After advancing by waves for decades, democracy appears to be retreating. Since the year 2000 over two dozen democratic governments have slid toward authoritarianism. Last year the National Endowment for Democracy warned of a "global assault on democracy." This rollback in free government comes from the heights of dictatorships but also from the pits of public opinion, where nationalist insecurity boosts jingoists and autocrats. It extends from hardened dictatorships in the Middle East to suddenly shaky democracies, like Hungary and Poland, in the EU. Fears are trumping ideals, as anxious publics endorse resolute, exclusionary states. Recent studies overlook this global context when they treat the Arab states as peculiarly dysfunctional. No doubt, the Arab uprisings of 2010-2011 produced fewer stable democratic regimes (one) than Eastern Europe's revolts in 1989 (six). To be sure, initial political openings in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen ended in shocking amounts of militant violence and state repression. Furthermore, intra-state conflicts and inter-state tensions have only risen since 2011. The clash of religious zealots and unrepentant despots makes it highly unlikely that Arab governments will legitimate themselves through popular consent any time soon. The paper delivers an alternative narrative, based on the author's recent four-month research stay in Egypt and an original dataset on recent democratization. At the country-level, evidence shows Egyptians express support for General-cum-president Abdel-Fatah El-Sissi at levels and in ways that cannot be wholly ascribed to state coercion; El-Sissi's highly controversial tenure to date appears to address a broadly felt sense of uncertainty. The experience of Tunisia, the Arab world's strongest standing representative democracy, supports this conclusion. Military authoritarianism did not return in Tunisia, but citizens in the country nonetheless express concerns about the suitability of democracy—and accompanying preferences for a well-functioning government, even if it is non-democratic—that match attitudes in Egypt. Cross-regional evidence helps to explain the mechanisms at work: Electoral democracy remains tenuous among low-to-middle income countries around the world. Both Egypt and Tunisia fall in this "danger zone," where challenging material conditions regularly drag countries back into authoritarianism. In these situations, specific religions and cultures matter less than general sources of livelihood. Democratic "legitimacy" can be eclipsed by non-democratic formulas that immediately provide—or promise to provide—economic and human security, which a political transition may not yield and may actually jeopardize.