Egypt is not Iran is not Libya is not Tunisia is not...

The sometimes-controversial social thinker, Samuel Huntington observed that democracies come about in waves. First there were the American and French revolutions, then there were a number of countries that went democratic after World War I. Then it was many places across Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa during the 80s and 90s. Now some people are declaring the so-called Arab Revolution a Fourth Wave of global democratization. I think so too, but not without about a dozen caveats.

Let's recall a few things about the first three waves. In Round 1, France didn't achieve true republic status until they dropped their emperors and conquests in the 1870s-- 80 years after their revolution. America went along fine for about 8 decades, only to succumb to bloody civil war. In Round 2, Germany and Italy were countries that joined the Democracy Club. It wasn't twenty years before the Wiemar republic was overrun by Nazis and Italy went along with Mussolini. In Round 3, places like the Czech Republic and Brazil came away pretty well-- Belorus and Zimbabwe, not so much.

At the beginning of Round 4, we have to assume that in the short term and in the longer term, at least some of the new political orders that emerge will be positive. It's just going to be generations before the final tally is in. But I'll make my own predictions. If I get half of these right, I figure that's not bad. But who's counting? For better or worse, here they are:

Some places will become rulebound representative democracies that ensure a decent chance for people to work towards their potential. Due to their secularity, levels of education, income, their history of pragmatic autocrats, not theocrats or warlords, I'd say that Egypt and Tunisia have good chances of making it through some pretty tumultuous times and coming out better in the end. Syria might end up in this category over the longer term.

Some places will make changes incrementally and without a whole lot of fuss. I'd put Jordan and Morocco with their personality-driven monarchies into this category, though Jordan's king has some problems of legitimacy since two-thirds of Jordanians are in fact Palestinian. But turkey did this a long time ago, thanks to the leadership of Ataturk and the collapse of the Ottomans. They were plenty diverse then as now. Autocratic Syria is a tough call. While not a monarchy, it acts a lot like one, with the son succeeding the father, etc. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States might take some time to do it, but they'll probably get there too.

Some places will make a lot of progress only to be overrun by fanatics, reverting to a hostile, dormant state for decades before emerging as more-or-less dynamic democratic states. Iran looks like it may be near the end of thirty years of pugnacious theocracy, and may be emerging now into something more pluralistic. Iraq unfortunately looks like it may be right at the beginning of its own dormant decades. And possibly Pakistan too.

Some places are a long way from achieving anything resembling an open, forward-thinking state that represents the wills and interests of most people. Yemen fits squarely in this category, as does Sudan and Afghanistan.

Algeria and Libya are wildcards in my view. For reasons of regional affinity, I'd say that Libya depends in large part on what happens in Egypt, and Algeria on what happens in Tunisia.

The point is not to expect the results of these developments to be either universally good over the short term, or uniform in their outcomes over the long term. Looking at Eastern Europe's upheaval now at age twenty is enough to convince me of this. Different people in different settings will generate different social outcomes, even if they all began changing things for similar reasons. We always have, and so long as we remain different from one another, we always will.