In late 2010 all looked quiet on the Arab front: authoritarian regimes, established for decades, ruled most of the 22 member states of the Arab League and, while poverty and employment rates were high, they had been so for longer than one cared to remember. Foreign Policy magazine's 'Failed State Index', published in June 2010 - which categorises countries into one of five states: critical, in danger, borderline, stable and most stable - did not see any of the Arab states as 'in danger' and, to be fair, neither did most analysts working on the region. What followed - the fall of three dictators, mass demonstrations and a war against Libya - stunned most of all the very people who had studied the region for so long. The question thus remains: why did we fail to predict the Arab Spring?
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