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The problem with revolutions once they've been won is keeping them from going bad. It's the same with all change in a brittle, ossified system.
The Iranian revolution led to the ouster of the Shah. The real Russian revolution led to the ouster of the tsar. Unfortunately, those aren't the revolutions celebrated: The Iranian revolution celebrates the installation of a new dictatorship as much as ousting the shah, and overlooks the time period between one and the other. The rhetoric around the Russian Revolution says it ousted the tsar, but it ousted Kerensky--the tsar had abdicated months before and showed no signs of trying to regain power.
Tito's demise, as also Brezhnev's, led to an eventual breakdown in the established order in Jugoslavija and Russia. No strong leader came along to impose order and maintain balance. Gorbachev and the Politburo intentionally tried upsetting the apple cart, hoping to be able to restack the apples in a way to meet their original goals, but the apples got away from them. Nobody succeeded Tito, either.
In these cases the loss of a strong leader led to instability. In the first two cases they'd disposed of the strong leader and didn't want a replacement. In the second, the strong leader hadn't the guts to continue to rule by decree. Either way, the resulting weakness and lack of civil society led to a lot of special interests all competing. Nobody wanted to compromise and the result was a bunch of independent groups all striving for as much power as they could get, not just as much power as they should get. The better organized groups, the simulacra of civil society (since they, too, were run from the top down) were able to gain control or at least break away. In the case of Gorbachev, there was no better organized group.
The general rule: After a strong central government falls, in the absence of a strong civil society you're going to have instability. The result is more likely to be another strong central government than the rapid promotion of civil society that leads to a viable democracy. We may like democracy, but we fear instability and penury more than we fear political oppression.
The alternative, the evolution of a tyranny to a democracy, is about as likely if a civil society is allowed to form independently. This happened in S. Korea, for instance. The US started off as a tyranny ruled from afar, allowing civil society to form and provide a sufficient (as history tells us) basis for a democracy. Iran is smart in not allowing such groups to form without a government minder. So is Hamas.
By "civil society" I don't mean politically active groups. I mean any kind of self-forming and self-governing group that members form freely for purposes, groups that provide a kind of "roof" under which members are free to interact, form common goals and modi operandi, and form shared values. These can be political, but can be flower arranging or religious, social work or amateur theatrical. This provides a training ground for negotiation and compromise, for leadership and team work--skills that are go way beyond protesting and rioting and show a developed ability to create and govern. When you find a community that lacks them, that doesn't form them, you know that you're not going to get good, independent, reasonable leaders out of it.
What's important isn't that such a group forms, or even a couple; what matters is that a lot of groups freely form. If just one or a few groups form, that small group of people will form the basis of the new "democracy" and be able, if so minded, to get the upper hand. Democracy is unlikely to continue after that. Even "good autocrats" are nearly invariably still autocrats first--in this they're no differnt from "bad autocrats"--and "good" second.
If the Egyptian Army actually wants democracy, the best way to do it is to allow civil society to get some underpinnings, even if it risks having the pre-organized groups flourish. Maintain stability until emotions are calmed down so that the protestors don't feel their oats, having gotten one set of demands they could then form a second set of demands that morphs into a third set. That's dictatorship by committee. They don't want one of the pre-organized groups to be in a position of simply taking power. Maintain a kind of superstructure, for the time being, and prevent "democracy" from being so disruptive and lopsided that the result is instability or rapid dislocations. This, too, is risky, because it requires that the military autocrats stop being autocrats first.
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