The idea of democratisation planted in Egyptian minds is beyond containment, yet Mubarak continues to resist.
The realist terminology of the ’domino effect’ does not capture the agency that Arabs are today assuming to unseat Arab hegemons, from Cairo to Sana’a.
This agency is unshackling itself from a threefold dynamic: the fear of the Arab police state; Orientalist constructions demoting Arab agency; and Euro-American democratisation theorists’ obsession with structure, culture and top-down institution-building.
Similarly, this agency stumbles upon the structures of a world order driven by self-interest and impervious to the dreams of millions of Arabs to be free.
A precedent has been set in Tunisia, and Egypt is on the move. Whilst the challenges are awesome, the seeds for planting democratic dreams have begun by the display of people’s power in Tunisia. Read more