Chapter 6 covers the post-uprisings period. Whatever the poor harvest in terms of democratic advances nine years later, many Arab states have witnessed an unprecedented wave of changes and reactions (counterrevolutionary moves) similar in importance to the revolutions of the 1950s–1960s. The term revolution (thawra) was first widely used, with the Tocquevillian caveat about the relevance of the state and the power structures of old regimes both for the breakdown and then regime re-formation – and the effect of huge social mobilization should not be assessed only with the notion of a unified outcome (success or failure) at the macro-level in the short term. This chapter shows the tentative deployment of the military's institutional power with different outcomes. Notwithstanding the enduring Tunisian exception and the case of full civil war in Syria, the picture is mixed with reinforced militarism in Egypt, attempts elsewhere in a context of acute threats and boiling regional context, yet with inherent weaknesses and risks of fragmentation.

The Libyan case study in Chapter 3 reveals how harrowing the introduction of democratic elections can be in countries without national unity or any of the attributes of a modern state. Qaddafi’s ideology of a stateless, egalitarian society based on an idiosyncratic blend of Islamic and Marxist concepts left Libya’s transitional regime largely without a bureaucratic apparatus to implement policies. Qaddafi had also reinvigorated Libya’s tribal system by favoring his own and punishing the region and tribes that were the base of support for the prior monarchical regime. Competitive elections in Libya were implemented in a country without a national military that could monopolize the use of violence. In its place, during the civil war, a welter of regional, local, tribal, and ideological militias – some more powerful than the “national military” – emerged and prevented transitional governments from being able to provide peace and security for Libyans. There was also a military strongman in Libya, General Haftar, seeking to utilize the near anarchic conditions to forge a military authoritarian regime – by reining in the militias and providing desperately needed security.