By Andrew Arato, March 7th, 2011 
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 . . .
Read more: Revolution in Egypt?
By Hazem Kandil, February 21st, 2011 
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 . . .
Read more: Egypt: Hope against Skepticism
By Daniel Dayan, February 12th, 2011 
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 . . .
Read more: Tunisia and Egypt: Questioning Insurrections
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, 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?
|
Blogroll
On the Left
On the Right
|