisings were suppressed, subsid ed or never materialized. The Arab Spring's modest harvest cries out fo r explanation. Why did regime change take place in only four Arab count ries and why has democratic change proved so elusive in the countries t hat made attempts? This book attempts to answer those questions. First, by accounting for the full range of variance: from the absence or fail ure of uprisings in such places as Algeria and Saudi Arabia at one end to Tunisia's rocky but hopeful transition at the other. Second, by exam ining the deep historical and structure variables that determined the b alance of power between incumbents and opposition. Brownlee, Masoud and Reynolds find that the success of a domestic campaign to oust the rule r was preconditioned by two variables: oil wealth and the precedent of hereditary succession. When rulers were ousted, the balance of power at the time of transition goes far in predicting the character of new con stitutional provisions and the trajectory of democratization writ large .