Over the course of three short months, popular uprisings have toppled regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, sparked a civil war in Libya and created unrest in other parts of the Middle East. They also have raised a question in many people's minds: Are all authoritarian regimes now threatened by this new democratic wave? In particular, is China, a rising superpower, vulnerable to these forces?  

The Communist government in Beijing is clearly worried. It has limited news coverage of the recent uprisings and has clamped down on democratic activists and foreign reporters, acting pre-emptively against anonymous calls on the Internet for China to have its own "Jasmine Revolution." A recent front-page editorial in the Beijing Daily, an organ of the city's party committee, declared that most people in the Middle East were unhappy with the protests in their countries, which were a "self-delusional ruckus" orchestrated by a small minority. For his part, President Hu Jintao has urged the strengthening of what has been dubbed the "Great Firewall"-the sophisticated apparatus of censorship and surveillance that the regime uses to control access to the Internet.

No social scientist or intelligence analyst predicted the specific timing or spread of the Arab uprising-the fact that it would start in Tunisia, of all places, that it would be triggered by an event like the self-immolation of a vegetable seller, or that protests would force the mighty Egyptian army to abandon Hosni Mubarak. Over the past generation, Arab societies have appeared stolidly stable. Why they suddenly exploded in 2011 is something that can be understood only in retrospect, if at all.

But this doesn't mean that we can't think about social revolutions in a more structured way. Even unpredictable things take place in a certain context, and the present-day situations of China and the Middle East are radically different. Most of the evidence suggests that China is pretty safe from the democratic wave sweeping other parts of the world-at least for now.

Perhaps the most relevant thinker for understanding the Middle East today and China tomorrow is the late Samuel Huntington-not the Huntington of "The Clash of Civilizations," who argued that there were fundamental incompatibilities between Islam and democracy, but the Huntington whose classic book "Political Order in Changing Societies," first published in 1968, laid out his theory of the development "gap."

Observing the high levels of political instability plaguing countries in the developing world during the 1950s and '60s, Mr. Huntington noted that increasing levels of economic and social development often led to coups, revolutions and military takeovers. This could be explained, he argued, by a gap between the newly mobilized, educated and economically empowered people and their existing political system-that is, between their hopes for political participation and institutions that gave them little or no voice. Attacks against the existing political order, he noted, are seldom driven by the poorest of the poor in such a society; they tend to be led, instead, by rising middle classes who are frustrated by the lack of political and economic opportunity.

All of these observations would seem to apply to Tunisia and Egypt. Both countries have made substantial social progress in recent decades. The Human Development Indices compiled by the United Nations (a composite measure of health, education and income) increased by 28% for Egypt and 30% for Tunisia between 1990 and 2010. The number of people going to school has grown substantially; Tunisia especially has produced large numbers of college graduates. And indeed, the protests in Tunisia and Egypt were led in the first instance by educated, tech-savvy middle-class young people, who expressed to anyone who would listen their frustrations with societies in which they were not allowed to express their views, hold leaders accountable for corruption and incompetence, or get a job without political connections.

Mr. Huntington stressed the destabilizing power of new social groups seeking political participation. People used to be mobilized by newspapers and radio; today they are spurred to action by cell phones, Facebook and Twitter, which allow them to share their grievances about the existing system and to learn about the possibilities of the larger world. This change in the Middle East has been incredibly rapid, and it has trumped, for now, old verities about the supposed passivity of Arab culture and the resistance of Islam to modernization.

But do these remarkable developments tell us anything about the possibility for future instability in China?

It is certainly true that the dry tinder of social discontent is just as present in China as in the Middle East. The incident that triggered the Tunisian uprising was the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, who had his vegetable cart repeatedly confiscated by the authorities and who was slapped and insulted by the police when he went to complain. This issue dogs all regimes that have neither the rule of law nor public accountability: The authorities routinely fail to respect the dignity of ordinary citizens and run roughshod over their rights. There is no culture in which this sort of behavior is not strongly resented.

This is a huge problem throughout China. A recent report from Jiao Tong University found that there were 72 "major" incidents of social unrest in China in 2010, up 20% over the previous year. Most outside observers would argue that this understates the real number of cases by perhaps a couple of orders of magnitude. Such incidents are hard to count because they often occur in rural areas where reporting is strictly controlled by the Chinese authorities.

The most typical case of outraged dignity in contemporary China is a local government that works in collusion with a private developer to take away the land of peasants or poor workers to make way for a glittery new project, or a company that dumps pollutants into a town's water supply and gets away with it because the local party boss stands to profit personally. Though corruption in China does not reach the predatory levels of certain African or Middle Eastern countries, it is nonetheless pervasive. People see and resent the privileged lives of the nation's elite and their children. The movie "Avatar" was a big hit in China in part because so many ordinary Chinese identified with the indigenous people it portrayed whose land was being stolen by a giant, faceless corporation.

There is, moreover, a huge and growing problem of inequality in China. The gains from China's remarkable growth have gone disproportionately to the country's coastal regions, leaving many rural areas far behind. China's Gini index-a standard measure of income inequality across a society-has increased to almost Latin American levels over the past generation. By comparison, Egypt and Tunisia have a much more equal income distribution.

According to Mr. Huntington, however, revolutions are made not by the poor but by upwardly mobile middle-class people who find their aspirations stymied, and there are lots of them in China. Depending on how you define it, China's middle class may outnumber the whole population of the United States. Like the middle-class people of Tunisia and Egypt, those in China have no opportunities for political participation. But unlike their Middle Eastern counterparts, they have benefited from a dramatically improving economy and a government that has focused like a laser beam on creating employment for exactly this group.

To the extent that we can gauge Chinese public opinion through surveys like Asia Barometer, a very large majority of Chinese feel that their lives have gotten better economically in recent years. A majority of Chinese also believe that democracy is the best form of government, but in a curious twist, they think that China is already democratic and profess to be satisfied with this state of affairs. This translates into a relatively low degree of support for any short-term transition to genuine liberal democracy.

Indeed, there is some reason to believe that the middle class in China may fear multiparty democracy in the short run, because it would unleash huge demands for redistribution precisely from those who have been left behind. Prosperous Chinese see the recent populist polarization of politics in Thailand as a warning of what democracy may bring.

The fact is that authoritarianism in China is of a far higher quality than in the Middle East. Though not formally accountable to its people through elections, the Chinese government keeps careful track of popular discontents and often responds through appeasement rather than repression. Beijing is forthright, for example, in acknowledging the country's growing income disparities and for the past few years has sought to mitigate the problem by shifting new investments to the poor interior of the country. When flagrant cases of corruption or abuse appear, like melamine-tainted baby formula or the shoddy school construction revealed by the Sichuan earthquake, the government holds local officials brutally accountable-sometimes by executing them.

Another notable feature of Chinese government is self-enforced leadership turnover. Arab leaders like Tunisia's Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, Egypt's Mr. Mubarak and Libya's Col. Moammar Gadhafi never knew when to quit, hanging on 23, 30 and 41 years, respectively. Since Mao, the Chinese leadership has rigidly adhered to terms of about a decade. Mr. Hu, the current president, is scheduled to step down in 2012, when he is likely to be replaced by Vice President Xi Jinping. Leadership turnover means that there is more policy innovation, in sharp contrast to countries like Tunisia and Egypt, which have been stuck for decades in the rut of crony capitalism.

The Chinese government is also more clever and ruthless in its approach to repression. Sensing a clear threat, the authorities never let Western social media spread in the first place. Facebook and Twitter are banned, and content on websites and on China-based social media is screened by an army of censors. It is possible, of course, for word of government misdeeds to get out in the time between its first posting by a micro-blogger and its removal by a censor, but this cat-and-mouse game makes it hard for a unified social space to emerge.

A final critical way in which China's situation differs from that of the Middle East lies in the nature of its military. The fate of authoritarian regimes facing popular protests ultimately depends on the cohesiveness and loyalty of its military, police and intelligence organizations. The Tunisian army failed to back Mr. Ben Ali early on; after some waffling, the Egyptian army decided it would not fire on protesters and pushed Mr. Mubarak out of power.

In China, the People's Liberation Army is a huge and increasingly autonomous organization with strong economic interests that give it a stake in the status quo. As in the Tiananmen uprising in 1989, it has plenty of loyal units around the country that it could bring into Beijing or Shanghai, and they would not hesitate to fire on demonstrators. The PLA also regards itself as the custodian of Chinese nationalism. It has developed an alternative narrative of 20th-century history that places itself at the center of events like the defeat of Japan in the Pacific war and the rise of a modern China. It is very unlikely that the PLA would switch sides and support a democratic uprising.

The bottom line is that China will not catch the Middle Eastern contagion anytime soon. But it could easily face problems down the road. China has not experienced a major recession or economic setback since it set out on its course of economic reform in 1978. If the country's current property bubble bursts and tens of millions of people are thrown out of work, the government's legitimacy, which rests on its management of the economy, would be seriously undermined.

Moreover, Mr. Huntington's scenario of rising but unfulfilled expectations among the middle class may still play out. Though there is a labor shortage among low-skill workers in China today, there is a glut of the college educated. Every year into the future, China will graduate more than seven million people from its universities, up from fewer than a million in 1998, and many of them are struggling to find work suitable to their self-perceived status. Several million unemployed college graduates are far more dangerous to a modernizing regime than hundreds of millions of poor peasants.

There is also what the Chinese themselves call the "bad emperor" problem. China's historical achievement over the centuries has been the creation of high-quality centralized bureaucratic government. When authoritarian rulers are competent and reasonably responsible, things can go very well. Indeed, such decision-making is often more efficient than in a democracy. But there is no guarantee that the system will always produce good rulers, and in the absence of the rule of law and electoral checks on executive power, there is no way to get rid of a bad emperor. The last bad emperor, commonly (if quietly) acknowledged as such, was Mao. We can't know what future tyrant, or corrupt kleptocrat, may be waiting in the wings in China's future.

The truth is that, much as we might theorize about the causes of social revolution, human societies are far too complex, and change too rapidly, for any simple theory to provide a reliable guide. Any number of observers dismissed the power of the "Arab street" to bring about political change, based on their deep knowledge of the Middle East, and they were right every year-up until 2011.

The hardest thing for any political observer to predict is the moral element. All social revolutions are driven by intense anger over injured dignity, an anger that is sometimes crystallized by a single incident or image that mobilizes previously disorganized individuals and binds them into a community. We can quote statistics on education or job growth, or dig into our knowledge of a society's history and culture, and yet completely miss the way that social consciousness is swiftly evolving through a myriad of text messages, shared videos or simple conversations.

The central moral imponderable with regard to China is the middle class, which up to now has seemed content to trade political freedom for rising incomes and stability. But at some point this trade-off is likely to fail; the regime will find itself unable to deliver the goods, or the insult to the dignity of the Chinese people will become too great to tolerate. We shouldn't pretend that we can predict when this tipping point will occur, but its eventual arrival, as Samuel Huntington might have suggested, is bound up with the very logic of modernization itself.

After the peaceful mass uprising that toppled one of the world's oldest autocracies, it is now possible to imagine the emergence of a genuine democracy in Egypt-the most important country in the Arab world. The very possibility of it marks an historic turning point for the entire region. However, there is a long and often treacherous distance between the demise of an authoritarian regime and the rise of a democracy.

With no experience of democracy in recent decades, and no apparent government leadership that is committed to bringing it about, Egypt's transition faces more formidable challenges than the transitions that led to democracy in recent decades in countries like Spain, Greece, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, the Philippines, Poland, South Africa, Indonesia, and Ukraine. (Which isn't to say these were easy: We forget how difficult each of these transitions seemed at the time, and how fraught they were with dangers and uncertainties.) With an energized civil society and deep resources of youthful talent, creativity, and mobilizing skill, Egypt has a real chance to get to democracy in the next few years. But doing so will require a keen analysis of the numerous potential traps that could sandbag the process.

The first trap is the Machiavellian opaqueness of the aging generals who are now running the country. Beginning with the Defense Minister (and now junta leader) Mohamed Tantawi, until a few days ago a close ally of the deposed President Mubarak, Egypt's new military rulers cannot be trusted to structure the political process and emergent rules in a way that will favor genuine democracy. Their principal goal, it appears, is to preserve as much of the old order as possible-Mubarakism without Mubarak (the father or the son). This means another round of the old shell game of Arab regimes-what Daniel Brumberg has called "liberalized autocracy." The process of liberalization-which runs in cycles, and which countries like Morocco and Jordan have seen many iterations of-institutes just enough change in the rules and faces to give the appearance of movement toward democracy without any of the dangers (for the ruling elite). But the changes, imposed from above, stop well short of the sweeping institutional transformations that would open wide the political arena (and the functioning of government) while leveling the playing field.

In their initial "communiqués," Egypt's ruling generals show signs of treading down this duplicitous path. Their initial choices have evinced the seductive veneer of democratic change but the closure and control of authoritarian continuity. To begin with, there appears so far to be little consultation with democratic forces in determining the character and pace of transition. Despite opposition demands, emergency rule remains in place, and so do many political prisoners. The military's initial decisions have been unilateral and preemptory. We learn there will be a constitution drafted within two months, followed by a referendum. A respected retired judge will head the process. This will produce "amendments" to the now-suspended authoritarian constitution. But what will be the role for Egyptian opposition and civil society in this process? What will be the scope down the road to draft a completely new, more democratic and legitimate constitution with broad popular participation and support? Will the president to be elected later this year serve another imperial six-year term, or be a caretaker heading a neutral government until a new constitution can be adopted and fresh elections held? At this point, if anyone knows the answers to these questions, it is only the junta.

The military is talking about early presidential and legislative elections, within six months. What could be more democratic than that? But, in fact, after the fall of a longstanding autocracy, it typically takes a lot longer than six months to organize competitive, free, and fair elections. Think of the steps. A neutral and independent electoral administration must be established. This requires not just legal authorization but also new leadership, and recruitment, training, funding, and deployment of new staff and equipment. If Egypt's generals intend to have elections administered by the same Ministry of Interior that shamelessly rigged the vote for Mubarak and his ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), that will be a sure sign that they do not intend to deliver democracy-or are too incompetent and cavalier to care. Then, the next step must be to produce a new register of voters. Experts believe only a quarter of eligible Egyptians are registered to vote today. The exclusion was very useful to perpetuating autocracy but could be deadly for an emerging democracy. That will take months, money, and far-reaching organization to do even reasonably well.

It will be one thing to elect a new president and quite another to choose a new parliament in Egypt's transitional flux. The military now suggests the two elections can be held together within six months. But they will have very different logics and requirements. A presidential election will be much simpler. The old order will no doubt throw up a somewhat more palatable face, perhaps the former Foreign Minister Amr Moussa. The democratic opposition may well rally behind a single candidate (though the regime, no longer able to exclude a democratic alternative, will probably try to fragment the field with as many opposition candidates as possible). Still, voters will be faced with a few principal choices for national leadership, and it won't matter where people vote, so long as they are of voting age and only vote once. This kind of election can be done more roughly and quickly, tossing aside the voter register and just dipping every forefinger in indelible ink after it has marked a ballot for one presidential candidate or another. It will be important in this election-and every future one-to ensure transparency and citizen monitoring of the vote, as well as to have Egypt's judiciary oversee the balloting (as it did in previous elections until the judges got too good at it and Mubarak cut them out). But, otherwise, a presidential election won't be a complicated affair.

By contrast, new parliamentary elections present formidable challenges. First, Egyptians (and hopefully not just the military) must decide what electoral system will be used. This choice can invoke arcane debate, but it may be one of the most important that Egypt makes in pursuit of democracy. If the electoral rules are "majoritarian," in that they make it hard for small minorities to get elected, they will work to the disadvantage of not just small ideological tendencies but also the welter of new, emerging parties and political forces-many of them liberal and secular-that will just be taking shape and starting to test their strength. This will inflate the strength of the only two political forces that now have effective political organizations on the ground-the old ruling party and the Muslim Brotherhood (with a smattering of some of the other older opposition parties). If Egypt retains the current electoral system of two-member districts (with each voter getting two votes), these two established political forces could sweep most of the seats between them, marginalizing the moderates, polarizing the parliament and political system, and dooming democracy from the start. Creating a liberal center in democratic politics requires more than moral and technical support for these parties to function; it also requires rules that enable them to get traction.

A much better-and fairer-alternative would be to elect the new parliament using some form of proportional representation, so that parties would win seats roughly in proportion to their vote shares. That way, new parties could begin to gain a foothold in the political process. Perhaps ironically, the best way to do this might be the way Iraq now does, by using the existing governorates (29 in Egypt) as multimember districts, and having each district then elect a share of seats equivalent to its share of the population. This would allow for very proportional results, with districts generally containing ten to 25 seats, while still enabling some accountability and candidate familiarity at the local level.

A truly democratic parliamentary election in Egypt cannot be pulled off in six months. In fact, it might require well over a year to prepare. But the alternative would be to rush to a vote with a flawed system that would leave Egypt's new democratic forces on the margins not just of legislating but of constitution-making as well.

How a new permanent constitution will be drafted-if it is even intended by the military-also remains a mystery at this point. The worst option would be to have a closed and hurried process dominated from above by the military. But that seems to be what the junta intends for the transitional period. Successful democratic transitions either use an expert but broadly representative constitutional drafting commission, and then a popular referendum to confirm the draft, or an elected constitutional assembly (often acting simultaneously as a parliament), possibly followed also by a popular referendum (as in Iraq). Some have used all of these methods combined. Experience of recent decades underscores the importance for future democratic legitimacy and stability of eliciting extensive public dialogue and broad popular participation in the constitution-making process, with adequate preparation and civic education and widespread media exposure, as in South Africa. A thorough, inclusive, and deliberate process of constitutional drafting and debate can also help to breed a more democratic culture at both the elite and mass levels. A rushed and closed process perpetuates authoritarian mentalities (and, often, authoritarian rules as well).

Prior to all of this is the most basic question of who writes the rules, the timetable, and the mode of transition. Egypt has now entered a classic transition game where the authoritarian regime and the democratic opposition have sharply different interests and little basis for cooperation and trust. As an institution, Egypt's military may not be hated the way Mubarak and his cronies were, but many of the generals were Mubarak's cronies. And the military's core interests are not freedom and democracy for the people, but preserving their own power, wealth, privilege, and impunity. The core lesson of numerous prior transitions is the need for a negotiated way out of this potentially fatal impasse. Democrats want democracy with no guarantees to autocrats. Autocrats want guarantees, with no real democracy.

There is an obvious generic compromise, and every successful negotiated transition-from Spain and Brazil to Poland, South Africa, and Indonesia-has settled on a version of it. The old order gets to hang on to most of its wealth and privilege, along with military autonomy at least for a time. Few, if any, henchmen of the old order are prosecuted for their past crimes, unless it is for the last, desperate excesses of a few diehards trying to hang on during the transition. Real accountability waits for a later day. Democrats get democracy. Autocrats (mostly) retain their wealth and influence, but they cannot bid for power unless they play the democratic game. The Yale political scientist Robert Dahl coined a term for this type of bargain. He called it "mutual security." From the Spanish transition on, the generic bargain became known as a political pact.

Only a negotiated pact between Egypt's surviving authoritarian regime and its emergent democratic forces can steer the transition through the current treacherous straits to calmer and freer waters. For that to happen, Egypt's disparate democratic forces must unify in a broad negotiating front that unites the "outside" opposition of the youthful movements with the "inside" opposition of the "wise persons" and established parties who have so far dominated, on an ad hoc basis, the discussions with the old order.

Opposition unity will give Egypt's democrats strategic leverage; if negotiations stall due to regime intransigence, then the unified opposition can more credibly threaten to turn out people by the millions again in protest. But, if negotiations move forward to ensure the essential conditions for a democratic transition-an end to emergency rule; freedom of organization, expression, and assembly; judicial independence; and new and fair electoral administration-then a unified opposition can guarantee social peace and political stability. Opposition coherence enables clear negotiating priorities to level the playing field and ensure a democratic transition. It will also give the old order a clear set of interlocutors who can credibly commit to deliver popular support behind a difficult compromise agreement. No condition is more important for a successful transition.

The role for the United States and other international actors is not to dictate terms for the transition or structures for the new political order. That is not our place, and Egyptians of every political stripe will resent it. But international actors should offer training to political parties and technical and financial assistance to the new civil society organizations and state institutions needed to make democracy work. For the United States., this will mean millions of dollars in new assistance for democracy in Egypt-but that is a trifle compared to the $68 billion we have invested in dictatorship (even if it was to buy peace). No less importantly, other democracies (including leaders of recent democratic transitions) can encourage Egypt's opposition groups to coalesce and share lessons of the strategies and choices that have led to democratic outcomes. And the Obama administration can make it clear to Egypt's military rulers that nothing less than a real transition to democracy-with broad consultation, serious negotiations, and a new climate of freedom-will return Egypt to stability and a lasting partnership with the United States.

Two decades after the fall of Soviet-bloc dictatorships, popular movements for democracy are erupting in the last regional bastion of authoritarianism: the Arab world.

So far, only Tunisia's dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, has been toppled, while Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak - who has ruled that ancient land longer than many pharaohs - announced Tuesday that he will step down in September. But other Arab autocrats are bound to go. From Algeria to Syria to Jordan, people are fed up with stagnation and injustice, and are mobilizing for democratic change.

So, what happens when the autocrat is gone? Will the end of despotism give way to chaos - as happened when Mobutu Sese Seko was toppled in 1997 after more than 30 years in power in Zaire? Will the military or some civilian strongman fill the void with a new autocracy - as occurred after the overthrow of Arab monarchs in Egypt and Iraq in the 1950s, and as has been the norm in most of the world until recently? Or can some of the Arab nations produce real democracy - as we saw in most of Eastern Europe and about half the states of sub-Saharan Africa? Regime transitions are uncertain affairs. But since the mid-1970s, more than 60 countries have found their way to democracy. Some have done so in circumstances of rapid upheaval that offer lessons for reformers in Tunisia, Egypt and other Arab countries today.

Unite the democratic opposition.

When a dictatorship is on the ropes, one thing that can rescue it is a divided opposition. That is why autocrats so frequently foster those divisions, secretly funding a proliferation of opposition parties. Even extremely corrupt rulers may generate significant electoral support - not the thumping majorities they claim, but enough to steal an election - when the opposition is splintered.

In the Philippines in 1986, Nicaragua in 1990 and Ukraine in 2004, the opposition united around the candidacies of Corazon Aquino, Violeta Chamorro and Viktor Yushchenko, respectively. Broad fronts such as these - as well as the Concertacion movement that swept Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin to power in Chile in 1989 after the departure of Gen. Augusto Pinochet - often span deep personal and ideological differences. But the time for democratic forces to debate those matters is later, once the old order is defeated and democratic institutions have been established.

Egypt is fortunate - it has an obvious alternative leader, Mohamed ElBaradei, whom disparate opposition elements seem to be rallying around. Whether the next presidential election is held on schedule in September or moved up, ElBaradei, or anyone like him leading a broad opposition front, will probably win a resounding victory over anyone connected to Mubarak's National Democratic Party.

Make sure the old order really is gone.

The exit of a long-ruling strongman, such as Ben Ali, does not necessarily mean the end of a regime. Fallen dictators often leave behind robust political and security machines. No autocrat in modern times met a more immediate fate than Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu, who was executed by a firing squad of his own soldiers in 1989 just three days after a popular revolution forced him to flee the capital. Yet his successor, Ion Iliescu, was a corrupt former communist who obstructed political reform. Most of the former Soviet states, such as Georgia and Kazakhstan, had similar experiences.

Countries are much more likely to get to democracy quickly if they identify and embrace political leaders who are untainted by the old order and are ready to roll it back.

But also come to an understanding with the old order.

Victorious democrats won't be able to completely excise the pillars of the authoritarian order. Instead, for their country to turn toward democracy, those pillars must be neutralized or co-opted. This old order may descend into violence when, as in Iraq, broad classes of elites are stigmatized and ousted from their positions. In a successful bargain, most old-regime elites retain their freedom, assets and often their jobs but accept the new rules of the democratic game.

Unless the military collapses in defeat, as it did in Greece in 1974 and in Argentina after the Falklands War, it must be persuaded to at least tolerate a new democratic order. In the short run, that means guaranteeing the military significant autonomy, as well as immunity from prosecution for its crimes. Over time, civilian democratic control of the military can be extended incrementally, as was done masterfully in Brazil in the 1980s and in Chile during the 1990s. But if the professional military feels threatened and demeaned from the start, the transition is in trouble.

The same principle applies to surviving elements of the state security apparatus, the bureaucracy and the ruling party. In South Africa, for example, old-regime elements received amnesty for their human rights abuses in exchange for fully disclosing what they had done. In this and other successful transitions, top officials were replaced, but most state bureaucrats kept their jobs.

Rewrite the rules.

A new democratic government needs a new constitution, but it can't be drawn up too hastily. Meanwhile, some key provisions can be altered expeditiously, either by legislation, interim executive fiat or national consensus.

In Spain, the path to democratization was opened by the Law for Political Reform, adopted by the parliament within a year of dictator Francisco Franco's death in 1975. Poland adopted a package of amendments in 1992, only after it had elected a new parliament and a new president, Lech Walesa; a new constitution followed in 1997. South Africa enacted an interim constitution to govern the country while it undertook an ambitious constitution-writing process with wide popular consultation - which is the ideal arrangement.

An urgent priority, though, is to rewrite the rules so that free and fair elections are possible. This must happen before democratic elections can be held in Egypt and Tunisia. In transitions toward democracy, there is a strong case for including as many political players as possible. This requires some form of proportional representation to ensure that emerging small parties can have a stake in the new order, while minimizing the organizational advantage of the former ruling party. In the 2005 elections in Iraq, proportional representation ensured a seat at the table for smaller minority and liberal parties that could never have won a plurality in individual districts.

Isolate the extremes.

That said, not everyone can or should be brought into the new democratic order. Prosecuting particularly venal members of a former ruling family, such as those tied to the Philippines' Ferdinand Marcos, Indonesia's fallen strongman Suharto or now Tunisia's Ben Ali, can be part of a larger reconciliation strategy. But the circle of punishment must be drawn narrowly. It may even help the transition to drive a wedge between a few old-regime cronies and the bulk of the establishment, many of whom may harbor grievances against "the family."

A transitional government should aim for inclusion, and should test the democratic commitment of dubious players rather than inadvertently induce them to become violent opponents. However, groups that refuse to renounce violence as a means of obtaining power, or that reject the legitimacy of democracy, have no place in the new order. That provision was part of the wisdom of the postwar German constitution.

Transitions are full of opportunists, charlatans and erstwhile autocrats who enter the new political field with no commitment to democracy. Every democratic transition that has endured - from Spain and Portugal to Chile, South Africa and now hopefully Indonesia - has tread this path.

Fragile democracies become stable when people who once had no use for democracy embrace it as the only game in town.

Kris Cheng is not your average senior at Stanford University, studying Energy Resources Engineering and traveling to places as diverse as rural Mongolia to research solar technology uses for nomadic communities. He is a self-taught photographer with an eye for the dramatic, capturing subjects in their natural environment but posed to enhance the style, expression, and intensity of the human condition. Kris's portraits explore the intimacy of his subjects, while also depicting the harsh realities of poverty and underdevelopment. This budding photographer captured the attention of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, when he submitted the winning photograph in a competition sponsored by the Center. 

The CDDRL photo competition was intended to encourage students, faculty, and staff, to submit their original photos, which illustrate themes central to CDDRL's research mission. The selection committee was impressed by the diversity and professionalism of the entries received depicting scenes of democratic expression, abject poverty, and new technology use, among others. From  over 60 entries, Kris Cheng's image of a small boy gazing into a trash-clogged river in an unincorporated slum outside of Manila in the Philippines was selected. His imagery captured both the challenges and opportunities of the work we are engaged in and his technical style left the selection committee wanting to know more about this young photographer.

I sat down with this incredibly humble engineer who is an avid outdoorsman with a penchant for adventure sports and extreme environments, to discuss his winning photograph, the journey that brought him to where he is today, and his plans for photography going forward.  

Q: Kris, tell me a little bit about yourself and when you first embraced photography.

A: I started becoming interested in photography as a hobby at the end of high school when I was a senior.  I went all over taking photos, traveling, and kept taking more photos and was continuously improving. Overtime, it became a passion and something that I am intimately attached with - second nature, in a sense.

Q: Did you ever have any formal training in photography or is it all the learn as you go method?

A: I adopted the learn as you go approach to photography, taking a lot of photographs, searching the Internet to find images I like and exploring why I liked those certain images. Being self-taught, I found the Internet to be an amazing resource to learn from other photographs, replicate others, imitate other styles, and gain new techniques and insights to apply to my own work. Photography is a creative process that doesn't lend well to a rigid school environment, so for me it's been learning by doing. See what you like and don't like, and always keep maximizing or minimizing those characteristics. It's an iterative approach.  

All of my favorite photographers were more or less untrained - Joey Lawrence and Chase Jarvis are among the photographers I follow the most.  

Q: Stylistically, how would you describe your genre of photography? Your photographs are remarkable in the way you incorporate light and reflections, please tell me more about how you achieve this effect.

A: I do a more stylized and dramatic form of photography that I guess you could call elaborate portraiture. Everything I do is more or less planned. I get an idea in my mind for how I want them (the subjects) to look and pose based on what they have been doing. In this sense, it is not artificial, but rather trying to bring out certain qualities I see in the subject.  I use a wide range of lighting equipment, such as remotely triggered external flashes to achieve the effects in my pictures depending on the location. My travel-sized lights are not nearly as powerful as the sun, so I had to wait until a golden period around sunset each day when I could achieve the desired lighting effects.  

Q: Do you have a particular niche?

A: I do a wide range of photography, including fashion, nature, and commercial work. I don't have a particular niche per se, but I do have a very distinct style evident in all of my photos.

Q: How do you gain the trust of subjects in your photographs to capture them in such intimate and realistic ways? What is the process you go through to gain their confidence?

A: I understand the importance of the human connection and photography is secondary to this, a way of documenting interaction. I went to Mongolia last year to research solar technologies and their applications for nomadic households, namely cooking.  I was working with the non-profit ADRA in integrating one of their entrepreneurial programs for impoverished families and went on a 20-day trip across Western  Mongolia with some Mongolians. All interactions were unplanned, and we stayed with families for a few days at a time to do experiments with solar cooking, gain input, and test out conditions in the field. For me, it was very important to establish a relationship of trust with these Mongolian families and interact using humor as a bridge.

For my type of photography, it is essential to engage with people and make them feel comfortable. After I felt that a mutual sense of trust had been reached, I would let them know that I had a camera and make sure they were comfortable with their photo being captured or if they had particular preferences. I always make it a point to send the prints after they are done, though with nomadic families it's not exactly easy.

Q: That provides a great background to your work in Mongolia but I would love to hear more about your trip to the Philippines where you captured the winning image.  

A: Two summers ago in 2009, I traveled to the Philippines to conduct a feasibility study of biogas integration into a village. That particular picture was taken in an unincorporated slum that was in the process of being transformed into a village by a non-profit called GK just outside Manila.  We spent two days there and it was really hard to get to know people as I was busy with my own work and there were significant language barriers - I didn't have the type of time afforded to me in Mongolia. In this village, I came across a little boy who was looking over the trash filled river that ran through his slum, and it was striking how the boy was interacting with these conditions. Places like these are a common occurrence throughout the Philippines and especially the developing world as a whole, and through the perspective of this boy I was hoping to convey the scene from a more intimate and "local" point of view. These kids play in and around the river like it's nothing, because this is their reality and they know nothing different.

Q: What has been your favorite place to photograph from among your international travels?

A: It partly depends on where I am in terms of photography. The Philippines was a really good stepping point for Mongolia in terms of audacity and planning. I learned a lot from my experiences in the Philippines, and was really able to build and expand on that when I went to Mongolia. I expect this trend to hopefully continue.

Q: Is there a future trip planned?

A: Yes, certainly! Not this summer as I need to stay in the area and get a job, but I am expecting my next trip to be up north to Greenland for a different photographic experience that is particularly focused on nature.

Q: Have you ever considered using your photographs to build awareness and bring attention to development challenges?

A: Photography goes hand in hand with the work I have been doing in international development and I hope that my work is eye-opening for a lot of people. I know there is a lot more I could be doing to make that a focus but at this point in my career I am not sure how far I want to take photography in comparison to other development projects that I feel are more tangible.

Q: But are the two necessarily mutually exclusive? Can't development and photography go hand in hand?

A: I have definitely thought of that and in what ways we can combine the two to use photography in a very new way that can provide a more lasting impact. Documentary photography has no doubt proven to be an enormous force for social change on a variety of occasions, but this is certainly not the only way photography can play a role in development. Photography touches on a very important aspect of the human condition, especially when dealing with issues of empowerment and self-worth, and I think there is much more potential to capitalize on that. Kids with Cameras (an NGO) is a great example.

Q: What are your tools of the trade?

A:  I currently have a Canon 5D Mark II and use a 16-35mm f2.8 and 50 mm f1.4 lens, with a whole range of additional accessories and equipment. I started with an entry level Nikon D50 camera several years ago and slowly worked up my way up. Luckily, my side work freelancing allows for me to pay for my personal work and equipment.

 Q: Tell me more about the professional work you do.

A: My professional work includes freelance commercial work like music photography, portraiture, and magazine profiles. I recently contributed to a feature on eco-fashion for the New York Times, which entailed a sustainable fashion photo shoot. Before, I would just take any job I got and went full steam ahead with it for the sake of experience and (some) money, but now I'm able to be more selective with what I take on.

Q: Have you ever exhibited your photos?

A: Not really, I know a lot of other people have but I do not necessarily like to heavily promote my work. That's not really my style, and I have other commitments to balance. I haven't tried but am open to getting more exposure. To be honest, I haven't done a stellar job of properly displaying my work outside of the Internet.

Q: Do you imagine a future career for yourself as a photographer? Where do you see yourself heading with this hobby for which you are clearly talented?

A: Four years ago, I had no idea where this was going to lead or that it would get me to this point, but I guess that goes with a lot of the things I do. Hopefully, this will be something I can balance with my career, although there were a few moments when I was tempted to drop everything and just become a photographer. Lately, I have gotten into documentary filmmaking because it is a natural progression for a lot of photographers and further allows me to make a real impact with my work to highlight different social issues. It suits me well to travel to all these places where no one wants to, or is willing to go. I thrive in extreme environments.

For more information on Kris Cheng's photography, please visit www.krischeng.com.

The nine other finalists in our CDDRL photo contest include (in no particular order); Thomas Alan Hendee (student), Jorge Olarte Blanco (student), Rachel Quint (student), Francis Fukuyama (staff), Jon Strahl (student), Omar Shakir (student), and Marina Latu (staff). Please reference the gallery below for samples of their winning entries.

A reception honoring our winner and finalists will be held on Friday, January 28 from 11:30-1:00 pm in the lobby of Encina Hall.

The first decade of the 21st century has seen a dramatic reversal of fortune in the relative prestige of different political and economic models. Ten years ago, on the eve of the puncturing of the dotcom bubble, the US held the high ground. Its democracy was widely emulated, if not always loved; its technology was sweeping the world; and lightly regulated "Anglo-Saxon" capitalism was seen as the wave of the future. The United States managed to fritter away that moral capital in remarkably short order: the Iraq war and the close association it created between military invasion and democracy promotion tarnished the latter, while the Wall Street financial crisis laid waste to the idea that markets could be trusted to regulate themselves.

China, by contrast, is on a roll. President Hu Jintao's rare state visit to Washington this week comes at a time when many Chinese see their weathering of the financial crisis as a vindication of their own system, and the beginning of an era in which US-style liberal ideas will no longer be dominant. State-owned enterprises are back in vogue, and were the chosen mechanism through which Beijing administered its massive stimulus. The automatic admiration for all things American that many Chinese once felt has given way to a much more nuanced and critical view of US weaknesses - verging, for some, on contempt. It is thus not surprising that polls suggest far more Chinese think their country is going in the right direction than their American counterparts.

But what is the Chinese model? Many observers casually put it in an "authoritarian capitalist" box, along with Russia, Iran and Singapore. But China's model is sui generis; its ­specific mode of governance is difficult to describe, much less emulate, which is why it is not up for export.

The most important strength of the Chinese political system is its ability to make large, complex decisions quickly, and to make them relatively well, at least in economic policy. This is most evident in the area of infrastructure, where China has put into place airports, dams, high-speed rail, water and electricity systems to feed its growing industrial base. Contrast this with India, where every new investment is subject to blockage by trade unions, lobby groups, peasant associations and courts. India is a law-governed democracy, in which ordinary people can object to government plans; China's rulers can move more than a million people out of the Three Gorges Dam flood plain with little recourse on their part.

Nonetheless, the quality of Chinese government is higher than in Russia, Iran, or the other authoritarian regimes with which it is often lumped - precisely because Chinese rulers feel some degree of accountability towards their population. That accountability is not, of course, procedural; the authority of the Chinese Communist party is limited neither by a rule of law nor by democratic elections. But while its leaders limit public criticism, they do try to stay on top of popular discontents, and shift policy in response. They are most attentive to the urban middle class and powerful business interests that generate employment, but they respond to outrage over egregious cases of corruption or incompetence among lower-level party cadres too.

Indeed, the Chinese government often overreacts to what it believes to be public opinion precisely because, as one diplomat resident in Beijing remarked, there are no institutionalised ways of gauging it, such as elections or free media. Instead of calibrating a sensible working relationship with Japan, for example, China escalated a conflict over the detention of a fishing boat captain last year - seemingly in anticipation of popular anti-Japanese sentiment.

Americans have long hoped China might undergo a democratic transition as it got wealthier, and before it became powerful enough to become a strategic and political threat. This seems unlikely, however. The government knows how to cater to the interests of Chinese elites and the emerging middle classes, and builds on their fear of populism. This is why there is little support for genuine multi-party democracy. The elites worry about the example of democracy in Thailand - where the election of a populist premier led to violent conflict between his supporters and the establishment - as a warning of what could happen to them.

Ironically for a country that still claims to be communist, China has grown far more unequal of late. Many peasants and workers share little in the country's growth, while others are ruthlessly exploited. Corruption is pervasive, which exacerbates existing inequalities. At a local level there are countless instances in which government colludes with developers to take land away from hapless peasants. This has contributed to a pent-up anger that explodes in many thousands of acts of social protest, often violent, each year.

The Communist party seems to think it can deal with the problem of inequality through improved responsiveness on the part of its own hier­archy to popular pressures. China's great historical achievement during the past two millennia has been to create high-quality centralised government, which it does much better than most of its authoritarian peers. Today, it is shifting social spending to the neglected interior, to boost consumption and to stave off a social explosion. I doubt whether its approach will work: any top-down system of accountability faces unsolvable problems of monitoring and responding to what is happening on the ground. Effective accountability can only come about through a bottom-up process, or what we know as democracy. This is not, in my view, likely to emerge soon. However, down the road, in the face of a major economic downturn, or leaders who are less competent or more corrupt, the system's fragile legitimacy could be openly challenged. Democracy's strengths are often most evident in times of adversity.

However, if the democratic, market-oriented model is to prevail, Americans need to own up to their own mistakes and misconceptions. Washington's foreign policy during the past decade was too militarised and unilateral, succeeding only in generating a self-defeating anti-Americanism. In economic policy, Reaganism long outlived its initial successes, producing only budget deficits, thoughtless tax-cutting and inadequate financial regulation.

These problems are to some extent being acknowledged and addressed. But there is a deeper problem with the American model that is nowhere close to being solved. China adapts quickly, making difficult decisions and implementing them effectively. Americans pride themselves on constitutional checks and balances, based on a political culture that distrusts centralised government. This system has ensured individual liberty and a vibrant private sector, but it has now become polarised and ideologically rigid. At present it shows little appetite for dealing with the long-term fiscal challenges the US faces. Democracy in America may have an inherent legitimacy that the Chinese system lacks, but it will not be much of a model to anyone if the government is divided against itself and cannot govern. During the 1989 Tiananmen protests, student demonstrators erected a model of the Statue of Liberty to symbolise their aspirations. Whether anyone in China would do the same at some future date will depend on how Americans address their problems in the present.

The writer is a fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. His latest book, The Origins of Political Order, will be published in the spring.