As a new era of democratic change swept across the Arab world this year, the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law hosted two conferences to examine the Arab Spring. On April 29, twelve internationally renowned Egypt scholars convened at Stanford to probe the root causes of the Egyptian revolution and debate the challenges facing the transition period. The second annual ARD conference held May 12-13, brought Arab activists and academics from the region together to provide a comparative perspective on political activism.

Participants in the Democratic Transition in Egypt conference were hesitant to label the popular uprising in Egypt a revolution in light of the fragile transition period. According to Professor Jason Brownlee of the University of Texas at Austin, "repressive agencies of the old order still exist in Egypt: the military intelligence, state security, and the general intelligence service."

Scholars unanimously agreed that nascent opposition parties face the enormous challenge of organizing during a hurried transition period and within a competitive party and campaign structure. Professor Samer Soliman from the American University in Cairo emphasized this point, "the party law is designed to bias the old guard and a legacy of suspicion towards political parties leaves youth hesitant to join or form political parties."

Significant discussion was dedicated to the role of the Muslim Brotherhood who many argued is the only well-organized opposition party in Egypt capable of commanding a majority in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Scholars were left wondering how to translate the success of this popular movement into a constitutionally-based political system representative of all societal interests.

The From Political Activism to Democratic Change in the Arab World conference featured eight activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain, and Yemen--in addition to a live presentation from Ramallah by Mustafa Barghouthi --who were joined by leading scholars to provide a grassroots perspective and original voice to the uprisings.

Panels presented country-based case studies highlighting the key challenges activists face in diverse Arab states and societies to evaluate the potential of democratic transition to take root. While variation exists in each country, it was clear that activists faced the same obstacles in pursuit of their goals and clearly benefitted from this shared forum at Stanford.

A new generation of young political activists connected through social networks learned through the revolutionary experiences of their Facebook friends. Stephane Lacoix, Sciences Po

Participants emphasized the contagion that spread protests across the region, beginning in Tunisia. Stéphane Lacoix of Sciences Po illustrated this point, "a new generation of young political activists connected through social networks learned through the revolutionary experiences of their Facebook friends."

Looking forward, participants agreed that these revolutions are far from complete and challenging work lies ahead. According to CDDRL director Larry Diamond, "democratic change is not produced by grassroots protest and activism alone but requires organization, strategy, and hierarchical structure.”

In each Arab country, tribal, sectarian, political, and religious division threaten the stability of the fragile transition period. In the near term, participants stressed the importance of delaying elections to give time for political parties, institutions, and leadership to develop so the status quo does not reassert itself.

The role of external actors-- from the US to the GCC--was cited as exerting influence on the internal politics in each country. Activists collectively commented on the inconsistency of US foreign policy in the region, which has placed strategic interests above ideological ones, not actively pressing for change in Bahrain, Jordan, and Syria in the same way as in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.

A tone of cautious optimism imbued both conferences as scholars and activists alike were hesitant to declare the Arab Spring a success, stressing that time will determine the ultimate outcome. Both conferences allowed the ARD Program to make a substantial contribution to the body of scholarly research on this topic as conference papers will be published in an edited volume.

 

In a new piece published on the Foreign Affairs website, CDDRL Director Larry Diamond argues that the Arab Spring is witnessing a thawing and freezing across the region as anti-democratic forces threaten nascent democratic transformations.

The decades-long political winter in the Arab world seemed to be thawing early this year as mass protests toppled Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February. It appeared as though one rotten Arab dictatorship after another might fall during the so-called Arab Spring. Analogies were quickly conjured to 1989, when another frozen political space, Eastern Europe, saw one dictatorship after another collapse. A similar wave of democratic transitions in the Arab world was finally possible to imagine, particularly given the extent to which previous transformations had been regional in scope: Portugal, Spain, and Greece all democratized in the mid-1970s; much of Latin America did shortly thereafter; Korea and Taiwan quickly followed the Philippines’ political opening in 1986; and then a wave of change in sub-Saharan Africa began in 1990. All of those were part of the transformative “third wave” of global democratization. In March, many scholars and activists reasonably imagined that a “fourth wave” had begun. 

Two months later, however, a late spring freeze has seemingly hit some areas of the region. And it could be a protracted one. Certainly, each previous regional wave of democratic change had to contend with authoritarian hard-liners, opposition divisions, and divergent national trends. But most of the Arab political openings are closing faster and more harshly than happened in other regions -- save for the former Soviet Union, where most new democratic regimes quickly drifted back toward autocracy.

If Tunisia still provides grounds for cautious optimism, the Egyptian situation is already deeply worrying. Its senior officer corps, which currently controls the government, does not want to facilitate a genuine democratic transition. It will try to prevent it by generating conditions on the ground that discredit democracy and make Egyptians (and U.S. policymakers) beg for a strong hand again. The ruling officers have turned a blind eye to mounting religious and sectarian strife (and an alarming explosion in crime). The military has spent enormous effort arresting thousands of peaceful protesters in Tahrir Square and trying them in military tribunals over the last two months. (In April, one such detainee, a blogger named Maikel Nabil, was sentenced to three years in prison for “insulting the military establishment.”) Yet it claims that it cannot rein in rising insecurity. Many Egyptians see this as part of the military’s grand design to undermine democracy before it takes hold.

The parliamentary elections slated for September are unlikely to help: New political forces have no chance of being able to build competitive party and campaign structures in time. The Muslim Brotherhood, which initially said it would only contest a third of the parliamentary seats, has now announced its intention to contest half of all seats, forming a new political party (Freedom and Justice) for the purpose. If the electoral system retains its highly majoritarian nature, it might well win a thumping majority of the seats it contests (perhaps 40 percent in all), with most of the rest going to local power brokers and former stalwarts of the Mubarak-era ruling party, the National Democratic Party.

Both theory and political experience teach that regimes with spent legitimacy do not last, and the legitimacy of the Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni dictators is utterly depleted.

Elsewhere in the region, Bahrain’s minority Sunni monarchy opted to crush peaceful protests and arrest and torture many of those with whom it might have negotiated some future power-sharing deal. With active Iranian support and a bizarre degree of American and Israeli acceptance, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad unleashed a slow-motion massacre that could go on for weeks or even months. In Yemen, the government is paralyzed, food prices are rising, and the country is drifting. Having seen the fate of Mubarak, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh is playing for time, but his legitimacy is irretrievably drained, and he lacks the ability to mobilize repressive force on the scale of Assad’s.

Of course, not every country in the region has been affected by the apparent freeze and some could still avoid it. Jordan and Morocco are not yet in crisis but could be soon. Both countries face the same conditions that brought down seemingly secure autocracies in Tunisia and Egypt -- mounting frustration with corruption, joblessness, social injustice, and closed political systems. Not yet facing mass protests, Jordan’s King Abdullah is in a position to lead a measured process of democratic reform from above to revise electoral laws, rein in corruption, and grant considerably more freedom. Yet there is little sign that he has the vision or political self-confidence to modernize his country in this way.

Morocco’s King Mohammed VI is still domestically revered and internationally cited as a reformer, but he is even weaker and more feckless than Abdullah. He has been unwilling to rein in the deeply venal interests that surround the monarchy, or ease the country’s extraordinary concentration of wealth and business ownership. Instead, his security forces, narrow circle of royal friends, and oligopolistic business cronies fend off demands for accountability and reform, further isolate the king, and aggravate the political storm that is gathering beneath a comparatively calm surface.

For now, both monarchies are treading familiar water: launching committees to study political reform but never moving toward real political change. This game cannot last forever. As a former Jordanian official recently commented to me privately: “Everyone is expecting serious changes to the way the king rules the country, and if these changes don’t happen, the system will be in trouble. The king can’t keep talking about reform without implementing it.”

Scholars of the Arab world had been arguing for years that the region’s various repressive regimes (not least Saudi Arabia’s Al Saud dynasty, which keeps several thousand princes on the take) would either pursue democratic reform, or rot internally until they were overthrown. Ultimately, the options remain the same for the regimes that have avoided revolution this year. Those who have reasserted authoritarianism will find only temporary reprieve. Both theory and political experience teach that regimes with spent legitimacy do not last, and the legitimacy of the Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni dictators is utterly depleted. They will surely be overthrown if not now, then in coming years. The Jordanian and Moroccan monarchies, however, could still survive if they spend what remains of their political legitimacy on democratic reform. In other words, even if the Arab spring comes in fits and starts, it will eventually bring fundamental political change. But whether democracy is the end result depends in part on how events unfold and how regimes and international actors engage the opposition forces.

Short of the wars that have periodically broken out in the region, the United States has never faced a more urgent set of opportunities and challenges there: real prospects for democratic development exist alongside the very real risks of Islamist ascension, political chaos, and humanitarian disaster. Countries across the Arab world differ widely in their political structures and social conditions, and the United States cannot pursue a one-size-fits-all strategy. But there are a few basic principles that it should apply everywhere. As it has generally and in a number of specific cases, the Obama administration must explicitly and consistently denounce all violent repression of peaceful protest. And it should enhance the credibility of those words by tying them to consequences. For example, in Libya, the United States identified and froze the overseas assets of top officials who were responsible for brutality. Additionally, it imposed travel bans on them and their family members, and asked Europe to do the same. In the past few days, the Obama administration has also moved to freeze the personal assets of Assad and other top Syrian officials. In extreme cases -- Libya is one, and Syria has now become another -- the United States can press the United Nations Security Council to refer individuals to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

When Arab governments turn arms against peaceful protesters, the United States and Europe should stop supplying them with weapons. Western countries have been selling (or giving) regimes, such as Saleh’s in Yemen, the tools of repression, including tear gas, ammunition, sniper rifles, close-assault weapons, and rockets and tanks. Although Saleh may have been a valuable asset in the fight against terrorism at one time, he has become a liability. By ending such trade, the United States would firmly send the message to the leaders of Bahrain (another recipient) and Yemen that if they are going to violently assault and arbitrarily arrest peaceful demonstrators for democracy, they are at least not going to continue doing so with U.S. guns.

For now, there is an urgent need for mediation to break the impasse between rulers and their oppositions and to find ways to ease the region’s remaining dictators out of power. Recognizing the need for an active UN role during the Arab uprising, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has begun to dispatch experienced and talented UN staff to engage in dialogue with different groups in Yemen and elsewhere. These diplomats can help develop possible political accommodations with the protesters. The United States should encourage the UN to try to mediate these conflicts, reconcile deeply divided forces within political oppositions, and help governments pave the way for credible elections. Because it is more neutral, the UN is the international actor best suited to mediate as well as convene experts on institutional design and help supply technical support for drafting constitutions.

American diplomats will have their own role to play: They can channel financial and programmatic support and provide another venue for different actors to meet and discuss differences. They should also speak out for human rights, civil society, and the democratic process. Such expressions of moral and practical support have made a significant difference in transitional situations in other countries, such as Chile, the Philippines, Poland, and South Africa. The Arab world has its own distinct sensitivities, but the ongoing uprisings present an unusual opportunity for U.S. ambassadors to join with representatives of other democracies to lean on Arab autocrats and aid Arab democrats.

The United States should help Arab democrats get the training and financial assistance they need to survive while urging them to cooperate with one another. This does not just mean more grants to civil society organizations. There is, of course, a need for such funding, but too much U.S. money thrown at these groups will discredit them as “American pawns” or promote corruption. Aid should be pooled among multiple donors, provide core (rather than project-related) funding for organizations with a proven track record of advancing democratic change, and must be carefully monitored to ensure that it is being used effectively.Western countries have been selling (or giving) regimes, such as Saleh’s in Yemen, the tools of repression, including tear gas, ammunition, sniper rifles, close-assault weapons, and rockets and tanks.

Finally, given its enormous demographic weight and political influence in the Arab world, as Egypt goes, so will go the region. Engaging Egypt will prove vital to any larger strategy of fostering democratic change in the Arab world. Beyond aid and vigilant monitoring of the political process, the United States must deliver a clear message to the Egyptian military that it will not support a deliberate sabotage of the democratic process, and that a reversion to authoritarianism would have serious consequences for the U.S.-Egyptian bilateral relationship, including for future flows of U.S. military aid. The United States cannot allow the Egyptian military to play the cynical double game that the Pakistani military has, or Egypt may become another Pakistan in two senses: an overbearing military may hide behind the façade of democracy to run the country, and the military may consort with our friends one day and our enemies -- radical Islamists within Egypt and Hamas outside it -- the next, to show it cannot be taken for granted.

This period of change in the Arab world will not be short or neatly circumscribed. Not a continuous thaw or freeze, the coming years will see cycles -- ups and downs in a protracted struggle to define the future political shape of the Arab world. The stakes for the United States are enormous. And the need for steady principles, clear understanding, and long-term strategic thinking has never been more pressing.

The following interview with Prince Moulay Hicham, consulting professor at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at the Freeman-Spogli Institute, on the ongoing events of the “Arab Spring” was published in the May 15 issue of the French newsmagazine, "L’Express."

After his death, will Osama Bin Laden become a myth?

For the West perhaps, but not for Arabs. Bin Laden’s influence has been in decline since 2004, when people realized that most of his victims were Muslims.

You have never stopped making the case for the democratization of the Arab world. It got to the point, in 1995, that Hassan II banned you from the palace for several months. How do you explain the wave of protests that we see today, from the Gulf to the Atlantic, sparing no country?

Aside from the conjunctural factors, there are some underlying reasons. To begin with, there is the character of the regimes that exists. Some are completely closed, while others have a façade of openness. All of a sudden, the structures of mediation — parties, unions, associations, etc. — that were supposed to represent civil society were completely discredited. At the end of the day, we were left with the dominant elites, alienated and cut off from the rest of the country, relying on the security apparatus. Also, in reality, the economic opening imposed by globalization and promoted by international financial institutions only profited the elites. In the absence of any serious policy of redistribution, GDP growth was accompanied up by an increase in poverty and social insecurity that made life more precarious even for the middle classes. Finally, we cannot ignore the demographic evolution of these countries. The transition from the extended family to the nuclear family, and the entrance of women into active public life on a greater scale considerably changed the social landscape. At the same time, widespread access to new means of communication broke the spell of the state’s monopoly on information, and brought more and more people into contact with the wider world. Even before the rise of new media technologies, the arrival of Al-Jazeera in the living rooms of the region had created a revolution!

And what was the trigger?

The sense of insult. The sense that one’s dignity was being insulted. This notion of dignity is essential to understanding what is happening right now. Until now, the prevailing concepts, especially that of national honor, were elements of a collective attitude. Dignity is a demand of the individual. I will add that the WikiLeaks revelations played a role in laying bare the disdain in which the governments held their citizens.

This revolt led to a set of demands that were democratic, and virtually never religious, even if Islamist movements tried to hop aboard the train.  Why?

Because this is a movement of the citizen! Its young organizers are challenging at once the authoritarianism of the regimes and the ideological discourse of the Islamists. They want neither despotism nor theocracy. They belong to a globalized, post-ideological generation, which privileges the autonomy of the subject and the individual. They refuse the identity gambit, Islamist or not, and aspire to universal values. We are in the full enthusiasm of the 1848 “springtime of the peoples,” with the romantic twist of May ’68. It remains to be seen if these young protesters will be able to transform their efforts into something that has a more concrete political content. Right now, we are entering into the kind of trench warfare between the besieged regimes and the democratic movements.

How do you understand the evolution of the situation in Tunisia and Egypt?  Are you optimistic?

The two situations are not identical. I’m optimistic regarding the transition to democracy in Tunisia, and more circumspect regarding Egypt. In Egypt, the army was always the spine of the regime. Under the pressure of the street, it broke from the head of state, but it remains very much in business, and will, in my opinion, hold onto its role as kingmaker for a long time. The temptation to reconstitute a party that would restore an order from the bits and pieces of the old regime – bringing together Islamists, businessmen, former dissidents, etc.— to the detriment of the reformers, is very real.

Do you think the regime in Syria will fall in turn?

Yes, if the revolt persists, and widens so much that the regime would be obliged to call on the army, which might hesitate to fire on the people. Right now, it’s the Republican Guard, controlled by the Alaouite minority, with the support of paramilitary groups, which is carrying out the repression. But it’s not clear that they would be able to stand against a general uprising. This is the problem that all the closed regimes face, once they’re confronted with an insurrection.

In the monarchies, the demonstrators don’t demand that the sovereign “leave,” but that the system be reformed. Could it be that Kings are more legitimate and republican dictators? The monarchy is at once an institution of arbitration and the symbol of national identity. For the most part, the populations of these countries accept this concept. But, eventually, this could cease to be the case, if these monarchies do not respond to their peoples’ aspiration for change. Right now, they — especially the divine-right monarchies — are struggling to find a response to this urgency.

To that point: In Morocco, where Mohammed VI named a commission to consider the reform of institutions, the religious powers of the king are today widely debated. The youth who organized the February 20th movement and the following demonstrations are calling into question the article of the constitution that emphasizes the sacred character of the person of the king. They are also questioning his role as commander of the faithful. How far must this reform go?

“Sacrality” is not compatible with democracy. One can understand that the person of the king should be inviolable, because he is the representative of the nation. One can preserve the role of “commander of the faithful,” if it is understood as having a moral dimension --somewhat like the Queen of England is the head of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith. But it’s necessary to give up the idea of the sacred character of the person of the king. If one keeps that notion, which was copied from French absolutism, in the midst of an institutional arrangement that is otherwise democratic, everything will be skewed. In the end, that won’t work.

Can the commission named by Mohamed VI go so far as to propose the suppression of the sacrality of the person who of the king?

I think that the Moroccan monarchy has understood the depth of the challenge, even if it has barely responded to it.  The commission is advisory. It’s the king who will decide.

In Morocco today, the ultraleft is part of the February 20 Movement, demanding the election of a constituent assembly…

That’s unrealistic. That would mean the end of the regime. Historically, constituent assemblies consummated the end of a regime.

Fundamentally, must it move towards a Spanish-style monarchy, as some demand? Or should we rather have a constitution in which the king would more or less have the powers of the French president, with a two-headed executive, as one sometimes hears in Morocco?

In France, the Head of State and the Prime Minister are both determined by popular sovereignty. In Morocco, there are two sources of legitimacy – that of ballots, and that of tradition. One can’t transpose the logic of the philosophy of cohabitation with that of a protected space. We have to turn the page, and do it without ambiguity. Morocco should draw on the experiences of the European monarchies, while preserving its own traditions and culture.

Do you think the reform will go that far?

Either the reform will stop short, because it doesn’t go far enough, and the contestation will continue. Or the king will choose to take the process to its conclusion. But in that case he risks to be brought to account, particularly for the choices of his entourage. Because the regime has waited too long, and time is pressing, there is a risk that everything will have to be done all at once. It’s an enormous challenge, without precedent. To reform the constitution is not only to define the equilibrium of power and give a moral dimension to the “commander of the faithful,” it is also to make sure that all the activities of state are inscribed in a legal and rational framework.

Is the challenge the same for the other Arab monarchies?

The problem is practically the same in Jordan, with the added fragility that derives from the institution’s lack of historical depth. In the Gulf, a process will take longer because civil society is not as well developed. Oil rents also allow problems to be postponed. That being said, in Bahrain, the monarchy, by choosing one side rather than another, is playing a dangerous game. And in Kuwait, they have already known ten years of repetitive crises.

How do you evaluate the West’s attitude toward the “Arab Spring”?

Westerners are blinded by the Islamist bogeyman. But France, in particular, which should rejoice to see young Arabs coming into the street in the name of its own values, seems to me turned in on itself and completely confounded. The United States is more pragmatic. It is acting in accordance with its strategic interests, case by case.

Is it true that you were one of the consultants who, in 2009, participated in crafting Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo?

Among others, I was consulted. Unlike other American presidents, Obama knows and understands the region. But when he made that speech he was not as well aware as his predecessors had been of the constraints of the American system – particularly the strength, in the United States, of the pro-Israel lobby.

How does one become the advocate of the democratic opening of the Arab monarchies when one is the nephew of Hassan II?

From studying abroad, undoubtedly an opening to the world. And an interest, acquired very early, in social problems…

But you remain a monarchist?

Yes. I remain convinced that a change in the framework of a reformed monarchy represents the least costly solution for Morocco. I would be lying if I were to claim that biology had nothing to do with this conviction.

The stands that you’ve taken have caused you several difficulties with your Uncle Hassan II. Then with your cousin Mohammed VI…

With Mohammed VI above all, insofar as his entourage brings more influence to bear than did that of Hassan II, I have been hassled, and made the object of campaigns against me…

How are your relations with him today?

During the last ten years, I was in the royal palace once. I have only seen the king two or three times, in the context of family reunions. The memories of the shared childhood and youth remain. The sense also of belonging to the same family. This is a constitutive element of my identity.

 

In politics, shoddy theories never die. In the Middle East, one of the oldest is that Palestine is the "core" regional issue. This zombie should have been interred at the beginning of the Arab Spring, which has highlighted the real core conflict: the oppressed vs. their oppressors. But the dead keep walking.

"The plight of the Palestinians has been a root cause of unrest and conflict in the region," insisted Turkish President Abdullah Gul in the New York Times last week. "Whether these [recent] uprisings lead to democracy and peace or to tyranny and conflict will depend on forging a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace." Naturally, "the U.S. has a long overdue responsibility" to forge that peace.

Writing in the Financial Times, former U.S. National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft intoned: "The nature of the new Middle East cannot be known until the festering sore of the occupied territories is removed." Read: The fate of democracy hinges on Palestine.

So do "Iran's hegemonic ambitions," he insinuated. This is why Tehran reaches for the bomb? Syria, too, will remain a threat "as long as there is no regional peace agreement." The Assad regime is slaughtering its own people for the sake of Palestine? And unless Riyadh "saw the U.S. as moving in a serious manner" on Palestine, Mr. Scowcroft warned, the Saudis might really sour on their great protector from across the sea. So when they sent troops into Bahrain, were they heading for Jerusalem by way of Manama?

Freedom does not need the enemy at the gate. Despots do, which is why they happily let the Palestinian sore fester for generations.

Shoddy political theories—ideologies, really—never die because they are immune to the facts. The most glaring is this: These revolutions have unfolded without the usual anti-American and anti-Israeli screaming. It's not that the demonstrators had run out of Stars and Stripes to trample, or were too concerned about the environment to burn Benjamin Netanyahu in effigy. It's that their targets were Hosni Mubarak, Zine el Abidine Ben-Ali, Moammar Gadhafi and the others—no stooges of Zionism they. In Benghazi, the slogan was: "America is our friend!"

The men and women of the Arab Spring are not risking their lives for a "core" issue, but for the freedom of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria. And of Iran, as the Green revolutionaries did in Tehran in 2009.

Every "Palestine-first" doctrine in the end comes down to that fiendish "Arab Street": The restless monster must be fed with Israeli concessions lest he rise and sweep away our good friends—all those dictators and despots who pretended to stand between us and Armageddon. Free Palestine, the dogma goes, and even Iran and Syria will turn from rabid to responsible. The truth is that the American and Israeli flags were handed out for burning by those regimes themselves.

This is how our good friends have stayed in power: Divert attention and energy from oppression and misery at home by rousing the masses against the enemy abroad. How can we have free elections, runs a classic line, as long as they despoil our sacred Islamic lands? This is why anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are as rampant among our Saudi and Egyptian allies as among the hostile leaders of Iran and Syria.

The Palestinians do deserve their own state. But the Palestine-first strategy reverses cause and effect. It is not the core conflict that feeds the despotism; it is the despots who fan the conflict, even as they fondle their U.S.-made F-16s and quietly work with Israel. Their peoples are the victims of this power ploy, not its drivers. This is what the demonstrators of Tahrir Square and the rebels of Benghazi have told us with their silence on the Palestine issue.

So Palestine has nothing to do with it? It does, though not in the ways insisted by Messrs. Gul and Scowcroft. The sounds of silence carry a different message: "It's democracy, stupid!" Freedom does not need the enemy at the gate. Despots do, which is why they happily let the Palestinian sore fester for generations.

Israel, which has reacted in utter confusion to the fall of Mubarak, might listen up as well. If democracies don't have to "busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels," as Shakespeare has it in Henry IV, then Israel's reformed neighbors might at last be ready for real, not just cold peace. Mr. Mubarak was not. Nor is Mr. Assad of Syria, who has refused every Israeli offer to hand back the Golan Heights. If you rule at the head of a tiny Alawite minority, why take the Heights and give away a conflict that keeps you in power? Peace at home—justice, jobs and consent—makes for peace abroad.

Still, don't hold your breath. Yes, democracy is where history is going, but it is a long, perilous journey even from Tunis to Tripoli, let alone all the way to Tehran.

The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at CDDRL is pleased to announce its second annual conference, From Political Activism to Democratic Change in the Arab World, to take place on May 12 and 13, 2011. The conferences addresses the key achievements of and challenges facing Arab activists in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, Palestine, Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. It features scholars and activists from across the Arab world, Europe, and the United States who will discuss the contexts and strategies of reform-driven political activism in the Arab world.

In a piece for the blog Jadaliyya, Arab Reform and Democracy Program Manager Lina Khatib at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, makes the argument that Arab leaders have reacted in a similar fashion to the growing demands for reform at home.

The extraordinary events that have been gripping the Arab world since December 2010 have demonstrated the steadfastness of Arab citizens across the region in the face of despotic regimes. But they have also demonstrated that Arab despots indeed engage in authoritarian learning. From Tunisia to Egypt to Bahrain to Libya to Morocco to Yemen to Syria (and the list goes on), Arab rulers have followed a peculiarly familiar pattern in the way they have-and are-responding to the protests calling for regime change.

1. Ignore the protests

One of the first reactions to budding protests is simply to ignore them and their potential. Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia completely dismissed the protests when they first started in December 2010, and so did King Mohammed VI of Morocco. Muammar Qaddafi of Libya went even further in the early days by actually joining the protests himself.

2. Offer cosmetic concessions

As the pace of protests picks up, we have seen Arab rulers offer their people a range of largely cosmetic concessions. The rulers of Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia have responded by throwing money at their people, while those of Jordan and Yemen have dissolved their governments, and the latter ruler, like Ben Ali and Mubarak before him, promised not to run for reelection.

3. Engage in denial

"Egypt is not Tunisia". "Syria is not Egypt". "Yemen is not Tunisia or Egypt". And the statements by Arab rulers go on in trying to convince themselves and their people that the regime change that happened "over there" will not happen "over here". The denial continues even after the leaders start losing those they had thought were on their side, from ambassadors to ministers to army generals, and that's not to mention those international "friends" who call upon them to step down.

4. Quell the protests by force

All Arab rulers who have witnessed protests calling for democracy have responded to those protests through violence. Some, like in Egypt, Yemen, and Jordan, pretended that the violence was "spontaneous" and not orchestrated by the government as they relied on plain-clothed thugs to do the dirty work. While others, like in Libya and Bahrain, sent their (mercenary) armies to quell the protests by force.

5. Warn of civil war

Both Qaddafi and Ali Abdallah Saleh of Yemen have warned that civil war may break out if their regimes crumble. The tragedy is that their warnings have an element of truth, but that's mainly because the civil wars they have warned of are largely to do with that fact that the wars would be catalyzed by them and their (private) armies and allies as they strive to regain power or as a consequence of their "divide and rule" strategies.

6. Blame the media

It would have been amusing had it not been so tragic that so many Arab rulers have blamed the protests on the media, from the social media to satellite television. Qaddafi called the foreign media "dogs", while the Emir of Bahrain put the blame on television-the Iranian Arabic-language channel Al-Alam and Hizbullah's channel Al-Manar-and in Egypt the blame was directed at Al-Jazeera. Egypt, Syria, and Libya have also engaged in various degrees of internet shut down. It is as if the social, economic, and political problems the people are protesting against would disappear if only the media would stop talking about them.

7. Speak about foreign plots

The Emir of Bahrain proudly spoke of successfully foiling a "foreign plot" in an attempt at justifying the violent suppression of protests. So did Mubarak back in February and Qaddafi has also blamed "outsiders" for the unrest. That's because, of course, no indigenous problems ever existed in those countries. Ever.

8. Or al-Qaeda

Ali Abdallah Saleh and Qaddafi have both invoked al-Qaeda to instill fear in the protesters and the international community. Saleh presented himself as the only alternative to an al-Qaeda takeover of Yemen while Qaddafi went even further by warning that he would collaborate with al-Qaeda if all else fails.

What the above demonstrates vividly is two things:

1. Arab rulers seem to belong to the same authoritarian club.

Similar actions, reactions, and strategies can be seen across the board. The stunning irony is that the Arab leaders engaging in this authoritarian learning seem to be doing this blindly, without seeing that those strategies, after having been repeated time and time again elsewhere, are no longer fooling anybody, and while completely ignoring the fate of Ben Ali and Mubarak and the possibility of it happening to them. That's the power of denial (and ego). Arab rulers are showing that they are, par excellence, detached not only from the societies they rule but also from realities on the ground altogether as they refuse to acknowledge that the rules of the game have changed.

This is to do with a number of factors: First, those leaders have, for the most part, ruled over several decades without seeing their authority challenged. So they are likely to underestimate the degree of dissent against them, and overestimate the likelihood of their survival in power. Second, non-democratic leaders normally rely on two ruling mechanisms, "the sword and the gold" (in the words of Yemeni scholar Abdul Nasser Al Muwaddah in a recent paper). They either try to co-opt dissidents by offering them monetary gains (and that is why having complete authority over public funds is so important), or quell them by brute force.

Third, neoclassical realism says that state policy is often affected by the success or failure of outcomes of decisions made earlier by leaders. When a regime like Syria's succeeds in quelling dissidents by wiping more than 20,000 citizens off the map in a past decade, its decisions in the present tense are likely to be influenced by this perceived success. Fourth, the same school of international relations says that leader decisions tend to become more and more ambitious in scope when there are no internal or external checks on their authority. As most Arab despots have had no viable internal opposition movements and have been directly or indirectly supported by the West, they have largely been able to do what they want.

Fifth, leaders are able to invoke scare factors (like al-Qaeda) when they see themselves as being immune to those factors. Invoking al-Qaeda suggests back dealing done by Saleh and Qaddafi with the group, which is not surprising considering both leaders' legacies in ruling their countries. Sixth, the easiest way to absolve oneself from responsibility is to put the blame on "others". The Lebanese did that for years when they called their civil war "the war of others on our land". This kind of conspiracy theory can work because sometimes, when a named foreign "other" is persistently pointed at, they may well become interested in being involved after all, which ends up giving the theory credibility. Think of Iran's current stance towards what is going on in Bahrain, as demonstrated in the recent attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

Finally, authoritarian learning is nothing new. Arab leaders have been engaging in similar behavior and tactics for a very long time as a mechanism of self preservation (from silencing oppositions to imposing emergency laws to controlling the media). So it would actually be unusual for them to suddenly break with tradition.

2. Arab citizens have by now become so familiar with the above pattern that they have come to expect it and even embrace it.

Here is the good news: This embrace is because the above pattern has become a proof of failure on the part of the rulers. First, Arab despots have become very predictable, which will make it easier for protesters to anticipate their actions and strategize accordingly. This is especially that Arab reformists do not operate in a vacuum. Just like the rulers learn from each other, so do the reformers, only that they are firmly tuned in to the changing realities around them. It is not just that they are communicating on Facebook, they are also learning from one another's experiences on the ground.

Second, there has been a role reversal when it comes to the fear factor. Protesters are viewing the cheap concessions offered to them by despots as proof that the despots themselves are scared, and thus are not settling for compromises and escalating their demands. They also see the despots' use of brutal force as proof of how little their own lives as citizens are valued, and consequently are no longer fearful. The more suppression the rulers apply, the more resilient the protesters become. After all, they have already gone so far, and have already sacrificed so much, and look at what happened in Tunisia and Egypt. The rules of the game have changed, and a new Arab reality is in the making.

Two decades after the fall of Soviet-bloc dictatorships, popular movements for democracy are erupting in the last regional bastion of authoritarianism: the Arab world.

So far, only Tunisia's dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, has been toppled, while Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak - who has ruled that ancient land longer than many pharaohs - announced Tuesday that he will step down in September. But other Arab autocrats are bound to go. From Algeria to Syria to Jordan, people are fed up with stagnation and injustice, and are mobilizing for democratic change.

So, what happens when the autocrat is gone? Will the end of despotism give way to chaos - as happened when Mobutu Sese Seko was toppled in 1997 after more than 30 years in power in Zaire? Will the military or some civilian strongman fill the void with a new autocracy - as occurred after the overthrow of Arab monarchs in Egypt and Iraq in the 1950s, and as has been the norm in most of the world until recently? Or can some of the Arab nations produce real democracy - as we saw in most of Eastern Europe and about half the states of sub-Saharan Africa? Regime transitions are uncertain affairs. But since the mid-1970s, more than 60 countries have found their way to democracy. Some have done so in circumstances of rapid upheaval that offer lessons for reformers in Tunisia, Egypt and other Arab countries today.

Unite the democratic opposition.

When a dictatorship is on the ropes, one thing that can rescue it is a divided opposition. That is why autocrats so frequently foster those divisions, secretly funding a proliferation of opposition parties. Even extremely corrupt rulers may generate significant electoral support - not the thumping majorities they claim, but enough to steal an election - when the opposition is splintered.

In the Philippines in 1986, Nicaragua in 1990 and Ukraine in 2004, the opposition united around the candidacies of Corazon Aquino, Violeta Chamorro and Viktor Yushchenko, respectively. Broad fronts such as these - as well as the Concertacion movement that swept Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin to power in Chile in 1989 after the departure of Gen. Augusto Pinochet - often span deep personal and ideological differences. But the time for democratic forces to debate those matters is later, once the old order is defeated and democratic institutions have been established.

Egypt is fortunate - it has an obvious alternative leader, Mohamed ElBaradei, whom disparate opposition elements seem to be rallying around. Whether the next presidential election is held on schedule in September or moved up, ElBaradei, or anyone like him leading a broad opposition front, will probably win a resounding victory over anyone connected to Mubarak's National Democratic Party.

Make sure the old order really is gone.

The exit of a long-ruling strongman, such as Ben Ali, does not necessarily mean the end of a regime. Fallen dictators often leave behind robust political and security machines. No autocrat in modern times met a more immediate fate than Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu, who was executed by a firing squad of his own soldiers in 1989 just three days after a popular revolution forced him to flee the capital. Yet his successor, Ion Iliescu, was a corrupt former communist who obstructed political reform. Most of the former Soviet states, such as Georgia and Kazakhstan, had similar experiences.

Countries are much more likely to get to democracy quickly if they identify and embrace political leaders who are untainted by the old order and are ready to roll it back.

But also come to an understanding with the old order.

Victorious democrats won't be able to completely excise the pillars of the authoritarian order. Instead, for their country to turn toward democracy, those pillars must be neutralized or co-opted. This old order may descend into violence when, as in Iraq, broad classes of elites are stigmatized and ousted from their positions. In a successful bargain, most old-regime elites retain their freedom, assets and often their jobs but accept the new rules of the democratic game.

Unless the military collapses in defeat, as it did in Greece in 1974 and in Argentina after the Falklands War, it must be persuaded to at least tolerate a new democratic order. In the short run, that means guaranteeing the military significant autonomy, as well as immunity from prosecution for its crimes. Over time, civilian democratic control of the military can be extended incrementally, as was done masterfully in Brazil in the 1980s and in Chile during the 1990s. But if the professional military feels threatened and demeaned from the start, the transition is in trouble.

The same principle applies to surviving elements of the state security apparatus, the bureaucracy and the ruling party. In South Africa, for example, old-regime elements received amnesty for their human rights abuses in exchange for fully disclosing what they had done. In this and other successful transitions, top officials were replaced, but most state bureaucrats kept their jobs.

Rewrite the rules.

A new democratic government needs a new constitution, but it can't be drawn up too hastily. Meanwhile, some key provisions can be altered expeditiously, either by legislation, interim executive fiat or national consensus.

In Spain, the path to democratization was opened by the Law for Political Reform, adopted by the parliament within a year of dictator Francisco Franco's death in 1975. Poland adopted a package of amendments in 1992, only after it had elected a new parliament and a new president, Lech Walesa; a new constitution followed in 1997. South Africa enacted an interim constitution to govern the country while it undertook an ambitious constitution-writing process with wide popular consultation - which is the ideal arrangement.

An urgent priority, though, is to rewrite the rules so that free and fair elections are possible. This must happen before democratic elections can be held in Egypt and Tunisia. In transitions toward democracy, there is a strong case for including as many political players as possible. This requires some form of proportional representation to ensure that emerging small parties can have a stake in the new order, while minimizing the organizational advantage of the former ruling party. In the 2005 elections in Iraq, proportional representation ensured a seat at the table for smaller minority and liberal parties that could never have won a plurality in individual districts.

Isolate the extremes.

That said, not everyone can or should be brought into the new democratic order. Prosecuting particularly venal members of a former ruling family, such as those tied to the Philippines' Ferdinand Marcos, Indonesia's fallen strongman Suharto or now Tunisia's Ben Ali, can be part of a larger reconciliation strategy. But the circle of punishment must be drawn narrowly. It may even help the transition to drive a wedge between a few old-regime cronies and the bulk of the establishment, many of whom may harbor grievances against "the family."

A transitional government should aim for inclusion, and should test the democratic commitment of dubious players rather than inadvertently induce them to become violent opponents. However, groups that refuse to renounce violence as a means of obtaining power, or that reject the legitimacy of democracy, have no place in the new order. That provision was part of the wisdom of the postwar German constitution.

Transitions are full of opportunists, charlatans and erstwhile autocrats who enter the new political field with no commitment to democracy. Every democratic transition that has endured - from Spain and Portugal to Chile, South Africa and now hopefully Indonesia - has tread this path.

Fragile democracies become stable when people who once had no use for democracy embrace it as the only game in town.

It took just 29 days for President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to flee Tunisia after mass protests erupted in the country.  Twenty-three years of authoritarian rule crumbling in less than a month is rather remarkable, especially considering the relative “calm” that had prevailed in Tunisia during those two decades.

Tunisia rarely hit the headlines then. No Islamists threatening to overtake the government (the Islamist al-Nahda party was outlawed in 1991). No terrorist networks causing security concerns (the exception being the sole attack on a synagogue in 2002 which catalyzed stepped up security measures). No strategic interests for the USA to speak of. And Ben Ali’s regime succeeded in marketing Tunisia as a safe tourist haven. Cities like Hammamet allowed tourists to be parachuted into newly built all-inclusive resorts that could have been anywhere in the world. There was even a custom-built, sanitized version of a traditional medinah in Yasmine Hammamet, which reminded one more of the artificiality of the world landmarks in Las Vegas than of real North African souks.

Tunisia’s sanitized image was also due to a severe crackdown on freedom of expression, as the country had one of the highest levels of media control—especially of the internet—in the world.

But what Ben Ali’s flight showed is how fragile the foundations of his rule were. So vulnerable that, in contrast to Iran and Egypt’s leaders’ resilience in the face of mass protests, he quickly offered one concession after another before completely giving up, making it clear that he was in fear for his life.

What will happen next in Tunisia is uncertain. The Tunisian opposition is divided into groups with wildly different agendas, from the Islamists of al-Nahda to the secular reformists of the Congress for the Republic headed by Moncef Marzouki. There is no political figure who can be clearly envisaged to become the next Tunisian president, and the way the balance will tip—will there be democracy, or another authoritarian regime of a merely different kind?—is unpredictable. But the clearest lessons that have emerged from Tunisia so far are that there is a real democratic potential in the Arab world and that authoritarian regimes in the region are not always what they appear to be. Those lessons are important on two fronts:

On the foreign policy front, the Tunisian uprising seems to have catalyzed US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to make the US administration’s boldest verbal statement thus far on the need for reform in the Arab world. Describing the political order of some Arab countries as “stagnant”, Clinton, on a visit to Bahrain on January 13, said that “This is a critical moment and this is a test of leadership for all of us”.

The United States is continuously criticized by democracy experts for favoring stability over the risks of democracy in the Arab world, and for backing up authoritarian leaders—whether directly or indirectly—for fear of having to deal with an unfavorable alternative (namely, an Islamist government, as in Egypt or Syria). Tunisia should be a relatively easy case for the United States in this context, a litmus test of putting one’s money where one’s mouth is. But it also shows how applauding stability can make countries like the United States blind to the democratic potential lurking beneath the façade of seemingly impenetrable regimes.

Western governments—including that of the United States—have mostly publicly congratulated the Tunisian people on their uprising, and France and other European countries refused Ben Ali entry on Friday when his plane was looking for a place to land. This reaction has been met with cynicism by Hizbullah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, a man who, since 2006, has been working to build up his credentials as the only credible Arab leader in the present time.  In a speech on Sunday, Nasrallah was quick to point out the irony of Ben Ali’s lack of welcome in the very countries which he had “served” throughout the duration of his rule.  So, on the regional front, the case of Tunisia unveils how quickly US opponents like Nasrallah can capitalize on short-sighted foreign policy. Nasrallah’s statement paints Western support for authoritarian Arab leaders as a house of cards that can crumble with the slightest shake—a warning to the West and Arab leaders reliant on Western support alike.

It is no coincidence that the reaction to the developments in Tunisia by other Arab regimes has mostly been to lay low. And here we can find another, more important, house of cards. Ben Ali’s regime has been exposed for the decaying entity that it is, and already copycat protests in other Arab countries—Jordan, Algeria, Egypt, and even Mauritania—have started. While a blanket domino effect across the region is not likely, reformists can take heart from Tunisia’s experience: while an authoritarian regime may appear to be indestructible, it may well be a mere house of cards.