Jonathan C. Pinckney is a Program Officer in the Program on Nonviolent Action at the United States Institute of Peace. He received his PhD in 2018 from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: When the Revolution Doesn't DeliverChapter 1: The Challenges of Civil Resistance TransitionsChapter 2: The Challenges at Work: Testing the Civil Resistance Transitions DataChapter 3: "The Elephant's Tail:" Nepal's Transition to Fractious Semi-DemocracyChapter 4: "Power is Sweet" Elite Semi-Democracy in ZambiaChapter 5: Brazil: Mobilization and ModerationChapter 6: Civil Resistance and DemocratizationWorks CitedAppendix

Mass protests frequently drive democratization. But as the Arab Spring demonstrated, not all such mobilizations result in successful transitions to democratic rule; many such movements are successfully squashed. Combining high-quality statistical work as well as case studies of Brazil, Nepal and Zambia, Pinckney lands on some crucial lessons. To hold both autocrats and their successors accountable, mass mobilization must be sustained into the democratic era. But it also must ultimately be transformed into organized opposition to remain effective. Both of these tasks are hard, but as his cases show the second is particularly challenging.