
Egypt

Egypt is an authoritarian regime. Since the fall of the British-aligned monarchy in 1952, and apart from a brief period from 2012 to 2013, Egypt has been ruled by its military. The Tahrir Square protests of 2011, part of the Arab Spring uprising, brought about the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, followed by a short-lived democratic experiment. This was ended by the 2013 military coup that brought Abdelfattah Al-Sisi into power. Egypt’s economy depends on tourism, construction, some manufacturing, agriculture, and foreign aid, and these sectors, especially tourism, have struggled with the economic effects of instability post-2011 and the Covid-19 pandemic. The political system allows for no real opposition. Political parties are weakened and co-opted by state security to the point of irrelevance. A new constitution promulgated in 2019 allows President Al-Sisi to continue to seek re-election until 2034. Continued detention of activists and journalists has translated into a paralysis of civic life. Economic instability has led to widespread poverty, with huge gaps in the social safety net. These conditions are captured in GSoDI data, with low and stagnant scores in the Representative Government attribute and in the subattributes for Civil Liberties and Social Rights and Equality.
Egypt’s population is 90% Sunni Muslim and 10% Christian (mainly Coptic). Conflict over the role of religion in the country dates back at least to the Arab Enlightenment of the late 19th century. Since the destruction of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been the largest, most cohesive opposition group, two trends have overtaken Egyptian politics. The first is the eruption of extremist violence both in the Sinai Peninsula and in religiously motivated attacks across the country, especially targeting Christians. The second is a top-down war on any form of civic organization outside the auspices of the government, whether that is by nonprofits, media, or labor. Egyptian society, for its part, has fought back, but only as small groups, struggling in isolation from one another. As more nonprofit organizations and activists are forced to leave the country or face arrest, they look to continue their work abroad. As the government (and especially the military) undertakes more and more ambitious construction projects, it is resisted by tenants of unregistered buildings. Remaining independent media outlets attempt to defend their journalists from arbitrary arrest. Nascent organizing by LGBTQ+ advocates is brutally crushed, and subjected to targeted harassment by regime-affiliated media.
With the reintroduction of military rule, Egyptians have fewer civil liberties, weaker civil society, and more dire economic prospects than they had even in the pre-2011 Mubarak era. Prospects of democratization remain low, given the tight control Al-Sisi’s government maintains over Egyptian society. The direction of Egypt will be best measured from movement in the Civil Liberties subattribute, which could presage a return to the pre-2011 status quo or a move toward deepening autocratization. Recent instability in world food markets has drawn attention to the precarity of Egypt’s food security, endangering the regime’s tacit contract of curtailed freedoms for economic stability. The Social Rights and Equality subattribute will track how well the regime holds to its end of the bargain, and could show either a reduction in the pressure on the regime or an early warning that popular frustration will boil over.
Monthly Updates
August 2022
The Egyptian government announced that it reclaimed a majority of Warraq Island, located southwest of Cairo on the Nile River. Several reports indicate security forces have evicted residents and demolished their homes, claiming they are infringing on state property, despite the people’s legal rights to the land, and claimed evictions to be "in the public interest". Residents remained defiant, with clashes erupting between residents and security forces, who used violence and tear gas to disperse the former.