The Middle East is commonly portrayed as a region of conflict and instability. While this characterization is not entirely misleading, it is also insufficient. Today, the Middle East finds itself at a momentous political crossroads, where the old order of governance is being challenged, the balance of power in the region is shifting, and, most importantly, societies across the region are quietly but steadily demanding change. The seeming tranquility that pervades much of the region today hides the region’s underlying, and increasingly deep-seated, economic, political, and social fault lines that continue to shape its future.

More than a decade after the Arab Spring, the region has neither fully changed nor fully returned to its pre-Arab Spring trajectory. Rather, it has settled into a precarious state of being simultaneously in a state of survival and transformation.

“Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable.”

Perhaps the most profound consequence of the post-Arab Spring era has been the resilience of authoritarian rule. Rather than failing, regimes across the Middle East have either adapted or survived. Rather than making the same mistakes of 2011, regimes across the region have come to rely not only on Instead, they have come to rely not Instead, they have come to depend not only on repression but also on sophisticated surveillance, managed political participation, and carefully crafted nationalist discourses.

In Egypt, the state has positioned itself as the sole guardian of order in the face of chaos, justifying its repressive political........

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