First, they are mass uprisings not against dictatorships but against governments that came to power through reasonably fair elections in existing (if young) democracies, but then turned against the principles of democracy – by suppressing media and opposition forces, by rewriting laws and by altering constitutions to partisan advantage. These people are protesting against the rotten fruits of democracy.

Second, these protesters are generally not interested in using democratic politics as their instrument of change. New political parties and candidates aren’t emerging from these movements, whose members often see representative democracy as a sideshow. They’re not anti-democratic, but they’ve come to believe that the protests themselves are more democratic than elections.

I’ve witnessed this in all the protests I’ve attended recently. In Kiev, during the lull between outbreaks of mad violence in the city’s haphazard Independence Square protest camp, I spent time asking dozens of protesters who they wanted to run Ukraine. Assuming their mission to force the resignation of President Viktor Yanukovych was a success, who were they backing as a successor?

Most had to spend some time thinking about it.