These two recent books each systematically trace the nature of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and its consequences for politics in the region in the wake of the Arab uprisings. The fact that they were written by two well-respected political scientists, Jason Brownlee and Amaney Jamal, who support their claims with ample evidence and theoretical sophistication, makes these books all the more powerful and well worth reading.

Both Brownlee and Jamal show how international actors—in this case, the United States—inhibit democratization, albeit through distinct mechanisms. For Brownlee, the causal process is more direct and more explicitly elite-centric. In his view, the United States has aided authoritarian durability in Egypt by reinforcing its military power, diminishing the incentives for coups by providing annual financing for the military, providing economic aid to support subsidies and infrastructure, and supplying funding that enabled the regime to maintain domestic repressive forces. For Jamal, the mechanisms are more indirect and are rooted in mass public opinion. In Jamal's account, anti-Americanism, in conjunction with the rise of political Islam, has hampered popular demand for regime change, even while citizens express support for more democracy. Jamal asserts that “democratic outcomes are contingent on internal negotiations between citizens and the elite” (p. 13). Given that Islamists are often harsh critics of American foreign policy and that they constitute the strongest opposition groups to authoritarian rulers in the contemporary Middle East, citizens who gain from linkages to the West are hesitant to support democratization out of fear that their countries will be shut out of global economic opportunities and will face unrest and instability. On this logic, the stronger the anti-Americanism of domestic democratic forces, as in Jordan, the less likely the regime is to democratize; and where anti-Americanism, particularly among Islamic movements, is relatively moderate, as in Kuwait, the likelihood of democratization is greater.

Focused on Egypt, Brownlee aims to explain why protests were able to unseat a long-standing dictator and why this popular movement has faced difficulties effecting regime change. Democracy Prevention is a magisterial account of the Egyptian-U.S. relationship based on a thorough review of archival sources and extensive interviews with key informants. Beginning in 1973 under Anwar Sadat and continuing through 2012, one year after Hosni Mubarak's ouster, the chapters track the consolidation of close ties between U.S. and Egyptian policymakers across multiple U.S. administrations. In the author's detailed and well-documented account, the reader sees how the multiple dimensions of the bilateral alliance bolstered authoritarian rule in Egypt for decades. The penultimate chapter (“Groundswell”) provides a thorough account of the forces that gradually coalesced into mass mobilization, ultimately leading to Mubarak's overthrow. Even readers with a good knowledge of American foreign policy and the Middle East are bound to learn a great deal about the events and interests that have cemented the Egyptian-American alliance, effectively blocking genuine efforts at democracy promotion in Egypt. Brownlee's account thus provides the essential background for understanding the rise of anti-Americanism among opposition forces in the region. In this respect, his work dovetails nicely with Jamal's arguments in Of Empires and Citizens.

Through a comparative study of Jordan and Kuwait, with additional short case studies of Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Palestine, Jamal relies on original qualitative and quantitative data to show variation in regional attitudes toward authoritarianism and to trace the mechanisms at play. In Chapter 2, she describes the construction of “U.S. client regimes” in Jordan and Kuwait, showing how the United States has played a very different role in the two countries, leading to distinct cross-national perceptions of the role of the United States in the region. In Chapter 3, she traces the rise of the major Jordanian and Kuwaiti Islamist groups, showing how the former espouse anti-American rhetoric while the latter hold far more favorable views of the United States, largely due to the United State's support for Kuwait in the first Gulf war. Chapters 4 and 5 use qualitative and quantitative data to trace the multistep process linking citizen attitudes towards the United States with variable attitudes towards democracy and their incumbent rulers in Jordan and Kuwait. Subsequent chapters bring more leverage to the argument by including additional cases that resemble the core country case on such relevant factors as their economic profiles and institutional structures. The brief analysis of Palestine, in which the United States pushed for free elections but refused to recognize their results when Hamas won, nicely encapsulates the logic of the argument (see p. 197). The final chapter includes a brief discussion of the implications of the findings for nonclient Arab states, which do not rely on external patronage (p. 223), although the logic of the arguments as applied to nonclient states needs more development, particularly with respect to the ways in which regime cronies in nonclient states have benefited from globalization (like their counterparts in client states), because it bears directly on the central claims of the book.

Brownlee and Jamal make rich contributions to the scholarly literature on persistent authoritarianism in the Middle East. Both books show how international actors—and not just domestic groups—constitute authoritarianism. As Brownlee notes, the existing literature highlights coercion and international support to explain authoritarian durability, yet the January 25 Revolution in Egypt appears to belie both approaches: Neither repression nor international backing for the ruler—even after mass protests erupted—could prevent the overthrow of Mubarak. Rather, in the case of Egypt, the author shows why and how international “linkages” and “leverage” have not translated into pressures for democratization in the Middle East, as has occurred in other regions (e.g., see Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, Competitive Authoritarianism, 2010). Brownlee (p. 123) even gently critiques his own prior work, but then shows why his own and others' work on persistent authoritarianism remains relevant, particularly for explaining why revolutionary uprisings do not necessarily produce regime change (pp. 171–74). Jamal also shows why existing research, which generally privileges culture or political economy to explain Middle Eastern authoritarianism, has suffered from a lack of attention to international factors.

On the face of it, the two books present opposing depictions about the political attitudes and behavior of Arab citizens. In showing that international support could not prevent the ouster of an authoritarian ruler, Brownlee suggests that Egyptians were motivated by domestic concerns to rise up against their regime, with little regard for global power dynamics. As a protester's placard depicted on the cover of Democracy Prevention indicates—“America, support the people not the dictator”—Egyptians were not afraid to publicly call on their government's international patron to abandon its support for Mubarak. On the other hand, Jamal contends that a subordinate position in the U.S.-dominated international order has made critical masses of citizens in Arab client states reluctant to agitate for democracy. These seemingly contradictory approaches can be reconciled, however, if Jamal's framework is extended to specify the conditions under which citizens' domestic grievances outweigh calculations based on global power dynamics in shaping their views and even actions. In Chapter 1, she briefly sketches out a potential scenario (“As the benefactors of the regime grew fewer, the majority of citizens began to see little utility in Mubarak” [p. 19]). This point deserves more analysis in order to clarify the scope conditions of the argument.

Like Brownlee, Jamal ultimately aims to explain persistent authoritarianism, a regime-level outcome. Given her focus on individual-level survey and interview data, it is vital to link mass attitudes and regime stability, as she herself acknowledges (pp. 166–69). Yet Of Empires and Citizens is on much stronger ground in explaining public attitudes, which it does masterfully, while the connections between the micro and the macro levels are not well developed. More attention to the linkages between masses and elites in authoritarian regimes would have been useful. At times, the book suggests that anti-Americanism tempers the demands of would-be pro-democracy elite activists to actually push for democratization (see, for example, pp. 221–22), but this is distinct from an argument grounded in mass attitudes, the preponderant focus of the book.

In their shared emphasis on the international dimensions of persistent authoritarianism, both books cannot explain the breakdown of authoritarian rule, which appears to be rooted more in domestic than international factors. To be sure, neither author sets out to explain authoritarian breakdown, which is arguably distinct from regime durability, but the two phenomena are interrelated. If foreign support is essential for keeping dictators in power, when is it no longer effective? Arabs rose up en masse and overthrew dictators in at least two United States client states and, particularly in the case of the Egypt, as Brownlee shows, the revolution occurred in spite of United States opposition. At some point, the masses revolt and external hegemons cannot preempt this. Revolts may arise when important components of the population perceive that their regimes no longer deliver for them, compelling them to withdraw their support for the authoritarian bargain, as noted earlier. If so, this is an important scope condition for this genre of argument.

Notwithstanding these small critiques, both books analyze some of the most important issues of our times with great theoretical and empirical rigor. The fast pace of change in the Arab world today raises further questions with implications for the arguments in these two books. First, since Islamists have held the reins of power in multiple countries across the region (albeit temporarily, in the case of Egypt), how does this affect the dynamics of U.S. relations with citizens and governments in Arab countries? Since both books were published, U.S. officials have become somewhat more comfortable in dealing with Islamists and some even publicly condemned the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi in Egypt, to the chagrin of the Muslim Brotherhood's opponents. Will this have any longer-term effect on U.S. foreign policy toward the region, and perhaps even produce subtle shifts in public opinion toward non-Islamist incumbent rulers? Islamists have been the most vocal champions of anti-Americanism and the most powerful opposition forces in the region since the 1970s, but, as Jamal asks (p. 229), why should we expect secular liberals to be more pro-American? Second, mounting regional tensions have also affected American relations with the Middle East. Deep divisions within the region over the war in Syria and other conflicts have worked to the advantage of the United States by undercutting nascent support for Iran and Hezbollah among citizens and rulers in predominantly Sunni countries in the region. How do regional dynamics play into the international–domestic nexus in shaping the prospects for political reform in the region?

Brownlee and Jamal conclude by presenting compelling and provocative policy recommendations, largely aimed at American officials. As Jamal notes (p. 227), U.S. statements to the effect that “America values freedoms in ways that ordinary Muslim and Arab citizens don't” are flawed and insulting. The relative absence of democracy in the Middle East is not due to a lack of secular, liberal forces—which may not even be essential for democracy (p. 230)—but rather to the nature of America's engagement with the region. America can help to bring about democratization in the Middle East by playing a less heavy-handed and more constructive role in the region. In turn, this major policy shift would help to create oppositions that are more pro-United States, freeing citizens to favor and even to mobilize in favor of democratic reforms. Brownlee, too, points to the interests behind existing policies toward the region. If American strategic interests have blocked the United States from promoting or tolerating democratization in its key client states, then nothing short of an overhaul of these interests will permit real political change. He thus argues that “U.S. decision makers will only embrace democracy in Egypt if they rely less on the Egyptian regime” (p. 176).

The strong evidence and arguments marshaled in these two books make the authors' claims about the routes to more democratic change in the Middle East quite compelling. But the magnitude of the shifts that these policy recommendations demand of U.S. policy toward the region makes it unlikely that this change will happen anytime soon. Indeed, the recent overthrow of Morsi in Egypt arguably reinforces precisely the macro- and micro-level political dynamics that Brownlee and Jamal highlight, respectively, by showing that the United States readily overlooks violations of the democratic process in favor of its geopolitical interests.