The revolutionary Arab Spring now is 1 year old. In hindsight, a lot of observers claim they saw it coming. Nonsense. This was an unanticipated revolution that took insiders and outsiders, including major intelligence organizations around the world, by surprise – like Eastern Europe in 1989.

So how did this happen and what are we to make of it now? Juan Cole, a professor of history at the University of Michigan, offered interesting insights at UC Davis in a Wednesday talk, titled "The Arab Spring One Year Later."

In retrospect, of course, it is easy to find signs of the gathering storm. Ruling dictatorships had become corrupt family cartels, stealing from the people and monopolizing economic opportunity and wealth. Educated young people couldn't find jobs.

But these regimes had weathered challenges before, so how to explain the cascade from country to country? Well, in fact, there's a "cascade theory" in political science, Cole explained. A regime may be privately hated, but seem to have widespread public support, because people lie about their preferences. They make calculations about access to resources (such as schooling) or torture by secret police and, thus, hide their private views. The regime may seem unshakable and people unwilling to express opposition.

"If you get 300 people to demonstrate, it's dangerous," Cole said. "But 70,000 is less dangerous." Once people show up, others can make calculations about whether it is safe to jump on the bandwagon. A minor event, thus, can make individuals reach a boiling point and take to the streets, setting a cascade in motion.

While many have noted the importance of social media – Twitter, Facebook and the like – in getting people to the streets, Cole adds another dimension. This generation of young Arabs, he points out, has been educated in modern, standard Arabic. Now people of different countries can understand each other – so you get "transnational pan-Arab politics of a new kind." Seeing Ben Ali chased out in Tunisia last January gave people hope in Egypt. Seeing Mubarak forced out in Egypt gave people hope in Libya and elsewhere.

Success was due in part, too, to differences in the relationship of the people to the army. In Tunisia, the army was small, not a real factor. In Egypt, it is very large, but the vast majority are conscripts – and the leadership feared they would not follow orders to fire on fellow youths, so didn't issue such orders.

Libya was another story. The elite military was willing to fire on peaceful people to crush the protest movement. Only international intervention forestalled that.

So what next? How does a youth movement that had a clear demand – as Cole describes it, "to end the dictatorship of a vampire-like ruling elite and hold free, fair and transparent elections" – make the transition to a new order?

There Cole is less optimistic.

The youth movement doesn't believe in leaders, and people split off when leaders start to emerge. They're good at making demonstrations but in Egypt did not gear up for elections. Cole notes that "the youth movement hasn't made the transition to the down and dirty of canvassing and campaigning." That's what parties do, they say.

In this, he compared the Arab Spring youth movement to Occupy Wall Street. His conclusion: "Participatory politics wins out every time. They have to figure out how to get elected." The Muslim Brotherhood has figured that out.

The lesson in all this is that seemingly stable, unpopular regimes can collapse over night. But you have to have an opposition willing to organize politically to make it stick.

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