“Early Adopters” and “Neighborhood Effects”

Abstract

By the spring of 2011, it was apparent that the “early adopters” among the Arab upheavals would see very different trajectories. Thanks in part to their different modern encounters with Europe—the French, British and Italians left distinctive institutional traces—and the impact of decades under regimes that reflected the personalities and proclivities of very different rulers, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya faced vastly different challenges.¹