I would like to thank Val Moghadam and Shamiran Mako for their engagement with my book and for their probing critique, which has given me the opportunity to further develop some of my ideas and arguments.

I would agree with much of what Moghadam and Mako have to say in their response, particularly on the transformation of revolution and the (relative) absence of a programmatic politics of social transformation in 2011. This is an argument that is now well known in works on the Arab revolutions (Moghadam and Mako’s among them), whereas the focus of my book is on the understudied phenomenon of counterrevolution.

Moghadam and Mako highlight the following points for critique in my book: my method of incorporated comparison versus a more country-focused approach, my argument that ISIS is counterrevolutionary, the place of class in my explanatory framework, and my engagement with gender. There are also some points of critique that I think have misinterpreted what I was saying in the book, which I am glad to have the opportunity to clarify.

To begin with the methodological objection, I chose a method of incorporated comparison rather than the more Millian approach adopted by Mako and Moghadam because—as I argue in my introduction—the units being compared cannot be treated as fully separate entities. Where a classic comparative method would identify a shared outcome and seek the similarities between units of comparison with otherwise different starting points to identify causal mechanisms leading to that outcome, incorporated comparison recognizes not just that the “units” are intertwined from the beginning but also so are the mechanisms. In a work of finite length, this choice meant paying somewhat less attention to the country-specific path dependencies that Moghadam and Mako identify. Yet no method can fully capture the world it seeks to analyze: there are always trade-offs between precision and comprehensiveness.

The second point, about class and revolutionary and counterrevolutionary subjects, fruitfully identifies another difference in our approach. Class is not, as Moghadam and Mako write, “secondary” to my analysis but central. I draw on a variety of data to map the class bases of the 2011 revolutions, and in subsequent substantive chapters I detail the class composition of the respective counterrevolutionary subjects in each country. Where we differ is in the understanding of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary subjects. Neither of these, in my argument, is identical to any particular social class or grouping but is rather formed from coalitions and fragments of these in the revolutionary process: classes do not line up neatly on one side or the other.

Mako and Moghadam also point usefully to my approach to gender. I do not agree that I pay as little attention to “decades of male-dominated polities” as they suggest. In both my theoretical framework and all my case studies, I integrate not only women as revolutionary actors but also gender as a site of counterrevolutionary contestation, particularly in the battles over women’s status in Tunisia, Egypt and Bahrain. Again this may reflect a difference of perspective: rather than asking “were the revolutions feminist,” I am concerned with the ways gender (including counterrevolutionary manifestations of state feminism) interact with revolutionary and counterrevolutionary processes.

In a critique I am sure will be shared by many readers, Moghadam and Mako question the relevant position of ISIS as counterrevolutionaries. “What social relations,” they ask, “were preserved by ISIS?” As I argue in my section on ISIS, whatever the ideological visions of the group themselves, they had no choice but to maintain the social relations of capitalism, particularly extractive capitalism, in Syria. This is one of the reasons why they repressed the revolutionaries of 2011 so viciously and were allowed to do so by the regime so long as it was convenient for Damascus.

One point needs to be clarified: my characterization of the United States playing ‘next to no role’ (p. 294 of my book) was in reference only to the post-2013 negotiations in Syria not, as Moghadam and Mako suggest, the region as a whole.

I would again like to thank Moghadam and Mako, and Perspectives on Politics for the opportunity for this productive exchange.