transplants and also deceased kidney transplants. so, you know, they're learning from us. now the question is will we learn from them? time. okay. thank you all for coming. i'll be over here signing books. [applause] if you would like one. [applause] >> on behalf of the public library, thank you again for coming, and thank you to all of you for coming and for your great questions. for more information on this system, please visit the d.c. public library web site. have great night. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> we'd like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback, twitter.com/booktv. >> larry diamond and marc plattner, the editors of "democratization and authoritarianism in the arab world," along with book contributors talk about the promise of democratization in the middle east after the arab spring and the eventual backlash that took place in egypt and elsewhere. this is about an hour and 45 minutes. >> good afternoon. i'm marc plattner, the editor of journal of democracy and the vice president for research and studies here at the national endowment for democracy. it's my great pleasure to welcome all of you to today's panel is celebrating the publication of "democratization and authoritarianism in the arab world," a new book edited by larry diamond and me and published by the johns hopkins university press. if i'm not mistaken, this is the 30th journal of democracy book that johns hopkins has published since the series began in 1993. these volumes, which mostly but not ebbs trucive -- exclusively draw upon articles that previously appeared in the journal, have addressed a very wide range of thematic and regional issues related to democratization around the world. for in hi of you who -- any of you who may not be familiar with the journal of democracy, it's a quarterly publication sponsored by the national endowment for democracy that has become a leading global forum for serious analysis of the problems and prospects of democracy around the world. larry diamond, who's my -- also my coed to have at the -- editor at the journal, will serve as the moderator of today's discussion, and i'll limit myself here to just a few brief remarks, mostly about the book itself. today given the intense worldwide focus on the shattering events in ukraine, the arab world for the first time in several years is no longer at the center of attention for those who follow global politics or democracy. and some might even say that so-called arab spring that began early in 2011 has proven to be merely a brief eruption that left behind a great deal of violence and very little democracy. yet it would be premature to discount the impact of the arab uprisings of recent years. not only have they made possible the still-promising democratic transition in tunisia and frail but still not yet aborted transition in yemen and libya, they also have changed the face of arab politics and given many arab citizens a taste of freedom that will not soon be forgotten. regardless of how one evaluates the events of 2011-2013, they must be considered a critical juncture in the struggle to bring democracy to arab lands. this their regional -- in their regional sweep, they are rivaled only by the wave of transformations in eastern europe and eurasia in 1989-'91. the journal of democracy monitored the arab uprisings and their aftermath intensively, and our book reflects the range and variety of our cover an. it's not easy, of course, for a quarterly to stay on top of rapidly-unfolding events, and we could not expect our authors unfailingly to hit a moving target. so along with some impressively prescient and accurate assessments, the book no doubt contains some judgments that now seem outdated or perhaps belied by events. in fact, one thing we've asked our panelists to do today is to reflect on how they might have altered the analyses that they contributed to book if they were rewriting their article today. but we also believe there's real value in bringing together essays that show how key developments in the evolution of the arab spring werer sued at the time -- perceived at the time they occurred. democratization and authoritarianism in the arab world is quite large for a volume containing 29 chapters along with an introductory essay. sixteen of these chapters consist of broad thematic essays with region-wide application that address such questions as the relation between islam and democracy, the role of islamist parties and forces, arab culture and public opinion and the reasons why different countries pursued very different paths during the arab spring. the remaining 13 chapters are devoted to case studies of individual countries with multiple chapters on egypt and tunisia and individual chapters on yemen, libya, syria, bahrain, algeria, morocco, jordan and saudi arabia. at the conclusion of today's panel, we'll have copies of the book available for sale at the back of the room for those who might wish to purchase one. i'll leave to larry the privilege of introducing our panelists, all of whom have contributed at least one chapter to the book. but let me say a word about larry himself. he's one of world's most eminent scholars of democracy. he's senior fellow at the hoover institution and at stanford university's friedman's foley institute for international studies where he directs stanford's center on democracy development and the rule of law. and he also serves with me as co-chairman of the research council of the national endowment for democrat's international forum for democratic studies. before we begin, i want to call attention to the superb job that was done by the journal of democracy staff. first in editing these articles when they initially appeared in the journal, and then in preparing the book for publication. all the essays were edited east by our executive -- either by our executive editor, phil, who's in the back, or our senior editor, tracy brown, who i'm sure is here somewhere. also in the back. and and our managing editor, brent calmer who's not here today handled the production and design of the subsequent book with his customary assurance and efficiency. and our assistant editor nate grubman played an extremely valuable role in helping to draft the introduction. so much so that larry and i agreed that he should be listed along with us as a can co-author of that -- as a co-author in of that introduction. i also want to thank melissa, jessica and dean jackson of the international forum for democratic studies for their help this organizing today's presentation. and i also want to note the president's here today of susanne -- [inaudible] our book editor at johns hopkins university press. and those of you who are on twitter, i'm told, can follow this panel discussion and contribute to the conversation by using the hashtag ned events or by following the forum at think democracy and the endowment @me democracy. and now please join he in silencing your cell phones, and i'm very pleased to turn the floor over to larry diamond. larry? >> okay. thank you so much, marc, and thank you again to everyone who has acknowledged -- who was acknowledged and thanked by marc. we're very grateful to three of our authors who are agreeing to participate in this reflection on the book and where the arab world is now in the wake of this publication and in the wake of all of the developments of the last three-plus years. i'm going to briefly introduce our speakers, they'll speak each for about ten minutes, and the order that i'll introduce them, i may ask them a few more questions and try and get them to fight with one another intellectually, and then we'll have plenty of time for you to pose your questions or challenges to them and to all of us. dan brumberg is one of our oldest in terms of longest serving -- [laughter] >> been around if more a while. >> -- in the journal of democracy. in fact, he joined our editorial board at a very early stage of his career and has been very influential in shaping our coverage of the political developments related to the arab world and to the the islamic world more broadly. he's an associate professor of government and codirector of the ma program in democracy and governance at georgetown university. he also serves as a special adviser at the u.s. institute of peace to isthmus limb world -- to its muslim world initiative. also a longtime partner and interlocutor with the journal of democracy in our studies center here at n.e.d.. he's a senior fellow at the hudson institute. he's a founder and co-editor of the center's current trends in islamist ideology, and he's taught at chicago, columbia, yale and georgetown. and bridges the worlds of intellectual life and policy and practice. we've gotten to know this gentleman more recently, but we're very excited about the work that he's doing and that he's also contributed to the journal of democracy. he's an associate professor of public policy at kennedy school of government at harvard where he teaches courses on comparative political institutions, democratization and middle eastern politics. his new book is just about out, right? with cambridge university press, "counting islam: religion, class and elections in egypt," and he's also the author of a very widely-acclaimed book, "order of conflict and violence" with cambridge university press. so i'll ask you each, beginning with you, dan, to reflect on what you wrote and on the challenges of democratization and authoritarianism at this moment in the arab world. >> well, -- >> there you go, larry, thank you. first i want to say i very much appreciate the opportunity to be with my old comrades and friends at this meeting and to have contributed to this volume. the list of contributors is extraordinary.!h' and a test toรง the widening ara of scholars who are doing serious work on the arab world in the wider middle east. when we started this venture, the notion that we were going to work on the arab world seemed to be fantastic to a lot of people. and i recall back in the day '88, '89 where we had to hold meetings just to put this on the agenda and to convince people this was a credible thing that needed to be studied. and the journal was way ahead of the curve. i mean that. i mean, it really was prepared to start asking important questions long before some folk out there both in the policy and the academic world were ready to think about them seriously. so i think it's a credit to the journal that is devoted so much time, attention and space. and, larry, you've done such a good job with marc in making that happen, so i really think -- i appreciate it, and i'm sure that many people in this audience who have also contributed to that effort recognize how important it was that the journal and n.e. devaluate were so much ahead of the curve on this matter. .. my reputation is on the line. [laughter] and low and behold even a week before the constitution was finally agreed on submit patent. this may sound somewhat self-serving, but the analytical from marquette tried to set out in that article is of remark that i think i am more convinced than ever, i have to say, is a useful way to think about the challenges of moving from what i call authoritarian, wreckage, protection rackets. democratic governments. and the paradigm itself focuses on the than amoco conflict and identity in our political systems. that paradigm is by no means limited to. does this look at ukraine remember i think the issues of identity conflict are especially pressing in the arab world for a variety of reasons and is not solved and that we expected in the sense that when we both started in tunisia in the rural area, not part of the metropolitan capital but 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 today's economic prefer the notion of arab political rebellions, as well as egypt and elsewhere, these were in part or in large measure initially about issues of economic and social injustice and dignity in things like that. a long piece some months ago about the intersection and syria between the issue of water and scarcity and the environment and the rest of it and have that played a critical role in the revolt in syria. people were sort of caught on aware by the extent to which the issue of identity and politics has loomed so large. i used the term deliberately because i do not think the issue, as i have written in the past, a piece from two or three years ago, maybe more called islam is not the solution the problem and argue that the issue is much more about how different segments of these communities with different identity perris can learn to live to greater activity of a democratically as opposed to having a peaceful coexistence are not so peaceful coexistence and out toward teheran system and that think therefore that the identity issue looms large but many people were surprised by it. remember that there was a piece written about six months ago when he said, he was shocked at the issue of secular islamist conflict in egypt loomed so large. my gosh, this is a man who knows the job well. but, you know, sometimes it is not easy to sort of stand back and see the terrain which was very much organized. the reason why it was not so surprising, the fact that things shifted so quickly from right focus on social and economic justice and dignity to a struggle over identity is that the political systems had, in large part, been organized around what i call protection racket systems in which the government regimes backed by strong military in many cases provided social and economic protection to vulnerable mile -- minorities are communities in return for their acquiescence to power. and that sort of relationship, which i would call a long time ago in a ruling bargain, that kind of relationship meant that in many respects the dynamics of identity conflict was institutionalized deeply before political roles exploded on to the arena and deeply embedded them on contesting political leaks to do the did not necessarily have linkages to other social groups. so when the lead politics shifted it shifted from the context of that protection rackets system. did not necessarily at all transcend command that think that is in the sense -- you know, in retrospect nothing is surprising. when you look back, that is for sure. but i have been thinking about this stuff for a long time. while i was hoping it was a shift to the pragmatic of social and economic struggle, it did not. and we think about transitions i think that we think about the transition. i still think it is in many respects still an important intellectual and theoretical contribution, but the paradigm assumes that democratization would emerge not because people were committed to democracy of elections but using democratic bulls as a mac -- mechanism of conflict resolution. but that proposed that there was no basic identity. it really did. and so to the extent to which -- here is the paradox. the authors were correct. you need some sort of political bargain or pact to make a transition. it is politically difficult. much more difficult than dealing with the radar, and rates of relation, so long. resilience or not trying to figure out their national identity. the struggle and egypt was over national identity in many ways. and the question therefore is out you move from, as i said before, and of their terry and protection racket system. in each case their is a different set of variables. god forbid, about those variables. even the word variable scares me a little bit. even dependent variable. i think that the structure of the relationship really helps in retrospect to understand the difficulty as well as the opportunity. in egypt you had a basic struggle between a military-led regime that as offer protection to different elements of the community, police, business community, secular intellectuals, but the key thing about the protection racket in egypt -- well, two things. it was maintained by a powerful military. in the end did not only provide protection to secular groups and business leaders but islamists who were always negotiating with the regime and continued that came and up they could reach a political pack. guess who laughed last. that was the egyptian story. morrison did not reach out to do what a leader has to to move to a democratic system, reassure the losers of basic rights. you cannot project to the losers that you are going to come up with a bargain that protect their rights or you will not get a transition. the struggle over the constitution, he did not release signal to the secular us that they had a place in the system. many of them back to the islamists. i thought it was a mistake. i think the democratic crisis requires a democratic solution. look where we are today. a system that is about as close to fascism as we can now find. it is in the technical sense of the term. tunisia had a very sharp secular islamist designed -- divide, but they had no military. so they talk of a fight. they fought a lot. i am sure that they will fight a lot, but at the end of the day they appeal to their own sense of self-interest and also to the are richer role of trade unions and other institutions and resolve the political pack. their i remain optimistic. it is much more difficult in countries such as bahrain and syria were you have a relatively small minority that sees democratization as an existential threat. an election could mean they're overwhelmed by the majority. they do not see any democratic outcome that they can live with. the bahrain government does not see a democratic of grouping it can live with. structurally there are cases that are much more global to a reassertion of the authoritarianism. the kind that we have now is worse than anything we had before, but you have opportunities. that remain not completely pessimistic about yemen. in libya i cannot be overly pessimistic because once you do not yield the issue of militias early on you have a situation. there are a variety of outcomes. i close by saying the following, in the wake of the revolt there was a sudden surge. and those of us who spent our careers writing about the mechanics of hypocrisy are told, oh, well, you and high demand and all those other customer you were wrong. it is not a question of whether we are wrong or right, but we have to put aside expectations that look at the historical context and then that our understanding of what is possible in the complexities of the systems. they're always in their own history. we have to take those misters and legacy seriously. thank you very much. >> okay. thank you. probably would have been useful if i had told the audience what you had written on. in fact, you did it very well. your topic was transforming the arab world protection racket politics. not bad. almost as good as liberalized autocracy. and hello has shared with us some of his work ron is a columnist bob and mobilization. his title is arab democracy or islamist resulted from revolution. three years later, health, which is it? >> first, before getting to that, i want to thank, as others have, larry and mark for this work and for the work of the national endowment for democracy i also -- mark observed early on in his remarks of the world attention is moving on from the arab spring because of the crisis from the ukraine. he that is extremely rude, but it does mean that this may be the last time for some time that we will have an opportunity to discuss these matters because other officials will emerge. i will talk a little bit about the article i wrote and what it said and how it looks today, what to focus my remarks that way and i think requires me to go another 15 rounds which would be time-consuming and unfair. i want to begin with reassessing the arabs pray. an interpretation of what is happening. what are the major facts concerning the arabs bring? and for this purpose are would include regional developments that go beyond the circumstances within the specific arab countries that under one result. i think it proper to include them for several reasons. first, which bear upon, as i will indicate to our subject, the countries of the middle east have a habit of thinking of themselves originally. sometimes acting as such. such has been the case with the arabs bring calm various countries acting upon the region and being acted upon by it. this is, of course, almost inevitable in any part of the world but is especially the case in the middle east because most of its country's share not only a geographic place but common ground. second and related to it because the question and its relationship became an important aspect. the net result was that all muslim countries in the region, non-arab as well as arab saw themselves as having a stake in the outcome of the revolts. to the extent necessary or possible they have mostly acted as such which has proven to have broad and deep consequences regional politics as though all. the most obvious, crucial, and appalling case is syria and the civil war. for this war and of the res volt which lost it has by now drawn in one way or another almost every country in the region. it is now being fought as a struggle between suny and shia. it was not, strictly speaking, anticipated but will may prove to be the most significant consequence. almost as obvious is the case of egypt is revolutionary dynamic has attracted the concern and intervention of other countries, both arab and non-arab, especially turkey. this regional engagement forms part of the fact of the arabs spring. we will come back to this, the dynamic of turkey's own politics has a variance. part, of course, the core of the arabs praying was the arab countries and their revolts. at the beginning they resulted with true goals, first of the overthrow of the existing autocrats and the replacement of autocratic regimes with new democratic ones. where does this stand? well, four of the five argon. the exception is bashir. the worst of the lot. but the establishment of new democratic regimes has largely failed to materialize. what happened? obviously different factors in different countries have contributed. nobel we will explore those differences. here i would like to focus on egypt which seems to be the most crucial or important and also happens to be largely the focus of the article. first, the largest arab country and thus is looked to as our model. a genuinely democratic revolution in the sense that it held more less free elections, multiple free elections which produced a new regime. the islamist regime of the muslim brotherhood. a new regime whose character is so uncertain but who may amount to the restoration of egyptian and autocracy. what happens? how does this -- what was the dynamic, the trajectory? i will make reference to the article. it seems to me the main beneficiary would be the brother heard. that did prove to be the case. the bird would be inclined to move quickly xbox to fulfill its vision of governs. i drew this conclusion from the statements of a portrait of leaders as well as the history of the brother of movement. the question at the time was how quickly and of course unsuccessfully in the event i was prepared for it to do something quickly. moved quickly and successfully. very considerable public support on the front end at least and the support of related as long as allies like the soldiers. his reign ended last july. what have we learned from this experience? this particular experience of the egyptian case? the egyptian revolt did provide an opening to the expression of popular will which, for that reason may be described as a democratic opening, but the first expression was a kind of religious populism not particularly devoted to a democratic order. this, plus other advantages, is what led to the brother had victories in the first place, what does populism as it came to the four presented certain questions. what kind of religion would promote and how would it govern? these issues were never resolved. particular, the brother had never be part -- never properly solve the issues of governance and tried to address them in an increasingly autocratic mode. i would say let's excuse them, but they had a lot of help because of frustrations they encountered with the resistance of various authorities. this managed to present resentment and chaos. political skills proved unequal to ambitions. where does that leave egypt today? it would be nice if it led to the emergence of an alternative political movement democratically inclined in the western fashion, but such has not been the case. the constituency was always week . the reason is underscored. the constituency of egypt is traditional and conservative and does not have a natural, and stage will feel for the kind of alternative, that kind of alternative. this is not to say that popular will can no longer express itself. it does, but it now endorses a new and charismatic save your. it is unclear what this will mean and how to interpret it. in so far as it is genuinely popular. moreover, the religious coalition may not be over. suggesting it might try to incorporate it in some fashion and is notable that he can try to have the support of some solace in his overthrow. the net result may be a new regime which is religiously populous and authoritarianism time. whether this can work will depend upon whether the political skills are superior to those of the brotherhood. his main opponents will be somebody who invokes an earlier form of national social populism we will have something of a test on which kind of populism is most appealing. the bearing of the particular experience? i confessed that do not have a clue. i do have three observations with which i will lend. the end your perspective end led to the release of religious passions into the political sphere and that think it cannot help but do so since the new leaf empower social constituencies define themselves religiously. what was being said earlier about identity being the question. some places more in some places less. we are not all of one mind. we play a heightened role in politics and especially in syria. second, however things may play out in egypt, possibilities of a religiously populace of authoritarian model may be exported elsewhere. such is presently the case in turkey where the prime minister is pursuing it under the new rubric of advanced democracy. many wondered whether it would follow the so-called turkish model, and so it may although in a sense now which would be a very erotic sense. finally overall our topic remains subject to a question raised in the spring of 2011 by a lebanese professor who said at the time as follows, the problem is not how you can destroy something, how you can resist something, but build something new, authority, relationship between the public and leaders. happily the arabs bring has yet to find an answer to that question. thank you. >> thank you for those eloquent remarks. we will not give the floor. i know that he has to articles in this book. one that he wrote three years ago. pretty soon after the egyptian revolution. we can say more cautiously and hopefully that may be your view of the situation, more eager to hear it, and another extremely influential and widely read as a that he coopted, which is now being enlarged into a book that he published which is trying to take stock of why the erebus bring happened in some countries but not others. the floor is yours. >> i am constitutionally incapable. >> you are entitled. >> all right. i first want to thank -- >> sit down. >> who is this upstart? a want to thank larry for inviting me to speak. i have been lucky enough to write a number of times. the first was one of was finishing my doctoral dissertation. our road to peace and wanted to really know what mark fought. what did you think? here entire career is ahead of you. every time i sit down to write something i think of the words. i don't know that aren't good at taking advice, but i certainly try to. one was in june of 2011. the possibilities seem to be in less. october 2013 when a full-scale of the arabs burning disappointment became evidence. each piece, i think, is reflective of its time. pardon me for being a little bit , will take seriously the question of what you think we got wrong and how we would do things differently. the june 2011 peace was broadly optimistic about the egyptian prospect for democracy. at that time i believe it was possible to get to a director of a quarter all of the relevant political players, the so-called secular or liberal opposition to the so-called leftovers of the mubarak regime. all of those actors made all of the correct decisions. add up the military would have to acquiesce to democratic authority, the islamists would have to resist the temptation to dominate the political order. non islamists would have to acquiesce to the idea of having a political order that may be has more in it than they might want them both islamists and on the islamists who had come up as anti mubarak opposition and friends of those would have to resist the temptation to try to exclude the former regime because excluding would create a new class who would try to tear down the entire egyptian democratic oedipus. if everyone does all of these things, and this is egypt. they can do it. if everyone does all of these things egypt can make it to democracy. of course, as we know, none of that came to pass. more than that they believe that this would i sometimes crack that open to align myself with my name of its say. not as dumb as i thought because i noted that the end of that article that egypt was an extremely poor country giving democracy is hard. keeping democracy is actually harder. i further noted that if he did fall into chaos people in that country would begin to yearn for the lugubrious ability provided by the strong man. bill cosmopolis help me craft that. i think i had a worse word then we settled on. the point is in essence that is kind of what happened. the second piece that i was lucky enough to have was co-authored with two of the greatest intellectual partners a scholar could have. that piece is more consistent with the pessimism that was buried in my earlier article, and in that article we basically survey the entire arab world, far more continuity and change. jarring the revolutions we may have been thrilled by the ingenuity and savvy of technologically connected young activists, but we neglected to note that they seem to be failing much more often than they succeed. in this article we take stock of the efforts of revolutionaries and note that of the 22 countries only six really face anything that we would characterize as a regime-challenging protest and that in only four of those cases you actually get success, which we define narrowly as overthrowing an all authoritarian regime and that protests success is predicted pretty well by two simple structural factors, whether regime had access to oil rights which allows you to buy it to things, acquiescence of the people oregon's to beat them over the head, and whether the regime had this experience successful hereditary which we take as cohesion. this part of the argument people grapple with. if you manage in the 21st century to pass power from father to son, that's pretty good evidence that your regime is pretty tightly bound if everyone in the regime can sign on to that. basically what we do in this new article is try to redirect the attention that scholars have put upon some agents to structures. does not matter how courageous and ingenious or how effective technologies, the outcomes of these things were essentially preordained. this perspective is pessimistic. someone want to tell me if you want to look like u.s. mocks always be pessimistic, but it is used will not just for explaining the outcome of protests but the outcomes of what happened in the places that matters to overthrow dictators. it is worth noting that of the for success cases that we have, the first suffered a military coup, a second still has not had a multi-party democratic election and more importantly, the person who rules right now is the vice-president of the gatt they overthrew. the third has devolved, and only tunisia has managed to erect new democratic institutions and keep them afloat, although as both then and hillel have noted, there has been a great deal of polarization, political violence, including two assassinations. so i am far less optimistic than many colleagues. at best would say it only looks good in comparison. so the question is, why the dismal record of failure? why wasn't it much more like the revolution in eastern europe in the early 1990's? dan does not like variables. >> i actually love variables. >> so do i. i really do. one variable we try to measure is of democratic you are. there are a lot of ways of doing this. one is a group of the university of maryland. you can go and look. policy for schoolers. they all jump. then move from autocracy, much more in the democratic zone, every single one experiences a nice jump. of the eight warsaw pact members only two of them have not made it. we will not see a jump. maybe ginny's yen. nowhere else. we will see much more continuity the question is why, and i think it comes to two things that we have always known. requires a level of economic development, state capacity, neither of which were present in the majority of arab countries. once you get into saying there are structural preconditions and economic developments people think i'm making an argument. this is the are you and that was alluded to. i actually think that such arguments are wrong. instead, what i am saying is, if you need to recognize the fact that there is a particular type of political landscape needed in order to sustain a political system in which everyone agrees that turnover of power is a good thing and should be enclosed @booktv code it. that is a political landscape and you need to have. and not sure the bill of rights would pass a referendum today. in the political landscape in which no side can defeat the weather. this comes from a famous line from walter woodman back in 1939. he wrote to mother's survival of democracy depends upon a sufficiently even balance of power to make it impracticable for the administration to be arbitrary and the opposition to be revolutionary in irreconcilable. both sides have to have a belief that they can potentially win infusion democratic contests than to continue to abide by the rules of the democratic game. this equilibrium clearly did not exist in egypt after mubarak. one of the ironies of political life in that country is that it went from being one kind of 1- party state to another kind after he was overthrown. the islamists were able to run roughshod. so it is not an all surprising that opponents look at the political game and that they needed to appeal to the military to protect basic interest concluding that the only way to prevent the new dominion was to welcome with open arms the not so tender administration of the men with guns. i would further note my argument has a lot different in that the nature of the conflict does not matter. i do not think that the identity conflict is that severe. if we injected sodium pentothal into most of the leaders of the anti to or pro-coup government there would be broadly sympathetic. i do not think that is what the debate was about but simply the fact that these people are winning and we cannot win on their election. none of this should have proven surprising. there are some shows to be taken in understanding what happened after as opposed to before because that is at least better than not understand the and all. >> thank you. i get nervous when officers go away. i will propose a trio of questions to each of you and answer what you want. i hope that you can engage one another more directly. the most essential controversies that we are struggling with. one controversy, i thought i heard you somewhat agreeing with the implication, i was not certain, who and what was the government under morrissey? perceiving and emerging one party to germany. was it, you know -- think we are pro early, you know, most of us any way feel that let's get real . there was a military coup on july 3rd 2013. it was a tragedy resistant to incipient or consolidating authoritarianism could not be mobilized. the not so tender administrations. but now a fascist military regime or at least of a certain form. but was this authoritarianism or just one party that -- you know, a 1-party dominant regime. what is the wider meaning of this? is the option of moderate islamist party playing the political game ruling and then not ruling and rotation of power and the normalization of this phenomenon, is that dead as an option? yen how do we explain as the more less ruling party giving up control of the government in preparation for election? five what is egypt today? is it -- i heard a kind of disagreement. dan saying and i have to agree that it is a kind of fascist regime. i thought i heard you saying, wait a minute. we do not really know. does not look good, maybe, bolita not know what the character will be, and it could move in different directions. finally, if the three of you want to address this i will simply note that we look at 15 states, arab states in the middle east and north africa. if you look at another indicator , the freedom house writings, of the states that chased during this time, almost all of the ones that the chains have gone self and are becoming more of tartarian. the only two that have been proven are one that you call quite aptly virtually in essence not a state at all, libya crores i think calls profoundly into question how freedom must cross of of this country as a democracy and the second which is clearly on the road to democracy. there roger does not lead good. you were right about that, but is it fair to say allegis still early days? who knows how this will play out one of you mentioned that i think there has been more than just robo but of progress. the fact that they could agree on any kind of constitutional framework and all seems to me to have been a major and vastly underappreciated achievement, not only by the many. why don't you start in the same order? >> in response to larry's question, a this may not make you happy. i see less dissonance. i know that i have now that i have used the f word, fascist, fascism -- i am not going to be an election observer anytime 7i imagine. clearly, to me, the system, when i use this term, fascism, the psychological thing going on as hard to grasp. it is profiled the difficult to half to grasp. all i can say is it is a profound the irrational aspect. i am not saying that because there is an identity complex it precludes transition to democracy. i would disagree in the sense that i think when you have a disagreement over ides 50 it is easy to manipulate people's feelings. and it is up to leaders were then manipulate them are now. you mentioned, you know, i did not read it, but his adviser where much of the back road seems to have been laid out. in an election with the conservative population when leaders are trying to mobilize they have to or a chance to play to that conservatism. you have to decide what to do, what kind of agenda you will set i do not think, you know, we cannot expect all political leaders to be nelson mandela. i would say that in terms of responding to addressing the basic features of the losers, this is something you see paradoxical the, an islamist regime protected by security apparatus and in the establishment of the intellectuals. have been eating gaze that sort of perception? i think that what we have in the region to some extent is a failure to lead in the failure to understand that you have to really stand above all of this. you are talking about someone who seems to have understood this which makes me happy and worried because it seems he has kept that party together. the story that as i understand, every time they had an opportunity to try to push the agenda and were pushed back partly by the circumstances of the assassinations, wonder what will happen to the party if he is no longer there to guide it because it was not for lack of trying that the elements and the party did not succeed happily enough. in any case, there is relationship. whether they are willing to step beyond it. mark howard and others have demonstrated repeatedly that he do not have transitions or oppositions do not have basic unity. it is not surprising. that is fairly predictable. they did not understand that they needed a leveraged. that was the other critical thing that they needed. that they did not get. >> okay. hello. thank you for the questions which help focus the mind. let me say one thing about to visa the one actual or potential positive. i agree with them. in my opinion based upon my experience, the most intelligent and a very long time. but one also must observe that on like in egypt the brother did not when an outright majority of the election. so you do not have to be a genius to see there was a different situation you had to deal with. there were a lot of people who did not see that and were pushing for something more radical. you could say, look, this is not permit it. let me know. and that is a function really have the character of today's in society, history, constituency, so forth in which case it was useful to make an agreement with other sectors like the labor unions or the secular educated. which -- even in that case he resisted a long time before ending the government. it was not an easy thing to do. if you compare that with egypt, well, he needed to make -- he needed to make a pact with the military and with the other forces. strictly speaking as a technical matter that would have been a good idea. always good to be able to of have more than one partner so that you can play them off against each other, but the other side does not really exist. i mean, it is not non existent, but it is not there is a force which is equivalent to either the army or the islamist constituencies. it is just not there. it to questions. what was the government's. where is egypt's today? what was the government? well, it seems to me that in the first place he was a composite. pushing forward and the still existing bureaucracy and all sorts of other institutions which were not under their control. there was a constant attempt to push to control those things resisted by it the institutions which presented a more see own very quickly taking control of things and drove him crazy. and so the critical thing seems to have been december 2012 when he lost it and lost patients and try to rule by decree, which she could not make stick. after that the trajectory was downhill. if i had been any i would have been more patient, but i do not think that he was giving advice to be patient. i think that there was a kind of temples. this is our time. lets make it work. as for where egypt yesterday, i was suggesting that the new autocracy is not the old autocracy. the one thing, you pass through this experience. mubarak is gone. a lot of the older topics had to do with the autocrat and what he was like and where he came from and how he can't office which was, of course, through the assassination of on mars about. all of that create systems and structures that are importance, but agents are also important. it remains to be seen what he is like, but he has come through the experience. again, it seems to me that he does not want to be because bureaucrats. but he also may think that it is not possible. maybe fascism will turn out to be the right word, but he needs to find a theme for the populism that will bring him to power. and how successful he will be with that, i don't know. remember the difference between tunisia and egypt. some portion of that is supporting in and defending it. if they are useful and he needs them he will try to give them satisfaction. this satisfaction presumably comes in the form. that is what i mean. and it may -- that actually may work. it does not fix the economy but may work as a means for binding society together. >> great. thank you. >> thank you for a great set of questions. very little sad. if we step back a little bit and try to answer the comparative question, why is it that uneasiness seems to have worked out an agent not. i think that his comments invalidate the perspective that i try to offer which is simply you had a much more balanced political landscape. it was not out of the realm of possibility and in fact quite likely that when you have a new set of alexians you will be able to do better. from the standpoint made did not require a kind of remarkable character but someone with a minimal level of understanding politics to know that your opponents are ones with whom you must negotiate. the egyptian case, the muslim brotherhood is running elections he does it turn out is the most potent electoral competitor? it is not the so-called liberal secularist but the more conservative party, to steal a description mentioned in an article kamal troll -- ultra-conservative religious monsters. and so if you are the muslim brotherhood thinking politically have to, you know, outflank, have to outflanked cynicism. it is not surprising that they sought in terms of political competitors and not in terms of the so-called circulars will eventually give the military an excuse to drive tanks down the street. that think it is a function of the political landscape and not necessarily a particular factor. if you think about the literature that we have in that democratization business, on two sides, you only get democracy if you achieve a certain level of development. on the other side you have people 1970's. there are no prerequisites to democracy. you need a political area that agrees. if you read his speech carefully what you need is an inconclusive political struggle such that participants conclude democracy is important. inconclusive. neither side can win which means that you had to have to equally matched signs? well, that comes back to structure and societal differentiation. that is really what was lacking in the egyptian case and a lot of these cases. syria, saudi arabia cannot these countries, jordan, all of these places have significant structural barriers, not least of which is that there hugely diverse, have always been challenges both from below by people who were never really recognizing the authority and from above by transnational movement. these have always been fragile states and have never been tremendously great, for tell grounds with the development of democracy. i will stop there in the hopes that we can have a good conversation. >> let me just say, his model only applied to countries. >> well, we can have a debate about that. >> it did not mean that there was consensus over the role of religion and policy but that we all agree we are egyptians. >> what is striking to me is the enduring struggle over what it means to be egypt and syria and algeria and tunisian. i think that those things -- let me just note one other variable and then i will go to the two of you because you raise your hands first. that is to my want to channel our founding member of the editorial board. .. and its incumbents but none of the speakers touched on that specifically the gulf countries that have no interest of having other countries and contributed to each funding the muslim brotherhood and how they both contributed and that is the identity. my question more if you can touch on this where is the u.s. leadership because they can kind of imposed balance of poverty and basically prevent the countries from the striking the fragile democracy system. in the score of the eastern european countries that jump quickly i think that is again from the involvement to the soviet unions and they can quickly lost to support that area in the united states and the western countries to make that in at the middle east. it's in the national interest of the united states and its emerging democracy is a stable democracy and a sustainable peace in the area is something otherwise going to shift to the libya. >> your questions brief because we have a limited amount. >> my question is in the same direction. you spoke about the fear of the sunnis and bahrain. are you assuming that the bahrain it could just be much easier for them to be -- to go through the words t the democra? because i don't feel this is the case where they are having the current role in bahrain they don't find it to offer as they are givin doing with the human s activists in saudi arabia. and the other factor is a. what would change? i want to ask you to speak to the issue of identity. can we separate the internal problems of identity from the government that comes to bahrain? >> i've been a member of the egyptian parliament in presenting the freedom and justice party and spoke to the full relations committee. living in egypt during the past three years, i don't agree with the characterization that they failed or had to rule by decree that it's important to contextualize the situation in which he didn't rule the freedom and justice party government that the national government. very recently the interior ministry stated that it wasn't anything even when he existed on getting information from the wrong information into the military controlled more than 50% of the economy and controlled the electric companies so they were able to make the challenges. it is still the muslim brotherhood or the freedom of the justice party failed not only alone but with other political forces agree on on the referendum. i think that it would be the referendum where we stayed away from the revolutionary force into the gradual democratic process, and i think that the trust of the democracy is a big mistake on all parties and was the need to keep the balance of both the revolutionary and the democratic. i vote for the people of two left in the square at all until we are really sure that the country is moving in the right section. i disagree in the pessimism from time to time the evolution is likely to continue if we look at this i think the transition as it has been going on the people of egypt still have a say in what is going on and it isn't likely to accept. and we are trying very hard not to work with other forces and all of us realize that we've made mistakes and we need to push the democratic force forward. >> [inaudible] i would like to ask the panelists on an issue that none of them touch upon is the role of the deep state and counter ways that these countries have moved on and what is egypt or libya [inaudible] on the arab countries. >> i'm not sure how many we are going to be able to take up. >> my name is mary from the institute for the civil society. the activists are looking at egypt a lot these days both in terms of looking backward in the sense that there are a lot of comparisons between what is happening in egypt now or under morsi. but also the forward look of wealth, we could have a square or green movement that gets somewhere. we would take the shape and consolidate moving forward towards the democracy in any kind of reliable way we need to have both sides were all sides feel that there is at least the chance of winning elections and this isn't the case of egypt. my question is in the perspective not a fan analyst, but am a person in a human being and particularly in activists on the ground in egypt. when you see what is happening under morsi, what is the right thing to do? do you wait and wait and see what happens and then wait for the next election when you know that there is no chance for winning or do you try to stop the process as undemocratic as it is with the hope that you're not -- you are going to stop the infringement of all human rights. >> okay. >> 33 quick questions. the first there were many comments about tax making. i wonder if the panelists could comment on whether the revolutionary atmosphere amid the euphoria of the resolution as a phenomena is induced into making the tax on whether the fact that those field of the revolution didn't miss the possibility was limited to say the least. the second is regarding the comment that the professor needed a democracy. we mentioned briefly the liberal and secular, democratic, whatever you want to call them. i wonder if we still share the view of the possibility of democracy without a committed democrat aiming to achieve it. the panelists didn't talk about this point with such a panel and choose the word to address the topic is the future of islamism. you could answer a long debate on this question but how does the penalty the future of islamists? many have commented on the end of islamism. i feel the panelists probably don't agree with that. where do you see this going from this point forward? thank you. >> i'm going to give you the last question very briefly pleasing than we have to go to the panelists. >> i am at the center of the egyptian american relations. and thank you for the work. i would like to ask your opinion about the administration because we are going to meet the family tomorrow. what is your opinion of what they should do? >> you mean the obama administration? >> the obama administration and the meeting with the family for the foreign minister of egypt. >> i'm going to mix it up and go into the reverse order. >> thank you again for the wonderful set of questions from the engaged audience and i wasn't able to answer all of them. i'm able to put it would be very rude. [laughter] >> you are more than able to. >> let me respond to sam's questions. could it possibly be that in the revolutionary atmosphere people are not prone to tax making? in the egyptian case there was the tax between the islamists and the army over the political timetable in the country it was just a pack that excluded a particular set of actors who nobody thought was verbally consequential but later for their ability to at least make problems and spoil the political game. the question about whether you can have democracy without democrats i certainly believe that you can. i will give you an example. we define tim huntington has a test of whether countries are democracy and correct me if i get the details wrong but you have to have had two turnovers of power in 60 years -- >> consolidation. >> so a few years ago -- so the big point is iran under an interview a few years ago where karl rove said something like we want to have a 100 year republican majority. by the standards of huntington, not a democrat. nobody wants to be a democrat. everybody wants to rule forever. so, to be committed to that is i think too high of the bar. you have to be forced to accept it as opposed to fundamentally connect to it. in terms of the future it really depends on how we define it. if we def defy islamism as the muslim brotherhood it is an open question. i really don't know. if we define it as a belief that still hasn't shipped structure in the politicaand the politican and as our friend thomas does as a political activism using with reference to islam, that is definitely not going to disappear. and it's not, you know -- i think both noted that the current egyptian regime had its own kind of islamism. after all rendered th raymond om constitution that the current regime looks forward the minute that morsi was overthrown, they took one of the most objectionable articles in the constitution and put it in article number one. as the most islamist article in the constitution. clearly signaling that this is not a revolution against islamism and instead it is a revolution against the muslim brotherhood and the click of the muslim brotherhood. very quickly in terms of the policy score that we observed in eastern europe and why we didn't have that in the middle east and your argument is that because the united states was involved have a negative degree here not in cases and toenough cases andy variables. however i would note that these eastern european countries were far more developed than the world they live now among all of these standard dimensions and so there were lots of reasons to expect them to do better. finally then to come to the big question about the presidential wisdom was in fact the failure and he concluded the political institution that they selected at the outset and i believe this also relates to some of the comments when he makes the point that in fact morsi was not trying to rule as a kind of presidential mode. and i think in this case he is right. we always mention the november 22 declaration of morsi as exhibit a. in the role of particulars against the muslim brotherhood. and what did he do in the declaration? first of all why would he be able to issue the constitutional declaration? the reason he was as because once he gets elected, the supreme court dissolves the legislature. so now he is the legislature and executive after a little bit of maneuvering as the legislature and executive gets to make the declarations coming off a situation that he created a situation that he inherited and then what did he try to do? he tried to bring back the legislature not because he's committed to having her imagery oversight but it was dominated by the brotherhood. he tried to bring back the legislature and the military said no so finally he comes around to november 22 and uses my decisions or judicial oversight but then he tells you what decisions he's talking about. number one, to make the upper house of the parliament of the legislature. think about this. the president trying to bring back a legislature and number two, that the democratic constituent assembly that was then writing the constitution cn but nocould not be result. it's a morsi supported he wasn't trying to destroy democracy and he wasn't acting in a kind of presidential mode. i don't want to pass judgment on that i only think that this was a question about this. there was nobody in egypt, nobody that has covered themselves in glory and this comes back to the professor's big point that egypt is now fascist. i don't like to use this term, but i would say i don't think -- i think that regardless of who have come out ahead in the summer of 2013, whether it was morsi or his opponent that egypt would be talking about now would be very, very depressing and inhospitable place for government. >> okay. you are next. is that all that you have to stay? >> there is a fair convergence between some of the questions but obviously the comment comes from different perspectives. let me begin in the role of the deep state. it reflects the efforts to impact we were talking about with respect to egypt, that there was enough case -- and i agree with the characterizations that were just offered. you have a deep state that was both functioning as an opposition to the elected authority and also not functioning anyway that was no longer described in the constitution. i mean as it was applied to there was no just later or line of authority. so to some degree c. seve morsis patience, so i don't think that it was simply not important that the super constitutional decree was made but it came out of the certain circumstances but a deep into the problem because it didn't -- there was still no constitutional authority and they conveyed more generally to people that now there was a different spirit and the government. succumbing in each case the problem almost collapsed altogether as it seems in libya means that it's going to play a role in the tradition. the role of outsiders, both regionally and the u.s. i think is the way that it has been put in the two different set of questions. this is where i sort of began with my remarks and in fact they had very large impact on internal developments in different countries and since the region didn't act as a whole, but in a conflict with itself it affected the trajectory of these events, especially in egypt where as you said, the governor was supported of the government and others were opposing it. the role of the u.s. is a different matter in here is a long discussion because we had separate reactions to different results 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. these are organic revolutions and they are good. why are they good? because they reflect the plant that is there and the people that are there and the problem with us getting involved is how we would distort the growth of the planets. he was pro- brotherhood and anti-brotherhood, he was nowhere basically in any consistent way that went back again to the original motion. we make things worse when we intervene. therefore we are not going to end this will be healthier. it turns out that organic growth has liabilities of its own and we are now in a situation as we can see for example especially in the case of syria. but we have not prepared the way forward. that was in a way by design, but it was conceived of as benevolently. it was not supposed to be -- it was just in the proof that we were being good was a sort of no interest of ours. and it also doesn't serve any interest but it hasn't served the interest of anyone in the region either of which is the problem. related to that i would say going back to the speaker in the party, i hope that's clear it seems to me president morsi had a lot of obstacles thrown in his path. those were from a different point of view dubious. and in fact, the discussion about that place earlier. now that i think about it from a year and a half ago or a year ago anyway. on the other hand, the response wasn't particularly democratic either, so that's where -- that's how we got to the present circumstances. >> a lot of excellent questions. my sense on the regional international factors is that they are very important and in the case of syria and in libya in some ways it is decisive, but i think that counter factually i am not as convinced that there is ultimately the decisive factors. and i think the ones that we have been talking about which are very much local produced part are the crucial ones. i do want to say that when i turned the regime fascist -- we don't know what this regime is, we really don't know. it is a kind of fascist moment when a leader is exploiting the fear of deepest fear of the population. population. and identifying enemies who not only our enemies, they deserve this or that state. as athis, when the court says -o 60 of these are going to be sentenced and members of the government say why not 20,000 or 10,000, you have to wonder what's going on. this is a really strange situation coming in a very disparaging. when i talk about these divisions, they are not ironclad. in my own work i don't talk about secularists. i talk about islam and non- islam. in the rubric it is much bigger and much more complex than the merely secular islamist struggle. and i think that there are possibilities in the coalition building in egypt that may emerge as a result of the learning process that comes from this. and as a result of the mistakes that leaders look at and assess and the kind of alliances. and there is more flexibility in the identity map and all of these countries than it would be suggested by the notions of seeing secular islamist divisions at least in many of them. but the balance of power is absolutely critical. but notice that whenever we talk about these identities, we are not talking about the workers. we are always talking about the language of identity so you cannot separate them out. and one last question of the issue, and i mentioned this in the article i said that the situation doesn't resolve it, it was fascinating and i wish that he was here. who did they encounter the most questions from? islamists. they kept asking venues they islamist that is what is left of our agenda. you say islam is accepting the pluralism and accepting working with others. this is what it means, then this is not an islamist agenda anymore. he has been sinking about these things for a long time. at the end of the day when he defines the islamist agenda and what the role of islam will be as opposed there are plenty within the party that believes it means much more. and in that sense, the situation hasn't resolved the issue at all. and we will see what happens when there is an election. there were a kind of peculiarities in the election including the election of our friend and all kinds of strange things and we don't know where it is going to go to the test will be after this next election if the party may do better than it did the first time and how it is ready to share the power and work with the opposition. >> i do want to add one thing in the context which is strengthening the point that dan made before. there's the giving of the structural things and so forth and so on, but then there's also a question of leadership. and how the leaders take into account a very specific events in response 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 in the time and emerge respect. the first was the demonstration of february 1812 the first demonstration more or less was dominated by the brotherhood and the square at which the leadership decided to invite off the platform. that was a moment to reflect what kind of things you needed to succeed in the revolution. and implicitly, the decision was made. and i think it was made incorrectly. other things were -- you probably remember the exact circumstances when, you know kennedy assassin was asked to sit next to the general at a public event that wasn't probably a very smart thing to do. having the successful pursuit of your own program and in the larger perspective to arab interest those things matter a lot and turnout in one way or the other how things turn out one way or another can actually be the trivial as they are were small as they are fairly decisive. >> thank you. think all three of you for the panel discussion. let me close with these observations before i thank my colleagues. first of all in answer to your question and i think this would be a very lengthy discussion to try to answer i would 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. [laughter] i think you have to begin with the first-order principles can e 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 don't even see what's happening. however you characterize it whether you want to use the f. word or not it is a deeply authoritarian moment in egypt where thousands of people have been killed since the military came to power, over 5,000 or in jail. i think there's very clear evidence of torture team used, democracy and liberal principles have had to flee the country. in one case we wanted to bring to the united states isn't being allowed to leave the country and