As we have seen in my first post, Egypt is now at a critical juncture. I make this judgment not with enduring cultural patterns, civilizational characteristics, religious fundamentalism, and the like, in mind, but with some fundamental facts about regime change and revolutions.

Under a dictatorship in its modern form, revolutions rarely can bring about a democratic transformation. Either they , as mere coups, will usher in only governmental change, or old or new elites, enabled by transitional dictatorships, will be able to renew authoritarian rule in new forms, under new legitimating ideologies.  Since 1989, an immense amount of literature has shown that it is negotiated transitions based on compromise among many actors that have the best chance of establishing the guarantees require by constitutional government, that represents the actual threshold of regime change beyond dictatorships.     It is very important that in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, the East Germany and South Africa oppositions demanded not the fall of a government, but comprehensive negotiations concerning regime change: its timing, rules, procedures, and guarantees.  The fall of governments of Gierek, Kadar, Zhivkov, Honnecker and P.W. Botha, was only a first step in each, an inner ruling party affair.

In Egypt, while there were important opposition groups they did not demand to jointly negotiate with the government. Even worse, a couple of them negotiated one by one with Mubarak’s men (the Wafd Party and the Muslim Brotherhood, or the latter’s adult branch).  The initially clever strategy of celebrating the military also backfired: it partially re-legitimated the regime. When Mubarak’s last speech surprised the crowds, leaders like ElBaradei openly called for a military coup without claiming any role for the opposition in the transitional arrangements.

Yet it is not impossible or too late even now to graft a negotiating process onto the revolutionary coup. This happened even in Iraq, where the attempt of the American occupiers to impose a constitution failed under the challenge of the Grand Ayatollah Sistani, and where the method of constitution making adopted wound up resembling the two stage Central European/South African model, although it was a version deformed by all sorts of exclusions and irregularities. Accordingly, it would be possible to treat in Egypt, the current junta and its top down method of change similarly to the various efforts of Communist and other authoritarian governments to save regimes through reform from above. They should be forced to discover that this method cannot be legitimate unless it is fully negotiated with the widest possible inclusion of opposition actors.  Using, for example, a roundtable approach, as described by Matynia in an earlier post on DC.

Fortunately, there should be several reasons why the reconstruction of the system of 1953 and after from above should not be easy this time:

First, the high level of mobilization of Egyptian society, and the sophistication of part of the grass roots:  Undoubtedly many have understood the meaning of the coup within the revolution, and the military dictatorship that follows it. But challenging it too soon would have dramatically split society. The military is popular. So the right time to act would be when the Supreme Council of the Military, the true governing organ, undertakes unpopular actions, or fails to to carry out some key measures like the lifting of the emergency.

Second, conditions for organizing have undoubtedly improved. So while it was not easy before to create an umbrella organization of the main opposition groups, it should be much easier now.  This should be done also because there may very well be a need to run a single oppositional candidate against a favored military candidate in presidential elections in what will remain a highly presidential system in the current amending scenario.  Once formed, an umbrella organization of the type I have in mind has the right and duty to demand comprehensive and extended negotiations with the military government concerning the timing, procedures and guarantees of a democratic transition.

Third, the link between power and outcome is not absolute. Lenin was very surprised to lose free elections to a constituent assembly when his party already exercised dictatorship through the councils. Similarly, but on the right, General Kenan Evren was also highly surprised in Turkey after the coup of 1980 to lose an election in 1983 on behalf of the parties he favored, even as he banned the most popular leaders and parties.  Thus even under the conditions of the present military dictatorship, it will be worthwhile to struggle for relatively fair and free elections under international monitoring.

Fourth, as the freedom struggles of other Arab countries influenced by Tunisia and Egypt continue, these can have democratizing effects on Egypt itself, especially if at least one country actually manages to break the threshold of regime change to constitutional rule. Today we cannot tell which country this will be, but Tunisia remains the prime candidate.

The events in Egypt should inspire us all (except for the Israeli right that is losing an enabler to go on without changing their rejectionist policies).  We should not however suspend our critical tools when we examine the results. The project of creating a constitutional democracy in the largest Arab country is far from done, and we should realize that the very revolutionary form the country’s liberation has taken represents serious dangers to the possibility of a genuine democratic regime change.  There are serious signs that the popular movement’s struggle may be frustrated, although the outcome is still open.

Revolutions break our heart, whether they fail or succeed. Will Egypt’s revolution escape this grim prophecy, or will it follow the ‘human, all too human’ pattern of disappointment and betrayal that has haunted the great majority of human revolts? Cautious observers along the Nile banks and elsewhere are waiting anxiously for Egypt to recover from its revolutionary hangover and comfort them by answering a simple question: Did the Internet savvy demonstrators accidentally push the restart button? Is this July 1952 all over again?

Pessimists are certainly justified in pointing out a few chilling similarities. To begin with, Egyptians are back again on the receiving end of military communiqués issued by a tight-knit group of officers they know so little about. Also, in a way reminiscent of 1952, vocal and violent critics of the old regime were caught flat-footed when it finally gave way: after driving the country to a precipice (symbolized in January 1952 by the burning of Cairo), opposition activists had neither the stomach nor the vision to make the leap from dissent to rule. Political power, and the responsibilities that come with it, ultimately fell into the lap of the men in khaki uniforms. Liberals, leftists, and Islamists are yet again making demands, and then waiting for the military junta to call the shots. Our suspicions grow even more now that we know that high-ranking officers were the ones who finally nudged the president out of office (though in a less conspicuous way than in 1952).

Refusing to accept this unsettling analogy, optimists find recourse in one resounding difference between 1952, when the people wholeheartedly supported a military coup, and 2011, when the military was swept over by the strong current of popular revolt. Is this enough guarantee that the military will act any differently? It might be too early to judge, but there are reasons to be hopeful.

The Khaki Uniforms ought to have learned from their own history that military governance inevitably degenerates into authoritarian police rule, which can drive a country to disaster, and ultimately marginalize the military itself. Egypt’s Supreme Military Council should have also been following the experiment on the other side of the Mediterranean, where the emergence of a relatively autonomous civilian political space under the auspices of the Turkish armed forces has – despite many reversals and misgivings – produced a stronger and more vibrant state (and military).

Ahmed Zewail © Unknown | Caltech.edu

Hope is even more justified considering the fundamentally different position of the people themselves. Egyptians did not receive Communiqué No. 1 during the early hours of another lazy summer day in July; they did not welcome unwittingly the top-down political change while sipping morning tea and getting ready for another dull day at work. This time, the communiqué was broadcast on gigantic screens, amidst millions of angry protesters, who had successfully brought the country to a grinding halt. Egyptians have been empowered and emboldened irreversibly.

For the first time in their history, they have participated in a thoroughgoing popular revolution, not some ‘blessed movement’ carried out from above. A revealing indicator of this new sense of ownership is a text message that began circulating hours after the president was ousted with clear instructions: “Do not throw trash on the sidewalk! Do not cross a red light! Do not pay a bribe! This is now your country.” People from all walks of life have finally experienced what it is like to be a real actor in history, rather than a chorus of applause for those in the limelight.

Can an entire population that has thrust itself so decisively into the center stage of history allow a bunch of officers to kick it out again through the backstage? It has happened before. It might happen again. This is a moment when even the staunchest realist hopes his skepticism (bordering on cynicism) about human potential proves unwarranted, and that history does not repeat itself.

Both the Tunisian insurrection and the Egyptian revolt have been described in terms of an absolute evil versus an absolute good, i.e. a mean, illegitimate and greedy dictatorship in contrast with a popular insurrection. In a first snapshot one can define the insurrections as “lessons in democracy.” But the larger question is: What comes next?

In the French account of the Tunisian events, an immolated street vendor has become an emblem, or ‘root metaphor’, for the uprising. Here was a young man who had gotten himself an education but could not find a job in the corrupt economy that was controlled by the families of the former president and first lady, the Ben Ali-Trabelsi clan. Courageously, this young man tried to earn a living by acquiring a street-cart to sell vegetables. The youngster went wild with grief when the police confiscated his cart. He put himself on fire. Immediately, he became a symbolic figure, a martyr. But whose martyr will he be? Who are the future victors?

The Ambiguity of ‘NO’

These current insurrections are often described as negations of what exists. Yet, what exists is rarely unambiguous. Rejection of the former Tunisian president Ben Ali can be inspired by both a yearning for a just or free society, as well as by a desire for another sort of authoritarian society. In the case of Egypt, some analysts believe that the dismissal of Mubarak carries an obvious meaning. But of course it does not. Behind it can be both the urge to challenge a police state AND the wish to salute another type of police state. Mubarak himself is both an adversary of democracy and an enemy of fundamentalism.

The first images of the Egyptian insurrection were crowd shots, aerial views. They project unity over diversity. While the masses show unanimous fervour now, over time the picture will become more specific. Already now we can see that the champions of democracy wear hijabs, demonstrators carry banners proclaiming “Mubarak in Tel Aviv,” they stomp with their feet on American and Israeli flags, and row after row of protesters turn Tahrir Square into an open air mosque. The point is not to criticize such actions, but to stress that they seem to converge around a relatively incoherent set of motives.

This is not your typical insurrection, but a specific insurrection. Or, in other words, those who are saying ‘no’ seldom express a pure ‘no.’ They are saying no in the name of something. Simple ‘no-sayers’ will be rapidly pushed aside by those who have more substantial things to say.

Pamuk’s Choice: Scylla and Charybdis

Many possible scripts can steer the turn of events. The comments of the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk on Turkey, as expressed in his wonderful novel ‘Snow’ are illuminating.

Pamuk systematically explores a baffling and paradoxical situation in Turkey. On the one hand, groups that traditionally support military dictatorships advocate ‘progressive’ ideas, i.e. notions that challenge religious fundamentalism. On the other hand, any democratic choice is condemned to be aligned with religious integralism. Thus, depending on one’s preferences, or fears, the battle can be described as both one between progressive ideas and religious integralism, and one between military dictatorship and democracy. The choice may end up as one between the Scylla of dictatorship and the Charybdis of integralism.

Such a choice exists now, but it will not last very long. Religious integralism often comes to power through a democratically valid electoral process. Yet once the seat of power has been reached, integralist movements may erase all institutions that are incompatible with their values. At the end of the day, we are left with regimes that started out democratically, through the will of the people and helped by Western journalism, but morphed into authoritarian orders. Look at Iran and Turkey. The real choice at that later stage is no longer one between dictatorship and integralism. Instead, it is one between two sorts of dictatorships: Religious dictatorships on the one hand, and military dictatorships with slight progressive inclinations, on the other.

Fearmongers or Sleepwalkers?

The French politician and former head of the Communist Party Marie-George Buffet stressed in a recent interview the diversity of those who are taking part in the Egyptian insurrection. She predicted that it might lead to one of the first free regimes in the Arab world. Impressive leaders, such as Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei are waiting in the wings. Buffet emphasized that one must be confident in Egypt’s democratic potential. One should not fall prey to the ‘politics of fear’.

Indeed, the “politics of fear” feel quite ugly. In addition, there is no certainty that the gloomy scenario sketched above will happen. Yet there is no certainty that it will not. The situation is open. While the politics of fear should be avoided, we should also steer clear of what I call the ‘politics of sleepwalking.’ Sleepwalkers are usually intrepid, fearless. They believe themselves invulnerable and there is a good reason for it: They sleep deeply.

Perhaps we are about to witness an extraordinary event: the advent of true democracy both in the Mashriq and the Maghreb. However, we should also ask ourselves the questions of ‘what will happen if democracy will be used as a disposable instrument?’ and ‘can we assume that the democratic nature of a transition will automatically transfer itself to the ensuing regime?’ Now that Ben Ali and Murabak are gone, what is next?

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 regime.

Tahrir Square is hardly a square, as its center is a circle, huge and grassy, now occupied by a tent city. Its shape is additionally confused by construction work, as it spills over into two limbs, one ending at the Egyptian Museum, and the other, Al-Tahrir Avenue, ends up at a bridge over the Nile, where an army checkpoint is installed.

Act Two: Hope – Speech, Conversation, Nonviolence.

Press coverage mentions the extraordinary solidarity of people sitting around bonfires and talking. We all know by now that Tahrir Square means Liberation Square, and though it has been advertised on tourist webpages as gay-friendly, only now has its very name gained a performative power. This is where the people regain their dignity, expressing on their own “yes we can”. We hear their freedom chants (horiya, horiya). From the bits of interviews we know that the object of their discussion is above all Mubarak and the regime he embodies, but we also hear them talking about real elections, and about a new constitution. And they pray. That is the beginning, the beginning of a larger conversation, of the dialogue they need so badly.

Over the past two weeks Tahrir Square has become both site and narrative of a societal hope that centers on the kind of change activated by a newly arisen public realm. Such a realm could create the conditions for dialogue, engaged conversation, negotiation, and compromise that are deeply invested in the democratic promise. But how to facilitate the transformation of an authoritarian political context into a democratic one? How to prepare the ground for a democratic order to emerge where there was none before?

How to make sure that the change is not just a gloss-over, but that it is inclusive, that it also respects the rights of minorities in the society, and that it takes into account the rights of women? How to ensure that the transformation that aims at creating democratic institutions and  practices takes care to nurture the richer texture of democracy?

Finally, how to ensure that the path to a new democracy is not a mere copy of  what has worked in other places? We have learned our lessons, and we already know that democracy cannot be imported or imposed from the outside. We know that if limited to its key benchmark — free and fair elections — democracy could legitimately bring to power non-democratic regimes. We know such instances, and they serve as a cautionary reminder not only for democratic missionaries, but also for the citizens of any democracy that has become taken for granted and relies increasingly on experts, electoral campaign managers, bureaucrats, and money.

The transition to a meaningful and enduring democracy, never an easy project, has the best chance to succeed if it is initiated and owned by the local people and takes into account their voices, imbued as they are with their respective histories, cultures, and economies. But since we know this, how can we respond to those who are disappointed that we appear not to support the aspirations of the Egyptian people?

Well, there is a mechanism devised in the last four decades, known as the roundtable, that by taking dialogue between the people and the regime seriously, has facilitated peaceful political transformation from authoritarianism to democracy.  The choice is clear: either the use of force, or the negotiated settlement.

Act Three: Furniture Needed — a Sizable Round Table

The political mechanism, the roundtable, was introduced in Spain in 1975 and tested in Chile in 1988, and made possible the negotiated transitions in Poland and Hungary in1989, and in South Africa in1993. The roundtable institutionalizes dialogue by providing for it a concrete framework in space and time, by authorizing and legitimizing the actors, by necessitating the drafting of a script, and by establishing rules for the conduct of negotiations.

In each case assuming local features, the roundtable seems to transcend geography as well as the varied historical and political circumstances that brought about the varied forms of dictatorship. After all, the cases of Spain, Chile, Poland, and South Africa are hardly analogous. The one thing they had in common was, generally speaking, the ostentatiously non-democratic character of their regimes, which were otherwise very different from each other. What may seem a paradox at first glance is that while in Poland it was the hegemonic communist party that was the ultimate confiscator of civil and human rights, in Spain and in South Africa it was mainly the outlawed communist party that acted against their respective dictatorships of fascism and racial apartheid.

Still, beyond society’s mastering of local ways of social self-organization in Spain under Franco’s aging fascism in the 1970s, in Poland under Jaruzelski’s compromised communism in the 80s, or in South Africa under the desolate Botha – de Klerk apartheid of the 90s, there was also a recognition on both sides of the pressures exerted by the international human rights community and by world public opinion, foreign governments, investment companies, and donor agencies.

• Who is to be the intermediary?

As the launching of a dialogue between enemies is a daunting task, an external third party, serving as promoter, guardian, or intermediary in the process, usually assists it.  Interestingly, there emerge often surprising or even unlikely allies. Both in Spain and in Poland the third parties that exhibited considerable initiative in facilitating this experimental path were the ancient if not pre-modern institutions of the monarchy and the Catholic Church, respectively. In South Africa they were the Afrikaner nationalists, or more specifically the verligte wing of the governing National Party, enlightened Afrikaner intellectuals, mostly academics, but still loyal to the nationalist outlook. Who could perform such a role in Egypt?

Who is to furnish the table for the dialogue and negotiations? Who is to authorize and legitimize the actors/participants in the talks? Who is to draft a script for the talks, establish the principles of negotiations, and plan for a contingency infrastructure in which any lack of agreement could be dealt with?  In both Poland and South Africa, the roundtable established the grounds for the new order and marked the beginning of the long, tedious, and less thrilling process of building the new– in Adam Michnik’s words—“gray democracy”.

Who will act as the “intermediary” in Egypt? The military, which is already seen as the quiet protector of the protesters, and is not hated as the state police are? Or perhaps exiles who are not known to the larger public but are not tainted, and who bring with them the experience of living in overseas democracies?

• Who might to be sitting at the table?

The roundtable provides tools for institutionalizing a dialogue between those who hold dictatorial power and those social movements which — though still illegal, and often represented by people just back from prison or exile and labe

led enemies of the state — are now acknowledged by the regime, however reluctantly, as the only ones able to bring credibility to the proposed dialogue and an eventual contract.

Omar Suleiman

At the roundtable, outside of a few pre-written threads, the rest has to be improvised, or “written on stage”. That kind of performance requires enormous discipline, continuous research and training, a study of the new language, and a search for fresh ways of encouraging support from, and interaction with, the audience. The key actors have to come from both sides, the regime and the dissenting civil society.

Among those that we know from the media is General Omar Suleiman, former Director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate, recently named Vice-President of the county, who seems to be trying to take charge of  the talks. There is a reluctant leader Dr. Mohamed El Baradei, a lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize winner who headed the International Atomic Energy Agency ; and there are some political prisoners better known in Egypt, such as Ayman Nour, a lawyer, leader of the Ghad Party,  and a presidential candidate who ran against Mubarak  in the 2005 elections that according to international monitors were rigged.  There is – no doubt— the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and one of the oldest opposition groups, illegal since 1952, but therefore even more influential, though currently holding back from  the forefront of the current protest. But of course there are no doubt actors on the ground that we outsiders have not heard of.

Mohamed ElBaradei

• The Benefits of Conducting the Process in Public – a Key to Building Democratic Culture  in Egypt

The manifest publicness of the roundtable talks serves an additional purpose in building any democracy: it exposes the larger society to the broad foundations of democratic politics, serving as a tutorial in participation, deliberation, representation, and discussion. Like its great-grandfather the New England Town meeting, the roundtable engenders the arts of dialogue and compromise and further underscores the performative dimension of democracy-in-the-making.

The anxious monitoring of the talks by the public – including its frustration over their less publicized parts — adds its own voices and gestures, expands the size of the theatre of political negotiation, and enables a larger co-participation in the roundtable talks. At the same time, the very mechanism and performance of the roundtable expands the stock of non-violent settings and political idioms that facilitate democratic change in contexts that lack democratic institutions and processes.

What is most important: the launching of a dialogue is not the result of the “good will” of the ruling regime, but a combination of factors, one of them being the recognition by the regime of the creative emancipatory invincibility demonstrated by society, the other party to the negotiations. It is important to observe that the invincibility reveals itself in a non-violent way (even if — or especially if — the non-violent approach is a recent one), and that it is not fueled by fear.

It is important to mention that the Spanish, Polish, and South African roundtables were not generated by frightened, atomized societies deprived of any capacity to resist the dictatorial power. Instead they brought together a motivated, hitherto rather unlikely assembly of modern subjects, half of whom at these tables, representing the oppressed, were well aware of having been stripped of their basic rights and capabilities as citizens. The other half at the table, the oppressors, have to acknowledge — even if reluctantly – that they are the keepers of a system whose very existence depends on excluding large parts of society from participation in the political decision-making process, and therefore from access to the resources and capacities needed to advance the well-being of both community and its individual members. But this is only the beginning.

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 “D – Word,” as Mark LeVine put it on the Aljazeera website, was motivated by such concerns.  Tonight Obama appeared overly cautious, but tomorrow his approach likely will change, and, in fact, he does underscore democratic ideals in his statement.

But this is not my major concern.  My concern is smaller in a sense.  I want to know what people are saying to each other on the streets of Tunis, Cairo, Beirut, Amman and Sanaa.  I know that they are saying “no” to the old regime, but worry that they haven’t developed a capacity to discuss among themselves what they favor, and haven’t developed the means to discuss among themselves alternative principles and compromises.  I examined this issue in a chapter of my book The Politics of Small Things, in which I demonstrate that because the Romanians could only say no, their post communist experience was particularly a tough one.  Because the experience of talking together beyond saying no was more limited in Czechoslovakia than in Poland, Poland had an easier democratic transition.    A democratic aftermath to dictatorship goes beyond the power of no.

Next on DC: Commentary on the situation in Egypt from an expert.