Under the headline "The future of tyranny", Mamoun Fandy asks some searching questions about the Arab Spring in an article for Asharq Alawsat.

"The talk about the future of tyranny, its manifestations, branches, and the extent of its longevity in various forms has not started yet in earnest," he says. "This is because our region is still submerged in the euphoria of the revolution ..."

Egyptian-born Fandy, who is a senior fellow International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, argues that the Arab Spring will not represent a break from tyranny heralding democratic change, but a mutation of tyranny. He writes:

"The concept of dictatorship in our countries has not been limited to the acts of an individual as we thought, or the result of concentrating power within the centralised government. Rather, the concept dictatorship in the Middle East is more widespread ...

"The dictatorship in Egypt was a complete system built upon sturdy pillars, from the father at home all the way to the head of the village, the chairman of the district, the governor, up to the head of state. Society became saturated with dictatorship, and entire currents were immersed in it, whether they were Islamic or secular. 

"Former President Hosni Mubarak, the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the chairman of the Egyptian Communist Party were all cut from the same cloth."

Fandy is certainly right about the nature of tyranny in the Arab countries. A point I made repeatedly in my book, What's Really Wrong with the Middle East, is that dictators are a symptom of the problem rather than the problem itself. Toppling them is an important step but Arab society is riddled at all levels with mini-Mubaraks.

Fandy also notes that the Arab Spring has so far left "tribal and family loyalties and the priority of blood relations" largely intact:

"What has happened is that the families and tribes have dressed themselves up in the cloak of revolutions in Yemen and in Libya, and in Egypt the opposition consists of tribes rather than concepts ...

"If you dismantle the projects of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamist groups to their bare bones, you would find specific tribes and families against other tribes and families using Islam as a cover, and this has nothing to do with Islam other than a veneer that covers the ugly face of tribal interests."

Fandy does say "This does not mean that tyranny is our fate," but his idea that what we are seeing is nothing more than a mutation of tyrannies seems unduly pessimistic: "Whoever came out of the mosque will return to the mosque, and whoever emerged from the tribe will certainly go back to the tribe."

This may be true in the short term but it misunderstands the nature of the Arab Spring which has been characterised in the media as a series of struggles against unpopular leaders. To some extent, that is what it is – or at least what it has been for most of this year. 

But I prefer to regard it as a gradual awakening which began long before the events of Sid Bouzid and will continue long after the departures of Ben Ali, Mubarak, Gaddafi, Assad, Saleh, et al. It's about a fundamental change in the way Arabs – especially the younger ones – perceive themselves and their capabilities, and about establishing a new kind of relationship with those who have hitherto controlled their lives, whether in the home, the school, the workplace or the palace.