Retrospective of both what has changed since the 2011 uprisings and what remains unchanged in the region, the essays collected in Elections and Democratization in the Middle East analyze democracy's prospects in the Middle East. The essays explore political movements in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey. Mahmoud Hamad and Khalil al-Anani, the editors of this collection, included a broad range of cases, countries that experienced uprisings in 2011 and those that did not, to show the diverse ways in which the processes of democratization have interacted with authoritarian pasts. While the essays are generally concerned with the effects of the 2011 uprisings on democratization in the region, the author of the opening essay notes the existence of electoral practices and democratic concepts in the political rhetoric in the Middle East prior to 2011, but also notes that the existence of democratic mechanisms has not always resulted in democratic regimes. The 2011 uprisings, according to contributor Nathan Brown, sometimes resulted in new elections and more open public spheres in the region. Yet even with these victories for advocates of democracy in the Middle East, the legacies of authoritarianism continue to complicate the transition to more democratic political structures. Ultimately, Hamad and Al-Anani conclude that most of the countries examined in the book tend more toward electoral democracy, where elections occur alongside weak rule of law and uneven protection of civil rights, rather than consolidated democracy, where the more substantive features of democracy, such as a broadly defined electorate and a legal system that protects fundamental rights, exist with fair elections.