The Middle East has been treated as exceptional in much of the scholarly literature. It was entirely absent from comparative studies of political transitions until the late 1990s, and even in the early 2000s some of the literature on resilient authoritarianism reproduced a narrative of a region seemingly immune to normal (that is, happening elsewhere) forces of political change. Following this trend, the politics and history of the region are routinely taught in region-specific courses, but they are far less frequently integrated into thematic courses except when the teacher is an area specialist. Unfortunately, the absence of Middle East cases from many broader courses reinforces popular conceptions of regional exceptionalism and deprives possibilities for comparative theorizing. Even worse, our years of teaching undergraduates have taught us that images of harems, pyramids, and desert warriors wielding sabers on camelback still shape many Americans' perceptions of the region. Obviously our classrooms challenge these images, but demand for specialized courses consistently exceeds capacity at a time when sensational images from the region saturate the news media. For those students who do not take or cannot gain a seat in those courses, images of harems, camels, and violence are likely to endure. Worse, the analytical implications of one-dimensional portrayals in political science have been grave, notably when the preoccupation with “culture” as a singular explanatory variable prejudices against exploring other influences on political practices and institutions.

The Arab uprisings, like the fall of the Berlin Wall more than two decades ago, are watershed events that have raised fundamental questions about our understanding of the processes of political change, the emergence and diffusion of contentious collective action, and the role of the international context in facilitating or hindering political change. The uprisings have further strengthened a growing focus within Middle Eastern studies on framing questions about the social, economic, and political dynamics in the region in ways that allow for more robust linkages with comparative theorizing about the dynamics of contentious collective action and the processes of political change. In other words, the Arab uprisings have injected new energy into the comparative study of contentious politics. In addition to new research agendas the uprisings have also provided opportunities for introducing students in survey and theory courses to the region's political dynamics, enriching students' engagement with theoretical concepts and honing their critical thinking and analytical skills while making the Middle East less “exceptional” for the students. Here, I focus on how incorporating of Middle Eastern cases allows instructors to raise questions and engage students in discussions about the emergence and diffusion of contentious collective action.

In 2011 the protests in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) were not only unprecedented in terms of scale and political consequences for the region, they also highlighted a number of long-standing analytical and theoretical misconceptions about Arab politics. In particular, the conventional thesis privileging the idea of a “durable authoritarianism” in the Arab world was partially undermined by a cross-regional civil society that confronted the formidable security and military apparatus of the state. Although in some countries democratic transitions have continued, since they first occurred in Tunisia, other Arab states continue to witness a resilient authoritarianism and strong state repression of civil society activism. These historic events have also set the stage for a new teaching agenda in important ways. Specifically, an agenda for teaching the “new Middle East” must incorporate two important general components: first, a critical review of the influential scholarship on persistent authoritarianism with the objective of addressing past theoretical and methodological misconceptions, and second, the introduction of new conceptual and analytical frameworks relevant to contemporary political developments in the Arab world and the MENA region more generally.

Whether it was bread-wielding Tunisians, marching Suez workers, or Yemeni protestors chanting against corruption, the 2011 Arab uprisings put political economy issues front and center. Indeed, a critical thread throughout the region's uprisings has been the simple question: “where has the money gone?” And though the field of political economy is multifaceted, the basic refrain “follow the money” unites most of it. Having students engage and debate political economy issues helps counteract much of the popular media's fixation on violence, terrorism, and sectarianism that too often exclusively frames how Americans understand the Middle East. Political economy gets at some of the most important (but certainly not all) factors and dynamics that define social and political life in the Middle East. A political economy approach also reinforces the critical disposition and tools of inquiry to instill in university undergraduates. In particular, the approach stresses to students that the realms of the economy and the political are hardly distinct, and therefore a more complete explanation for the events of 2011, and after, require grasping that interaction (Lindblom 1982; Polanyi 2001).

Analyses of the spread of the Arab uprisings have been dominated by three comparative angles. Single-country studies have emerged as the most common framework, often put to use in a second comparative approach of examining variation across cases. For example, studies explore which states have had major uprisings and which have not, which uprisings were peaceful and which were violent, and so on (Amar and Prashad 2013; Haddad, Bsheer, and Abu-Rish 2012; McMurray and Ufheil-Somers 2013; Sowers and Toensing 2013). A third approach explores comparisons with other waves of popular mobilization against authoritarian regimes, for example, in Europe during the mid-nineteenth century, Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, and so on (Patel, Bunce, and Wolchik 2013 Weyland 2012). These literatures investigate the complex processes of mobilization, revolution, and transition unfolding in parts of the Middle East since the outbreak of the uprisings in late 2010. From the literature on revolutions, for example, we know that a popularly based movement that brings about some change in political leadership does not necessarily lead to a regime change resulting in a fundamental overturning of an economic, political, or social system. From past cases we have learned that at least some old institutions and alliances almost always reemerge, and what form the new institution will take eventually is often unknown for several years—for example, think of the Iranian revolution, let alone the French revolution. As events in postrevolutionary Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Yemen continue to unfold—and it is questionable whether those revolutions are even over—and as the bloody civil war in Syria continues, these insights provide us with useful tools for examining how institutions, processes, and power relations are changing—and how they are not.

The phenomenal success achieved by Islamic political parties in the wake of the Arab uprisings of 2011 is one of the most significant and frequently noted developments to follow from those momentous events. Within a few months of the demise of long-standing authoritarian regimes, Islamist groups that had been banned and oppressed for decades found themselves flourishing. Soon El-Nahda in Tunisia and then Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood tasted victory in constituent assembly, legislative, and eventually presidential elections. A new area of political Islam in power had seemingly arrived.

In this article I address the perennial lenses through which the region is studied and produced as a reality unto itself, particularly in the dominant discourse in the United States. I conclude with some contingent good news.

The recent protests and revolutionary movements in the Middle East, which commenced in late 2010, constitute a cataclysm not only in the way we understand the relation between states and publics in each respective country, but also in the manner the region is taught. Significantly, Arab media studies has emerged as a vital and extremely functional subject of immediate relevance to the studies of Middle East politics. The explosion of media worldwide and in the region has created new connections, increased information flows, and forged new opportunities for solidarities and transnational dissident identities to emerge.

The Arab “revolutions” and the events surrounding them have posed a variety of theoretical challenges to political scientists. Popular uprisings have resulted in the ouster of long-standing autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, and are seriously threatening the survival of incumbent authoritarian rulers in a region that once seemed immune to democratic change (Brumberg 2002; Fish 2002; Heydemann 2007; Posusney and Angrist 2005; Salamé 1994; Schlumberger 2007). These unforeseen developments pushed scholars of politics back to the drawing board to revisit dominant theoretical understandings of the drivers of regime change and stability (Albrecht and Bishara 2011; Bellin 2012; Blaydes and Lo 2012; Brownlee and Stacher 2011; Droz-Vincent 2011; Gause 2011; Goldstone 2011; Hoffman and Jamal 2012, Lynch 2011; Masoud 2011; Stacher 2012).

This symposium addresses the rise of Internet data—and, more broadly, the data that is generated by a range of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Global ICT growth could have wide-ranging implications for the study of politics, but political science is currently lagging behind other disciplines in its use of ICT-derived data—particularly compared to fields such as public health and economics (Nadav et al. 2011; Carneiro and Mylonakis 2009; Choi and Varian 2009; Christakis and Fowler 2009; Ginsberg et al. 2009; Jensen 2011). The articles in this symposium, therefore, focus on the question of how political scientists can and should think about using ICT-derived data in their research.

What kind of Internet data is generated in authoritarian political environments? And how can political scientists use that data to better understand the dynamics of nondemocratic regimes?

Predictions of the United States presidential election vote outcome have been growing in scope and popularity in the academic realm. Traditional election forecasting models predict the United States presidential popular vote outcome on a national level based primarily on economic indicators (e.g., real income growth, unemployment), public approval ratings, and incumbency advantage. Many of these forecasting models are rooted in retrospective voting theory (Downs 1957; Fiorina 1981), essentially rewarding the party in office if times are good, punishing it if times are bad. These models have successfully predicted election results by modeling economic performance and incumbent approval ratings (Campbell 2012; Fair 1992; Fair 1996; Klarner 2012). For example, Abramowitz's (2004; 2005) “time for a change model” predicts election results using economic performance during the first half of the election year, the number of years the incumbent party has been in office, and presidential approval. For a full review of 13 presidential forecasts for the US 2012 election, see PS: Political Science and Politics October 2012 (45 (4): 610–75). Although national models are the most common, researchers have also started to use state-level predictions for presidential and congressional outcomes, with mostly positive success (Berry and Bickers 2012; Jerome and Jerome-Speziari 2012; Klarner 2012; Silver 2012). These models use similar predictors, such as incumbency, economic conditions, and home-state advantage, and predict the per-candidate percentage of popular vote. Unfortunately, with state-level models, many of the economic variables used in predicting national models are unavailable beyond 10–15 election cycles (compounded also by 1959 additions of Alaska and Hawaii), so state-level models naturally have a shorter period of analysis than do national models.

Google search data have several major advantages over traditional survey data. First, the high costs of running frequent surveys mean that most survey questions are only asked occasionally making comparisons over time difficult. By contrast, Google Trends provides information on search trends measured weekly. Second, there are many countries where surveys are only conducted sporadically, whereas Google search data are available anywhere in the world where sufficient numbers of people use its search engine. The Google Trends website allows researchers to download data for almost all countries at no cost and to download time series of any search term's popularity over time (provided enough people have searched for it). For these reasons, Google Trends is an attractive data source for social scientists.

The events of 2011 transformed the politics of the Arab world. In just under 12 months, dictators fell in three countries: Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. In Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria, protests and violence continued throughout 2012 to shake what were once assumed to be the solid foundations of long-standing autocratic regimes. Although it is too soon to assess the outcome of these events, one immediate consequence is clear: the empowerment of public opinion in Arab politics. For the first time in more than 50 years, the voices of average Tunisians, Egyptians, and Libyans can directly influence political outcomes. This shift may yet prove to be temporary, but its importance in driving current events cannot be discounted.

Retroactive digitization of the printed corpus reveals patterns of social evolution and political manipulation. Prior to the introduction of online search, examining the etymology of a political term helped social theorists extrapolate the historical trajectory of a political concept. Now we have tools for quantitative examination of such hypotheses. Using four case studies, I demonstrate the utility of word search dynamics in shedding light on the evolution of long-debated political phenomena. A triad of etymological explorations by Richard Koebner motivates the first three cases.

Despite having transitioned to democracy, the governments of many developing countries still deliver poor public services as measured by social outcome indicators. Recent literature frames these issues of governance and public service delivery as a two-part principal-agent problem: civil servants are the agents of politicians and politicians are themselves the agents of the voters (Olken and Pande 2011). Much of this literature explores the determinants that drive citizens to demand better services (Pande 2011). Less attention, however, has been paid to understanding the behavior of the agents themselves and the interventions that can lead local politicians and civil servants to deliver better services.

The arrival of Hurricane Sandy within a week of the 2012 presidential election caused unprecedented disruption to the final days of the campaign and Election Day in areas that were affected. The precise impact of the storm on those areas hit hardest was not necessarily clear. Contrary to prior research on the effect of disasters on electoral outcomes, we find that the president's vote share was ultimately increased in storm-affected areas by about four percentage points, plus or minus two points. While those states most heavily affected were unlikely to give their electoral vote to Romney because of other factors, we present counterfactual analyses that show that such a storm could have had a significant impact on swing states: although the storm only affected some areas, we show that Virginia would likely have been won by Romney were it not hit at all, whereas North Carolina would likely have gone for Obama had it been directly in the storm's path.

This article reports on an Internet-based quasi-experiment that took place during the French 2012 presidential election. We designed a website where French voters could vote under different voting rules. Based on the observation of more than 8,000 participants, we find that a substantial minority (10% to 15%) vote differently under the different systems, with 17% of the voters not voting for their preferred candidate in the one-round election, this percentage dropped to 12% in the alternative vote (first choice). Compared to the two-rounds election, at the aggregate level, the top two candidates get slightly more votes under one round, while the minor candidates obtain more first choices under the alternative vote. These findings are consistent with what the literature suggests about the impact of these voting systems on voters' choice.

During political campaigns the spread between the popularity of the candidates is a common metric capturing the state of the horse-race feature of the campaign. One candidate is said to be ahead of another by an indicated number of percentage points. If the difference is less than the margin of error, the race is considered too close to call. In two-person races, however, the spread corresponds to a much smaller confidence level than is usually reported because the two numbers used to compute the spread are not independent. The size of the confidence interval that is typically reported is incorrect by a factor of two. Therefore, some spreads that are reported as decisive are races too close to call.

After the 2012 Republican New Hampshire primary, 159 poll results were released prior to the subsequent nomination contests in the Republican presidential primary. More than two-thirds of these polls relied on interactive voice response (IVR) software to conduct the interviews. We evaluate the ability of polls to predict the vote-share for the Republican candidates Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich. We find no overall difference in the average accuracy of IVR and traditional human polls, but IVR polls conducted prior to human polls are significantly poorer predictors of election outcomes than traditional human polls even after controlling for characteristics of the states, polls, and electoral environment. These findings provide suggestive, but not conclusive, evidence that pollsters may take cues from one another given the stakes involved. If so, reported polls should not be assumed to be independent of one another and so-called poll-of-polls will be misleadingly precise.