In this study, Chenoweth and Stephan analyzed 323 resistance movements from 1900 to 2006. What they discovered was that nonviolent campaigns of civil resistance (including protests, strikes and boycotts) succeeded 53 percent of the time, but violent campaigns only 26 percent. They also showed that, because of higher levels of citizen participation, nonviolent movements were 10 times more likely to lead to a democratic result.

Apply this analysis to the Arab revolutions. There’s hope for Egypt today, Ackerman argues, because the mass protest movement known as Tamarod mobilized 22 million Egyptians this spring to sign a petition demanding the recall of President Mohamed Morsi. That’s about two-thirds more people than voted for Morsi in the first place. Tamarod’s roots are in the nonviolent protest movement called Kefaya, created in 2004, which started the national mobilization that finally toppled Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt had never seen a mass nonviolent campaign like Tamarod, and it provided the backbone of popular support for the generals who ousted Morsi. This doesn’t excuse the generals’ heavy-handed tactics, but it reminds us that the open, diverse civic movement represented by Tamarod might prepare the ground for a real, working democracy in a way that the closed, conspiratorial Muslim Brotherhood couldn’t.