Revolts across the Arab world have targeted long-time Presidents seen as eager to set up ruling dynasties, while the region’s established monarchies have so far emerged relatively unscathed.
“It is clear that the ones who have been in the line of fire of the Arab revolts are the presidents, but even the monarchies might not be immune to the contagion,” says analyst Saman Shaikh of the Brookings Institute in Doha.
Tunisia started the ball rolling in January when president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was sent packing into exile, to be followed by Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak the following month under the weight of mass street protests.
“People power” has since set its sights on embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh: Between them, the three heads of state have amassed several decades in power.
“People have revolted against republicans that wanted to become royal families,” says Mustapha Alani of the Gulf Research Centre in Dubai.
“If you are president, you have to stick to your republican principles.” Mr Ben Ali and Mr Mubarak were both perceived to have their sons lined up as successors to rule Tunisia and Egypt, respectively, in the decades ahead.
In Syria, which was unaffected until a tentative first protest on March 15, the date of a Facebook-organised Day of Dignity, Bashar al-Assad took over the mantle as President on the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, in 2000.
But protests have since boiled over, with activists accusing security forces of killing more than 100 people on Wednesday alone in a southern town.
Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has been president for the past 12 years and plans to run again in a 2014 election for another five, faces a growing protest movement.
And leading the Arab pack in longevity, self-styled “king of kings” Muammar Gaddafi has ruled Libya for more than 40 years and was apparently grooming son Seif al-Islam to take up the baton.
But unrelenting coalition air strikes with the blessing of a UN Security Council resolution combined with an armed revolt on the ground suggest his days in power are numbered.
“A lot of these leaders had started as revolutionaries but they turned out to become tyrants,” says Jamil Mroue, an Abu Dhabi-based Lebanese commentator and former newspaper publisher.
“They all looked like liars.”
In the case of Tunisia and Egypt, the army’s intervention proved decisive, while the military is now also being seen as pivotal in determining the outcome of an anti-Saleh revolt in Yemen.
The Arab monarchies in Morocco and the countries of the oil-rich Gulf – apart from Bahrain, and to some extent Jordan, Kuwait and Oman – have fared better in resisting dramatic change.
The issue is complicated in Bahrain where a Sunni royal family rules over a Shiite majority.
“Monarchies constitute systems that are more rooted in society, that refer to a certain social order,” says Mr Shaikh.
Mr Alani points out that the rules of succession, even if lacking transparency and at times disputed within the ruling family, are seen as an internal affair. “Kings can pass their power to their sons or to their brothers,” he says.
But even monarchs, he warns, “if they want to survive, they need to reform as well. They cannot survive the old-fashioned way. They cannot turn the clock back, their historical legitimacy cannot last for ever.”
And Mr Shaikh points out that Western powers have strategic interests at stake in the Gulf, deterring them from rocking the boat.