Withdrawal of the Army before Democracy. The Issue of a Transitional Configuration: Comparative Analysis of the Egyptian Case

If one of the things that has come out of the study of political changes in Africa and Eastern Europe from the 1990s is to consider political transitions as moments of flux, this article aims also to look at them from a configurational approach, in the sense suggested by N. Elias, i.e. to highlight the role of the actors together with the ways in which the rules are drawn up. By going back particularly to the period from the departure of the deposed President (11 February 2011) to the eve of the first round of the legislative elections (28 November 2011), the analysis will show that the dynamics of protest and mobilization are much more focused on the demilitarization of the regime than on the issue of democratization.