But with most institutions consumed by corrosion, it may have to resort to harder repression.
Late last week, the Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt, forecast a period of severe repression, with hard-liners in command in Cairo, but said the Europeans should keep talking to all sides so as to be ready, if the opportunity arose, to play a role in achieving a solution.
Some areas, like the Basque region, which suffered particularly severe repression under Franco, pushed hard for the right to govern themselves.
Severe repression followed.
Since 2000, as the Chinese economy grew stronger and stronger and the pressure from the international community diminished, the government has returned to hard-line repression.
Yet as the old Soviet Union found (and today's Belarus is finding), economic problems make repression harder to sustain.
Last week the newly appointed Minister of Defense, Gen. Wiranto, warned that the Government would crack down hard on demonstrators protesting repression and corruption.
I was an active socialist, working hard towards change, but repression was widespread; you were either a friend of the military or their enemy.
His father was an austere teacher who believed in hard work and the repression of emotions: Helmut was told not to cry when he fell over.
Khamenei is the largest minority shareholder (albeit one with God-given preferred stock) in a system where repression and hard-won freedoms vie, as do authoritarianism and democracy.
His death comes at a time of rising fears for Egypt's 10 million Coptic Christians, who have felt increasingly vulnerable since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak and amid attacks on churches by hard-line Islamists and repression by Egypt's security forces.
