Despite pledging to escape the democratization telos of earlier literature, comparativists have generally framed recent politics in the Middle East through a dualistic view of democracy and dictatorship. Domestic human rights advocates and political activists are treated as opposition movements struggling to replace authoritarian rule with a more democratic political system. This paper joins a small but growing set of scholarship that approaches reform movements without presuming a particular outcome or goal. Drawing on the recent publications of leading intellectuals behind the Egyptian Movement for Change (Kefaya), I assess the critiques and proposals of Tariq Al Bishri, Mohamed El Sayed Said, and Abdel-Halim Qandil. In their goals and strategies, these authors exhibit a level of nuance and pragmatism that differs substantially from, and usefully complicates, the prototypical images of anti-authoritarian opposition within American political science. With Kefaya now in its fifth year, the movement’s core leaders and nominal affiliates have begun to reflect on their record challenging the autocratic government of Hosni Mubarak (r. 1981-present). Al-Bishri’s Misr: Bayn al-`Asyan wa al-Tafakuk (Egypt: Between Disobedience and Disintegration), Said’s al-Intiqal Al-Dimuqrati al-Muhtajiz fi Misr (The Blocked Democratic Transition in Egypt), and Qandil’s al-Ayam al-Akhira (The Last Days) reveal the parameters of that discourse, including the beginnings of a critical self-assessment and reevaluation of the group’s approach. These books convey a highly pragmatic and measured approach to political reform, at odds with many of the assumptions of mainstream democratization studies. All three authors were instrumental in the inception of Kefaya during 2004-2005, but their programs for reform would fit uneasily in the conventional category of “moderate opposition.” Their demands upon the regime are more prudential and more inventive than presumed in the democratic transitions literature, while their attitude toward the allegedly radical Muslim Brothers reflects much greater openness to long-term cooperation than commonly assumed. Transcending the language of democracy and authoritarianism, with its fin de siècle connotations, these texts shed light on how Egypt’s latest intellectual-activists have understood their work emboldening fellow citizens and constraining an arbitrary chief executive. Their political work and scholarship offer a provocative reference for all those seeking to understand contemporary struggles for human equality and emancipation.