know, the exclusion law on the question of what to do with those and how much do you move the revolution forward. but it's also over redistribution. the elections, major issues about the elections were over questions about what would we do with redistribution of seats, constitutional elections, exactly the same idea this interest and make sure it was 2020, 20.

so anyways the concerns that you move into the transitional period are with obvious questions about whether or not regions fight regions, but also within them. it tends to be this group conflict. no one is thinking a person from ex-tribe become the person from y tribe. where as in tunisia to some extent although there is a sort of, those are low level of polarization. i think it's important. and egypt are larger extent, the ways in which the debate and the cleavage depends comes about is really the questions about what was finish of society and whether not islamism would play a role and what kind of role at what point have truly taken over. i want to make it clear it's not simply because that comes from rhetoric or positions of the muslim brotherhood. it's also because that becomes the response of what we think of as the non-islamist parties.

the dialogue and the debate becomes one in which people feel much more, and so that's why you will see journalists are arrested because of the sort of statements are seen as anti-islamic. you will see pressures on the courts. you'll see pressures on the presidency. you will see pressures on department. essentially pressures like you said that kinds of liberal institutions and democratic institutions that essentially are the ones that would underpin democracy. >> so final word, i think it's probably clear by now but a wanted to get clear that this isn't actually about the content. this isn't about islamism, right? it is about the nature of that debate. about the extent to which it is totalizing or left totalizing. the ways in which they feel to it that this is really, because much farther than this division of resources, we cantomorrow an,

right. and it's linked, it can be linked again what we are saying it is linked to economic systems, all sorts of systems. it's not as simple, a simple issue of islam. >> thank you very much, ellen. a lot of questions. thank you. let me say i was just there in courage to buy the thesis of the study that we should really focus on our institutions rather than trying to characterize islamists. and this is especially true i think in the libya case, having just returned there and also having spent time there before the elections of last year. i think it's incrediblincredibl y important. let me just offer some observations to sort of compliment the excellent analysis that was presented, focus specifically on the case of libya. i think it's important with olivia to really appreciate the

weight of gadhafi's 42 year rule on the transition to an obviously it's well-known that there was no civil society, no political participation. and this is really affected the transition. but more importantly was gadhafi's very divisive style of patronage politics. i me, when you go to libya today we often look at the tribes as this sort of organic grassroots movement. but what happened in the latter stages of the gadhafi regime is he we tribalized society, and the elevated certain, he provide them with favors. what you're seeing in the post-gadhafi transition is really a turning of the tables. you are seeing locales and towns that were suppressed under gadhafi trying to reassert themselves. and it's creating cleavages that were not there before. and much of it has to do with this struggle for resources, with economic resources or

political resources. from my visit last week, there's a real sense, and i been traveling there, i've been there four times since the end of the revolution. there's a real sense among my friends, people i see on a repeated basis that with his last visit there's a sense that the gadhafi state is perpetuating itself. people are talking about part to their to be difficult to escape from his personalized way of governing the country. why? because there are no institutions. and so the government, however well-meaning, reverts to what it knows and that's the sort of backroom patronage some politics and that creates a vicious cycle because then the revolutionaries, the opposition said this is just more of the same. and all this is taking place in a very dire security vacuum. let me speak briefly to the fault lines, the political fault lines that we see today in libya.

i can, i think it's absolutely accurate that we should not try to impose an islamist liberal divide on this country, because it is very different in the libyan context that we find in tunisia and egypt. the most important fault line in this country i would argue is really sort of almost a chronological one in terms of where were you during the revolution, to what extent did you accommodate technology regime, what were you doing under gadhafi, where were you during the revolution, did you join the revolution lay, were you the love of our joint? these debates are being spliced out to three minute degrees. to the point where this debate on the political isolation law, there were some islamists that were saying, if you're not in benghazi on february 17 with us, then you should be excluded from government. of course, this is nonsense because people came from abroad. but this is the type of debate we're having in this country. it's really about revolutionary

legitimacy defined as your proximity to the old regime. the second major fault line i think as was mentioned was between the center and the periphery and its regionalism. much of this again is an artificial construct that was the product of gadhafi's divided rule. when i talk to libyans, they often surmise what they lament that the country is becoming another somalia or and iraq. i served in iraq in 2003 and i can tell you the sorts of existential fighting that we see, we saw in iraq, or sectarian and ethnic, we don't see any libya. the idea led to exist, certainly there are eastern grievances about a little coal power, about the distribution of oil revenues, but the idea of libya still exists and its territorial unity. that said, there are some more power centers emerging. i mean, a key center of power to follow if you're following libya

is the city state of misrata. this is the economic powerhouse in the center of the country where the most vicious battle of the war was fought. misratans are really framed the medal of victory and they're using this to assert this post of war, that we just needed the gadhafi regime, therefore, we deserve the preponderance of political spoils. disagreed a tremendous backlash among other libyans. there was a saying that for 42 years gadhafi tried to get all of leaving to hate misrata. he failed, in the two years misratans have done it for themselves. because again this is a previously repressed town that is now trying to reassert, reassert itself. again, the eastern question is very important to libyans talk about federalism, but again we have to say what did they really mean by this? much of this comes from the

political immaturity of the vocabulary. when you talk about federalism they are really talk about decentralization, municipal government. because everything was so centralize under gadhafi people had to travel from the east to tripoli just a click associate study benefits, just to renew their passports. so people want decentralized local governments but sometimes this gets expressed i think as a degree for federalism. that said, this impulse for real separatism in the east does not enjoy great support. let me talk, finally, about the islamist dimension you. again i think one of the saving graces of this country, and it was well conveyed on the slide, the ideological spectrum of the various parties is fairly narrow. they defin define themselves ase most centrist. you don't have these really start divides among the parties. in the run up to the parliamentary elections when you look at the different slogans, some of the islamist parties were trying to convey a very

moderate, that especially women without the hijab. the national forces alliances were tried to play up its piety. so both were converging on the center. now, it's often remarked that in the parliamentary elections that may muslim brotherhood affiliates, did not do well at the party list. this is too. why? because it has a very thin institutional base. it's a newcomer to the political scene. it didn't have the son of grassroots support that its counterparts in egypt and elsewhere had. many libyans i spoke to said that the most in brotherhood really got lazy in their campaigning. i mean, they sort of have these slogans. they talked about social the piety. they didn't realize there was this real thirst by libyan voters for fixing the country, for technocratic expertise. and they sort of assumed that just because they were the islamist party people would vote for them. to the interesting thing, a fine device of the muslim brotherhood in libya thought that just because someone shouted allahu

akbar during the revolution that doesn't he's going to the islamist at the polls. and i thought that was very telling. some other factors that came into play with the islamist was they were tainted by this procession of outside influence, especially from qatar. displayed huge factor with the party of -- you look at their fancy campaign ads. they were very well produced, clearly with catharina money. there was this phenomena and letting politics that is residue from the gadhafi era that gadhafi drilled into people's heads that political parties are pawns of foreign powers. and you find it is time and time again when you look at the national forces, a national salvation front people say oh, that's a cia front. so people have this tendency to associate parties with some sort of outside power, even though it may not be the case.

we are seeing islamists exerting themselves, retooling themselves. the mother and 10 -- the salafis are regrouping as well. much of their influence is occurring at the informal networknetwork through person kd key figures. such as the grand mufti, such as ali salabi. again this leads to sort of a last observation on elections, that elections in this country are still very much at the level of personality politics. why did the national forces aligns when? was because, they had this for technocratic aura but again it was because of the popularity of mahmoud jibril. he was a known quantity. another cases these islamists figure, the grand mufti, people know him. he's a wise person. so against this idea of actually campaigning on a program or on an agenda hasn't really reached

maturity in this country yet. people still vote along locale tribal family lines and based on personalities. i think i'll leave it at that, and in the q&a i can talk about some of the key institutional hurdles that this country faces in terms of the political isolation law and the constitution. >> thank you very much. may i take the first shot at questions and then turn it over to the audience. i also was very impressed with the presentations that were given, and they are in line with some of the studies that have shown that basically very few people in the arab world, serving in the countries that are studied, want a totally secular society. very few in egypt, i think less than 5%, while the sort of government to be totally secular with the normal religion to

play. having said that there's a new once here, which is that the same people who do not want a total secular state also do not want the elected officials to work about ideological issues. they want their officials to do about the economy, basically, and not about whether people where the hijab or not. whether there are, whether drinking or not, et cetera. so you know, i would like you to comment on this. is this actually a sign that people -- not necessary people to tell of how to conduct their lives? the other comment i want to make is, again, you seem to show that you have core support for islamist forces in this country, probably and most of the arab world, around 22, 25%.

of the people who consistently voted islamist because they identify with the ideology of these movements, but then you have large center which does not, is this, you know, is this a lecture at support of -- sorry, popular support which is translate into much bigger support, 70% in egypt, 45% in tunisia, et cetera. is this a sign of just a lack of organization on part of the secular forces? and how likely are we going to see that change with time? a lot of people argue that as these governments into the political sort of for a band are supposed -- foray, deliver support to the people as they do not deliver results partly because of the lack of experience, that we're going to see a shift to a secular party. that has not happened yet

because my islamist parties have indeed lost support, we are not seeing that support being translated into gains for the secular forces. again, a question probably of organization, but it's also, i would like both of you to comment on this, but it also might mean that islamic parties in these countries don't care whether they perform economically are not big because if they know they're going to win the elections anyway, they don't seem to care. egypt is facing a fiscal cliff but nobody seems to be doing much about it. tunisia is in a bit better situation, but still facing dire economic conditions. another in tunisia don't seem to be really that worried about the lack of economic performance.

i was very struck by your comment about libya is thinking of themselves as libyans. this concept of citizenship in the arab world, and is probably also true i would say in egypt and tunisia where we are, despite all the tensions, we are not seeing the kind of tensions that we're seeing in syria and iraq, lebanon, even before the uprising. this sort of comment is this a result of not just -- divided the dance but more important, of 100 years after in which governments of the region never sort of gave citizenship any due attention. so for the next 100 years, a true sense of citizenship was not cultivated in these countries, leading to the civil strife that you're seeing.

i wonder if all three of you can comment on this? you want to take the first shot, jakob? >> i would, so in terms of sort of the islamist being so sure about staying in power that they don't care about sort of economic policies and economic solutions and so, i don't think, i think that they do care about economic policies and i do think they care about providing good economic solutions for the country, and here i'm speaking primarily on egypt. but i think they also acknowledge that it's bad politics to do the necessary economic reforms and so one. in egypt right now there is no sort of reconciliation between

non-islamist parties and the islamist parties. it's extremely divided, and the parties, they know they need to be reform. they know that they need to do reform in order to get influence and so on, but they would wait until the next elections, until they sort of would do something about subsidies and so one. so, well, i do think they care about how -- so, i think it's accurate that they do have sort of a core support of 22, 25% in egypt case, maybe even, maybe even a bit more. i think especially in the last election, the salafis conducted a very, very good campaign where they were able to reach above and beyond sort of their core

voters about salafis. -- tease out salafis but they engaged social networks and so on. and this can change, islamist of the non-islamist parties have a tendency to perform much better but not in the present state with a relatively fragmented position with very little sort of platform, very insufficient platform. and with very importantly, that the discussion is still a long the lines of religion and not along the lines of solving economic problems. i think that's my first, my 2 cents worth.

>> one thing worth. >> one thing i would point out which of these interesting is the question of people think somehow, the strange they care about a lot of economy but they sort of vote on religion, right? to some extent this gets back to the point of supply and demand. there's two issues. one is the supply of differentiation across the parties was one that was a bad religion but on the one in the debate has to be said about religion and, therefore, people into choosing what they are choosing based on that. and in some ways people care about economy, so much so that for many people you ask them do you support, do you think it's the best thing, 80% of tunisians, 90% of egyptians say it's a great thing. at the same time you ask them what it is, there's a great deal of them will actually think it means equality, economic equality but it means everybody has a basic standard of living. for them democracy is not about rights and elections and

turnover of government. it's actually about economic welfare. the people i think are a little bit sort of have a bit of conflation there. so in some ways the fact that they care about if they're voting for religions i guess in some ways no stranger because they care about these things and want to have economic problems fixed by there's no great debate over how that should happen. their own positions tend to be that we want to stay to be doing something. that's the reason why you also get all this, the fact it would require a lot of policies that are going to be extremely unpopular. so it's not, that debate, that discussion has had some but not nearly as much as the other debates. there's this question that is an interesting one about whether or not we will see the loss of support for islamist overtime and, of course, what we see is quite the opposite. we see islamists, if we're talking about -- when we did the polls at the end of last year in 2012, we asked who did you vote

for and would you vote for the same party essential is what we are asking. and we would ask you vote for in the next election. what we would find is those who voted for the fjp were much more likely to be returned voters than the other parties were. so other parties were losing, but they ended in an fjp with the two parties essentially most able to gain. i think there's two reasons for that. so you can say being in government shows you haven't solve the problems and you were there for responsibility, et cetera. i don't think we should overlook the fact is also countries in which people have a very long experience of wanting to be close to the one who's in government because those are the ones who can do something for them. to the extent to which some of the same policies that took place under the mubarak and ben ali regimes are still taking place now and as you said with regard to libya as well. then it's not a surprise to

people decide in some ways there's an attraction to voting for what they see as the ruling party, and there's not a lot of clarity about the extent to which what is at stake in making sure you're on the right side of it. so i think those are issues that had to be taken due to account. the citizenship issue is an interesting one. i'm not sure it means that, for example, syria is a great example of fragmentation breakdown and were at the moment one could argue sectarianism is trumping seediness and. although honestly i'm not sure that that is the only way to read that situation. but even they don't think of themselves as civilians. and again our notions and our relationships with assistance have often come in what context are we in. so i'm not sure that it's stalled in north africa than it is in the middle of iran.

>> i guess i'm living with regard to citizenship i think we do to look at the sort of the postcolonial trajectory of this idea of legitimacy when contrasted with, before gadhafi the monarchy that ruled that there had a degree of legitimacy. it was not hoisted upon libyans in the same way that it was forced upon iraq. the idea of the state i think still resonates. the shared experiences of combating the italian occupation. and then it's difficult to sort of quantified this but in talking to libyans is just a sense of civic collective civic responsibly that stems from the revolution, that this was truly a revolution that everybody participated, perhaps for the own motives. but it was sort of you know, the wikipedia revolution to everyone contributed content to this.

it was not a single established opposition movement that led the charge, say, like the sp splm or the northern alliance. this is truly bottom up. you get the sense from people that the sacrifices of the martyr should not be in vain, that people should vote. you have a relatively high turnout in voting. i mean, 60%. and i think is really informed this idea of civic responsibility. and you really see this and a lot of the protest that we see against the militias that are besieging the ministries, that obviously in the wake of the tragic attack on our outpost in benghazi. this idea of civic action is used very strong in society. >> okay, let's open it up, please. we will take three questions at a time. if you can identify yourself, lease, where you come from, and asked a question spent i came from the other building. the question is this.

i understand that the problem is not so much between religious people and sacred, but it's also inside islam. for instance, just to give you an example, the attack, the destruction. can you elaborate a bit? >> okay. please. in one of the charts you brought, the threat in egypt, military intervention versus islamists. nowadays, big or even in egypt whether the military should be involved or not. could you give any thought to that? >> let's take another question. >> thank you very much for a lovely presentation.

oh, from howard university. for jakob, excellent findings that there is a center that most of these debates are not really taking into account am a but what happens to that center as the political class continues to push for polarized discourses as well as policies? well, i mean, what happens to the center as this continues? and i realize that in this transition we are really dealing with a moving. i mean, there's quite a bit of motion that is still taking place in these societies and, therefore, sort of like difficult also to predict where that is going. and then for ellen, i'm kind of, i mean, i like the idea that you have these two definitions of what politics is all about.

but at the same time i'm thinking that, again, there is a split between the political class and the rest of the public in which there is the political class seems to be largely focused on vision, the vision things, let's put it that way, and the rest of the population, and i'm thinking of the neighbor movement in both countries where, i mean, 30 the distributed issues are more important. and then to complicate matters in response to the first question you seemed to indicate that people were voting for religion even though they were concerned about distributive issues. but what is the reason why, for instance, they voted for the muslim brotherhood is because they deliver services and, therefore, were about distribution in the end and,

therefore, it's not a question of religion versus this, but that religion and distribution are actually, well. >> okay. do you want to go first? >> sure. thank you, great questions actually. and i want to basically to step back for second, right. because your first question, the question about what happens to the center overtime is an interesting one because it actually illustrates this concerned about, you know, as people's positions fix or do the actual changeover time. what you think is exactly sort of the crux of the issue in these kind of universal sort of socially transformative debates. so i think it's a great illustration of exactly that, that part. now, is there a distance between the political, both of the political classes sort of own

position as we saw with the diagrams, right, but their own concerns but are they actually not more concerned about these debates and the sort of things, for example, religious dimensions than the labor movements than others. another thing that everything is, universalistic but it's only universalistic only when it's to should be. but the question is when it comes to the debates, when it comes to the major debates when elites are fighting over things like institutions, then part of the question is what is the dominant, what's the dominant cleavage our what is the dominus -- dominant basis for the debate. it's interesting there are all these people out there -- there is a real kind of source of support for parties that would come in. a little like one could argue,

coming in say, we are a good muslim party, right, you can be a good muslim and vote for us, and yet this is not about the role of islam in the state. so in other words, there is a center out of there. when i said this or that part of his it's about what's the short term, what happens in this immediate period of transition is because this tells us what opportunities are out there. there are opportunities for people to take on distribution issues. there is an opportunity for parties to come in. there's a lot of opportunities. it gets to your third question, what happens if the networks, the organizational capacity that is so much more developed such that the voting is actually about that mobilization, it's about the social distribution or economic distribution much more than it's about the ideology. it doesn't detract from the importance in which those ideologies shape those debates, but you're right. and i'm not saying that a way that these are not sort of, i mean, when i started at the outsourcing here are two types of party.

the rent-seeking parties could not develop these cufflinks and the ability to decline parties in the same way that the social movement parties did. and one of the question is how much that can be developed over time. by the way, this is an aside to it so interesting, from the west, those who didn't go together as if there's something about a programmatic party that has to serve have no program. and the reality of course is in the middle east we see both of these things coming together and more important that people would really like a programmatic party recognize the importance and have no issues with a programmatic party that they support going out engaging, i mean, many people of no issues. with a programmatic party actually engaging in that behavior is not as antithetical as when they often suggest. oh, can and should a quick question about the military? when i said military intervention, it was not about the military voting, is about

the question people wanting the military. there's a certain sort of call for some people, not by anybody by any stretch of imagination, of the military coming in and being, playing a guardian role. that's what i was referring to. >> okay, i will just add to ellen's comments on identifying. so there's a center among the voters, the attitudes of the voters on the religious scale but i also think on the economic issues and so when. and anyone who has spent some time in egypt knows that it is a fairly sort of moderate country and moderate people. the issue is that there's sort of no parties that have taken this center position, again as ellen underscored. the parties are very polarized. and especially since, so doing the parliamentary election in egypt back in 2011, there was a

tendency for the freedom of justice party to move to the center and try to catch the scent of boat and so on, and leaving the morsel of radical islamists votes to the newer parties. sort of the political development since the elections have just polarized the environment even more. and then the question is, as you suppose, what then happens to the center that we can identify among the voters, and there is sort of a danger that gradually, that people are forced to make a choice between one of the two sides because they don't have the option of going to the center. and also being on one of the side has an advantage that is a very clear position for the parties. and you also saw that in the presidential election where the two candidates that had come in the presidential election you

actually had sort of center candidates. they were sort of more center candidates, so it was the two candidates that represented each extreme, the secular and the more islamist extreme that went to a second round, and sort of contributed to the polarization of the political environment in egypt. >> to address the question on intra- islamist conflict as illustrated, i think you're absolutely right. this is a real phenomenon in libya where, because, you know, islamism was kept so suppressed for so long, now the gates are open and as one islamist said to me, it's blinded us. he said it's it's a disorientio us and there's so much competition going on, people are trying to stake out positions. obviously, the two main currency

for now they are i think united against on the issue of this isolation law, you will see real competition. in fact, there was a salafi figures looking ahead to the next election is a real kind of let these muslim brotherhood take a stab at government and then we're going to run and our slogan is, we're not the muslim brotherhood. this is their approach. but more important and i want to speak of is just a bit is this idea of divisions within the salafi current because we typically love all these individuals together but in libya there's a real debate between what we can call the quietest, those who stay away from politics, the politicals but decided to run in election and then the rejectionists string. and i think one function of this competition is acts of violence as people try to assert themselves. i think the attacks are one symptom of this by this rejectionist strand of salafis

in libya. there's a great deal of dialogue and negotiation going on among these different players. many of them trace all of their sort of genealogy back to notorious prison in tripoli where gadhafi kept all his political prisoners. this is a cauldron road where these guys became politically active. and you see many of them take different branches. i think a key hurdle is the constitution. i heard in benghazi when i was in the east that some of these rejectionist groups are waiting to see what the constitution looks like before they give up their arms and integrate into the police or integrate into the state. i heard that there's delegations coming over from egypt to try to talk to some of these rejectionist groups in sort of the salafi vocabulary and say it's possible to preserve your purity and yet still participate in the elections in the state. so these discussions i think a

really fascinating and there are ongoing. >> great. let's take a second round. please. >> thank you so much. my name is layla. professor lust, you mentioned that you were put on democratic institutions, including the judiciary, the media, but what about civil society? can you speak to the state of civil society in egypt, libya and tunisia? and to what extent is civil society being stifled, and that's, that can be for all of the panelists. >> regarding the point professor lust raised about that, if you ask egyptians, i am from egypt. regarding, when you ask egyptian what do you want, what do you wu understand about democracy, they say they're looking for more economic welfare.

then jakob said that muslim brotherhood do care about economy, as they know how to run the country, but they wait until certain problems. and i find this very contradictory. you think the egyptians would wait for years, and then you say also that if you ask egyptian who elected muslim brotherhood they would reelect muslim brotherhood again. i don't think they can do that again if they have very, very, now we have like 40% poverty rate in egypt, among them i mean 40% of egyptians are poor. you think they're going to reelect ache in the muslim brotherhood if they are suffering more? >> other questions? >> hi. i'm from the middle east policy. actually i would if you could shed some light on rebuild campaign egypt.

tomorrow, i know, i don't know if you -- it's now almost 4 million people signed for no confidence and president marcy calling for presidential elections on june 30. and actually i wonder why you didn't mention this in your presentation, talking about the public opinion in egypt. and my point of view, the popularity is declining so fast. thank you. >> okay, who wants to go first? why don't you do that, jakob? >> so, one, just to go on the declining popular of the most brotherhood, i think we should, according to my experience, we should be careful of sort of overestimating what, from the

polls we had sort of consistently both in the transitional period, vis-à-vis sort of the opinion of the supreme council of armed forces, and also we see similar trends sort of the public opinion, vis-à-vis the muslim brotherho brotherhood, that you see in cairo there's a sudden discourse of critique and dissatisfaction with the ruling party. blog you see in the rural areas and so on, you see a more consistent, a more consistent support. so definitely egypt is facing tremendous problems, and these need to be solved for any ruling party to continue to be successful, but one should always be careful, sort of taking some of the main intellectual discourse and seeing this as affecting sort of the public opinions of egypt.

in terms of, you said contradictory to say that the brotherhood will win again and so on, i think in the short term, and i was speaking on the short term i think that they are, they are aware that there are tremendous problems, especially in terms of subsidies and the current account deficits in egypt, the reserves, so and so forth. problems that any government has to address in a three or four year period. but in the short term, also because there is no low house of parliament, i think they're playing a waiting game right now to get the elections are now scheduled for october. and i think before the october sort of elections, i think

they're trying to wait it out and win these elections, and then possibly enact reforms after, after the elections, which would be very, very unpopular. >> the last statement i think is really what is the critical issue is. it's the fact, long-term the improvement in the economy would be a very proper thing to do in turning it around in the short term there's almost no way did it without having a lot of constituencies to become very much hurt. and the question is, okay, so what do you do? i think the answer for many is nothing, right, or nothing but with the modification of them use some of these same techniques that you used before. with regards to the civil society, what's interesting, right, is that in some ways, both the civil society and also the petition, good demonstrations in the case of

exactly what i was talking about, right, it is the interests of people who otherwise would think you elected president, he lead a president kerry at his term. i think a lot of people are signing a petition believing in the institution. but at the same time in democratic elections allowing them to, you know, be returned democratically. but it seems like the stakes are too high and it seems like the problems are too much. at least the last week and half or so ago the draft in egypt of course is being very heavily criticized. it's considered by many to be worse than what they have had under the bark. it's the same kind of questions about both sides trying, in a sense, sort of play and make sure that the other side can't get a fair hearing. it's a little bit difficult to compare with places like libya, because of their the institutions are in some way quite absent but that is a different situation.

>> just to add in i think a living context, i mean, i think civil society -- libyan context, has really stepped into certain degree develop the vacuum of the official state. but up to a certain point. and again i think we have to be very careful about how we define civil society, especially when they go there attending to help. i mean, the civil society representatives that are in the hotel lobbies in tripoli are very different slices by what we mean by civil society in this country, or in from actors, and much of this is still very traditional forms of authority, tribes. i think we need to sort of reconceptualize what we mean by malicious in this country, and look at the revolutionary armed groups that continue to provide funding, a sense of identity,

medical care for a number of these armed fighters, and a sense of political identity that that is, in fact, civil society. they do have legitimate grievances and they are playing a role in the absence of the state. so it's a very complex situation. but again, i think this idea of people power has been very effective. i me, i was in tripoli and they witnessed the march of protesters moving to confront these armed groups that were in front of the ministries, and the siege was broken precisely because of this mobilization of power, people power. >> i wan want to comment again n two questions that were raised. one having to do with the popular support for the islamists in egypt, and president marcy in particular. a recent poll by the center showed that on one hand, if people are asked if the elections were held now, with the vote again for president

marcy or not? 37% said yes. 45% said no. so certainly, you know, you have a lot of support. at least for the president which is different maybe then parliament. on the other hand, of the people who said no, two-thirds of them could not name a person, you know, that they would elect in place of president marcy. so that by itself, and all the traditional sort of opposition figures that ran in the presidential campaign had 2%, 3%. so i mean, you still have, of course, a situation which is by the way not unique to the arab world. in every other region of the world, you know, emerging political parties took time to organize. that's not unique to the arab world, and i hope nobody -- at

the highest standards for the rest of the world. so the question of democracy and what does democracy mean. you know, it is true that maybe if people ask to rate their priorities of people in the arab world, again like most people around the world, would rank the economic condition as the number one priority. it is also true that they also rank corruption very highly that they need to address corruption. equity very high. they need to have equitable trade and rule of law apply to everyone. and i think maybe part of this question is that most people still equate democracy with principle -- political parties only. rather than be quite sort of addressing such issues as corruption and equities they care about, would the development of a system of checks and balances, message on

political reform and democracy? that sort of connection is still missed, i think, in, from most people's minds. but i think that if the connection is make him if people are asked explicitly, you would see a much larger number of green with the need for political reform, if they understand that political reform is the only way that corruption or equity can be addressed, you know, and institutional manner. >> do we have another third, find around? please. >> thomas, reported in egypt. my question is related somehow to marwan's last point which is definition of democracy or definition of, let's say, civil society our institutional

reform. my observation is that last year as this year we're asking the same questions and you're trying to understand the same people in the same way. is this something reasonable? is this the nature of the town or the decision-makers or the professors or the scholars to ask the same question and try to find the same answers, or try to justify, or sometimes even in the name of appeasing or appealing, or what ever you can call it, to try to say this may take time? but people are not using -- to communicate. they are using reform. so it's not a matter of taking the pigeon to the telephone to understand democracy. because i see that there is a large growing understandings of

democracy or civil society or voting or transparency or today, discussion which is social reform. thank you. >> this is for all the people, by the way. >> please, sir. >> steve winters, local researcher. i hope i have my facts right here, but it seems that i heard president marcy was on a trip to moscow not so long ago. meeting with putin. and that the idea has been floated that egypt might join the bric's group. as the idea of such a grand dilemma received any reaction from the populace in egypt and opposite we have economic implications? >> one final question ask okay, jakob. >> in terms of institutions, i

think one of the key issues in the process in egypt has been sort of exactly the development in terms of the institutional development. i think it was a big mistake for the process, the parliament was dissolved. that has brought a number of discussions that could have taken place within institutional framework onto the streets. so, i think it is a key focus, instead of focusing on the political access and so on, also focusing on the processes and institutions that are going to deliver sort of a democratic outcome, and this may also be one of the differences between tunisia and egypt is that in

tunisia you've had a constituent a century where you've had a debate on the constitution. you've had, elected a parliament that has not been dissolved and so on. and while in egypt you had a constituent family where the liberal parties did not participate, actually didn't have a parliament and so when. so i do think that in terms of promoting democratization and so one, institutions have played a major role in sort of a different trajectories that we see. >> so with regards to most direct question to me, professors like to ask the same questions over and over again, i guess we do until we think we've got an answer. and i think, frankly, we are far from understanding

democratization and when you get it. which is one reason why my approach and my take is to think that it's actually useful to think about institutional reform. certainly think about passages of the. when do you get it, what wants to, what other kinds of pressures and challenges and how do those different. and i think it's important to realize that part of what i'm saying today is obviously about where i think is taking place in libya, egypt and tunisia. the bigger part of it is to see if what you see a change in syria or if you're just a transition in yemen that was a bit more than we've seen so far, right, or in jordan or elsewhere. what kind of questions when we want to ask, right? and my argument is the first thing we want to really understand is what are the actors and where their positions and how much grassroots support do they are to they have come when this sort of enter into the debate. in places like libya we didn't

have, you have a very open playing field. it was capital punishment on a if you're in one but if you knew somebody was and he didn't say it. i me, that's a very different institutional environment but also creates very different expectations about what kind of cleavages come to the floor and they will kinds of implications it has whether or not there's a lot of struggle over things like the media and the association and speech or was not does not sort of the main focuses of conflict but other things are. so hopefully we get a bit farther, but yes, we ask the same questions over and over. >> just as briefly, in the case of libya, it's very appropriate to define democratization in terms of these institutional terms, because libyans themselves see this as absolutely crucial to the success of their experiment. they did have elections but everyone knows it's not enough.

they're looking at the gnc but now they cannot get anything done. the jeans he is incapable of forming committees. they lack basic capacity in terms of taking minutes. the government isn't working because there isn't as large institutional framework. you have one meaning individuals thrust into these positions are completely new, and people are demanding institutions and their commanding processes. and people i think are really defining democracy in terms of the constitution. they are really holding out to this. we talked a lot here about libya's lack of experience in this area, but libyans themselves remember that they had a constitution in 1951, and people are revisiting that have drawn elections from the. and i think that's very encouraging sign. >> i just have one comment on the question of democratization, which is that -- again, no one

should expect this to happen overnight, you know, we have not had a culture of democracy for along time but one key issue i think is that one we will need to press again and again, and is being asked in several points, is the issue of the right to be different but i think that the principal pillar of democracy. that has not yet been totally embedded in arab culture. when you ask people, if they agree to women rights or if they agree to just, you know, fellow citizens being ethnically or religiously or culturally different, you do get majorities actually in many countries in the arab world, but not over -- [inaudible]. it's not enough to have 55% said i believe in women's rights. is not enough to say 65%, i can live next to a christian but, you know, and less this

fundamental right to be different is not just agree to but, in fact, celebrated, as a sign of strength, you know, diversity will continue to suffer. and i think that's something that is going to take a very long time. it's going to involve a change in education and systems. it's not going just because you of the revolution it pops up. we are already seeing it, you know? it still is zero-sum battle game, right, in the airport. what islamists are trying to dominate, the secular parties are also, as ellen said, sometimes willing to go to undemocratic means to dominate as well. so in egypt, government behaves as if the elections mean everything, and the secular opposition behaves as if they mean nothing. ..

>> talking about the current status and future of the book industry speaking with becky anderson, president of the american book sellers' association. this is live coverage from book expo america here on c-span2. >> good