In one sense, the revolts are aimed at the “Arab exception” – the dismal record of oppression and dictatorship that has so far prevented the Arab world from taking part in the democratic and free-market wave that has swept Latin America, Europe and much of east Asia since the 1970s. If this is the narrative that prevails, then a postrevolutionary Egypt might actually look to the west as the exemplar of the liberal political and economic values it is now seeking to embrace. ~Gideon Rachman

This seems very unlikely. Amy Chua assessed the likely effects of rapid democratization in the region in World on Fire, and her judgment still seems correct:

Meanwhile, even if the turn to fundamentalism in the Middle East is a product of closed or repressive political regimes, it sadly does not follow that political liberalization in the region today would lead to moderation–or, for that matter, to pro-market regimes. On the contrary, rapid democratization in the Arab states would likely be a recipe for extremist politics, dominated by ethnonationalist (if not fundamentalist) parties unified in their hatred of Israel and the West.

She wrote at the end of the same chapter:

While free market democracy may well be the optimal end point in the Middle East, the simultaneous pursuit today of laissez-faire markets and immediate majority rule would almost certainly produce even more government-sponsored bloodshed and ethnic warfare.

Western sympathizers with the Egyptian protesters are fairly confident that there is nothing to fear from rapid political change in Egypt because the crowds in “the Republic of Tahrir” are mostly secular democrats with what seem to be reasonable constitutional demands. It doesn’t seem to bother these sympathizers that the crowd may not be broadly representative of Egyptian political opinion*. Mass democracy tends to encourage identity politics to the detriment of minorities, be they political, religious, or ethnic. It often empowers different forms of collectivism, and it especially rewards nationalists. Neither of these is particularly compatible with liberal political and economic values broadly defined. It is important to stress here that this is the result of a functioning mass democracy. Most of the worrisome scenarios we have been discussing concern a hijacked or diverted revolution that turns into another dictatorship, as if the only danger came from the failure of democracy to take root. There hasn’t been nearly enough discussion of what could happen to Egypt if democratic revolution is successful.

* It should give outside observers pause that a large number of Westerners were convinced without much evidence that the Green movement was broadly representative and was bringing about “the Green revolution” with the potential to topple the Iranian government. They mistook a civil rights movement for a regime change movement, and identified a small minority of Iranians with the broad majority. Now that we are seeing a genuine regime change movement in Egypt, many of the same optimists are back again to celebrate Egyptian democracy before it has even taken form. It would actually be very unusual for a nascent democracy in the developing world to “look to the west as the exemplar of the liberal political and economic values it is now seeking to embrace.” It doesn’t do anyone any good to set unreasonable expectations for what political change in Egypt might produce.