The Pattern of Change and Order in Egyptian Politics (original) (raw)
Related papers
2012
The popular uprising that took place in Egypt in January and February 2011 may eventually lead to regime change. Whatever the end result of the ongoing process, however, the theories of authoritarian consolidation-which view the capacity of a political regime to adapt to a changing environment as key to its durability-provide an interesting framework to analyze the process of crisis of early 2011. The work conducted by Michel Camau on Tunisia's authoritarian regime and its transformations in the 1980s, in particular, is worth being considered and put in perspective with the recent developments in Egypt. It underlines how factors of a different nature can combine and create a fluid conjuncture to which political actors-regime leaders included-may find it difficult to adapt. The Egyptian context of January 2011 can be viewed as one of these critical moments of political fluidity in which transformation or rupture are at stake for the regime, depending on the capacity of its leadership to adapt. The prospect of the presidential succession is seen as a window of opportunity for changing the balance of power within the political system. The social effects of liberal economic policies and the growing political awareness of youth have led to major social transformations. Growing tensions within and between the main institutions of the regime have progressively undermined the ruling elite's cohesion. Because it takes place in such a critical conjuncture, the multisectorial mobilization of early 2011 contributes to the blurring of the leadership's calculations and capacity to adapt. The regime undergoes a process of fracture and disintegration whose eventual result remains unclear.
Breaking out of Authoritarianism: 18 Months of Political Transition in Egypt
Constellations, 2013
It took the Egyptian mass protests, turned into a revolutionary movement, 18 days in January and February 2011 to topple former president Hosni Mubarak and the top leadership of his regime. In the squares and streets of Cairo and other cities, anger was mixed with hope. Anger was directed at the way Egypt was ruled, the invasive security state, corruption, and the dismal economic and social situation. Hope was placed in a transition towards a new political system that rid the country of the authoritarianism, which beset the country for several decades and was considered the origin of the problems it suffered. Eighteen months later, it seems that translating the hope into reality was, and still is, conditioned by the actors involved in the process of change and by their relative power. Actors came into being over several stages. There were the immediate actors of change, especially the youth groups, which prepared and then led the mass protests. Then, there were the political and social movements that had been active in the previous years in protest and resistance against the designs of the Mubarak regime. From among a third set of actors, which for decades coexisted or clashed with the regime, the Muslim Brothers stood out as the most organized and powerful force. Finally, the military became a decisive actor in the transition process, the falling Mubarak having transferred power to them. There was no agreement between the civilian actors, neither on the course of change nor on what should be changed. The course of change was ultimately decided by the relative powers of the actors. Power distribution also weighed on political debate and the subjects of change. To issues of discontent and protest aired in January and February was added the question of the application of shari'a, for long a central concern of Islamists. Disagreements between actors bore on what constituted the core of the desired change. Political, socioeconomic and symbolic concerns separated the actors. Ironically, the military, the main protagonist of transition, wished as little change as possible. Having been for six decades the mainstay of the regime, they wanted to keep their privileged position. The actors, their relative power, their objectives, their attitudes, their actions and interactions, and issues of discontent and protest all constitute distinguishing characteristics of the Egyptian transition. This review is carried out after a democratically elected new president was inaugurated and a new government formed. It will address these distinguishing characteristics, which, in sum, relate to the initial conditions and to the conduct of the process. Actors, their relative power, and issues of discontent and protest constitute the initial conditions. The objectives, attitudes, ideas, actions, and organizational capabilities of participants have conditioned the conduct of the process. The concluding remarks will include a reflection on the prospects of a representative, stable, and effective political system emerging out of the transitional process. This review does not purport to draw conceptual conclusions nor to review theoretical approaches to the study of transitions and to test the Egyptian process against them. However, it will benefit from elements of two contending theoretical perspectives in an effort to look into the future of the Egyptian transition. The first perspective is that of the lessons drawn
Human Rights Brief, 2012
Egypt’s revolution did not end on February 11, 2011. Despite the removal of Hosni Mubarak from the presidency, the former Mubarak regime remains entrenched in Egypt’s economic and political system. This is evident from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’ (SCAF) June 2012 power grab of legislative authority after dissolving parliament – a move many consider to have been a virtual military coup d’etat. Skeptics argue SCAF is merely a Mubarak holdover until the old regime can reinvent itself under a new guise. Former Prime Minister and Mubarak confidant Ahmed Shafiq’s near win against the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi in the presidential elections may be proof of this. A Shafiq presidency would have instantly nullified gains made through the last eighteen months of protests, sacrifices, and deaths by millions of Egyptians. Although the current political landscape differs from the days preceding the January 25 revolution, Egypt appears to suffer from a familiar syndrome: for every step taken towards meaningful reform, it falls back two steps due to entrenched counter-revolutionary forces. This began the moment the military took control of the executive branch on February 11, 2011 only to unilaterally replace the 1971 constitution with its own interim Constitutional Declaration on March 30, 2011. This dubious document unilaterally imposed by SCAF barely holds Egypt together as the country faces one legal crisis after another. This essay argues Egypt is still in the midst of a revolution and has yet to enter the post-revolutionary phase of nation-building. The essay starts by providing a brief summary of the political context of the post-Mubarak transition. Central to understanding the context is identifying the key political actors and their roles in the ongoing struggle to reshape Egypt’s political landscape. Finally, this essay highlights the importance of the rule of law to steer Egypt through an inevitably turbulent phase at this historic juncture. In many ways, the heated contestation for power is a healthy indicator of Egyptians’ investment in their nation in stark contrast to the pre-revolution sense of hopeless complacency. But such contestations can be politically debilitating if they are not constrained by laws that ensure a fair and level playing field among the various political actors, allow the citizenry to hold elected officials accountable for failing to improve the economy, and guarantee no one – not even a President, as evidenced by the recent criminal trial of Mubarak – is above the law. Without rule of law, however, the citizenry will again disengage from the political system as it discovers its votes and voices are irrelevant to the broader power struggle between the military and Muslim Brotherhood. In perspective, Egypt’s experience could have turned out much worse compared to other nations undergoing revolutions (see: Syria). However, that alone does not curtail Egyptians’ well-grounded demands of a government at the service of the people and not the other way around. Until leaders who are entirely separate from the former regime and its entrenched interests are elected, the people will not see the goals of the revolution realized.
The Struggle for the Reins of Government in Egypt (December 2011)
INSS Insight, 2011
The achievements of the Muslim Brotherhood in the first round of the elections are indicative of the dramatic change taking place in Egypt, but they are not evidence that Egypt is about to turn into a radical Islamic republic that would fundamentally change its foreign affairs and security policy. The claim that the Arab spring has become an Islamic winter is precisely what it sounds like: a simplistic trope that ignores the complexity of the revolution now underway in Egypt.
Political and Social Transformations in Egypt
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017
Hybrid Regimes (HyR): Variously referred to as 'hybrid regimes', façade democracies, 'democracy with adjectives', etc. this class of models suggests that regimes may formally present as democratic (e.g. with elections, and institutions providing checks and balances) but nonetheless remain de facto autocracies, in which informal authoritarian practices void formal democratic institutions of their substance. Authoritarian Resilience (AR): This class of models identifies blockages making democratic transitions impossible either in principle or in practice. As for DT models, necessary conditions for AR include institutional, material and cultural conditions (e.g. rentierism, Orientalism). These models are useful in identifying a series of factors associated with liberal democracy and with the impediments of transformations into democracy, and an important part of this project aims to deploy these frameworks to help provide insights into the general characteristics of Totalitarianism Authoritarianism Dictablanda Democradura Liberal Democracy political systems in the Middle East and their recent transformations. The first goal of Transition Analyses is precisely to use these models to evaluate different types of evidence on actual changes in the Middle East over the medium term encompassing the run-up to and the aftermath of the Arab Uprisings (2010-2015). These approaches have limitations which can obscure as much as enlighten. For example, all three approaches are effectively variations on a fixed 'conceptual menu': elements which permit transformations in one model, block it in another. The roots of such a 'fixed menu' in Rostow's Modernization theory are fairly evident, and bring their own limitations, such as the assumption of a hierarchy of needs-or at least of stages-in processes of social, political and economic 'modernization' (security, economic, political in that order), or the fact that while thinking of transformative processes as articulated along a modernization-style broadly linear trajectory does not require determinism, it does obfuscate more complex political dynamics. Cyclical Authoritarianism (CA): CA models are built on the recognition that transformative while processes in the wake of the 'Third Wave' of democratization have been understood in terms of a more or less frustrated transition towards democracy or authoritarian retrenchment, but that transformation processes are themselves used by authoritarian regimes to maintain power, for example that transformations are designed to be reversible or that regimes alternate economic and political openings and clampdowns. Thus, what may appear as a fluctuation between points on a scale of change, may itself be a political strategy. CA regimes adaptively fluctuate between reversible formal configurations while not undermining autocracy. Brittle Authoritarianism (BA): BA models represent another interpretive possibility. Ayubi's use of Gramsci's distinction between hegemonic and non-hegemonic regimes suggests that if regional autocracies are 'ferocious' in their use of force but not hegemonic (Gramsci) or legitimate (Weber), they may well appear stable by repressing dissent and resisting change, but remain vulnerable in being unable to absorb dissent by adapting to challenges. Such regimes rely on both extra-legal violence and the legalization of violence (harassment, torture, detention without trial, etc.) but find concessions difficult, a combination which rather than reflecting the strength and stability of the regime, is a result of a brittleness which its ferocity can only partly conceal. In addition, although existing quantitative data-this project included-are of insufficient sophistication, breadth, and quality to subject this dynamic to scrutiny, it is important to note here that there is a further 'layer' to social, economic, and political transformation processes, namely the interaction between these processes and the categories used to describe and analyse them. The gap between formal institutions and informal practices, between form and substance of any social, political, and/or economic system has among other effects the implication that the perception of the former is affected by the experience of the latter: respondents' opinions about any political ideology, for example, will depend on their lived experience of it. For example, Arab nationalism was discredited by the loss of 1967, by the 1979 Egypt-Israel accords, by the inability of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq to deliver on unification, and generally by nationalism to deliver the renaissance it had promised. This contributed to conditions that made the 'return' of Islamist movements possible from the 1970s onwards. Similar dynamics apply to Islamist movements themselves, as well as to both authoritarian and democratic political projects. This dynamic is crucial, but can at best be glimpsed at indirectly through survey data. In sum, these five broad models and their exploration through different types of data constitute the main remit of Transformation Analyses, and are designed to lay the groundwork for both future analysis and future research design. The remainder of country Transition Analyses will be taken up with analysing survey and non-survey quantitative data in the context of qualitative research in Middle East Studies. Democracy Any authoritarian system, regardless of external rigidity, contains traces of pluralism that might make possible democratic conditions through a series of permutations (and vice versa, of course). Broadly speaking, the literature on democratization/authoritarianism in the MNEA region analyses institutional, economic, and cultural factors to identify either causes of or blockages to democratisation. Transitology, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian resilience models view elections, identity politics, and rentierism as essential, contingent, or irrelevant to transitions to democracy or authoritarian retrenchment. Similar divisions can be identified in literature on the Middle Eastern: some studies treat the Middle East as an exceptional case, others suggests uniqueness derives from a series of (contingent) factors, some claim that change away from authoritarianism is impossible either in principle or de facto, others emphasise the hybridity or the fragility of authoritarianism. Perhaps the best-and most notorious-example of these disagreements is the debate about the 'compatibility' of democracy and 'Islam', with eminent figures like Huntington, Lewis, Gellner, and Kedourie taking one view, and Said, Esposito, Piscatori, and Halliday taking the opposite position. This section draws on the BTI Status Index-perhaps the most prestigious indicator of political (democracy) and economic (social market) transformation-evaluating against survey data on public opinion preferences on the characteristics of democracy, on the perception of democratic systems, and on whether democratic systems have positive effects.