This event was hosted by the National Endowment for democracy in washington, d. C. The challenges of moving from what i call authoritarian rackets, protection rackets, democratic protection rackets, governance, and the paradigm itself focuses on the dynamic of the conflict and identity in the air of a political system, that paradigm is by no means limited to the cases of the arab world. Lets look at ukraine right now as an example, where the issue of identity politics and hypocrisy intersect and democracy. But i think the issues of identity conflict are especially precedent in the arab world for a variety of reasons, and its not something that we really expected in the sense that when the revolt started of course in tunisia in the rural area, not in part of the metropolitan capital but in the rural areas it was about a revolt searching for social and economic equality and dignity. And so many of the initial slogans in the rebellion not only in tunisia, i much prefer the notion of the arab political rebellions in the arab spring as well as in egypt and elsewhere, these rebellions or in part or large measure a nation about issues of economic and social justice and dignity and things like that. Tom friedman wrote a long piece months ago about the whole intersection in series you between the issue of water scarcity and the environment of the rest of it and how that played a Critical Role in the revolt in syria. The people were sort of caught unaware by the extent to which the issue of identity politics has loomed so large. I use the term very deliberately because i dont think the issue as ive written in the past, i wrote a piece some two or three years ago, you know how time flies, called islam is not the solution for the problem. I argued the issue is much more about how different segments of these communities can learn to live together democratically as opposed to having a kind of peaceful coexistence or not so peaceful coexistence in an authoritarian system. I think, therefore, that the identity issue is a large but many people were surprised by it. I remember a piece about six months ago when he said he was shocked that the issue of secular islam is egypt has loomed so large. I was thinking my gosh this is a man who knows egypt well, but sometimes its not easy to sort of stand back what you know and see the terrain. The terrain was very much organized. The reason i was not so surprised about the fact that things shifted so quickly from the focus of a social and Economic Justice and dignity to a struggle over identity is that the political system that in large part been organized around what i call protection racket systems in which governments regime is backed by Strong Military in many cases, provided social, economic protection to vulnerable minorities or communities in return for their acquiescence to their power. That sort of relationship which i called a long time ago a ruling bargain, that relationship men in many respects the dynamics of identity conflict were institutionalized deeply before we saw the arab political revolt explode in the political arena and deeply embedded among contesting political elite who did or didnt necessarily have linkages to those other social groups that were revolting against a system they saw as corrupt, inefficient and unfair. When the elite politics shifted, it shifted in the context of a protection racket system and didnt necessarily at all transcend it. I think in that sense it was, in retrospect nothing was surprising when you look back, thats for sure. But i had been thinking about this stuff for a long time and while i was hoping that it would shift to the pragmatics of socioeconomic struggles, it didnt. Now come when we think about transitions i think we think about the transition paradigm. I still think its in many respects still an important intellectual contribution but the paradigm assumed that democratization would emerge not because people were committed to democracy and election but because people were using democratic rules as a mechanism of conflict resolution initially, the notion of democracy without democrats. And sewed to the extent to which heres the paradigm but i think the authors of the paradigm were correct. You need some sort of a political bargaining or packed to make a transition. Its different difficult to have a pact when the struggle is not over economic and social issues explicitly but over identity. How do you bargain identity issues . Much more difficult than dealing with demand of labor and inflation rates and so on compare the struggle of brazil over egypt. Brazilians were not configure their National Identity. The polls are not trying to figure out their National Identity of the struggle in egypt was over National Identity in many ways. And the question, therefore, is how do you move from an authoritarian protection and racket system to a democratic one . Indication of a different set of variables and do not going to do a boring Political Science dissertation hear about those variables but even the word variable scares me a little bit. Or even dependent variable. But i think the structure of that relationship really helps in retrospect begin to understand the difficult as well as the opportunities. In egypt you had a basic struggle between a military led regime that had offered protection to different elements of the community, to copts, to the business community, to secular intellectuals. But the key thing about the protection racket in egypt, two things. First of all it was maintained by a powerful military which sustained itself as we well know, and in the end the protection racket that would provide protection to i thought it was a mistake. The democratic crisis, part of the democratic solution, but look we are today. I think we have in egypt is a system that is about as close to fascination as we can now it really is. In the technical sense of the term, instantly ways. Tunisia benefited from tunisia had a strong divide, no doubt about it. But they didnt have a military to appeal to to resolve the collection action problem. So the either talked of the fight. They fought a lot. Still sure theyre going to fight a lot but at the end of the day they appeal to their own sense of selfinterest but also to the armatrading will of the trade unions and other institutions and result of creating a constitution. And there i remain optimistic. I think its much more difficult in countries such as bahrain and syria we have a small relatively small minority that sees democratization as an existential threat because an election could mean that they are overwhelmed by the majority. The alawites, there was a piece in the time about this today, the alawites did not see any democratic outcome they can live with. Structure there are cases that are much more vulnerable to reassertion of what theyre doing isnt. I think the kind of authoritarianism we have in bahrain and egypt is worse than anything we had before but you also have the opportunities. I see them in tunisia. I still remain not completely pessimistic, lets put it that way about yemen. And olivia, i cant be overly pessimistic because what she did not deal with the issue of militias early on you have a path situation. There are a variety of outcomes in egypt. I would only close by saying the following. In the wake of the revolt in tunisia and egypt, there was a sudden surge of optimism, and those of us have spent our careers writing about the mechanics, you and heidemann and all the other guys, you were wrong. Its not a question of whether we were wrong or right but we have to put aside Great Expectations and look at the context and really embed our understanding of whats possible in the complexities of these systems. They are always in their own history. So we have to take those histories and legacies seriously. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you very much. It probably wouldve been a useful service if i had told the audience what you had written, but, in fact, you did it very well. It probably was transforming the arab worlds protection racket politics. Not bad, dan. Its almost as good as liberalized hypocrisy. And Hillel Fradkin in this volume has shared with us some of his work on islamist thought and mobilization. Is the title is Arab Democracy or islamist revolution. So, three years later, hillel, which is it . [inaudible] well first, before getting to that i want to thank as others have larry and marc for this work and for the work of the National Endowment for democracy. Marc observed early on in his remarks that the worlds attention is moving on from the arab spring because of the crisis in ukraine. Thats extremely rude of Vladimir Putin to done so, but it does mean this may be the last time for some time that we will have an opportunity to discuss these matters it has other issues will emerge. I will talk a little bit about the article i wrote and what it said and how it looks today. But to focus by remarks that way i think requires me to go under the 15 rounds with olivier which would be timeconsuming and unfair to all of you. So i just really want to begin with what was largely the task, which was to reassess the arab spring some three plus years, and to indicate what we have learned. And by this i meant i suppose it meant that weve been asked to offer an interpretation of what has happened over the past three years. So i thought it would be best to begin by stating what has happened or what are the major facts concerning the arab spring, at least how i see it. And for this purpose i would include in such fact regional developments that go beyond the circumstances within the specific arab countries that underwent revolt. I think its proper to include them for several reasons. First, which bear upon as ill indicate to our subject, first because the countries of the middle east have a habit of thinking of themselves regionally, i sometimes acting as such. And such has been the case in the arab spring with the various countries both acting upon the region and being acted upon by it. This is of course almost inevitable in any part of the world but it is especially the case in the middle east because most of its countries share not only a geographic place, but the Common Grounds of being muslim and of identify themselves as such. And second and related to it, because the question of islam and its relationship to these revolts became almost immediately an aspect important to understanding them and has remained so. The net result was that all muslim countries in the region, nonarab as well as arab, saw themselves as having a stake, whether positive or negative come in the outcome of the revolts, and to the extent these were necessary or possible they have mostly acted as such. This is proven i think of brought into deep consequences for the fate of the arab results both in themselves and regional politics as a whole. The most obvious crucial and appalling case is serious and its civil war. For this war and the revolt which launched it has by now drawn in one way or another almost every country in the region. And, of course, it is now being caused as a struggle between sunni and shia islam. Thithis consequence was ousted o speaking anticipated. I wont claim to have done so, but in the end it may prove to be the most significant consequence of the arab spring for both arab and regional politics. Almost as obvious is the case that egypt whose revolution dynamics has attracted the concern and intervention of other countries, both arab and nonarab, especially turkey in the latter category. This region engagement also was part of the fact of the arab spring. I will come back to this, that the dynamic of turkeys own politics but, of course, the core of the arab spring was the arab countries and the revolts. At the beginning the revolts presumptive have presumptively two goals. First two over the existing autocrat. The second, the replacement of autocratic regime as such with a new democratic regimes. Where does this stand . Four of the five autocrats are gone. Exception is bashir alassad who now looks as if he will survive. And a part from Moammar Gadhafi seemed the worst of the lot. But the establishment of new democratic regimes has largely failed to materialize. One possible exception is tunisia. What happened . There were different factions in Different Countries that contributed and no doubt will explore today those differences in our discussion. But here i would like to focus on egypt which seems to me the most crucial or important case for several reasons and it also happens to be, was larger the focus of the article in the journal and this volume. First its the largest arab country and was the model. It was the country in which the greatest hopes were invested. It did have a genuinely democratic revolution in the sense that it held more or less, and may be inclined to forget this, more or less free elections, multiple free elections which produced a new regime. The islamist regime of the Muslim Brotherhood supported by other islamist parties. As we all know that regime has failed and is in the process of being replaced by a new regime whose character is still uncertain but may amount, i take this this is a dance of you, to the restoration of hypocrisy if perhaps it is somewhat of a new kind. So what happened . How did this, what was the dynamic, the trajectory . Que . Que x at the beginning, and here i will make reference to the article, at the beginning of the egyptian revolt it seemed to me the main beneficiary of the new political opening would be the brotherhood. That did prove to be the case. It also seemed the brotherhood would be inclined to move relatively quickly to fulfill its 80 year old vision of islamic governance. I drew this conclusion from the statements of authoritative leaders as well as the history of the brotherhood movement. The question at the time was really how quickly and, of course, how successfully in the event, and i think i was prepared for it to move fairly quickly, but as quickly as it did. It moved very quickly and for a while successfully. And i think partially because it was buoyed by very considerable public support on the front end at least, and the support of related islamist allies like the sole of his. What have we learned from this experience, this particular expense of egyptian experience with egyptian revolt did, in fact, provided to be the expression of popular will. Which for that reason i think we may describe as a democratic open. But its first expression was kind of religious population not particularly devoted to democratic order. This plus other advantages is what led to the brotherhood in the first place. It is populism as a team, presented certain questions or problems. What kind of religion would promote and how would it govern . These issues were never resolved. In particular the brotherhood never solved the issue of governors and tried to address them in an increasingly autocratic mode. I would say it doesnt excuse them but they had a lot of help because of the frustrations they encountered with the resistance of various authorities within the government. This managed to produce both resentment and chaos and the eventual family. The brotherhood political skills proved unequal to their ambitions. Where does that leave egypt today . It would be nice if the brotherhood failure led to the emergence of an alternative Political Movement democratically inclined in a western fashion, but such has not been the case because for such a movement was always weak and it appears weaker still now. I think part of the reason is, was underscored in the new book that the constituency of egypt is a very traditional and conservative on. It doesnt have a natural instinct feel for the kind of alternative, that kind of alternative. This is not i think to say that popular will can no longer express itself. And it does but it now endorses a new and charismatic savior, a person in general sese. It is over what the slimming and how to interpret it. Insofar as he is a genuinely popular, top you will still seems to some power. Moreover, it seems to me the religious coloration of such population may not be over. He himself is suggested might try to appropriate in some fashion and is notable he can have the support of some salafis and its overthrow of morsi. The net result may be a new regime which is religiously populist and authoritarianism at the same time. Whether this can work will depend upon whether his Clinical Skills are superior to those of the brotherhood. At the present time i think this is great, his main opponent in the elections will be the National Socialist popular group. We will have something of a test in a new term of which kind of populism is most appealing to the egyptian public. I think some kind of test for a lot of reasons. What is the bearing of a particular egyptian expense to the broader realm of the conflicts . I confess i dont have a clue, but any series since i do have three observations with which i will end. First, as in egypt, the perspective and of hypocrisy led to the religious passions into the political sphere. I think it could not help but do so since the nearly briefly empowered social constituencies defined themselves religiously, what dan was saying earlier about identity being the question. In some places more come in some places less that as we are not all of one mind it has led to religious quarrels. To put a heightened role of politics. For example, and especially in syria. Second, however sisi may play things out in egypt a possibility today of a religious populace but authoritarian model may be explored elsewhere. Such at least is presently the case in turkey where Prime Minister or the one is pursuing it under the rubric of advanced democracy primers are erdogan. At the end of the answer and many wondered whether it would follow socalled turkish model. And so it may although innocent now which would be very, very ironic. Finally over all our topic remains subject to question raised in the spring of 2011 in the wake of the death of osama bin laden. It was raised by a lebanese professor who said at the time, the problem now is not how you destroy something, you can resist something come its how you can build something new, a new state, a new authority, a new relationship between the public and leadership, a new civil society. Arab spring has yet to find an answer to that question. Thank you. Thank you, hillel, for those eloquent remarks. We are not going to give the floor to tarek masoud. Ill note that tarek has two articles in this book. One day he wrote actual i think almost three years ago now, pretty soon after the egyptian revolution. I think we can say more cautiously, hopeful peace, maybe then your view of the situation now. We are eager to hear it. And another, and extremely influential and widely read essay which is now being put in a book that will be published soon try to take stock of what the arab spring quote unquote happened in some countries and not in others. So whichever piece of that or this you want to talk about, the floor is yours. Thank you very much. Im constitutionally incapable of speaking while sitting. I first want to thank spent who is this upstarts because i want to thank larry and marc for inviting me here today. Ive been lucky enough to write a number of times. The first time i wrote for them was when i finish my doctoral dissertation. I had to lobby to get into it. Marc was somewhat dubious and afterwards, i wrote the piece i want to know what marc thought. I said what did you think . Unwanted the good things you have your entire career ahead of you las. [laughter] i dont know if im good at taking advice but i certainly try. As my do friend larry has noted, i was lucky enough to to contributions in this volume. One was written in june 2011 when the revolution in egypt was still fresh and the possibilities seemed to be endless. And another was written in a cover 2013 when the full scale of the arab spring disappointments became evident. Each piece i think is our reflective of its time. Pardon me for being navelgazing. Ill takes us to the question you asked which is what do we think we got wrong and how wouldve done things differently . The june 2011 piece which was entitled the road to and from liberation square, Tahrir Square, i think was broadly optimistic about egypts prospects for democracy. At the time i believed it was possible for egyptians to get to a democratic order if, and this is a very big if, all of the relevant political players, political elites from the military to the most brotherhood to the socalled secular or socalled liberal opposition to the socalled fallujah, left overs of the mubarak regime, if all of those actors made all of the right decisions. So i thought the military would have to acquiesce to democratic of 40. I thought the islamists would have to resist the temptation to dominate the political order. And i thought that nonislamists would have to acquiesce to the idea of having a political order that maybe have a little more religion in it that they might want come at a couple of the islamists and the nonislamists who have made, who had come up as nonmubarak, is at the mubarak opposition, i thought both of those would have to resist the temptation to try to exclude the former mubarak regime because excluding the mubarak would create a new class of spoilers and try to down the entire egyptian democratic edifice. If everybody does all of these things, this is egypt, they can do it, they have surprised us before, if everybody does all of those things the shoot to make its democracy but as we know, none of that came to pass. More than that it seems quaint that anybody could have believed that this would come to pass. I kind of like to beat myself up. Im a neurotic person and the sometimes crack that hes open to remind myself of my me everyday and i kind of always, i come away from it was always surprised that it was as dumb as i thought because i didnt know it at the end of that article that egypt was an extreme poor country and that poor countries even if they managed somehow to make it to democracy, they usually fail to keep it. Getting democracy is hard. Keeping democracy is actually harder. I further noted that is egypt detoured into islamist dominion over economic crisis or in the chaos, people in the country and part of that country would begin to yearn for the stability provided i the strongman. I think bill helped me craft that since. I think i had the worst word. But the point is in essence that kind of what happened. The second piece that was lucky enough to have, was coauthor with two of the greatest intellectual partners a scholar could have, professor Jason Brownlee and professor Andrew Reynolds at the university of north carolina. That is entitled modest harvest is more consistent with the pessimism buried in my early uncle but in that article, the second article, we basically survived surveyed the entire arab world. So during the revolution we may have been thrilled by the ingenuity and the savvy of technologically connected young activists, but we neglected to note that they seem to be failing much more often than they succeeded. In this article we take stock of the efforts of revolutionaries and we note of the 22 countries in the arab league only six of them really faced anything that we would characterize as a regime challenging protest, and that in only four of those cases you get success which we defined very narrowly as overthrowing of an authoritarian regime. And we note that protest success of predicted pretty well by just two simple structural factors, whether a regime that access to oil rent which allows you to buy two things, the people, and if that doesnt work, guns to hit them over the head. And the second is whether the regime had experienced successful hereditary succession which we take as a toxic a regime cohesion. This part people grapple with. Its simple. We are basically saying in the 21st century to pass power from father to son, thats pretty good evidence you of your regime is pretty tightly bound if everybody in this regime can sign onto that. So basically what we did in this new article is we tried to redirect the attention that scholars put from agents from activists et cetera to structures. So in are telling it doesnt matter how courageous or ingenious the worth the youth were, technology to overcome the collective action problem. The outcomes of although these things were essentially preordained. This perspective is really pessimistic i know. Someone once told me if you want to look like youre smart always be pessimistic. I think its useful not just explained the outcomes of protests by think also for explaining the outcomes of what happened in places that managed to overthrow their dictators. Its worth noting that of the four successive cases that we have, egypt, yemen, tunisia and libya, the first to suffer a military coup. The second so that a multiparty democratic election and more morally the person who rules given right as the Vice President of the guy who they overthrew. The third, libya, has the balls into a state of near lawlessness and only the fourth, only tunisia has managed to erect a new Democratic Institution and critically keep them afloat although as both dan and hillel have noted, theres been a great deal of polarization, a great deal of Political Violence including two assassinations in 2013, until fact im far less optimistic about tunisia than many of my colleagues to address i would say it only looks good in comparison to its arab spring neighbors. So the question is why this dismal record of failure . Why was the arab spring much more like the revolution in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s . Dan said he doesnt like variables. I have to confess i need to talk about variables. I dont like it but [inaudible] so do i. I really do. One variable we try to measure is how democratic you are, and theres lots of ways of doing this. One way is theres a group of university of maryland put something out called the four score. You can go look in Eastern Europe. Every warsaw pact member. They all jump, all move from being really bad hypocrisy still looking, much more democratic some writer in 1990. Every single one including russia. They experienced this nice jump. Of the eight warsaw pact members, today only two members have not kept at. When we finally update the store to take account of the arab spring we will not see any jump like that. Baby well see it in tunisia. We will not see anywhere else. We are going to see much more continuity and change. Then the question is, why is that. I think it comes to really two things that weve always known about how to get and keep democracy. That requires a level of economic developer, and of a state capacity, neither of which were present in the majority of the arab countries but i want to be clear. The argument im making, to which it is in structural preconditions and Economic Development was aware needs to be, people think im making a judgment about how these people are not ready for democracy. I think the argument that hillel alluded to and a scribe to, and a colleague who makes argument that there there is not a consy for pluralism, i think such arguments are wrong, i think instead what im saying is simply recognizing the fact that you need to have a particular kind of Political Landscape in order to sustain a political system in which everyone agrees that turnover of power is a good thing and should be encoded in the Political Institutions of the state. That landscape that you need to have is not in which and what is a liberal and everyone i do with it but i think in the training you probably wouldnt get what i do but the bill of rights to a referendum on not sure it would pass today. What you need is the Political Landscape in which no sides can defeat the other. This comes from a famous line from Walter Lippman back in 1939, he wrote in a piece called the indispensable opposition. He said the survival of democracy depends upon a sufficiently even balance of power to make it impracticable for the administration to the arbitrary and for the opposition to be revolutionary and irreconcilable. Oath sides have to have this belief that they can potentially win in a future democratic contest for them to continue to abide by the rules of the democratic game. Disequilibrium clearly did not exist in morsis egypt. One of the very sad ironies is that it went from being one kind of one party state during the mubarak era to think im another one party state after mubarak was overthrown in which the islamists which door to their opponents were able to run roughshod over them at the ballot box. And so its not at all surprising that their opponents look at the political game and thought that democracy and elections were a fools errand. They needed to use dans word i feel to be mounted to protect their basic interest. They concluded that the only way to prevent a new dominion of the islamists was to walk him with open arms a not so tender administration of the men with guns. I would further note as a little wrinkle here, my argument is different from the professors and the nature of the conflict doesnt matter. I dont think the identity conflict in egypt is that severe but i think we injected sodium pentothal into most of the leaders of the antito sorry, the procoup government they were broadly sympathetic with the idea of the principles of the state. I dont think thats what the debate was about. These people are winning and we cant win under the election. So none of this should approve and surprising to us less obvious but i suspect for many people much smarter than myself it wasnt surprising that a think theres some solace to be taken. I think are some solace to be taken in at least understand what happened after as opposed to before it happened because thats at least better than not understand what happened at all. Thank you very much. [applause] so, thank you, thank you, also thank you for personal discipline. I get nervous when authors leave might immediate reach to go a distance away and i dont have the ability to be an effective agent of horizontal accountability. Im going to pose a true of questions to each of you trio. I hope you can engage one another more directly now. The most controversies that were struggling with. One the controversy, and i thought i heard you kind of somewhat agree with the implication of hillel and dan, but i wasnt certain, tarek, is who and what was the government under Mohammed Morsi . That is, what youre saying is yes, its not surprising the other side perceived an emerging one party had to many. But was it, and i think we are probably most of us do anyway, lets get real here, was a military coup on july 3 of 2013, if i got the date right, and it was a tragedy that resistance to consolidating authoritarianism, if we agree thats what it was, could not be mobilized by means other than a not so tender administrations. What dan broberg now thinks is a fascist military regime. But was this authoritarianism or was it just one party, yeah, one Party Dominant regime because the Muslim Brotherhood had more votes . And what is the wider meaning of this . Is the option of moderate Islamist Party playing the political game and ruling, not ruling the rotation of how and kind of the normalization of this phenomenon . Is that dead as an option in the region . If it is how do we explain the dramatically different decision as the more or less ruling party in tunisia last year to actually do the control of the government in preparation for an election . So thats one set of question. The second is what hes egypt today . Here i heard a kind of disagreement between hillel and dan. Dan is saying, i have to agree with it, but its a kind of fascist regime. Hillel, i thought heard you saying, well, wait a minute, we dont really know, it doesnt look good maybe so we dont know exactly what the character of it is going to be and it could move in different directions. And then finally if the three of you want to address this, ill simply note in this book we look at 15 states, arab states in the middle east and north africa, and if you just look at another indicator, the Freedom House ratings of the Political Rights of civil liberties, of the states that a change during this period, almost all of the ones that changed have gone south in the sense of becoming more authoritarian. The only to that of improved in the freedom scores are one that you called i think quite aptly a lawless state, virtually in essence not a state at all, libya would you think calls profoundly into question how Freedom House could classify this country as a democracy today. And the second, tunisia, which i think is going on the road to democracy. So the ledger doesnt look good. I think youre right about that. Wanted to mention the yemen was think theres been actually more than just a little bit of progress. The fact they could agree on any kind of constitutional framework at all to hold the country together seems to me to have been a major and vastly underappreciated achievement, not only by the yemenis but by our common friends, the United Nations mediator, jamal. So dan, why dont you start and we will go in the same order. In response to larrys question, excellent questions and in response to tareks remarks, i say less, this may not make you happy, i see less distance between the three of us. I know youre pushing here for some conflict. I know that i know that ive used the fword, fascism about egypt. [laughter] fascism and communism are not going to be a lecture over the income soon i imagine, but clearly to me the system is much more shot and when i use this term fascism, theres a profound psychological thing going on its hard to grasp. The way the leader is maneuvering the fear of the population. Theres aspects of it that are very difficult to grasp and it doesnt fit into, all i can say is its a profoundly rational aspect of this but i do want Energy Question and tareks as well by saying im not saying that because of his identity conflict this precludes a transition to democracy. I would disagree with tarek in the sense that i think when you have a disagreement over identity, its easy to manipulate peoples fears come easy to me be going their most basic and concerns about where theyre going to end up in the system. Its up to leaders whether to manipulate those or not and exaggerate them. You mentioned the book, i havent read it but i was his adviser time flies when he wrote his masters at georgetown university. Much of the background of this book seems to been laid out and his basic argued was that in an election with a conservative population when leaders are trying to mobilize it got to attempt to play to that. You got to decide as a leader what you going to do. What kind of agenda youre going to set. And i dont think, we cant expect all political leaders to be nelson mandela. Thats and exceptional record and exceptional human being. But i would say in terms of responding to addressing the basic fears of the losers, this is something you see paradoxically in its own way and iran. This is an islamist regime that is protected by secure apparatus but also an establishment of clerics and intellectuals who greatly fear losing their ideological agenda. How do you engage that sort of perception . So i think that what we have in the region to some extent is a failure of leadership. And the failure to understand that you have to stand above all this. When you talk about someone who seems have understood this. That it makes me by the way both happy and worried. Because it seems he has kept the party together. The story as i understand in tunisia was the radicals in the movement every time that it opportunity try to push this agenda and they were pushed back partly by the circumstances of the assassinations and so on. I wonder what will happen to his part it is no longer there. Because, in fact, it wasnt for the lack of trying that the elements in the party, they didnt succeed apple enough but i wonder what will happen. I think theres relationship between ideological feel on the one hand and how political leaders engage it and whether theyre willing to step beyond it. We do know mark howard and others have demonstrated that oppositions, you dont have oppositions some unity. Its not surprising they negotiate a pact with morsi. Thats fairly predictable but what they didnt understand what they needed the leverage to attack the secularist. That was the other critical thing they needed and that they didnt get. Okay. Hello . Thanks for the question, which focus the mind, let me say one thing about tunisia. Because it doesnt stand out as the one actual or potential positive. First, i agree with dan that a lot of turns on who in my opinion, my sprint with the brotherhood leaders is the most intelligent in a very, very long time. But one also has to observe that unlike in egypt the brotherhood did not win an outbreed, or islamist did not win an outright majority in the election. You dont have to be a very great intellect to see there was a different situation. You to do with. Of course, the were a lot of people who didnt see that and were pushing as dan said for something more radical but people could say look, the situation doesnt permit that. And, of course, in fact we know as soon as you said that. And that is a function relief of at least partially of the tunisian society, its different histories, different constituencies and so forth. In which case one has to make or it was useful to make an agreement with other sectors, like the labor unions or the secular secularly educated. Even in the case here is is ever a long time before ending the government. It was not an easy thing for him to do. If you look then compare that with the egypt which and larrys question about egypt, dan just said more senior to make any needed a pact with the military intended a pact with the other forces. Strictly speaking, as a technical matter that wouldve been a good idea. Its always good to have more than one partner at a minimum so you could play them off against each other, but the other side doesnt really exist in the egyptian politics. Its not nonexistent but its not there as a force which is equivalent to either the army or, you know, the islamist constituencies or even the tradition. Its just not there. As for egypt, larry poses two questions. One is what was the government under morsi, and where is egypt today and the question of whether dan and tarek and i disagreed about, how to describe the current regime. What was the government under morsi . It seems to me in the first place it was a composite. It was morsi pushing forward and it was still existing bureaucracy and all sorts of other institutions which were not under the control. There was this constant attempt on morsis side, the brotherhood side to push to control those things, resisted by the institutions especially in the judiciary which, first of all, prevented morsi from very quickly taking control of thanks and also drove him crazy, if i may say so. And so the critical things seems a bit december 2012 when he just lost it. I mean, lost patience and try to rule by decree, which he could make state. And that was after that, their trajectory was downhill. And if i had been morsi i wouldve been more patient, but i dont figures getting advice from people to be patient. I think it was a kind of impulse of their, this is our time, lets make it work. Now. As for where each it is today, i was suggesting that both dan and i, and i think tarek, the old autocracy is not the new autocracy. The one thing and through this experience, and besides mubarak is gone, and a lot of the old autocracy had to do with the autocrats and what he was like, and what he came from and how we came to office, which was of course through the assassination of anwar sadat. So all of that created systems, structures are important but autocracies agents are also important and who they are. It remains to be seen what he is like previous come through this experience. Again it seems to me he doesnt want to be the colorless bureaucrat that mubarak is but he also may think its not possible to be the bureaucrat, that he needs made is fascination will be the right word for but that he needs fascism. A theme for the populace that has brought him, well bring him to power. And how successful he will be without i dont, but remember again a difference go back and await the difference between tunisia and egypt, besides the brotherhood, the salafis got 30 of the vote and some portion of that group is supporting him. So if they are useful to him and he needs them, he will try to give them some satisfaction, and the satisfaction presumably comes in a form of appropriating some of the religious sensibility informs them. Thats what i mean. That may actually work. It doesnt fix the economy but it may work as a means to Binding Society together. Great thank you, hillel. Now, tarek. Thank you for a great set of questions and for dan and hillel for some weight in such but at least a very little to add. Add. I guess it would just step back a little bit and try to answer the comparative question, why is it that tunisia seems to have worked out and egypt didnt . And i think that hillel, his comments were valid at the perspective i tried to offer which is simply in tunisia you did have a much more balanced Political Landscape. If you were a nonislamist in this tunisian situation, it was not an out of the rumba possibly come in fact it was quite likely that we have a new set of elections you can even do better. And so from the standpoint it did require a kind of remarkable minutia type character, required some with a minimal level of understand politics to know that your opponents are ones with whom you to negotiate the and of an egyptian case. The egyptian case the Muslim Brotherhood is running an election and who does it or not is the most potent electoral competitor . It is not the socalled liberal, socalled secularists. It is, in fact, the more conservative party, the salafis movement which just to a description that was mentioned in an article the opponents of, referred them to ultraconservative religious monsters but a great line. And so if your the most brother and your thinking politically, i to have outside come i have to outflank these salafis. So its not surprising the most brotherhood thought in terms of his most potent political competitors and not in terms of the socalled secularists would eventually give the military excuse to drive tanks down the street. So i really think that its a function of the Political Landscape and not necessarily a particular actor. Its interesting, dana mentioned the identity conflict. So i really dont believe that identity conflict was really important. But if you think about sort of the literature that we have in the democratization business, we have on two sides the structuralists who think you only get democracy if you achieve a certain level of development and societal differentiation, and on the other side you have people basically going back to i think in 1970, there are no prerequisites to democracy the old at the political elite that agrees on democracy as the rules of the game. If you read that piece carefully, 1970, what you need is an inconclusive political struggle such that the participants in the struggle conclude democracy is important to the point is inconclusive, neither side can win, right . Which means, he doesnt recognize this but i think you may that you had to to equally matched sides. Howd you get to equally matched sides . That comes back to structure and societal differentiation, et cetera. I think this was what was lacking in the egyptian case of whats lacking in a lot of these cases. Lets remember thinking that syria, saudi arabia, thinking about bahrain, all of these countries, thinking about jordan. All of these, significant structural barriers to getting to democracy, not least of which is that they are hugely diverse, that there have always been challenges to the authority to the central state both from below by people who never really would reconcile to the authority of the hashemites in the jordan and also from above, transnational movements. These have always been very fragile states and have never been tremendously great Fertile Ground for development of democracy. And i will stop it in hopes we can have a good conversation. You are looking for a bit of dissension to let me say in response, he also said his model only apply to countries that would risk consensus on National Identity. In egypt there is that. We could have a debate about that. No, no. He did not mean, he did not mean that there is consensus over the role of religion in politics but he only meant that we all agreed we are egyptians and we should live with speed what is striking to me is the enduring struggle over what it means to be egypt, what it means to be syria, what it means to be algeria and tunisia. I think those things are like let me know one other variable and then im going to go to the two of you because you to raised your hands first. And that is, i want to channel our late esteemed Founding Member of the Editorial Board and his frequent coauthor and simply noting, egypt had a president ial system. Tunisia had a parliamentary system. Morsi won the first round of the president ial vote with what, about 27 , and barely won with what, 51. 5 , the runoff election. It does enable people to grandiose projects when you have president ial is him. You were first. To go ahead. I am from the accountability center. I have a question, hillel mentioned the role of turkey and its influence in the area but none of the speakers touched on the role of other arab countries and specifically the gulf countries. They have contributed to egypt lately because qatar funding the Muslim Brotherhood and other both contributed and played and that is identity, most brotherhood versus military government. My question more, if you can touch on this, the u. S. Can kind of compose balance of power. Are really sustainable in the a. Otherwise were going to shift to alqaeda. Thank you. Thank you. Do keep your questions brief because we only have a limited amount of time. My name is [inaudible] from bahrain. My question is in the same direction to dan specifically. You spoke about the fear by thal to whites from the sunnis al alawites from the sunnis. Are you assuming that bahrain is just totally sunnis, it will be much easier for them to be, to go through [inaudible] toward democracy . Because i dont feel this is the case where if saudis are having the current control in bahrain, they dont mind to oppress sunnis as they are doing with the human rights activists in saudi arabia. And the other factor, as you know, we have the [inaudible] in bahrain. And the interest of u. S. Government is preserved by the current regime. So what if bahrain is totally sunni . What will change . I want to ask briefly. The issue of identity. Can you, can we separate the interim problems of identity internal problems of identity from the Foreign Policy of u. S. Government when it comes to bahrain . Okay, thank you. Yes. You were next. Thank you. A unelected member of the Egyptian Parliament presenting the freedom and Justice Party and a spokesperson for the Foreign Relations committee. Living in egypt during all these past three years, i dont agree with the characterization that morsi failed or had to rule by decree. It is very important to conceptualize the [inaudible] in which the freedom and Justice Party government. He ruled with the National Party government. Very recently, the interior minister stated that we dud not listen to anything from morsi even when he insisted on getting information, we would give him wrong information. And the military controlled more than 50 of the economy, they controlled gas, electric companies, so they were really able to make serious challenges. Still the Muslim Brotherhood or the freedom and Justice Party failed not only alone, but with other political forces. I think the beginning of the failure started with the march 19th referendum where all agreed stay away from the revolutionary course into a gradual democratic process. And i think the belief and the trust of formal democracy was a big mistake on all parties. There was a need to keep a balance of both the revolutionary [inaudible] and the democratic. I myself called for the people not to leave Tahrir Square at all until we are really sure that the country is moving in the right direction. I am still optimistic. I disagree with the pessimism i hear from time to time. I think the revolution is likely to continue if we look at it. I think the transition is still going on. I think the people in egypt still have a say in whats going on, and theyre not likely to accept the status quo. And were trying very hard now to wok to work with other Secular Forces and all of us realizing that we made mistakes and thank you for that. Over to ali and back and then maybe well be able to ali [inaudible] from the Citizenship Forum on democracy and development in benghazi, libya. I would like to ask the panelists on an issue that none of them touch upon. Is the role of the deep state encounter the ways that these, you know, countries of the arab spring have really moved on, and what is, you know, egypt or libya or tunisia and other things, how did they really either maneuver it or manipulate it, their power to bring about a break on the movement of the arab spring countries . Okay. To this woman here, to sam im not sure how many were going to be able to take after that. Could you stand up . My name is maryam am i work or few an Elearning Institute for iranian society. Iranian activists are looking at egypt a lot these days both in terms of looking backward and forward, backward in the sense there are a lot of comparisons iranians make between what is happening in egypt now or under morsi really and the iranian revolution, but also the forward look in terms of, well, we could have a Tahrir Square that actually, or we could have a Green Movement that actually gets somewhere. My question is about tareks analysis that in order for things to really take shape and consolidate or at least move forward toward democracy in any kind of reliable way, you need to have both sides or all sides feel that theres a chance, at least a chance of winning elections and that this was not the case in egypt. My question is, from the perspective not of an analyst, particularly an activist on ground in egypt when you see what happens happening under morsi, what is the right thing to do . What is the moral thing to do . Do you wait and wait and wait and see what what happens and wait for that next election when, as you say, you know theres no chance of winning, or do you stop to try the process, as undemocratic as it is, with the hope that youre going to stop the infringement of all manner of human rights . Okay. Sam . Samuel [inaudible] the hudson institute. Three very quick questions. The first, there was a comment, many comments about pac making and the failure to make pacs. I wonder if the panelists could comment on whether the revolutionary atmosphere, the euphoria of revolution itself as a phenomenon is inducive to making facts, or the fact that those regimes fell through revolutions meant that the possibility of making pacs was limited, to say the least . The second is regarding a comment that professor bromberg made about democracy without [inaudible] tarek mentioned briefly the nonislamists, whatever you want to call them. I wonder if we still share this view of the possibility of democracy without committing, committed democrats who are aiming to achieve it. The third to [inaudible] i mean, in a sense, the panelists didnt talk about this point, but i think such a distinguished panel i might use the opportunity to have them address the topic is the future of islamism. Answer, of course, to a long debate about this question, but how the panelists see the future of islamism. Many have [inaudible] on an end to islamism. I get the feeling the panelists probably dont agree with that. Where do we see islamism go from this point forward . Okay. Im going to give you the last question, very briefly please, and then weve got to go to our panelists. My name [inaudible] im with center of egyptian american relations, and to dan, thank you for the two words, the coup and fascism, and thats one of the quotes in egypt. Now i would like to add your opinion about the administration. Theyre going to meet [inaudible] tomorrow. What they should do and whats your opinion they should do . You mean the Obama Administration . Obama administration and kerry in particular meeting [inaudible] foreign minister of egypt. Next week. Okay. Im going to mix it up here and go in reare verse order to conclude reverse order to conclude. Well, thank you again, and these were a wonderful set of questions from a very engaged audience. Unfortunately, i wont be able to answer all of them. I actually am able to, but it would be very rude if i [laughter] youre more than able to. Let me respond to sams questions. Sam said why was there this failure to make pacs . Could it possibly be that in a revolutionary atmosphere people are not prone to pac making . Of course, there was just a pac between the islamists and the army over the political timetable in that country. It just was a pac that excluded a particular set of actors who nobody thought wasser terribly consequential but later proved their ability to make problems and spoil the political game. The bigger question about whether you can have democracy without democrats, i certainly believe that you can. Ill give you an example. We define, Sam Huntington has this sort of simple test of whether a countrys a democracy. You had to have had two turnovers of power within consolidation. Consolidation, absolutely. [inaudible] a few years ago i read sorry. [laughter] larrys moderating. So, but the big point is i remember an interview a few years ago where karl rove said we want to have a 100year republican majority. Ie, by the standardsover huntington, not a democrat. Everybody wants to rule forever. So, you know, to be committed to that is, i think, too high a bar. You have to be forced to accept it as opposed to actually fundamentally committed to it. In terms of the future of islamism, it really depends on how we define it. If we define it as the Muslim Brotherhood, i really dont know. If we define it as the belief rm as political activism with reference to islam, thats definitely not going to disappear, right . And its not and i think it was noted that the current egyptian regime has its own kind of islamism. After all, remember, the interim constitution that the current regime put forward the minute morsi was overthrown, they took one of the most objectionable articles in the morsi constitution and put it in article i, right . The most, quoteunquote, islamist article in that constitution. Clearly signaling, right, this is not a revolution against islamism, instead, it is a revolution against the Muslim Brotherhood and the clique of the Muslim Brotherhood. Very quickly, in terms of the jump in the polity score that we observed in Eastern Europe and we we didnt have that in the middle east, we have a negative degrees of freedom problem here. Not enough cases and too many variables. However, i would note that these Eastern European countries were far more developed than the arab world is now along all of these standard dimensions. So there were lots of reasons to expect them to do better. And then finally, to come to larrys big question was, in fact, the failure in egypt encoded in the Political Institutions that they selected at the outset . I believe this all relates to some of the comments of a doctor who makes the point that morsi was not trying to trial in the kind of president ial mode that [inaudible] and i think in this case hes right. Think about, we always mention the november 22 constitutional declaration of morsi as exhibit a in the bill of particulars against the Muslim Brotherhood. And what did he do in that constitutional declaration . First offirst of all, why was ho issue constitutional declarations . Once he gets elected, the Supreme Court dissolves the legislature, right . So is now he is legislature and executive after a little bit of maneuvering and getting to make constitutional declarations. Not a situation he created, a situation he inherited. Then what did he try to do . He tried to bring back the legislature. Not because hes committed to having parliamentary oversight, but because it was dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. The military said no. Finally he comes around to november 22nd. He tells you what decisions hes talking about, number one, to make the upper house of congress a legislature. Think about this, a president trying to bring babb a legislature back a legislature. And number two, that the Democratic Assembly that was then writing the constitution could not be dissolved. So morsis supporters would say he wasnt acting in this kind of president ial mode, he was actually doing the opposite. I dont want to pass judgment on, that i only think theres enough question about this. There is nobody in egypt whos a hero, theres nobody whos covered themselves in glory, and this gets back to the professors big point that egypt is now now fascist. I dont like to use that term, but i would say i dont think i think regardless of who would have come out ahead in the summer of 2013, whether its morsi and the egypt we would be talking about now would be very, very depressing and inhospitable place regardless. Wow. Okay. Youre next. Is that all you have to say . [laughter] i spoke for1vwdd [inaudible] [laughter] okay. Trying sorry. Trying to, theres a fair con very generals between some of these questions, but, obviously, they come at themes from different perspectives. Let me begin in the way backwards with the question about the role of the deep state. Yes, because i think itni reflects, it relates directly to what tarek was just talking about with respect to egypt. There was in that case, and i agree with the characterizations that were just offered. You had a deep state that was both functioning as ap opposition to these, the elected authority and also not functioning. I mean, dysfunctional in a way that was no longer describable constitutionally as i think tarek was implying. There was no legislature, there was no clear lines of authority. So to some degree morsi made them up as he went along, and it was out what i meant earlier by the fact that he just lost patients. So patience. So i dont think, in fact, it was simply unimportant that the superconstitutional decree was made. It came out of the circumstance, but it deepened the problem because it didnt, there was still no real constitutional authority. It conveyed more generally to people that now, you know, there was now a different spirit in the government. So in each case i think theres, you know, the problem of the preexisting state, unless it collapsed altogether as et seems to have as it seems to have done in libya, thats going to play a role in the transition. The role of outsiders, thats both regional and in the u. S. I think thats been the way it was put in two different sets of questions. In the case of the regional this is sort of where i began with my remarks, that, in fact, they had a very large impact on internal developments in Different Countries. And since the region didnt act as a whole but in conflict with, you know, with itself, it affected the trajectory of these events. Especially in egypt whereas you say, qatar was supporting the brotherhood government and others were opposing it. The role of the u. S. Is a different matter. And here its obviously a very long discussion because we had separate, obviously, reactions to the different revolts and so forth. But at the very beginning in the early spring of 2011 the president was quoted as saying effectively i want to keep hands off of this, period. He did it more positively. His statement was these are organic evolutions, and organic revolutions are good. Why are they good . Because they reflect the plant thats there. The people who are there. And the problem with us getting involved is were outsiders and we would, we would distort the growth of these plans. And i think by and large i know in egypt that everyone claims the president has been on the side of their opponents. But its that he was probrotherhood, and he was antibrotherhood. He was nowhere, basically, in any consistent way which went back, i think, to the original notion. These, we make things worse, we americans make things worse when we intervene. Therefore, were not going to. And this will all be healthier. It turns out that organic growth has liabilities of its own, and were now in a situation as we can see, for example, especially and emphatically in the case of syria. But we have not prepared the way for that was in a way by design. But it was conceived of as benevolently. The proof that we were being good was that it served no interest of ours. And it also hasnt served any interest, but it hasnt served the interest of anyone in the region either which is the problem. And related to that i would say say what was the other thing . The, going back to the speaker from the freedom and Justice Party. I hope its clear, it seems to me that president morsi had, you know, had a lot of obstacles thrown in his path. Those were from a democratic point of view dubious. In fact, this discussion about that took place earlier, i think about a year and a half ago or a year ago anyway. On the other hand, the response wasnt particularly democratic either. So thats where, thats how we got to the present circumstances. I have to stop there. Great. Dan . Well, a lot of excellent questions. You know, my sense on regional and international factors is that theyre very important n. The case of syria and, of course, in libya in some way theyre decisive. But be i think counterfactually, im not as convinced theyre ultimately the decisive factors. I think the ones weve been talking about which are very much local for the part are really the crucial ones. I do want to say when i termed the regime fascist, its not that we dont know what this regime is yet. I mean, we really dont know. Its a fascist moment. The leader is exploiting the deepest fears of the population and identifying enemies who not only are enemies, but they deserve this or that fate. So when the court says 560 of these are going to be sentenced and a member of the government says why not 20,000 or 10,000, youve got to wonder whats going on . This is a really strange situation and a very disspiritted one. Where it will go, i dont know. I am optimistic in the sense when i talk about these divisions, theyre not ironclad. By the way, in my own work i talk about islamists and nonislamists, because the nonislamic rubric is much bigger and much more complex than the islamist struggle. And i think there are possibilities for Coalition Building in egypt that may emerge as a result of the learning process that comes from this. And a result of the mistakes that leaders look at and assess and the kinds of alliances. And theres more flexibility and malleability in all these countries than would be suggested by the mere notion of, say, secular islamist divisions. At least many of them. But tarek is right, the balance of power is absolutely critical. But notice whenever we talk about these identities, were not talking about workers versus the bourgeoisie. Now on the last question, this issue of islamists, i mentioned that the tunisia situation doesnt resolve it. Who did he encounter the most questions from . Islamists. They kept asking him, oh, you say islamists, you know, thats whats left of our agenda. You say islamists accepting the pluralism and accepting working with others. That, if this is what it means, then this is not an islam u. S. Agenda anymore. What does it mean when a political leader has the courage, i think its more than simply the balance of power. Hes been thinking about these things for a long time, and i think, you know, he means them. But at the end of the today when he defines an islamist agenda in ways that question whether islam, what the role of us lam will be islam will be as opposed to simply a mere inspiration for identity, there are plenty within his party who believe it means much more. And in that sense, the tunisia situation hasnt resolved the islamist issue at all, and we will see what happens when theres an election. Lets not if its true that because of the party only got whatever, 40, 45 , they faced a situation where it would have been craze i to try to impose their will, they did for a long time, but there were all kinds of [inaudible] all kinds of strange things that we dont know where its going to go. So the real test will be after this next election and what happens when perhaps the party may do better than it did the first time in how it is ready to share power and work with the opposition. Yeah. I thanks, larry. I do want to add one thing that occurred to me in the context of dans remarks. Which is in a way to stress a point that dan made before. There are the givens, the structural things and so forth and so on, but then theres also just a question of leadership. And how leaders take into account very specific events and respond to them. And i would say a couple of things in the course of the events of the last three years, specifically in egypt, struck me very powerfully both at the time and in retrospect. The first was the demonstration of february 18th. Which was the first demonstration more or less that was dominated by the brotherhood in Tahrir Square at which the leadership decided to invite Yousef Qaradawi to speak and decided to throw a good name off the platform. That was a moment to reflect on, you know, what kinds of things you needed to succeed in the revolution and implies italy implicitly a decision was made, and i think it was made incorrectly. Other things like, tarek probably remembers the exact circumstances when, you know, the assassination of anwar sadat was next to general [inaudible] at a public event. That was probably not a very smart thing to do. So from the, first of all, from the perspective of having a successful pursuit of your own program and from the larger per spentive of perspective of egypt or arab interests, those things matter a lot and turn out one way or the other. How things turn out one way or the other can actually be, trivial as they are or small as they are, be actually fairly desossive. Thank you decisive. Thank you, hillel. Thank all three of you. Met me close with these observations before i thank my colleagues. First of all, this answer to your question, it wasnt answered and i think itd be a very lengthy discussion to try to answer it, id just say one thing. Whatever the Obama Administration does, i hope it will not commit the ultimate and unsustainable hypocrisy of declaring that egypt is now making sufficient progress toward democracy. [laughter] i think, you know, you have to begin with first order principles. And the first order principles are not to make a fool of ourselves again in the arab world by turning things upside down and pretending that we dont even see whats happening. However you characterize it, whether you want to use the f word or not, its a deeply authoritarian moment in egypt. Over a thousand people have been killed since the military came to power, over 5,000 are in jail. I think theres very clear evidence of torture being used, friends of democracy and liberal principles have had to flee the country. In one case a scholar weve wanted to bring to the United States isnt being allowed to leave the country, and, of course, many people are suffering much worse fates. So we have strategic interests, but itd be nice if wed stand up for our principles now and then too. Or at least call things as everyone else in the world would see them. The second thing id like to end on a hopeful note, so let me just observe this. Weve had a situation for 40 years where the arab world was the only region in the world, the only significant however you do the math clustering of states in the world where there wasnt a single democracy. Be and now there, according to freedomhouse i think correctly judged, there is a democracy in tunisia. Its transitional, it has elements of from jilt. Fragility. We stont shouldnt take it for granted. And if i were an american policymaker, id be saying, okay, whats the economic agenda for embracing and lifting up this economy, for strengthening the state, for partnering with the Civic Society and Political Institutions . Youve got to start somewhere. This country is crucially important in an outsized way, i think, to the future of democracy and freedom throughout the world. And the final thing is, you know, i really do believe, i think my colleagues agree, were really still in very early days