opposition, where you can debate policy without necessarily being seen as a traitor to the country as a whole. and i think in some respects, tunisia has an asset, the tunisia has an asset, the strength of his administration, existence of the labor unions which will likely play a role as the government or is loyal opposition. i think the fact that tunisia faces circumstance is it's probably going to mean that they collect information more effectively. the budget more effectively and so forth than they might if they were less constrained in financial terms. we can return to those propositions later if we want. egypt then saw the next of the really apparent uprising. and as you all know, these were very urban. in contrast to the tunisian case, the uprising, the protest

were not only in cairo and not only downtown cairo. they were significant uprising in alexandria and suez. these are large provincial cities. this was an urban phenomenon. one of the things that is a consequence of that is the course among many others the outcome of the referendum on the constitutional amendment because the only people that voted no with the people who have been interrater squared -- tahrir square, for the constitutional amendments and in the rural areas it was practically 100%. the people who were prepared to be collectively give and challenge the military were almost entirely what you might call the intelligentsia in the urban areas. we also so in addition and extremely highly disciplined protest movement. there was and remains those

movements to its readers and in that respect, that is, i wouldn't say ideological position, a principled position on their part that they are part of the people. they are not leaders and so forth and so on, so they don't want to surface at this juncture. but i think what's really important about this is that that serves them well as protest organizers. it does not serve them well after the protest has succeeded. i think it's fair to say if they got caught in the beginning of january, as they organize to january 25 police day protests, they did not expect to prevail. they organize protests in the past but it fizzled out. they learned lessons in that. they learned about civil disobedience, nonviolent protests and so forth, but they did not expect that they would

be confronted with success in the way they had. they were extremely good at protesting and now are finding themselves ill-equipped and unprepared for actually managing their political position in the new egypt. that said, they were prepared for the opportunity when it presented themselves in very well in that part and very well sophisticated and not only can name. i think we debate this. we see with 800,000 people, quite a lot of people to ben tar square for quite a long time in a context where they were sufficiently well-organized, they were not provoked by the thugs and saboteurs who were trying to make up a lamp. we can talk more about what happened in tahrir square, but it was a very, very sophisticated capacity to rally the troops, keep them there,

keep them engaged, keep in people. he saw almost a successful than those who develop over the course of time. some of that was to ensure that it was useful and that it was possible to sustain it for what turned out to be several weeks. the authoritarian and semi-think that this protest actually revealed was not the kind of predatory -- predatory regimes that we saw in tunisia, but actually an authoritarianism toward boardman flag, that over the course of time, the regime just that out of touch, stop thinking about a lot of the kinds of things that ordinary people care about so that over the course of time, things in egypt, whether it is u.k. should our basic social services or salaries or anything are

formally very, very cheap. the former wages are very low for the police, for example. teachers get a patent, but everybody supplements their salary with something that could be described as corrupt. you know, the small-scale brides to the police. the private lessons at all the teachers give in order for students to be prepared for exams. everybody has a second job and a second source of income. and so in fact, things in egypt are kind of incentive. actually hard to get the social services that you are putatively have is a matter of right. you don't get -- there is no such thing as free education, even though education is free because you have to pay for the private lessons. so all of that -- there is a kind of pervasive small-scale

corruption that is born of a failure to keep pace with inflation and wages for teachers or keep pace with wage rates were police was a huge 6 million civil servants sitting judge. they are all underpaid and they all have another source of income. so one of the real challenge is for each of his not so much removing a predatory family, although their accusations largely unfounded against the mubarak family, but the real challenge is to reform the 6 million person public rockers the so that people are paid enough that they don't need to supplement that and then they stop supplementing it. that is going to be very complicated. it's not probably impossible to do, but it's a very different challenge than tunisian reformers will be facing. i do think the effects of neglect in egypt are going to be harder to reverse than removing

the predatory family, the effects of neglecting egypt than removing the family in tunisia. but as i said, the debate on the future that this is a recognized about a very simple suburban american safe and clean neighborhood campaign is in many respects very appealing and there is an enormous amount of enthusiasm immobilization about taking responsibility. so as they say, people are cleaning up neighborhoods. neighborhoods that have been claimed by anyone because the government wasn't doing it and local residents were doing it. suddenly people were cleaning up neighborhoods. suddenly with the police disappeared, these neighborhood watches disappeared of local citizens taking responsibility for their own security and so forth and so on.

that impulse is saying are a citizen of this neighborhood, not only this country we want to be a citizen. we want to build response on our part of that responsibility. that change in the way egyptians are seeing interactions with each other and with public authorities they think is quite remarkable and does bode well over the long run for the transition that does -- it does capture a sense of -- and reinforce a sense of responsibility on the part of many citizens. you think it's fairly clear the military did step in and manage the transition of mubarak's departure does not want to say. i think a lot of the vote for yes for the constitutional amendments is not at the constitutional amendments, but it was for her the military's timeline that they get out quickly. so one of the things it is interesting in context like this and this is true when all of the left voted for fox in mexico,

there's a lot of strategic. i don't necessarily agree, but i want the consequences. a lot of people didn't even know what the constitutional amendments were, but they were voting one because they could vote and they didn't know what the outcome is going to be. that in itself was exciting. and to accommodate that if they voted yes, this was the way it is not insulting the military and ensuring that they did leave promptly as they promised to do. we can talk more about the prospects for the characters and transition if you want. i think there's ample reason and i certainly sitting in cairo and very optimistic about the prospects of the choppy complicated, not easy, but nonetheless ultimately successful transition in egypt. libya by contrast i could not be more pessimistic about. the ragtag band of rebels that appeared in the eastern province animated by the enthusiasm and the lack of fear demonstrated by

the young people in tunisia and egypt are completely uncoordinated as you can tell now, much less with other rebels in other parts of the country. there is and has been for decades virtually no free information available in libya about what's going on in libya, much less than the rest of the world. the most about libyans do about each other is unreliable and incomplete and there's very little capacity to coordinate. the discipline and organization esop among egyptians is not something you see among libyans because for the last 30 years, the regime in libya has deliberately and relatively successfully presented the growth of bureaucracy, professional middle classes,

nationwide networks of ties, political institutions, anything. so what you see now and you hear these reports all the time about tribes and tribalism in libya. this is a sort of renewed or induced tribalism because one of the few reliable sources of solace and support in a context like cbs was family. so tribal ties had begun to attenuate 50 or 60 years ago had become less important essay by professional professional identities and so forth, robbed of any capacity to have those identities in an effective way. people then resorted to family because the only way to get access to the kinds of social services you needed for education or other kinds of permissions to do things in libya was actually through those kinds of connections. so it's interesting about corruption in libya as it demonstrates there has to be

something public which has turned to private sources, private purposes here that asserted the definition of corruption in some sense. in this instance, there is no public. gadhafi and his revolution and ideological supporters and family and that's all. so it's hard to argue that the way people have behaved in the extent to which they relied on their own families for access to the kinds of daily needs that we all have constitutes corruption when there wasn't any alternative to that at all. all of this means, in my estimation, that the post-gadhafi reconstruction is going to be far more about state formation than democratic transition. they think we are starting behind the euro in terms that the construction of the nationwide state administration that would be recognized by all

libyans as having any legitimacy. and i think that's going to be a real challenge. i think there are regional tensions that are long-standing and i've grown over the course of time. the east was always relatively solid under gadhafi and it's no surprise that further protests started. but it's also true that using a lot of fairly opportunistic tribes moving towards the rebels then when the rebels worsened at bat, the move towards the government and so forth and so would. there's a lot of opportunism because there's no ideological commitment of any kind at this point can expect opposition to those people who think they can get away with it. and i think that's really the question right now of whether the opposition will be able to get away with even opposition. one of the things gadhafi has said and in most respects a man

of his word is that he will die a martyr to the revolution. so unlike ben ali who was exiled to tunisia, but survived were mubarak who wasn't even required to leave the country, but just went off to his home in sherman shake, gadhafi is going to be, if in fact the rebels prevailed, will be killed in his body will be dragged to the streets so people know he's really dead. there is that quality to the tension. nobody is going to give up this fight because they know if they surrender they'll be killed, so they may as well die in battle. nobody on either side or perhaps on any side believes there is any merit or value or prospect in surrender. so it is going to be let back in many ways and i think that was

is and remains a challenge for people who look and from the outside, saying this is of course in part at least a case of the new united nations.journal the responsibility to protect civilians and so forth, but at the same time it is also like these other protests against authoritarian rules, not simply an issue of civilians. this is what could be described as a civil war. and if you put your thumb on the scale and trying to protect civilians, you're actually taking sides in a war that may be fine. it certainly was, i think part of the calculus of the arab league and they knew perfectly well what they were doing. gadhafi is one of the most unpopular people in the arab world and the arab league's, so there was no love lost there. those are the calculations that the international community are going to have to live with us

this resolves, however it does. so when found, they are very different kinds of nondemocratic settings and therefore very different kinds of protests against those nondemocratic regimes and it behooves us to disaggregate m1 from the other and start thinking about what the prospects for various kinds of policy regimes in the aftermath of the fall of the authoritarian regime may be. as i suggested, we have two cases where we have reasonable cause her optimism. i am particularly optimistic about egypt, but that's because i lived there i think. i think if i was living in tunis, and we optimistic about tunisia, too. it's going to be heard in egypt, but i think it's got a good shot he a much more open and dynamic society than it has been in recent years. one of the things, however then i'll stop here and entertain

observations that we do need to be concerned about is the cost that libya may represent to libya and egypt and it would be very much to that if those countries preoccupied as they should be, was sorting out internal issues and being asked to be much less actually doing anything in libya because you can see temptation for the rest of the world. their neighbors, day care. on the other hand, they are very, very busy. and if they succeed in any way to develop something that approximates democracy, it would be so hugely valuable to the region s. paul, that is worth being abstemious about asking them to do anything and are for libya. and on that now perhaps i can stop them we can talk about tahrir square if you like.

thank you. >> thank you very much, or enter send. [applause] i'm going to use my privilege as moderator and asked the first question if i can. is there any emerging trend that we can be in each of on a new system? are each of egyptians thinking of the system or is it too premature to talk about such terms? maybe a couple of words on the role of the muslim brotherhood in the ship. >> as i said, one of the interesting aspects about you should check out his people did not expect to be in this position. if you ask any egyptian on the 25th of january whether two months later they would have to be thinking about whether presidential system was better than a parliamentary system, they would've said bush's get to the protests. i think of that respect, this is

a malaise for egyptians across the country are absolutely starved for information. they love thinking about this. you know anything about parliamentary systems. these are not debate that it taken place in the country. so we are at a point where people simply want to know what the choices are. there is enormous but cavity. at auc went public programming night after night about how to reform the constitution about these amendments may be or what an electoral system looks like or how parties are financed or having the organist at different ways depending on your electoral system and whether you have a presidential system. all of this is all new. so the answer is no. nobody really as much of a conviction about what kind of system would serve them best. they are trying to figure out what systems there are have been given what systems there are, what interests they have and whether those interests would be better served by a system they system be or some hybrid system

or some you might not. the two parties are the two groups that are believed to be at the moment the best organized are of course the permanence of the ndp, the ruling party. and nobody really knows what's going to happen to that, whether its remnants will be reorganized and reconstituted in something like a sort of non-communist communist party. will it be alive alive or will it be taken apart? and the tunisian decision to try and just completely and the life of the ruling party doesn't seem to be on the horizon and egypt at this point. but nobody knows it's going to happen to that. it does clearly have the strongest network grassroots support and so forth in the rural areas among the people who voted for the constitutional amendments. but that's on the docket for all the people who were protesters can of course don't have corny

organizations. they are not graded easiest for the political parties who have been the formal opposition parties said they are trying to figure out whether they form a party and if they form a single party, what is it about? can they form a lot of little parties? lacoste as they are to be in a lot of little parties. that may be why they want to permit system because they are better for all of that. all of that is completely open and completely up for grabs. all i can say is people stay up all night trying to figure it out. i try to remind the egyptian colleagues the time of oscar wilde's crack, but the trouble with socialism that takes too many evenings. i'm sure the trouble with democratic transitions as they take to many evenings and that's really the situation people are in. i think the interesting thing about the brotherhood is that is also the group said to be the best organized and so forth with

remnants of the ndp. i think it's pretty obvious that there are, i wouldn't say ideological cleavages within the brotherhood as much as generational cleavage as. and this generational cleavages are not simply okay, the older brothers have soared past their prime and it's my turn. i'm now 55. it is about what the rules the brotherhood should be, so this becomes an intra- brotherhood debate about politics, brotherhood, aspirations of brotherhood and so forth and so on. so it's easy from the outside to say they are a coherent, well organized and so forth and so on. if you begin to think and say it, they are so coherent and will work and a pitcher get the work they are fairly well organized. if you are doing competing patronage networks that have no real purpose in life, then i

think there's two groups and still fairly strong. the ndp has been decapitated in the muslim brotherhood doesn't know who should be ahead of it if you will. so there is a lot of debate in there. even what we think of as the best organized are not particularly well organized. again, they were prepared for this either. the brotherhood was accustomed to being cranky and claiming to be so forth and so on. and so presented with opportunities, they are not displaced either. so it's an interesting moment where nobody was ready for this and everybody scrambling to figure out how to best take advantage of opportunities they never expected to have. it is to be careful what you wish for a moment tunisia for everybody. >> okay. the thing to take a group of questions and then if you can just state who you are and who

you represent a repair. >> jet. come a filmmaker. with respect to reject in your comment that they are searching for alternatives that can't quite figure out what kind of system they want. in respect to that, amendments to the constitution seemed to me to be somewhat premature. a constitution would follow this decision. is there any kind of movement towards our discussion of the detroit assembly, where they would then form a constitution based on the decision of what system they want? >> birth santini from brookings institution. just a couple of -- i would be very interested in your opinion on what perceptions in the u.s. any judge currently our and how

it might hope in these very delicate transition pages, to the point your making about the choice of local systems. thanks. >> microphone here. >> hi, thank you for joining us. the movements in each of had them mrc described by power of the youth. her cultural norms that respects for the elderly in the community, the experience any judge and also, have these events in the arab world inspired the scholarship on the region? >> i'm going to take that. i'll go backwards on this because those are very interesting -- they're all interesting questions, the first

of all on scholarship, most of the scholars were prepared for this either, so everyone is trying to get there the book finished before they start taking about this. a lot of the other books are about persistence of authoritarianism. he might just have to forget about it altogether. nobody was prepared. the cultural norms and the youth then things, this is a very interesting question -- dynamic. one of the things people don't quite appreciate here is the extent to which the parents of these ships are proud of their children. it's astonishing. this is not seen in this country is something that was a revolution against the parents. this is a revolution not behalf of the family, if you will. it's much more in -- everybody i know went down to tahrir square

to see their kids. everybody. i mean, all that kind means is that since the only thing parents will say is we are of little guilt ridden because we didn't do it. we had to put it on our children. that they are hugely proud as i said, the funny thing about education and egypt is there is no free education, so everybody, but poorest comer purchase, everybody pays for it. in this sense, this is the redemption of god. that investment has paid off. and it hasn't paid off in the sense that these kids have the jobs for which they were educated. because as you well know, the mismatch between skills and jobs and so forth and so on as to what was on the 24th of january. but the sense that the kid did lose their fear, did represent we are going to take control

again of our destiny and so forth and so on is something that all of egypt is proud of. all of the families are proud of. in that sense, it doesn't seem like you should be respect in hierarchy and what about the significant dynamic. you are quite right about that. that may resurface. one of the things they think is interesting and never marked dumbness facetiously even in the united states about quotes, kids today, is that this is the generation that taught their parents how to program the vcr. ..

it is not just that they are the youth and loss of testosterone at that age in that kind of step. this is a