Can the outcome of revolutions be predicted? At the beginning of 2011, riots and revolutions broke out across North Africa and the Middle East in a number of countries. Widely considered a rebellion against bad autocratic regimes, many in the international community optimistically called this movement the “Arab Spring,” seeing it as the beginning of a new era of democracy for the region. Researchers at the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), however, predicted otherwise. Their analysis pointed to a low success rate for fledgling democracies that might result from these revolutions. They also predicted problems with power vacuums and the use of force to reestablish order. Today, six years after the original report was published, events have proven them correct.