The Arab Spring, which swept across the Middle East between 2010 and 2012, demonstrated the extent to which military structure and decision-making determine whether peaceful uprisings lead to democratisation, renewed authoritarianism, collapse or civil war.
From violent protests in Cairo and Manama to the ousting of Libya's Gaddafi and the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, the series of uprisings which swept through the Middle East and North Africa from late 2010 have been burdened with the collective hopes and expectations of the world.
The success and survival of American democracy have never been guaranteed. Arguing that we must take an unflinching look at the nature of democracy-and therefore, ourselves-historian Robert Tracy McKenzie explores the ideas of human nature in the history of American democratic thought, from the nation's Founders through the Jacksonian Era and Alexis de Tocqueville.
