By Elzbieta Matynia, February 11th, 2011 
As I post this, Mubarak has resigned. The military is in control. Elzbieta Matynia submitted these reflections yesterday, and now they are even more timely. She looked beyond the immediate crisis and imagined the process of successful political transformation, thinking about past experiences, specifically about Roundtables – the form invented in the late twentieth century to facilitate peaceful transitions from dictatorship to democracy. She writes in South Africa looking at Egypt, thinking about South Africa and her native Poland. She presents her position in three acts. -Jeff
Act One: The Meeting on the Square
How many of us, including the tourists to Egypt’s pyramids, were really aware that Egypt has been under a state of emergency for 30 years now? That the rights and freedoms of its citizens, guaranteed in the constitution, were indefinitely suspended, including the freedom of association, freedom of movement, and freedom of expression? (Except for family gatherings it is illegal for more than four people to gather even in private homes.) How many of us knew that censorship was legalized (no freedom of the press) and that tens of thousands have been detained without trial for defying these limitations? That people have lived in fear of the ubiquitous security forces? And that the number of political prisoners in this country of 77 million runs over 30,000…
Just a reminder to those of us who try to make sense of the developments in Egypt, including the recent Day of Rage, and the Day of Departure…
The people who gathered on Tahrir Square saw themselves for the first time as citizens, and indeed the square became their newly constituted public space. For Hannah Arendt such a coming into being of a space of appearance is a prerequisite for the formal constitution of a public realm. In this space, there is an accompanying enthusiasm and joy of discovering one’s own voice, even if interrupted by the attacks launched by undercover police and those who side with the ruling . . .
Read more: Egypt, Squaring the Circle: A View from Poland and South Africa
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 9th, 2011
How does the head of state of the oldest of modern democracies, born of a revolution, approach the uncertainties of this revolutionary moment? Many are quick with criticism of, but also with appreciation for, President Obama’s apparent conservative realism.
Ross Douthat wrote in Monday’s Times: “Obama might have done more to champion human rights and democracy in Egypt before the current crisis broke out, by leavening his Kissinger impression with a touch of Reaganite idealism. But there isn’t much more the administration can do now, because there isn’t any evidence that the Egyptian protesters are ready to actually take power.”
On my side of the political tracks, opinion is different. My friend and colleague, Elzbieta Matynia, posted on her Facebook wall an open letter: “Dear Barack, Dear Mr. President, Why are we still hesitant to join the Egyptians’ cry for their rights and dignity? The longer we wait, the more doubt there is around the world in the sincerity of our commitment to democracy. Why are we failing to appreciate that these determined people are trying hard not to resort to violence? Too often, geopolitics has smothered the hopes of an entire people!”
A more extended application of these questions was developed in a piece by Asli Bali and Aziz Rana, “Supporting democracy in the Middle East requires abandoning a vision of Pax – Americana.” But I wonder about such judgments of the President and the Western leaders. Are these judgments responses to actual policy, or are they responses to the politics of gestures as examined by Daniel Dayan in his post last week?
Gestures that are thought to reveal what is going on in closed negotiations between the authorities and some oppositional figures, but may not actually be representative, may be more significant as expressions in and of themselves, as Dayan suggests. Their appearance is significant. They have a power, while they may not be telling an underlying story.
As President Obama seems to gesture toward human rights, democracy advocates in Egypt and abroad are heartened, while America’s traditional allies in the region . . .
Read more: Obama and Egypt
By Hazem Kandil, February 8th, 2011 
Today, I was planning to present my reflections on the events in Egypt, using the insights of our conversations at DC, but Hazem Kandil, a sociologist from Egypt, sent in his latest thoughts about what is happening there, providing critical insight that I have not seen elsewhere. My thoughts from a distance will wait until tomorrow. -Jeff
If scholarship has failed the Egyptian revolutionaries, they too have failed scholarship. The revolution, as gallant as it may be, has so far benefited little from what theorists of revolutions have to offer. A cursory look at the history of popular revolts suggests the following:
– Popular uprisings eventually subside if demonstrators do not take the initiative and suffice with demanding concessions from the old regime (such as asking the president to step down) because people cannot keep coming out, and state institutions (such as the military), as well as other countries cannot be asked to chose between an established regime and a vague body called “the people.” In revolutions, you cannot stand still; if you do not move forward, you will be pushed backward.
– To transform a popular uprising into a revolutionary situation, demonstrators must create a situation of dual power.
– Dual power requires that demonstrators immediately elect a governing body and charge it with managing everyday life (coordinating neighborhood watches, administering food distribution, negotiating with foreign government, and so on).
– This governing body can then demand the recognition of the people, state institutions (such as the military), and other countries of its legitimacy as the new power.
– This state of polarization between an old fading power and a new rising one is what eventually destroys the existing regime.
As long as demonstrators fail to apply this recipe, the power struggle will come to resemble a chessboard where one side makes all the moves and the other merely blocks its advances. The absence of a strategy for victory transforms a potentially revolutionary situation into a waiting game where the only option revolutionaries have is to keep their fingers crossed and pray for their rivals to lose, . . .
Read more: Revolutionary Failure in Egypt?
By Rafael Narvaez, February 3rd, 2011 
 I agree with Daniel Dayan that the general commitment to make visible all things hidden is deeply problematic, as I explored in my initial post on WikiLeaks. But, this doesn’t mean that making previously secret things public is always without merit. Political judgment is at issue. Here, Rafael Narvaez, a sociologist originally from Peru, will consider the issue, as it applies to the situation in his native land, and, more generally, third world dictatorships, drawing upon the writing of Mario Vargas Llosa. -Jeff
After receiving the 2010 Nobel Prize for literature, Mario Vargas Llosa gave an interview with Inger Enkvist at the Swedish Academy. Enkvist begins by asking broad questions pertaining to the role of literature, of fantasy, the humanities, etc. He then asks about one of the key themes in Vargas Llosa’s work.
“In your oeuvre one often finds fanatics, characters that are cynics, politically, and also skeptics. And almost always there is a fracture [in your narrative] separating the world of politics and the world of ethics or morality. Can you comment?”
Vargas Llosa, with his usual nonchalant straight-forwardness, answers:
“I come from a world [Peru] where politics, generally and save exceptions, has been in the hands of the worst kind of people […]; a world that has had a very entrenched history of dictatorships that have been very violent and very corrupt; a world where politics seemed to be the monopoly of cheaters [pícaros], of bandits, of the most violent people. Naturally […] there have also been decent people, idealists; but they have been generally defeated, left in the margins –destroyed, in the end. So it is not at all strange that my oeuvre presents a view into political life in Peru and Latin America [which shows] such tradition of violence, of large-scale corruption, of thuggishness […]. In Latin America politics has generally been a terrible source of violence, of corruption, of backwardness. It would have been absurd and unreal for me to describe such political world as it were a world of generous beings, of idealistic characters who work for the common good [begins to . . .
Read more: Mario Vargas Llosa, The Politics of Gesture in Peru and Beyond
By Andras Bozoki, February 1st, 2011 
As we are observing the great promise of the events in Egypt, I thought it might be interesting to consider another transformation that is not going so well. Here Andras Bozoki presents his troubling reflections. Bozoki is a Professor in the Political Science Department at the Central European University in Budapest. He is the author of many books on the transformations in Central Europe and the problems and promises of the emerging democracies. When Fidesz, the new ruling party, was a liberal opposition party, Bozoki was its spokesman and campaign strategist. He also served as Hungary’s Minister of Culture in 2005 and 2006. -Jeff
With all of its problems, Hungary after 1989 has been a success story, but now the success is challenged in ways that are very much unexpected. From the happy story of the transition from dictatorship to democracy, there is a looming potential tragedy, a transition from democracy. In the second part of 2010, we Hungarians have been witnessing something that I, for one, never expected.
We grew up in a soft dictatorship which slowly but surely opened up in response to the pressure of civic movements, the increasing weakness of the structure of the party-state and also external pressures. In the 1980s, the post-totalitarian regime slowly devolved, culminating in the dramatic democratic changes of 1989. Although the “negotiated revolution” of 1989 was elite driven, most people happily endorsed the new regime of freedom. They could travel, watch foreign movies, start their own enterprises and speak freely about their lives in public. Free elections and a representative government, a constitutional court, and democratic opposition were all firmly established. The last twenty years were far from being unproblematic, prime examples: a widening gap between the winners and losers of the regime change, between the living standards of the capital city, Budapest, and the rest of the country, and between the life chances of educated classes and the Roma population. But still, what we all experienced was a genuine liberal democracy. Governing parties lost elections. The media aggressively criticized politicians. Democracy was consolidated, and the country successfully joined the European Union.
But then there was . . .
Read more: The Hungarian Shock: The Transition from Democracy?
By Hazem Kandil, January 30th, 2011
 Hazem Kandil is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at UCLA. His work examines state institutions (primarily, the military and security organs) and religious movements, with a special focus on Egypt, Turkey, and Iran. He has taught at the American University in Cairo and has published on the sociology of intellectuals, military sociology, developments in warfare, and international relations. His most recent publication is Islamizing Egypt? Jeff
It seems that the gap between scholarship and reality remains unbridgeable. Much ink has been spilled on studying Egypt and its political prospects. Most of it seems to have missed the mark. We learned that Egyptian society has been thoroughly Islamized; we read volumes about mosque networks, social welfare circles, identity politics, symbols, rituals, etc. But when Egyptians finally revolted none of this came to play. The demands were non-ideological; the participants were people who never got involved in social or political movements; and the urban heart of the revolt was secular downtown (a neighborhood Islamists never demonstrated in). Again, we were bombarded with articles about cyber movements, social network sites, and the like. Yet when the government shut down the cell-phone and Internet services at the beginning of the turmoil, there was virtually no effect. When asked, many demonstrators had never even heard of Facebook.
Experts warned of the ‘revolt of the poor’, i.e., the starving inhabitants of the inhuman shantytowns that engulf the capital. But spearheading the revolt were the country’s best and brightest. Among them, credit officers, stock market investors, and car dealers (each worth several million pounds), in addition to dozens of actors, pop singers, and other celebrities. Also, nineteenth century doctrines about the passiveness and incurable fatalism that plagues Muslim societies (justifying the ‘democratic exception’) were still circulating when Egyptians were pushing back the men with the black helmets and batons, torching armored vehicles, and mailing tear gas canisters back to sender. Finally, studies warning of the dissolution of social bonds in Egypt, and the absence of modern civil society values failed to explain how doctors formed voluntary medical committees, and fellow citizens set neighborhood watches (to guard against plainclothes police thugs . . .
Read more: Egypt Considered Deliberately
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 29th, 2011
I’ve been following the news of major political mobilization from the Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Lebanon, and now I see in Jordan too, with great interest. Since I was an eyewitness to the changes in East Central Europe, participated a bit and thought and wrote about them during and after, I can’t help but think about comparisons and contrasts. I think Roger Cohen’s piece drawing the comparison substitutes hope and dreams for careful analysis and is overly optimistic. Rather for me the comparison leads to questions and concerns.
I wonder why the roundtables that were key to the transition in Central Europe, but also in South Africa and Latin America, and earlier in Spain, which provided a kind of special architecture for the transition from dictatorship to democracy, are not being discussed in Tunisia.
I wonder to what extent there exists in any of the countries the kind of social custom of pluralistic self organization which provided the micro infrastructure for the successful peaceful transition to democracy in Poland, what I call the politics of small things.
And tonight as I watch the dramatic video reports on television of the intensified protests in Cairo, with escalating violence, I worry not only about the frightening likelihood that by the time I wake up tomorrow, there may be massacres in the street ordered by the dictator in a last ditch attempt to stay in power. I also worry what will happen when he is finally overthrown, and the protestors have their day.
I have no expertise in Egypt and its neighbors beyond what I read in the newspapers and in casual reading of magazine and journal articles. I tend to think that the fear of the Muslim Brotherhood that the regime propagated has been self serving. I don’t know how the Brotherhood will act or whether it will act only in one direction. I worry about sectarian violence, about how changes in Egypt will affect other countries of the region and beyond. I suspect that the measured and cautious approach of President Obama, supporting democratic rights without daring to say the . . .
Read more: Transition to Democracy in the Arab World?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 16th, 2011 
This week we have had been responding here at DC to the massacre in Tucson and to President Obama’s speech addressing the tragedy. We also have been considering Presidential speeches more generally.
Gary Alan Fine has presented an unorthodox account of the identity of the assassin. I presented a quick analysis and appreciation of Obama’s address, focusing on the media response to it. And Robin Wagner Pacifici and I have thought about Presidential speech making more generally. We will continue exploring these issues in the coming days, continuing our exploration of the speech and the response to the act of Jared Lee Loughner. I will give a critical overview of our discussion in next week’s DC Week in Review.
Here, instead, I want to draw attention to a post of a few weeks ago, specifically to the replies it has generated. I think the discussion as a whole provides insight into an important practical and theoretical problem, the relationship between realism and imagination.
First recall the initial post by Vince Carducci, he opened:
“Brazil is fast setting the pace for both developed and developing nations by declaring itself the world’s first “Fair Trade” nation, an announcement that comes on the heels of the election of its first woman president. Scholars and advocates have taken note. But while Dilma Rousseff’s election has been reported, the Fair Trade story has gone unnoticed in the mainstream Western media.”
And he closed expressing his hope by citing Kenneth Rapoza who:
“characterizes the election of Rousseff, Lula’s handpicked successor, as a refutation of the Washington Consensus that prescribes privatization and so-called open markets as the pother to success for lesser-developed countries. Fair Trade Brazil marks yet another step down a road less traveled.”
Carducci used Brazil to reveal that there are alternatives to “neo-liberalism.” But Felipe Pait as a Brazilian pointed out:
“This seems to be a marginal phenomenon in Brazil. …Lula’s economic policies have been rather conservative, and so have his and Dilma’s presidential campaigns. No one in Brazil is interested in autarky – not university graduates looking for every opportunity to study and work . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: The Imagined and the Real Brazil
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 6th, 2011 
There was an interesting profile of the politics of small things in the New York Times. A report on The Belarus Free Theater, which is in New York, performing at La Mama. This theater resembles the kinds of theaters I have studied. They create a free space in a repressive society. They do so not just to make a political point, but a cultural one, creating art, not agitprop. It is not surprising that one of their major admirers and supporters is Tom Stoppard whose work fits in a similar tradition of serious philosophically informed politically significant work.
But I noticed in the Times account and in other reviews and reports of their work an approach that I find problematic: the notion that great art is correlated with bad politics. Great art in the face of repression is heroic and certainly worthy of notice, but I think it is far from clear that repression is a particularly good basis for artistic achievement. To the contrary, I believe it is distance from repression, after the fact, from exile or in spite of repression, that political problems are best confronted artistically. Consider Stoppard’s work as an important case in point.
As a very specific confirmation of my point that good politics promises to make particularly great art, I thought about a theater – cultural group I know in the neighborhood of the Belarus Free Theater, Pogranicze (Borderlands) of Sejny. It is a foundation, community center, social service agency, social movement, cultural institute, art center, music school, and theater, among other things, with its roots in the Polish Student Theater Movement. Its founders were active in that movement. In 1989, the fall of the Communist order challenged them. What is the role of an alternative movement, when in a very real sense the alternative won? The victory was unanticipated even by the leaders of the political opposition, as it was with the rest of the world. The founders of Pogranicze . . .
Read more: Bad Politics = Great Art?
By Nachman Ben Yehuda, January 6th, 2011
When I first found out about the Rabbinical letter banning the sale or rental of property to Arabs, I noticed that my old friend and colleague, Nachman Ben – Yehuda, was quoted condemning it in the Toronto Globe and Mail. I then wrote to him asking for more extended reflections for DC. I received this post from him over the holiday weekend. He took his time, he explains, hoping for consequential official response. He offers his sober deliberate considerations. -Jeff
There are times and places where people like to stick together with their own flock, in defined, sometimes confined, geographical locations. In these locations, they live their own life style, with their own dress codes and eat their own foods. The Amish in Pennsylvania and the Jewish ultra-orthodox in Mea Shearim in Jerusalem are two examples. People outside of these communities and non-members may find it difficult to move and live in such social habitats. Moreover, in the case of ultra-orthodox communities, strangers who live in their neighborhoods and practice a non-religious life style may find themselves facing aggression and violence. I am writing about this to contrast it with the call of some rabbis in Israel not to rent apartments to Arabs in Israeli cities.
Israeli Arabs are just that – citizens with full and equal legal rights, and Israeli cities are not confined communities with a uniform worldview and way of life. Israeli cities, like most other cities of the world, are centers of diversity, including the religious and the secular, Jews, Christians and Muslims, old and young, Sephardi and Ashkenazi, etc. These cities are open. Renting an apartment is basically an economic issue. Making and publicizing a general call not to rent apartments to Arabs (or to any other culturally defined group) is quite simply racism.
The rabbinical pamphlet received very critical comments from some Israeli politicians and others, but this did not prevent activists from the Israeli right and religious right to stage a large demonstration on Thursday, December 23, 2010 . . .
Read more: Problematic Rabbinical Ruling Continued
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