Middle east studies, smith college, Usa From transitions to transformations For a brief moment in early 2011, the Middle East seemed poised to slip free of its authoritarian moorings. The mass uprisings that swept across the region in late 2010 and early 2011 created unprecedented possibilities for political openings of a kind the Middle East had never previously experienced. Less than a year before the uprisings began, Larry Diamond, a prominent scholar of democratic transitions, characterized the Middle East as 'a striking anomaly-the principal exception to the globalization of democracy' (Diamond, 2010: 93). By early 2011, as protests gathered momentum, and demands for voice, dignity and justice spread from Tunisia to Egypt and onwards across Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria, an end to the Arab world's exceptionalism appeared to be at hand. Within a matter of weeks, presidents-for-life Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt had been forced from office. By year's end, they would be joined by Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen and Muammar Qadhafi of Libya.