A report from the Brookings Institution:
We may very well be entering an Arab democratic moment. This is not about individual countries and their particular economic and political conditions, although those certainly matter. Something bigger is going on here. Arabs are discovering a power they weren’t aware they had. Arab regimes gave the impression of being stable, strong, and secure, backed by overwhelming coercive capacity. Facing such odds, fighting for democratic change seemed a losing battle.
Tunisia, then, was decisive. It showed that the long vaunted stability of authoritarian governments was illusory. They, too, could fall. All you needed was a good dose of people power. There is, after all, strength – and safety – in numbers.
read on....
The National Journal provides a map of the area, and speculation about which nations might next fall -- or not.
