What accounts for continuing authoritarian success in the Arab world today? In light of the "Arab Spring," explanations of "authoritarian resilience" in the region clearly need to be revised. Yet it is important to remember that many of these authoritarian regimes have weathered the storm well. As Sean Yom and Gregory Gause recently noted in these pages, most of the region's monarchies have so far remained unbowed by the winds of revolutionary change. 1 It is much harder-though not impossible-to identify Arab republics that have not been deeply and adversely affected by the wave of uprisings. In the Republic of Algeria, not only did the regime survive this tumultuous period, but it hardly deviated from its habitual methods of authoritarian governance. Is Algeria the exception that confirms the rule? Or does it underscore the complexity of the mechanisms underpinning authoritarianism in the region, and the limitations of revolutionary models of regime change of the Arab Spring? In my view, Algeria illustrates a type of authoritarian resistance to popular challenges that is based on pseudodemocratization, redistributive patronage, and an effective use of the security apparatus. It would be misguided to evaluate the prospects for political change in the Middle East simply in light of the recent uprisings. The patterns of democratic revolutions and authoritarian resilience observed during the Arab Spring indicate that specific combinations of factors can be conducive to regime failure, but they hardly provide a comprehensive map of all the causes that can lead to regime change in the region. For one thing, authoritarian elites do learn from their mistakes and those of others; in that respect, the Algerian regime is no exception. 2 Furthermore, and somewhat counterintuitively, just because a particular regime

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and between statist and non-statists Islamists, for better (e.g. Tunisia) and for worse (e.g. Egypt).