Jay Ulfelder thinks that would-be revolutionaries in the Middle East need third-party allies to succeed:
The notion that protesters are more likely to succeed when they manage to peel elements of the military and police away from the regime is fairly conventional. The idea that protesters might achieve similar ends through alliances with other groups is less often recognized. Schock’s case studies provide several examples. In South Africa, the dependence of the apartheid system on black labor made strikes and other work stoppages unusually painful for the racist regime and the business leaders who supported it. In Nepal, state employees helped propel a popular uprising against that country’s king in 1990 by openly casting their lot with the demonstrators. In Thailand, the growth of an entrepreneurial class in the 1980s created a powerful new constituency that turned against the military government in 1992 when many of its members worried that harsh repression of pro-democracy demonstrations would scare away investors and tourists.
The Dish 