Fresh off the press with his “The Iron Cage of Liberalism: International Politics and Unarmed Revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa”, this assistant professor of politics and international relations walks us through his thesis on why unarmed revolutions succeed or fail. Invoking the godmother of the study of revolution, Theda Skocpol, Ritter invites us to consider some of the inter-linkages between states that make resistance to authoritarian rule potentially successful.