Between 2010 and 2019, more people took part in protests than at any other point in human history. Across the world, movements formed that looked revolutionary. But, after the heady successes of the Arab Spring and elsewhere, in most of the countries rocked by the waves of democratic movements, things were soon no better, and may now be worse, than before the protests started. Vincent Bevins calls this ‘the missing revolution’.
The risings in the Arab world, in Brazil and Chile, Hong…