The Middle East and North Africa region has not been immune to forms of contentious politicsfar from it. The region has experienced independence struggles, revolutions, labor protests, and demonstrations for women's rights. Yet it has been regarded as a laggard in the democracy waves that Samuel Huntington theorized. The region was not, for example, part of democracy's third wave, which enveloped Southern Europe, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and parts of Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa between the mid-1970s and 1990. Eva Bellin asked: "Why have the Middle East and North Africa remained so singularly resistant to democratization?" Michael Herb noted that among the Arab monarchies, all except Morocco lacked a strong party system. Just before the start of the Arab Spring protests, Larry Diamond wrote, "The continuing absence of even a single democratic regime in the Arab world is a striking anomalythe principal exception to the globalization of democracy." At around the same time, Asef Bayat argued that mass protests for political change were unlikely to occur, and thus analysis had to focus on variegated individual and localized forms of resistance. 1 Shortly thereafter, the region exploded in mass protests, with demands for political change and socioeconomic rights.As noted, the immediate outcomes varied. Regime changes occurred in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, albeit in very different ways; Syria, Libya, and Yemen descended into varying degrees of violence and then internationalized civil conflict; and Bahrain's Day of Rage was suppressed with Saudi military support. The Tahrir Square protests in Egypt raised expectations of significant sociopolitical transformation, and in 2011-12, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia appeared to be undergoing a democratic transition. However, by 2013 Egypt's process had stalled and then reverted to a military-led authoritarianism, and in Pathways to Democratization 27 terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.