The Path to Democracy in Egypt

Cairo is full of a hundred metaphors for the incoherence, fragmentation, and spirited improvisation that animate Egypt's unfolding transition. My favorite was the traffic cram that erupted at a major intersection near Cairo University. The problem was not the number of vehicles, but the absence of traffic police. Seemingly resigned to the possibility that we would never cross, my taxi driver looked overwhelmed. There was no miraculous parting of this sea of cars. Instead, he and his vehicular compatriots used shrieking horns, occasional rebukes, and momentary four-wheel brinkmanship to, finally, make it through.

Much like the frustrated drivers at that intersection, Egypt's citizens -- and those political leaders who speak in their name -- seem unwilling to let the present incoherence defeat their unfolding revolution. If anything, it is the very absence of a full fully fixed system that provides some basis of hope. Egypt's march will encounter strikes and confrontations like Friday's battles in Tahrir Square between protesters and security forces. Whatever the aspiration of old regime elements to revive or recast their order, it seems more likely outcome that we will see a fitful lurching forward that will lead Egypt, though it may take ten or more years, well beyond the "liberalized autocracy" that defined its politics from 1974 to February 2011.

It should be no surprise that many of the emerging players see the incoherence as merely a camouflage for a conspiracy of control and collusion. This is the perception of the young, mostly secular social activists who led the Tahrir protests that toppled Hosni Mubarak. They express little doubt that that the military is seeking to reinvent its power by aligning with the Muslim Brethren and the remnants of Mubarak's National Democratic Party. Such a pincer maneuver would leave the liberals with little choice but to rely on the military for protection in a manner that might resemble Turkey's illiberal democracy of the eighties and nineties. Egypt, they fear, is going back to someone else's future.