...argues that the uprisings are in danger of being dismissed as a meaningless experience, not just because of the chaos and terror that followed them, but because of the widespread sense that they have left no real political residue apart from Tunisia’s fragile success at building a democracy.

One of the difficulties in writing about the Arab Spring is that the term really refers to a series of mutually inspired but quite different national conflicts. Yet in his new book, Noah Feldman...has tried to outline a unified theory.

The Arab Winter is not a history. Rather, it is an argument, in the best sense of that word, couched in political philosophy. To get the most out of the argument (for who doesn’t want to argue back?) the reader should be somewhat familiar with the Middle East.

Devoting separate chapters to Egypt, Syria, the Islamic State and Tunisia, Mr. Feldman argues persuasively that the Arab Spring ushered in a new era, characterized by politics from below.

Feldman, a legal scholar, analyzes the events of the 2010–11 Arab Spring and its aftermath at a high level of abstraction.