I have noticed several instances, so far, of conflating two similar but distinct political models of regime change in a number of news stories (my glance at Google News showed about 90 different recent articles including the search term "domino theory" - my suspicion is that virtually all of them are referring to the current situation in the greater Middle East). The two models are the domino theory, which was particularly critical to shaping Western strategic thought throughout the Cold War, and snowball (or demonstration, or diffusion) theory, which I first learned of as a part of Samuel P. Huntington's Third Wave model.
At first glance the two seem similar. Domino theory asserts that each state within a region represents a set of finite real resources - manpower, natural resources, and other capabilities. Similarly, each state exists within a geopolitical reality - Vietnam, for instance, borders Laos and Cambodia, which themselves border Thailand and Burma, which in turn borders India and Malaysia which borders Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore, and so on. It is possible, therefore, to clearly predict the existence of geopolitical "lines" along which conquest, be it traditional or using a "Fifth Column" or some combination thereof, would most likely have to occur if any given state was to be converted to a fundamentally new and aggressive political-economic ideology (e.g. Stalinist Communism). Allowing any one state to convert is to convert its resources to the advantage of the opponent, increasing the pace of conversion, which is to say movement from state to state. Thus, lining dominoes and then toppling one over is an appropriate metaphor - it was critical for the Soviet Union, in any one region, to topple over only one domino to begin its take-over of the region as a whole, and it was equally critical for the United States to prevent any single state from first converting.
Honestly, and I say this with no snarkiness at all, the best way to really get a sense of this is to play several games of Risk, or some other similar game, and note both how geography limits the available rational strategies and how resource acquisition tends to allow a steadily quickening pace of play.
On the other hand, diffusion theory, often known as snowball theory, refers to a similar, but not identical model. The gist is that states cover a spectrum in terms of their political, economic, social, geographic, and cultural characteristics. This spectrum typically is epicentric - you can choose any state in the world and as you move further away from it, well, states become less like it (there are exceptions - consider the English-speaking world whose members deeply influence each other at a very high rate and are scattered across the globe). The assumption is that this system is fairly stable - like a mountain at which our epicenter is the tip-top covered in great quantities of snow. But, if you have a radical event occur in one state then the effect is like that of rolling a snowball off the top of a mountain into deep snow. At first the snowball moves slowly, affecting only nearby states. But, if the snowball picks up enough snow it grows in circumference and weight and speeds faster and faster down the mountain, giving it the potential to affect an ever increasing number of states. While Huntington speaks of this specifically in terms of regime-change (democratization being his snowball of interest) clearly this logic could follow for a number of different political phenomena.
The difference between these two models, both of which purport to explain how regime change in state X may cause regime change to occur in neighboring and/or similar states A, B, and C, are more significant than one might imagine. Domino theory, for instance, clearly lay within the theoretical bounds of "hard power" politics - it is a realist understanding of regime change in which having more real, measurable power results in greater political success. Furthermore, domino theory is very much a theory about hegemony - regime change of particular regimes is important and significant only within the broader struggle of great powers to control the world - it works very well to explain at least some of the logics of the US in Vietnam and the USSR in Afghanistan, for instance.
Snowball theory is significantly different - it is ground on the notion of imitation, and therefore falls under the aegis of "soft power" theory, such as that described by Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Soft power includes all that power which a political actor receives through means other than the "carrot" and the "stick" (pay-offs, threats of coercion, and coercion). In diffusion theory when actor X affects A, B, and C it isn't primarily through the machinations of X (though that might be occurring) or of hegemon Y, it is becomes X has demonstrated something to actors within A, B, and C and they have decided, consciously, to imitate it without any particular hope or need for reward or fear of coercion from X or any given hegemon. Call it inspiration, ethical, ideological, philosophical, or even practical (it is tough to build a wheel if no one mentions the concept of the wheel to you your entire life), it is inspiration by one population of another that results in snowball diffusion.
Why is this relevant here? Because clearly we see both models at work in the greater Middle East, but not both at work in the rebellions, protests, and revolts which dominate the contemporary news. The United States, as well as other great powers, are clearly bent on achieving regime stability in the region, and have been at least since late in the Cold War and especially since the 9/11 attacks - the overriding fear that anti-Western theocracies might emerge, inspired in particular by the 1979 Iranian revolution, regimes which could then imperil critical resources emerging from the area (especially petroleum) and destabilize "frontier" regions of Asian great powers such as India, Russia, and China, has led the Western great powers to engage in Machiavellianism of the highest order in the greater Middle East, guided by an implacable faith in (or at least fear of) the validity of domino theory's logic. On the other hand, the emergence of what are increasingly being called the "Arab Revolts" (even as they spread into non-Arab states - irony) is clearly an instance of snowball diffusion - the great powers not only aren't the primary forces behind the movement, they're frankly afraid of its possible implications even as it results in a Middle East which, quite possibly, will better mirror their own ideals.
The irony is palpable, and the error of conflating dominoes and snowballs couldn't be more pronounced.
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