The two main demands of the Arab revolutions chanted from Tunis to Damascus via Bahrain – “The people want the fall of the regime” and “work, freedom, national dignity” – remain, nine years later, unfulfilled. On the ground, people are still struggling to find political, economic and social solutions to these problems, and several endogenous as well as regional explanations have been summoned to explain these difficulties. The fact that these slogans make the state both the target of challenges and the provider of solutions, as employer and as guarantor of national sovereignty, further complicates the intelligibility of current dynamics. One can neither deny nor resolve this paradox. Yet, it has unfortunately produced a number of simplistic theses: one interpretation reduces there volutionary process to issues of political and economic liberalisation, whilst another one focuses on the role of the state in the management of economic and social problems. But these theses do not withstand a closer observation of the facts and raise two fundamental questions: what does the return of ‘national sovereignty’ mean for the political agenda of Arab countries? In a region suffering from wars and neo-liberal reforms, can the state (and what kind of state) still be a relevant subject of analysis? Above all: does the state have the political, economic and symbolic resources to respond to the emancipatory claims of the peoples of the region?