Conventional State structures, in the West as well as in the developing world, have become subordinate to highly centralized, but far-reaching power system controlled by multinational corporations, financial institutions, and their owners, which have no particular connection or loyalty to any given nation-state, but only to the interests of their own elite class.
Merely holding elections, or even seizing government by revolutionary means, is not going to restore power to the local level. Real political change is no longer a matter of just changing government administrations. Not in Egypt, not in Tunisia, not in London and not in Washington.
Populations across the world are all suffering the same oppression, the same injustice, the same exploitation, the same disenfranchisement, the same disempowerment, the same marginalization and exclusion, because we are all under the heel of the same system, being managed by the same tiny group of super rich individuals by means of the institutions of private economic power.
Every state is entangled in the global corporate system to such an extent that before we can start to talk about democracy or any other form of government, we have to first talk about how to achieve independence.
We should not pursue a revolutionary strategy of collapsing the State, because that is exactly what is happening already. We need to pursue a strategy of liberating the state from corporate occupation, and restoring economic sovereignty and political independence.
That can only happen by confronting and disrupting the mechanisms by which that system functions and flourishes in our countries, until we are in a position to impose regulations upon their presence and activities, and restrict their influence over government policy.