A senior policy planner in the U.S. State Department at the time of the uprisings, Dafna Hochman Rand takes a retrospective look at the Arab Spring in order to trace the progression of public frustration and political insecurities of regimes and to offer an explanation for the origins of the Arab Spring. Drawing on three years of research in Morocco, Tunisia, and Bahrain before the Arab Spring, Rand identifies and discusses three factors occurring during the 1990s and 2000s that fueled the political upheaval in the Middle East. First, rising demands for free expression created a public forum for discussion that the states could not regulate. Second, top-down de-democratization efforts by ruling groups restricted people's personal freedoms. Third, new leaders coming into power halted liberalizing reforms promised by their predecessors. Each of these was a catalyst of the Arab Spring, fifteen years in the making. Following the emergence of these three forces, the relationship between states and societies as well as authorities and citizens began to transform. The fourth and final chapter of the book lays out the U.S. response and the challenges pro-democratic policy makers will face in the wake of the Arab Spring.