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71. Militarizing the Nation: The Army, Business, and Revolution in Egypt

Author:
Zeinab Abdul-Magd
Publication Date:
03-2017
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
Egypt's army portrays itself as a faithful guardian "saving the nation." Yet saving the nation has meant militarizing it. Zeinab Abul-Magd examines both the visible and often invisible efforts by Egypt's semi-autonomous military to hegemonize the country's politics, economy, and society over the past six decades. The Egyptian army has adapted to and benefited from crucial moments of change. It weathered the transition to socialism in the 1960s, market consumerism in the 1980s, and neoliberalism from the 1990s onward, all while enhancing its political supremacy and expanding a mammoth business empire. Most recently, the military has fought back two popular uprisings, retained full power in the wake of the Arab Spring, and increased its wealth. While adjusting to these shifts, military officers have successfully transformed urban milieus into ever-expanding military camps. These spaces now host a permanent armed presence that exercises continuous surveillance over everyday life. Egypt's military business enterprises have tapped into the consumer habits of the rich and poor alike, reaping unaccountable profits and optimizing social command. Using both a political economy approach and a Foucauldian perspective, Militarizing the Nation traces the genealogy of the Egyptian military for those eager to know how such a controversial power gains and maintains control.
Topic:
Government, Military Affairs, and Arab Spring
Political Geography:
Middle East and Egypt
Publication Identifier:
9780231542807
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

72. Egypt’s Security and Haftar: al-Sisi’s strategy in Libya

Author:
Giuseppe Dentice
Publication Date:
02-2017
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI)
Abstract:
The Egyptian military response through heavy air strikes on the cities of Darnah and Sirte – as a consequence of the kidnapping and beheading of 21 Egyptian Copts by a Libyan cell affiliated to the Islamic State (IS) in February 2015 – represents so far the peak of Egypt’s involvement in the Libyan affaire.
Topic:
International Security and Military Affairs
Political Geography:
Libya and Egypt

73. Egypt’s Secular Political Parties: A Struggle for Identity and Independence

Author:
Michele Dunne and Amr Hamzawy
Publication Date:
03-2017
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Secular political parties in Egypt have always been caught between an overbearing state and a largely Islamist opposition. The brief, chaotic political opening from 2011 to 2013 offered them unprecedented opportunities, but the violence and intense polarization that followed the military coup have put them under more pressure than ever. Formal politics in Egypt is now a tightly controlled game in which no real independence is allowed, but some secular parties might reemerge as contenders should there be another opportunity for free competition.
Topic:
Political Theory and Democracy
Political Geography:
Egypt

74. Legislating Authoritarianism: Egypt’s New Era of Repression

Author:
Amr Hamzawy
Publication Date:
03-2017
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Egypt’s new authoritarian regime is rapidly closing the public space—cracking down on autonomous civil society and independent political parties, asphyxiating the practice of pluralist politics, and thwarting citizens’ peaceful and active engagement in public affairs. The government’s primary strategy is to institute wide-scale repression through lawmaking and justify its behavior through conspiratorial and populist narratives. With unprecedented resolve, it has passed new protest and terrorism laws, introduced legal amendments targeting nongovernmental organizations, and extended the military court’s jurisdiction. Essentially, the regime is adapting lawmaking for its own purposes. To fight against the tide, those challenging the system need to fully understand how.
Topic:
Governance, Authoritarianism, and Democracy
Political Geography:
Egypt

75. Too Big to Fail: Egypt’s Large Enterprises After the 2011 Uprising

Author:
Amr Adly
Publication Date:
03-2017
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Large private enterprises are vital to Egypt’s economy and stability. After the 2011 uprising, they lost political sway due to their ties to the regime of former president Hosni Mubarak. However, Egypt’s economic crisis pushed successive regimes to reverse measures taken against these enterprises, affirming their role in economic revitalization. Though cut off from patronage networks after Egypt’s 2013 coup, enterprises are more autonomous from the state today. This may create advantageous openings if the state’s dependence on them grows.
Topic:
International Affairs, Global Markets, and Global Political Economy
Political Geography:
Egypt

76. Unsolved Dilemmas: Issues of Internal Governance in Egypt’s Human Rights NGOs

Author:
Yara Shahin
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
This paper explores the state of internal governance in Egyptian human rights NGOs. It looks at their internal structures including; decision-making processes, the existence and role of governing boards, relationships with donors, levels of accountability and representation of constituencies along with the relationship with the government within a restrictive legal and political environment. It argues that while the restrictive environment for civil society in Egypt has hindered the development of stronger internal governance mechanisms in many organizations, the internal dynamics of these organizations have also contributed to the weak internal governance structures in most of them. The dilemmas that persisted through different generations and phases of Egyptian human rights organizations include balancing activism on public issues with bureaucratization and professionalization of vehicle organizations, the difficulty for and resistance from founders/directors to leave their influential posts, developing better participatory mechanisms of accountability towards the NGOs constituencies and addressing the “stigma” of foreign funding
Topic:
Human Rights and Governance
Political Geography:
Egypt

77. Institutional Reform of State Agencies in the Arab Region: Educated but Unemployed: The Challenge Facing Egypt’s Youth

Author:
Adel Abdel Ghafar
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
The state was the subject of political and political economic analysis in general in the post-independence period. This was also the case in the Arab region, where new states emerged with cumbersome civil bureaucracies and large military and security apparatus, and with huge powers to control the management and direction of (natural and human) economic resources. It was as if the burden of economic and social modernization had been placed on those newly independent States in the face of traditional societies lacking the social classes capable of advancing modernization, be they bourgeois or national proletariat. Despite the decline of the development models of the state by the seventies, the Arab state has continued to be the focus of analysis of development and modernization with the flow of oil money and the emergence of rentierism in most, if not all, the Arab countries, whether direct producers of oil or receivers of oil through secondary flows. This has placed emphasis on the importance of the state as a holder of wealth and as a source of distribution for different social strata.
Topic:
Education and Reform
Political Geography:
Egypt

78. Revolutionary Youth Movements, Religiosity and Identity Politics in Egypt

Author:
Fouad Halbouni
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
This paper explores how the emergence of revolutionary youth movements have destabilized the different forms of political and religious identification inherited from the world of the Mubarak regime. I am interested basically in showing how revolutionary politics introduced new forms of identification that broke with the exclusionary binaries upon which Mubarak's world was based. In order to track those transformations, one needs to take a second look at revolutionary politics, its disruptive force of all existent grounds upon which these political and religious identities had root themselves
Topic:
Human Rights
Political Geography:
Egypt

79. Historical Legacies in Egyptian Security Institutions

Author:
Yosra El Gendi
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
On October 13, 2014 in Corniche Street, Alexandria a police superintendent at a checkpoint and a navy officer engaged in a fist fight. The army officer contacted the military police which took the police officer and superintendent at the checkpoint to an army base where they were requested to stand hours in the sun as a form of punishment (Madgy et al., 2015). While many insist that these are individual incidents (Abdel- Aal, 2015). This is only one incident of at least 6 of clashes between members of both institutions since the 2011 uprising (Madgy, 2015). These incidents that point to the different security institutions’ extensive powers and the divisive structure in which they are based, a structure that was once called a “mamluk state” (al- Sherif, 2012). This points to the failed processes of state-building at the core of the institutional weaknesses in Egypt.
Topic:
Security and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Egypt

80. The Formal Birth of the Human Rights Movement in Egypt

Author:
Yasmine Shash
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
This paper analyzes a chronology of Egypt’s human rights movement since its birth in 1985 going through its different phases and generations until 2016. It starts with a brief history of the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights, the challenges it faced and the conceptual differences that led to its fragmentation in early 1994.
Topic:
Human Rights
Political Geography:
Egypt