Strikes and sporadic protests were tolerated

Development does not protect the despots. On the contrary, it would almost, threaten them to paradoxical way, in the light of the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt (7 annual increase in GDP since 2004, one of the highest in the world).

It objected that this economic growth was a sham, it was only in a thin layer of the population, while the people, he sank into poverty. This is not so sure. First of all, the theory of the "revolt of the empty bellies" framework poorly with the profile of the protesters met in Cairo, armed with mobile phones, or even Facebook and Twitter followers. In addition, many development indicators, although still unworthy of the 21st century, actually grew in Egypt. The proportion of literate children (80), families living in slums (25) of people surviving on less than 2 dollars a day, households with access to drinking water and even unemployed improved regularly. Egypt ranked in 2010 a sum any not disastrous, the e 101, for in countries such as the India human development index, Cameroon or South Africa, where no one believes the street in overthrowing the regime. And an urban middle class is emerging, even though it still represents only 15 of the population. The Egyptians believed that their purchasing power has not progressed since the beginning of the liberal reforms of 2004, supposed to have had to close magnates of a son of Hosni Mubarak, but the GDP per capita has indeed doubled in 15 years. And there is that farmers may have tractors and irrigation systems, satellite dishes, household appliances and automobiles urbanites who would have been a luxury at the beginning of the century.

"The regime feels unsinkable as long as it has the means to subsidize the price of the"aish"", was a banker in Cairo, referring to the wafer of bread sold in the immutable price of 25 dollars (euro 3 cents) since the riots of 1977 last November. The grant of first necessity products and a strong repressive apparatus of 3 million of police officers and informants for 80 million people had to keep the people under control. But now, "livestock is is rebiffé", in the words of the Tahrir square demonstrators, seeking not so much bread of freedom and dignity. Obviously, economic growth and development sketches were not enough.

Two explanations for this. The Egyptians could legitimately feel "frustration on" dear to the sociologists Boudon or Durkheim, that could be summarized as follows: "That's me important improve my slums if others strut in villas." Inequality has increased up to the absurd, on a background of nepotism and corruption. Everyone, in Cairo, had stories on how this or that Minister had acquired land at derisory prices. There is of what raise the anger of ordinary Egyptians, including of hundreds of thousands of law, pharmacy and engineering graduates produced by the educational system but condemned to vegetate in odd.

In addition, the Egyptian regime was faced with an intractable challenge: how to modernize "the Mummy" How to extend the reign of Hosni Mubarak came to power in 1981, at a time where more than half of Egypt's population was not born, while adapting to globalization How to preserve a police plan to arrest and torture arbitrarily - as revealed by the famous case of the young Khaled Saïd-, on behalf of a State of emergency in force for thirty years, almost a world record, while still attracting millions of tourists and investors Images of liberty involuntary subversion - conveyed to des de involontaire de de involontaire involontaire involontaire; the latter, which Egypt is the second favourite destination in Africa, needed a State of law.

The regime believed found the parade by slightly raising the valve of the pressure cooker, by adopting a "more subtle of néo-autoritarisme" form, in the words of Issandr El Amrani, the author of the blog of reference The Arabist. Internet was not censored. The Egyptian press was the most impertinent in the Middle East. Strikes and sporadic protests were tolerated. Hosni Mubarak believed able to co-opt a loyal opposition. In 2005, it had organized the first pluralist presidential elections in the country since 1952, which only had served, by the emptiness of the polling stations, to reveal its lack of legitimacy.

In short, the fall of Mubarak illustrates this searing of Alexis de Tocqueville, in 1856: "the most dangerous time for a bad government is usually where he began to reform." This is not always going in worse that it falls in revolution. It happens more often than people who had supported without complaint... the more oppressive laws, violently dismisses them as soon as the weight reduces.

Should be cynically conclude that dictators could to save knowingly refusing any development, reducing class averages, universities and the Internet to the strict minimum This is the strategy, for the moment, followed by Turkmenistan and Burma, which however have the advantage of having need of investors or tourists, being extensively equipped with oil or to powerful geo-strategic sponsors. This posture itself seems now threatened. Riots have erupted this week in Libya. Times change, certainly.