There
is a paradigm nobody talks about much any more in regard to Egypt: the democratic
transition. The problem with the
idea of democratic transition, dearly beloved by both the Obama Administration,
most of my colleagues in political science, and the Muslim Brotherhood was that
it presumed the institutions of the state would be passed, intact, from the old
regime to the new. Through
elections, constitutions, and the circulation of new elites popular sovereignty
and democratic practice would re-invigorate the barren institutions of the old
order. Where necessary, new ones
would be created.
What,
we are impelled to ask, went wrong in Egypt? What made it, one analyst is reported to have said, the
stupidest transition ever or the revolution that never was? Or did the fault lie not in our Egypt
but our selves? Not least in our
inability to recognize that the complicated and confusing period, lasting a
decade or more, between the first observation of revolutionary upheaval and its
conclusion, is both more important and more uncertain than we feel comfortable
with.
I
want to begin at the point where theories of failed revolution and failed
democratic transition diverge: the
institutions of the old order.
Theorists of failed revolution tell us that too many Egypt’s old
institutions and old elites survived the 2011 upheaval: the Armed Forces, the judiciary, the
bureaucracy, and the old elites.
Theorists of failed transition might seem to believe that not enough of
the old institutions survived but on closer inspection they have a different
concern: given free elections and
the doctrine of popular sovereignty not enough Egyptians seem to have taken the
outcome of elections with sufficient seriousness. Specifically the winners of the parliamentary and
presidential elections, the Muslim Brothers, have not been accorded the
legitimacy of a freely and popularly elected government.
This
is puzzling. Free and fair
elections are the tonic of transition.
All theorists of transition
recognize that free elections are not “enough” as they put it to ensure
democracy but free elections, by definition, they are the way in which the
people express their will. Once
elections have been held it is up to the new government to do its work and for
the people to wait a decent interval before judging its performance at the
ballot box rather than through ongoing and defiant street demonstrations and
conflict. This is even more
puzzling because it is a little difficult to argue that this has something to
do with Islam since the Islamist parties won and they have no problem with
asserting the doctrines of popular sovereignty and electoral legitimacy.
The
dominant concern in Egypt today is the high, and increasing, level of
polarization. It seems to be
common in the US and Europe to describe this a conflict between the country’s
minority urban secular middle-class and its religious (Islamic) majority. That Egypt has become increasingly
polarized is apparent but it is doubtful that the polarization that paralyzes
the country is between the secular middle-class and the rest of Egypt. Much of the violence in the
streets today is occurring outside of Cairo in the Canal Zone and the
provincial cities of the Delta, places not known for their large, secular
middle-classes. The violence is often specifically
between the Muslim Brotherhood, its direct supporters and its occasional allies
on specific issues, and the restive lower middle and working classes in these
cities. Socially we can speak of
polarization on many dimensions. There
is a marked rural/urban dimension to what we see; there is also a clear aspect
of educational attainment; in terms of religion there is also an obvious
Christian/Muslim dimension, but within the Muslim community there may also be
an antagonism based on how the Brotherhood understands Islam in the modern
world (of which more below).
Lastly there is a rather widespread dissatisfaction with what many
Egyptians perceive as the Brotherhood’s own internal lack of transparency and
democracy and aggrandizing organizational ambitions. These, in turn, provide both local and national elites with
the basis through which they have opposed the Brotherhood but over which they
have very little direct influence.
It
is possible to use electoral maps to see a geographic dimension to this
increased polarization. Egypt has had two constitutional referenda,
parliamentary elections (and run-offs) for two chambers, as well as a
presidential election and runoff.
The elections are not strictly speaking comparable but what we see is a
decline over time in turnout, relative support for the Muslim Brotherhood, and
an increasing polarization centered on the Delta. Specifically three quite different provinces—Gharbiyya,
Cairo, and Minoufia—have emerged as localized centers of opposition to the
Brotherhood. All three of these
provinces, which voted no in the December 2012 constitutional referendum had
voted yes in the March 2011 referendum.
They also voted against Morsi in both the initial and runoff stages of
the presidential election.
Gharbiyya is the province in which the textile center of Mahallah is
located whose 2006 strikes are often referred to as the origin of the collapse
of the Mubarak regime. Tanta,
however, also a textile center is even more strongly opposed to the MB; what
may differentiate the two is the presence of the headquarters of an important
Sufi order, the Badawiyya, which is located there and to which there is an
annual pilgrimage. Cairo is the
most urban of the governorates and, of course, has the largest concentration of
the socalled secular middle class.
Minufia is quite unlike both Cairo and Gharbiyya and the best anyone can
come up with to explain its behavior is that it was the home of both Sadat and
Mubarak, but this seems like weak tea.
Given
recent events it might now be possible to add the Canal cities of Suez, Pt.
Said, and Ismailiya to the list of anti-MB strongholds. There are some specific grievances in
each of these three cities of which the most well-known stems from the deaths
of 79 people at the Port Said soccer stadium on February 1, 2012 during a match
between the local team, Al-Masri, and the Cairene Ahli team. The death sentences handed down to 21
defendants in Port Said on January 26, 2013 led to demonstrations and riots in
Port Said and demonstrations in support of the verdicts in Cairo. The next day, itself the anniversary of
the uprising that toppled Mubarak, massive riots broke out in Pt. Said and the
other Canal cities as well as Alexandria.
In response President Morsi declared a state of emergency and curfew
which the demonstrators promptly and publicly broke by announcing street
demonstrations to begin at the same hour as the curfew. The army refused to enforce the curfew
with force and Morsi was left to slowly withdraw it and then allow it fade
away.
One
of the peculiarities then of the last two years is that the authority of the
executive and the legislative branches of government have, for the time being, diminished while the authority of
judicial branch and the Armed Forces (especially in the months since it
relinquished power to President Morsi in August 2012) has increased. The Armed Forces have become more
independent, constitutionally and even practically, from the executive branch
than at any other time in recent history and the judiciary has intervened in
politics with remarkable independence over the past two years. Sometimes, as when they dissolved
Mubarak’s National Democratic party, the courts gained universal praise. At other times, as when the Supreme
Constitutional Court proclaimed the first post-Mubarak parliament elected in
violation of the constitution, less so.
The courts in Egypt, as
elsewhere, are a counter-majoritarian institution; their role may seem to be
hard to explain in the context of the Arab world generally where such an
independent court system that asserts such broad powers of review is
anomalous. It is, in fact,
anomalous within the context of the French jurisprudential system from which
Egypt’s judicial system springs.
Briefly what we are seeing is the result of two trends. One is the culmination of at least a
hundred years of judicial culture in Egypt based on asserting the necessity of
the rule of law as a way for the ordinary courts to control the executive and
asserting claims of constitutional interpretive power. The other is the reality that, of the
three branches of government, the courts have been the one to which ordinary
Egyptians have resorted most frequently and with most success over the past 100
years. The courts can be
arbitrary, corrupt, and unresponsive but they have proven to be more useful
than the other branches.
It
is I think for this reason that there has been, in the years since 2011, so
little popular response to calls for the establishment of revolutionary
tribunals. Egyptian experience
with exceptional tribunals, whether revolutionary or military, has not been
positive.
Looking
forward then we can see two institutional forces with significant legitimacy:
the Armed Forces and the courts. And
we can see two institutions, paradoxically based on liberal notions of
legitimacy—an elected presidency and legislature—which are having the most
trouble establishing broad acceptance.
One problem for the president is that he tries to wield the power of his
office in ways consonant with a regime that is dead (the old republic) or with
a regime that has not yet been born.
Let us
recall his attempts to deploy the power of the presidency in the interregnum
between the old constitution and the new one. SCAF had dissolved the lower house after the Supreme Court
ruled it had been elected unconstitutionally. On assuming the presidency Morsi tried to issue his own
constitutional declaration ordering the lower house back into session. The courts, the SCAF, and significant
portion of public opinion rebuffed his attempt. I have already noted that his recent attempt to create
a state of emergency in the Canal provinces failed. In November he issued a constitutional declaration that
allowed him to replace the Public Prosecutor and also shielded the work of the
committee writing the constitution from judicial oversight. Massive demonstrations, including
attacks on the Presidential palace, forced Morsi to rescind the declaration
although not its effects and the committee wrapped up its work in record time
so that a referendum could be held thereby putting the threat of judicial
review behind it.
So,
going forward politics in Egypt appears to be bounded by four forces: the judiciary, the army, the elected
legislature and presidency likely controlled by the MB, and the mass public
protest. Mass public protests,
rare between 1952 and 2011, have often had the effect of forcing the executive
to back down on policies and the last two years, in which they have become common,
are no exception. Unfortunately
these protests have, over the past year, increasingly turned into street
battles between the MB and their opponents, especially in the provincial
towns. Even casual viewers of
Egyptian television recognize that the Canal cities and other towns of the
interior are now the scenes of pitched battles in which people—clearly not the
secular westernized intelligentsia—are determined to attack and destroy the
MB’s local offices and headquarters.
The most obvious example occurred in early December 2012 when the
national headquarters of the MB in Muqattam (Cairo) was torched. Generally the police do nothing as they
do nothing in most street fighting unless they themselves have been attacked. But there are also indications in many
provincial cities that MB militias and those based partly on soccer clubs now
engage in routine street battles with each other.
It
may come as a surprise then to realize that the Morsi government has been able
to carry out some of its responsibilities even if it has chosen to do so in
ways that maximize the influence of MB’s political wing, the FJP, in
politics. The government has
recently managed to pass a law allowing it to issue Islamic bonds over the opposition,
not of the secular liberals who play almost no role in the Shura Council (the
upper house) but over the opposition of the Azhar and the Salafi parties. The government has been able to
negotiate with the International Monetary Fund and the absence of an agreement
has more to do with the IMF’s concern about Egypt’s unstable politics than with
the incapacity of the government to reach an agreement with the international
body. The government does not, it
is clear, have much control over the police but the opposition leadership does
not have much control over the demonstrators. If the opposition leadership often appears weak and divided
it is equally clear that its base, especially in the industrial cities, is
unwilling to tie its future to the National Salvation Front. In other words, the broad outlines of
power are far from settled in the country.
New
parliamentary elections will be held beginning in April. The opposition has, for the moment,
decided to boycott the elections.
Not to participate is to allow the MB and other Islamists to dominate
the parliament completely which, given the new constitution, will allow them
fairly wide power over society.
Whether that will come with the ability to solve the country’s pressing
economic problems and increasing polarization is far from clear. Obviously the MB hope to ride out the
storm but if they do there is every reason to believe that their preference
will be to impose.
And
indeed neither they nor any other government will have much time given the
rapid decline of Egypt’s foreign exchange reserves, the evident lack of
competitiveness in the export of manufacturing or agricultural products, and
the country’s declining tourism (itself in part subject to competitive
pressures since the primary tourist destination is the country’s beaches not its
Pyramids).
Egypt
is by no means a country engaged in a democratic transition. It is a country in the midst of a
revolution. For better or worse, however, unlike the classic revolutionary
situations Egypt has a functioning and still respected court system (not true
of France, Russia or China) and a functioning Armed Forces which will intervene
to prevent the collapse of the state but not much more.
Egypt is
also a country whose urban population has been mobilized as never before and
which has stayed ready to take to the streets long after most people had
written that possibility off. It
is primarily the pressure of the streets that have pushed the political
situation forward, but at some point the political leadership of the country
must take up its real responsibility.
Egypt is now in a situation
reminiscent of what, in 1975, Michel Crozier, Samuel Huntington, and Joji
Watanuki called the crisis of democracy.
What they meant was that the levels of mass mobilization had undermined traditional
(that is, previously existing) relations of authority within the state, the
religious institutions, and elsewhere.
The masses were too eager to participate and thus, through an excess of
democratic aspirations and activity, threatened democracy itself at least as
Crozier, Huntington and Watanuki (and the Trilateral Commission) understood it.
The decline of authority, or
haibat al-dawlah as the Arabic
equivalent employed in Egypt today has it, was a moral as well as a political
crisis in the minds of these three distinguished conservative
intellectuals. They could hardly
imagine how such a chaotic situation would end well. The world of
the advanced industrial societies differs today from the one that existed in
the first two-thirds of the twentieth century and probably also from the one
that the authors of the report might have preferred. The revolutionary democratic impulse that they feared
was contained for many reasons, not least of which was the adjustment of
institutions and elites to new ways of governing. To paraphrase
Lenin, revolutionary situations occur when elites can no longer govern in the
old way and large numbers of people want to live in some as yet unspecified new
way.
What might
this mean for Egypt? For the MB
this may mean that winning elections is no longer anywhere near sufficient as a
goal. To succeed they will need to
find a different way of governing.
Today’s polarizing conflicts in Egypt are far from limited to differences
between the MB and a secular, middle class (or Facebook) opposition. It is possible that, for example, many
of the young people who showed up to dance the “Harlem Shake” in front of the
Muslim Brothers’ national headquarters were engaged in middle class mockery. If that were the opposition with which
the MB had to contend they would be in a very different situation than they
find themselves. The dock workers
who have several times shut down the port at Ain Sokhna (most recently in mid-February 2013)
were interested neither in embarrassing the MB nor in line dancing. Nor are industrialists like Magdi Tolba
dancing for joy: the weakened
pound is causing nearly as many problems as it solves for textile exporters
like him.
The National
Salvation Front faces its own problems.
Frequently derided as feckless and irresponsible, they have the opposite
problem of the MB: a political coalition that is sufficiently broad and whose
institutional connection to its possible electoral base is sufficiently tenuous
that they cannot find a way to compete coherently in the electoral process. Whether the boycott
strips the elections of legitimacy or locks the opposition into the political
wilderness remains to be seen.
Even a
large electoral majority in parliamentary elections may not, for the
foreseeable future, translate into viable governance as popular demands
continue to be expressed in ways that are both democratic and disruptive and as
the political leadership of the country finds it difficult to agree on a common
path forward.
