The uprisings of 2011 altered the political landscape in the Arab world, prompted early elections in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia,[1] and provided us an unprecedented opportunity to examine critical questions regarding the relationship between social networks, political institutions and elections. Focusing on these countries allows important cross-temporal and cross-national variation. In all cases, earlier elections were held in an environment of long-standing (and apparently stable) authoritarianism. In 2011, elections were held in an atmosphere of uncertainty –arguably as founding elections in Tunisia (where the break with the past is most dramatic), as elections in a highly charged contestation over extent of change in Egypt, and as elections under uncertainty but controlled reform in Morocco. The paper explores the extent to which changing levels of uncertainty and the nature of contestation has altered electoral behavior. It rests on the premise (and evidence) that elections in the long-standing authoritarian regimes were best understood as understood as competition over access to state resources (e.g., wasta), rather than as contestation over policies, executive office-holding, or broader rules of the game. Moreover, in many cases, they were often best understood as competitions between social networks that tie voters and candidates (in what are often viewed as clientelistic relationships), rather than as individual exchanges between voters and candidates. To what extent has the uncertainty of 2011 altered this? How, when and where do social networks and expected personal benefits continue to drive voting? How does this differ depending on the issues at stake in the elections, and how does it differ across voters (e.g., new entrants into voting vs. voters who have previously engaged)? This paper will examine these questions by drawing on systematic studies of campaigns in the 2010 Egyptian, 2011 Egyptian, Moroccan and Tunisian elections, on surveys in Egypt (2011) and Morocco (2012), electoral outcomes and secondary sources. In doing so, it will contribute to the literature on elections under authoritarianism and transitions (e.g.., Malesky, Blaydes, Masoud, Lust, Lindberg), and to that on clientelism (e.g., Magaloni, Stokes, Dunning and Stokes, Kitschelt and Wilkinson, etc.)