Tarek Osman: Egypt: After Revolt, Transition
[Tarek Osman is an Egyptian writer. He was educated at the American University in Cairo and Bocconi University in Italy. He is the author of Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak (Yale University Press, 2010)]
The first factor is the transformation in the composition of the country’s middle class. This group of public-sector employees, professionals, army officers and owners of small- and medium-sized enterprises coalesced in the 1950s and 1960s.
But in the mid-1970s, under the infitah (open-door) policy of President Anwat Sadat, the middle class reconfigured as new sectors emerged - traders, brokers, employees of multinational companies, and a significant number of the 3 million–plus Egyptians who emigrated to the Gulf in search of jobs during the 1970s oil bonanza. Moreover, the state’s gradual but consistent withdrawal from providing adequate education, healthcare, transportation and other key services weakened the traditional middle-class and pushed parts of it into the lower socio-economic strata.
The financial reforms of the 1980s and 1990s further pressed the older middle class and widened the fractures between its various subdivisions; then, the economic policy shifts of the 2000s imposed severe pains on this beleaguered group. The state incrementally retreated from central economic command (initially by floating the Egyptian pound, resulting in inflation, then through an accelerated privatisation programme, extending to the state’s strategic assets, and finally by granting economic decision-making power to the private sector’s leading capitalists). This hollowing-out of, and within, Egypt’s middle class created social tensions, alienated many of its segments, and instilled anger that percolated through the society.
The second factor is the gradual erosion of the legitimacy of the regime. Nasser (1952-70), Sadat (1970-81), and Mubarak (1981-) all ruled Egypt on the basis of the people’s consent to the ruling framework that the 1952 coup d’etat/revolution had put in place. But no truly fair and transparent elections took place in Egypt during those sixty years. The people’s consent was schematic, with constant reference to the key tenets of the 1952 revolution - chief amongst them being “siding with the working classes”. The economic policies of the mid-1970s onwards rendered that tenet in particular null and void, and as they merged power and wealth in the 2000s legitimacy drained from Egypt’s ruling elite.
The Egyptian people’s tolerance of the semblance of democracy (lacking any real participation in power or any functioning checks and balances) and their tolerance of absolutism (from Nasser to Sadat to Mubarak) had come to converge around their tacit acceptance of ultimate rule by the military establishment that had led, secured, and sustained the 1952 regime.
This began to change in the 2000s with the ascendancy of the new capitalists: their assumption of complete control over the state’s economic strategy and practices created an intra-regime balance between the military establishment and the emerging economic players. That distorted formation, whose newer elements had their financial clout alone to sanction their position, represented to a degraded middle class a final breach of an already terribly frayed social contract.
The third factor is a noticeable weakening of the regime’s established institutions. This was especially true of the presidency itself. Under Nasser and Sadat, it had remained a vibrant nerve-centre of governance, even a laboratory of ideas (albeit some bad ones), and certainly the place where active power was contained and expressed. By the 2000s the institution had long withered into a mere administrative structure around the president....
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The first factor is the transformation in the composition of the country’s middle class. This group of public-sector employees, professionals, army officers and owners of small- and medium-sized enterprises coalesced in the 1950s and 1960s.
But in the mid-1970s, under the infitah (open-door) policy of President Anwat Sadat, the middle class reconfigured as new sectors emerged - traders, brokers, employees of multinational companies, and a significant number of the 3 million–plus Egyptians who emigrated to the Gulf in search of jobs during the 1970s oil bonanza. Moreover, the state’s gradual but consistent withdrawal from providing adequate education, healthcare, transportation and other key services weakened the traditional middle-class and pushed parts of it into the lower socio-economic strata.
The financial reforms of the 1980s and 1990s further pressed the older middle class and widened the fractures between its various subdivisions; then, the economic policy shifts of the 2000s imposed severe pains on this beleaguered group. The state incrementally retreated from central economic command (initially by floating the Egyptian pound, resulting in inflation, then through an accelerated privatisation programme, extending to the state’s strategic assets, and finally by granting economic decision-making power to the private sector’s leading capitalists). This hollowing-out of, and within, Egypt’s middle class created social tensions, alienated many of its segments, and instilled anger that percolated through the society.
The second factor is the gradual erosion of the legitimacy of the regime. Nasser (1952-70), Sadat (1970-81), and Mubarak (1981-) all ruled Egypt on the basis of the people’s consent to the ruling framework that the 1952 coup d’etat/revolution had put in place. But no truly fair and transparent elections took place in Egypt during those sixty years. The people’s consent was schematic, with constant reference to the key tenets of the 1952 revolution - chief amongst them being “siding with the working classes”. The economic policies of the mid-1970s onwards rendered that tenet in particular null and void, and as they merged power and wealth in the 2000s legitimacy drained from Egypt’s ruling elite.
The Egyptian people’s tolerance of the semblance of democracy (lacking any real participation in power or any functioning checks and balances) and their tolerance of absolutism (from Nasser to Sadat to Mubarak) had come to converge around their tacit acceptance of ultimate rule by the military establishment that had led, secured, and sustained the 1952 regime.
This began to change in the 2000s with the ascendancy of the new capitalists: their assumption of complete control over the state’s economic strategy and practices created an intra-regime balance between the military establishment and the emerging economic players. That distorted formation, whose newer elements had their financial clout alone to sanction their position, represented to a degraded middle class a final breach of an already terribly frayed social contract.
The third factor is a noticeable weakening of the regime’s established institutions. This was especially true of the presidency itself. Under Nasser and Sadat, it had remained a vibrant nerve-centre of governance, even a laboratory of ideas (albeit some bad ones), and certainly the place where active power was contained and expressed. By the 2000s the institution had long withered into a mere administrative structure around the president....