A New Generation of Autocracy in Egypt Jason Brownlee
Assistant Professor University of Texas at Austin
“The great and proud nation of Egypt has shown the way toward peace in the Middle East, and now should show the way toward democracy in the Middle East.”1 With this injunction, U.S. President George W. Bush sought to catalyze political reform in the region’s most populous state. But his bold declaration has elicited the same kinds of faux liberalization that have characterized Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s quarter-century in power. While allowing a patina of competitive politics to validate the United States’ hopes, Mubarak has also confirmed his critics’ worst fears. Constitutional amendments in May 2005, followed by presidential and parliamentary elections that fall, benefited Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP) and exposed his opponents to state-sanctioned repression. This past spring, the regime further entrenched itself, deploying a second round of amendments that doomed any chance for vibrant multipartyism under the current president or his successor. The Egyptian elite has thus turned Bush’s call on its head, embracing the mantle of reform only to enshrine its dominance beyond Hosni Mubarak’s passing. Rather than blazing a new path to democracy, Egypt has embarked on the road to political dynasty recently traversed by the Assads in Syria and the Aliyevs in Azerbaijan. The lopsided battle over constitutional changes thereby signifies the Egyptian government’s success at regenerating authoritarianism while again suppressing its critics. This essay recounts the latest arc of liberalization and repression. It also addresses the reasons why hereditary succession may command the tacit support of most Egyptian leaders, focusing on the “transitional period” of the past two years, during which autocratic rule has been rejuvenated without being reformed.2 Jason Brownlee is an assistant professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin and a regular visitor to Egypt. His research on democratization and Middle East politics has appeared in Studies in Comparative International Development and World Politics. He is the author of Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization. The author thanks Joshua Stacher for helpful comments on a prior version of this work. This article went to press prior to the NDP’s ninth general congress, scheduled for November 2007. Copyright © 2007 by the Brown Journal of World Affairs
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Jason Brownlee The Constitutional Amendment and Contested Elections of 2005
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When Bush reiterated his call for Egyptian reform in the 2005 State of the Union address, Mubarak appeared to respond. Mubarak’s four six-year terms in power had been approved through uncontested referenda, as had the tenures of his predecessors. On 26 February 2005 the septuagenarian president proposed amending Egypt’s constitution to replace these single-candidate plebiscites with multi-candidate presidential elections. But the measure, ratified by a violence-ridden referendum on 25 May 2005, did not deliver the political sea change initially promised.3 As the fate of Mubarak’s strongest challenger soon demonstrated, the amendment was carefully managed to foil genuine competition. In the multi-candidate presidential polls that September, twice-elected member of parliament Ayman Nour finished second with 7.6 percent of the national vote to Mubarak’s unassailable 88.6 percent.4 This relatively strong showing solidified Nour’s status as the leading oppositionist outside the contraband but active Muslim Brotherhood (widely regarded as Egypt’s most viable opposition movement yet prohibited from joining the presidential race). Nour’s success only intensified the problems already plaguing him and his party, Al Ghad (Tomorrow). He was harassed by state security and then robbed of his seat in parliament through electoral chicanery.5 His dubious defeat in the opening rounds of parliamentary polls on 9 November 2005 supported suspicions that Nour was the victim of an organized government campaign. On 24 December, a regime-friendly judge convicted Nour on orchestrated forgery charges and sentenced the erstwhile presidential contender to five years of imprisonment, a telling capstone to Mubarak’s year of reform.6 Even as parliamentary elections spelled the beginning of Nour’s downfall, the same set of polls appeared to buoy the Muslim Brotherhood, which won 88 seats—more than quintupling the group’s presence from the prior legislative elections in the year 2000. The Brotherhood’s unprecedented capture of 20 percent of the People’s Assembly enlivened the group’s supporters and disconcerted its critics. As was with Ayman Nour’s candidacy in the preceding presidential elections, the Brotherhood’s victories constituted not an irreversible advance for the opposition, but a gain the regime could neutralize after accruing credit for its alleged reform. Numeric success concealed qualitative setbacks, as official and plain-clothed government targeted the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership for defeat. The head of the group’s parliamentary bloc, Mohammed Morsi, lost his post amid state-sponsored intervention; anti-corruption champion Gamal Heshmat was deprived a seat amid similar conditions. Brotherhood candidates who surmounted electoral subterfuge composed a vocal parliamentary presence, only to find their legislative initiatives derailed by Mubarak’s ministers and the solid supermajority still held by the ruling NDP.7 Thus the Brotherhood’s expanded bloc commanded no
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A New Generation of Autocracy in Egypt measurably greater influence over legislation than its previous cohort. On balance, the 88 parliamentarians’ first full year in office seemed a symbolic measure to placate U.S. foreign policy makers and ward off subsequent pressure.8 If this was Mubarak’s ploy, it worked; abandoning her earlier tone of criticism, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was noticeably upbeat about local developments during her visits to Cairo in 2006 and 2007.9
Urban Cairo
Photo courtesy of Daniel Hudner
The autocratic wake of 2005 left reform advocates crestfallen, for the presidential and parliamentary elections had momentarily answered long-standing calls by Nour, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the broader set of democracy activists whose hopes they carried. Beginning in the spring of 2003, public protests over the second Palestinian intifada and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq had morphed into rallies directed at President Mubarak, his family, and his associates. Print media crystallized this discontent, with the Nasserist weekly Al-Arabi and the new independent Al-Masry Al-Youm assiduously exposing the regime’s excesses. In March 2003, an estimated 10,000 protesters occupied Cairo’s central square and chanters coupled their outrage against the United States with critiques of Mubarak and his sons.10 State security rigidly corralled subsequent demonstrations, but the reemergence of public protests amid the martial law–like conditions of Egypt’s state of emergency (in effect continuously since 1981) symbolized broad dissatisfaction during Mubarak’s fourth term (1999–2005). In December 2004, a new organization, calling itself the Egyptian Movement for Change or Kifaya (Enough), initiated protests decrying further presidential terms for Mubarak and condemning the rumored plan of a dynastic succession. Kifaya’s demonstrations varied in size from dozens to hundreds of protestors and seemed to embolden other groups to articulate their criticisms and manifest the depth of their popular support.11 By the time Mubarak displayed his newly minted electoral bona fides, Kifaya’s calls had lost their earlier resonance, mainly because the government had silenced so many advocates of reform. While Nour languished in prison, the Ministry of Interior
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Jason Brownlee began mass arrests of Muslim Brotherhood members in March 2006. As the number of detainees approached one thousand, the crackdown demonstrated the ephemeral impact of the Brotherhood’s expanded parliamentary presence.12 Over the Brotherhood’s objections, parliament renewed the authoritarian state of emergency laws for an additional two years, starting in April 2006.13 Other victims of the post-2005 backlash included veteran judges and intrepid bloggers sanctioned for exposing state corruption. Wouldbe contestants in local elections were also chagrined to hear they had been postponed until spring 2008. Hence, the trend toward muffling dissent and curtailing competition was clear barely a year after the May 2005 amendment had been approved, and it would only quicken in subsequent months. The sources of this indomitable autocratic drive—plus the signs of its next destination—are found among the regime’s ranking leaders and their shared commitment to retain power. Stewards of Democracy: The Ruling Elite’s Self-Legitimation
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President Mubarak’s much touted constitutional amendment in 2005 was a poor substitute for the political advances his critics had demanded. Rather than reinvigorating Egypt’s moribund political system, the measure reinforced what is arguably the main obstacle to electoral democracy: the ruling elite situated in the National Democratic Party, bolstered quietly but firmly by the state’s repressive agencies. Those who head the regime’s political and security wings have proven consistently unwilling to share power with their critics. Wrapped in the mantle of modernization and “new thinking,” the NDP has refurbished its organization while preserving its hegemony. Generational changes within the ruling party have not issued a cadre of soft-liners willing to partner with their counterparts in the opposition. Instead, a new Wrapped in the mantle of modern- guard of younger politicians has encroached ization and “new thinking,” the NDP on the domain of party stalwarts, only to has refurbished its organization demonstrate that they themselves were more interested in promoting themselves than in while preserving its hegemony. proposing reform. Leading this group is the president’s son, Gamal Mubarak. Beginning in 2002, the younger Mubarak and his allies steadily outnumbered old guard politicians in the NDP’s general secretariat, the party’s steering committee, and the president’s cabinet. Gamal Mubarak presently holds one of three assistant secretary-general positions, comfortably ensconced behind Safwat Sherif, the party’s increasingly ceremonial top administrator.14 Gamal also heads the NDP’s nine-member Policies Secretariat and much larger Higher Policies Council, a way station for recruiting academicians and priming them for future cabinet posts. Gamal’s group seems uncommitted to a genuine organizational cleanup, let alone an
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A New Generation of Autocracy in Egypt opening of the field for opposition candidates. Indeed, their own struggle against the old guard remains contentious. Even as the NDP’s Higher Policies Council crafted the May 2005 constitutional amendment, it remained under the close watch of Sherif and Kamal El-Shazli, head of the People’s Assembly and putative kingmaker of Egyptian legislative elections. In November 2005, new guard icon Dr. Hossam Badrawi lost his parliamentary seat to an NDP affiliate known to have El-Shazli’s backing. If the new guard’s actions demonstrated the limits of their democratic commitments, Badrawi’s loss marks the scope of their capacity. Gamal Mubarak’s colleagues have colluded with their party’s traditional bosses rather than reaching out to their contemporaries in the opposition like Nour. With the merger of its old and new wings, the NDP has co-opted well-known personas who previously advocated change, including Badrawi and former Cairo University political science dean Ali Eddin Hilal. While these Anglophone technocrats periodically aver that democracy depends on inculcating democrats, they are themselves helping to perpetuate authoritarianism despite democrats through the continuation of an autocratic regime impervious to moderate oppositional demands for reform.15 Given that Egypt now lags behind young democracies like Ghana and Mali, it seems likely that the NDP’s stewardship is the problem, not the solution. The new guard’s most prominent spokespersons invoke the examples of Asian developing nations like South Korea and Taiwan to argue that political reforms must be sequenced behind economic reforms. This dilatory logic thereby gains a veneer of social-scientific reasoning, yet obfuscates the NDP’s own role in preventing democratization and ignores contrary evidence from the former one-party communist states. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, economic reform has progressed most robustly in the context of competitive, free elections; political reform has spurred successful economic recovery rather than the reverse. In contrast, countries that eschewed democracy descended into a quagmire of stalled reform, where crony capitalists fed off the state while obstructing further change.16 This is essentially where Egypt’s state and society lie today. From a comparative perspective on democratic transitions, reformist elements within the NDP have been remarkably reticent to play the role of soft liners.17 Westerneducated academics and businesspeople have not reached out to non-violent opposition movements, nor have they sought counter-regime coalitions that could inaugurate free and fair elections. Rather, they eschew even modest liberalization despite the regime’s demonstrated capacity to repress radical groups whenever they do arise.18 This political elite still employs national security rhetoric to justify draconian assaults on civilian activists. During a summer 2005 visit to the United States, Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif explained the government’s disruption of public protests as follows: Well, we’ve seen some arrests yes, but first of all, the fact that there is [sic]
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Jason Brownlee demonstrations says a little bit about the system. We’re allowing people to express themselves through demonstrations. Now, in a society that’s still maturing . . . what happens is, and many times this happens, a demonstration does not stop at expressing opinions. It moves to becoming something of a destabilizing affect, for example, turning to violence.19
Five days after Nazif ’s remarks, an officially abetted assault on civil demonstrators in downtown Cairo betrayed the regime’s penchant for brutally quelling dissent. Through their tacit collaboration with government security forces, yesterday’s soft liners are today’s hard liners, the ruling party’s core strategists. Rather than working to democratize the regime, they have focused on succession stagecraft, coyly positioning Gamal Mubarak as president in waiting. Against expectations that such machinations would drive a rift within the regime, hereditary succession may instead nurture a consensus among incumbent politicians and apparatchiks whose self-interests are wedded to the regime’s preservation. The Collective Benefits of Hereditary Succession
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Beginning in the summer of 1999, Gamal Mubarak had risen steadily in the ruling elite alongside his like-minded colleagues. Through putatively meritocratic promotions in the National Democratic Party, the younger Mubarak could be groomed for the presidency in plain sight while assiduously denying any dynastic ambitions. The 2005 constitutional amendment put his disavowal under strain, however, for it opened an electoral stepping stone from the NDP to the presidency. Badrawi reinforced such suspicions when he remarked in summer 2006 that the party could nominate Gamal Mubarak for the next presidential election, scheduled for 2011.20 Gamal has thus become the undisputed heir apparent in a government conspicuously devoid of a vice president. While another member of the ruling clique could certainly vie to fill Hosni Mubarak’s post after his passing, the president’s son has a substantial lead at building political support where it formally matters—much to the contrary of earlier predictions regarding the impossibility of a civilian successor. While ruling party politicos are the face of Mubarak’s regime, the military remains its backbone. All four prior presidents (including the nominal executive Mohammed Naguib during the republic’s first year) came from Egypt’s armed services, leading some commentators to doubt Gamal Mubarak’s prospects.21 There are at least a couple of reasons, though, why the military might not only accept but even abet a hereditary transition. For one, the military’s role in public life has steadily receded. The Ministry of Interior under Habib al-Adly, who holds the rank of general, and the Egyptian Intelligence Services, headed by Omar Suleiman, are the primary institutions for con-
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A New Generation of Autocracy in Egypt trolling elections, demonstrations, and other opposition activity. Hence, Egypt has become more of a police state than a military state, with the numbers of state security employees eclipsing the military’s 450,000.22 The personnel trend toward a civiliandominated cabinet over the course of Egypt’s last two presidencies proves further that the military’s political role has retrenched.23 Consequently, while military officers and their patrons will presumably defend their privileges, which extend from country club access to neighborhood administration and business ties, their significance has noticeably shrunk in the years since Sadat transplanted Hosni Mubarak from the air force to vice presidency in 1975. The military’s most important interests may lie with a status quo–preserving scenario in which they retain access to political power but do not rule directly. A president with his base in the party rather than the military could be an acceptable ally, particularly if he is the strongest candidate for preserving Egypt’s annual receipt of $1.2 billion in U.S. military aid. Moreover, there is no reason the civilian Gamal would not work effectively with security professionals, thereby perpetuating the police state built up during the elder Mubarak’s reign. Additionally, hereditary succession would conform to political patterns in analogous regimes elsewhere. It is true that when viewed through the prism of Egypt’s recent history—including the overthrow of a monarchy in 1952 and subsequent rule by military officers—succession by Gamal would be unprecedented.24 Yet when placed in a broader comparative perspective, hereditary succession in Egypt would be quite conventional. In the past decade, sons of autocrats have taken power in a rapid series stretching from Syria (2000) to Azerbaijan (2003), Singapore (2004), and Togo (2005). Rulers in Equatorial Guinea, Libya, and Yemen appear to be headed in the same direction. The very diversity of these cases would seem to confound any search for a general explanation. Yet there is a political common denominator that runs through these cases and through Egypt as well. In each of One earlier scholar thus foresaw these instances the ruling party lacked experience in choosing a successor from within its few institutional arrangements own ranks and was essentially subordinate through which autocrats would to the president. The president’s tapping of his son as heir apparent thereby forestalled favor non-hereditary succession. an unbridled struggle for leadership. Father-son handovers then provided collective security for regime elites who preferred the preservation of their own privileges over a potentially destabilizing power grab. A similar process appears to be underway in Egypt. Rather than polarizing the civilian and military factions of Egypt’s regime, hereditary succession may cement a fresh coalition between outspoken party members and circumspect officers. Although the grooming of Gamal Mubarak has generated culturalist accounts
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about allegedly Arab traditions, his rise is more readily explained in political terms.25 Rather than being a dysfunctional method for hording power around the ruler, hereditary succession helps resolve the collective problem posed by non-democratic leadership transitions. Father-to-son power transfers prepare for a regime’s continuity without endangering the sitting ruler’s position. Rulers prefer sons over alternative figures more inclined to hasten the succession through assassination or coup attempts. More importantly, hereditary succession appeals to most of the surrounding political elites, the very pool of potential heirs not designated to fill the ruler’s post. By establishing a pattern for the preservation of the regime after the ruler’s death, other incumbent officeholders share an incentive for accepting the ruler’s appointee rather than vying against each other in a power struggle. One earlier scholar thus foresaw few institutional arrangements through which autocrats would favor non-hereditary succession, expecting hereditary monarchs to gradually predominate among non-democracies.26 This approach illuminates the constellation of actors assembling behind hereditary succession in Egypt. There is obviously no guarantee that even the most well-planned hereditary succession would be successfully executed. But the shared interests of party elites and security officials in the regime’s overall continuation may mean there is less tension around this issue than is often assumed. Evidence from contrasting cases also supports such an inference. In one famous example of failed dynasticism leading to a ruler’s ouster—the case of Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay—the regime had publicly split two years before the coup took place. Notably, in Paraguay much of the military favored hereditary succession, mainly for the reasons outlined above, and the country’s century-old party was a major opponent.27 The Egyptian elite has displayed no such fissures and closely resembles peer states like Azerbaijan and Syria, where sly constitutional engineering has presaged a hereditary succession that preserved the incumbent elite intact. The past year’s events in Egypt have further promoted Gamal Mubarak to the detriment of any opportunity for power sharing between the regime and the opposition. Constitutional Engineering in 2007 On 26 March 2007, Egyptian voters minimally turned out to ratify amendments of 34 articles in their country’s constitution. The changes had received due discussion within parliament but were publicly proposed and briskly approved within a week’s time, thereby curtailing public deliberation and opposition resistance regarding the amendments’ intended effects. The 2007 amendment package carried the same blend of superficial reform and substantive restrictions as its forebearer two years prior. But this second round of constitutional engineering went much further to exclude the Muslim
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A New Generation of Autocracy in Egypt Brotherhood, severely constrain the formal opposition, and ensure the power of the NDP and Gamal Mubarak after the current president’s passing. Ruling party member and political science professor Dr. Mohammed Kamal touted the latest amendments as a set of “very positive steps” that “give unprecedented powers to parliament.”28 Less ebullient outside analysts have cautioned that the 2007 amendments bode poorly for political reform. Freedom House warned that “they will further hinder political competition in a repressive environment,” and Amnesty International called the constitutional change Egypt’s “greatest erosion of human rights” since 1981.29 As detailed in a report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the revisions strengthen the regime’s political control and further disadvantage the opposition. Even if they lead to the nominal conclusion of the state of emergency in place throughout Mubarak’s tenure, the amendments preserve the president’s ability to try civilians in military trials—under the rubric of “anti-terrorism”—and actually reduce the opportunity for the accused to lodge legal appeals. Independent judicial supervision is supplanted by an electoral commission that is effectively subordinate to the executive branch. Most crucially for the exercise of political rights, the amendments bolster the NDP’s electoral dominance by symbolically incorporating the formal opposition and decisively excluding the Muslim Brotherhood.30 The threshold for presidential nominations is retained but lowered, allowing leaders of the formal opposition to ostensibly challenge the NDP’s standard bearer in future presidential polls. Without guarantees of electoral fairness by an independent arbiter, however, it is difficult to see how such competition will provide more than the kind of democratic facade practiced by numerous dictators elsewhere, including in nearby sub-Saharan Africa. Severe restrictions on the Muslim Brotherhood are consistent with this impression and suggest the Egyptian government is more concerned with burnishing its plebiscitarian visage than with democratizing its politics. The Brotherhood’s promising participation in elections and public life has now been constitutionally sanctioned by a ban against not only religious parties, but all forms of political activity based upon religion. Such restrictions will likely combine with electoral revisions to block the Muslim Brotherhood from competition and place the formal opposition in perpetual orbit around the NDP, jockeying for advantage while depending on a ruling party with no viable competitor.31 This regeneration of Egyptian autocracy seems set to coalesce in future elections held under a party-list system, also enabled by the March 2007 amendments. If most parliamentary seats are soon filled by party lists, the demise of individual candidacies will increase the power of the NDP-controlled Political Parties Committee and place the opposition further in the thrall of the regime it is supposed to challenge. In addition to marginalizing the unlicensed Muslim Brotherhood, party lists and enlarged
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Jason Brownlee constituencies will presumably help the NDP’s new guard ease ahead of veteran party members. Through appropriately high placement on the party’s lists, Gamal Mubarak and his technocratic colleagues like Kamal can avoid competing with popular local candidates and more easily transit from the NDP’s policy committees into parliament. Finally, the amendments designate the prime minister as the president’s official presidential successor in the absence of a vice president, a change that could be employed in advancing the Mubaraks’ incipient dynasty beneath a legal ruse. Conclusion: The Renewal of Egyptian Autocracy
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Early in Mubarak’s tenure, it was still possible to envision a halting and labored march toward democracy: two steps forward, one step back. Yet instead of using institutions as a springboard for pluralism, the ruling party has erected them as barriers to competition. Much like Iran’s infamous screening body, the NDP elite have turned themselves into Egypt’s own Council of Guardians: vetting, repressing, and otherwise obstructing the country’s incipient reform movement. Rather than relinquishing power to the millions of Egyptians whose interests they allegedly defend, Mubarak and his party continue to undercut their fellow citizens’ efforts to make government serve the people. Areas for improvement are multiple, but NDP stalwarts continue to avoid the kinds of real changes that would guarantee dignity and equality to those with a different political vision. In this sense, the potential succession of Gamal Mubarak is a symptom of the regime’s debility rather than a root cause. Dynasticism is an instrument for the new guard’s unremarkable power grab as erstwhile reformists become the latest in Egypt’s line of self-appointed stewards. Paradoxically, the regime sees its greatest threat in the moderation of its opponents, who determinedly advocate reform through public demonstrations and the limited formal channels—newspapers, parliament, elections—that the system offers. Because the opposition, unlike the regime, has refrained from violence in conveying its message, its continued exclusion is a necessary embarrassment for incumbents wanting to stay in power. Whether through force (state-sanctioned thuggery against peaceful demonstrators and voters) or fraud (the conviction of Ayman Nour) the ruling party is aggressing against the very Egyptian democrats it claims to await. In this context, one should heed Prime Minister Nazif ’s comment that the opposition will not be prepared for presidential elections until 2011. Indeed, Nazif probably overestimates the other parties’ ability to escape NDP-sponsored repression and develop viable political organizations in a state under martial law.32 It is not the alleged absence of democrats that most troubles the ruling elite, but the stubborn resilience of pro-democracy forces despite the regime’s attempts to in-
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A New Generation of Autocracy in Egypt timidate them, discredit them as radicals, or sabotage their organizations from within. These opposition forces have proven courageous but have not yet effected structural changes in the system. In light of comparative experiences in developing states this moderation may be part of what delays the regime from engaging in the hard work of genuine reform. Whereas most autocratic withdrawals occurred under some form of pressure that compels compromise, the current Egyptian regime faces a restrained domestic opposition and benefits from regular international support. Thus, the cohesion of Egypt’s leading elites may stem in large part from the absence of radical threats to their privileges and interests.33 U.S. backing for the Mubarak regime has played a role in the rise of an Anglophone, Western-trained technocracy poised to inherit and perpetuate an autocratic system. Oddly enough, given that his government is the second-largest recipient of U.S. aid, President Mubarak has attempted to smear all of his opponents as foreign puppets. Kifaya, Al-Ghad, and Egyptian judges have denied such ties while attempting, with moderate success, to return attention to the regime and its U.S. backers. Meanwhile, Gamal Mubarak enjoys an audience with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Egypt and even, during a May 2006 trip to the United States, the White House. These connections increase skepticism about President Bush’s eagerness to see Egypt “show the way toward democracy in the Middle East.” One interpretation is that the apparent tensions of U.S.–Egyptian relations were mainly for domestic consumption: Bush showed his constituents the Iraq War had spurred regional democratization; Mubarak went along while appeasing his local critics with another liberalization charade. For a couple of years at least, the United States could look like it was effectively spreading democracy, and an Arab autocrat could act like he was democratizing. If democracy promoters seek more encouraging figures to shake up old modes of thinking, they can invoke the example of Ayman Nour and his Tomorrow Party. Much like the centrist opposition to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, Nour’s party has the potential to draw together a broad array of anti-Mubarak groups for change. However, just as Gamal Mubarak’s ascendance signals the regime’s problems but is not the source of them, Ayman Nour symbolizes Egypt’s promise but is not its panacea. The most important step would be for all of those—in the regime and among the regime’s foreign patrons—who have been obstructing and resisting change to stand aside and remove the barriers they have posed to Egyptians’ expression of their own beliefs and realization of their own political visions. That would require a willingness by Egypt’s rulers to allow societal demands to chart the course. Instead, they seem to be ushering their countrymen down a predetermined route of self-preservation and political continuity. With NDP technocrats twisting laws and Gamal Mubarak newly wed, the country approaches its first hereditary transition since the ill-starred king Farouk took power in 1936. W A
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1. George W. Bush, “Remarks by the President at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment of Democracy,” (speech, 6 November 2003). 2. For background on Egyptian politics, including the earlier portents of dynasticism, see Jason Brownlee, “The Decline of Pluralism in Mubarak’s Egypt,” Journal of Democracy 13 (October 2002): 6–14. 3. Neil MacFarquhar, “Mubarak Pushes Egypt to Allow Freer Elections,” New York Times, 27 February 2005. 4. Joshua Stacher, “The Election to Prepare Succession: An Anatomy of Egypt’s First Presidential Election,” Review of African Political Economy 34 (September 2007). 5. Michael Slackman, “Mubarak Foe, Bravado Gone, Feels Victimized by Smears After Second-Place Finish,” New York Times, 19 October 2005. 6. Nadia Abou El-Magd, “Egyptian government opponent convicted of forgery, sentenced to five years,” Associated Press Newswires, 24 December 2005. 7. Samer Shehata and Joshua Stacher, “The Brotherhood Goes to Parliament,” Middle East Report 240 (Fall 2006). 8. Shibley Telhami, “America in Arab Eyes,” Survival 49 (Spring 2007): 108. 9. Mohammed Abbas, “Egypt Rulers Restore Grip on Power, US Distracted,” Reuters, 1 March 2006; USA Today, 17 October 2006; Jackson Diehl, “Rice’s Rhetoric, In Full Retreat,” Washington Post, 22 January 2007. 10. Paul Schemm, “Egypt Struggles to Control Anti-War Protests,” Middle East Report Online, 31 March 2003. 11. The International Crisis Group termed this reaction the “Kifaya effect.” International Crisis Group, Reforming Egypt: In Search of a Strategy, Report No. 46, 4 October 2005, 10. 12. US Fed News, “Egypt: Police Intensify Crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood,” 18 December 2006. 13. Daniel Williams, “Egypt Extends 25-Year-Old Emergency Law,” Washington Post, 1 May 2006. 14. For a description of how Gamal Mubarak has eclipsed his colleagues, see Joshua Stacher, “Egypt—A Leap toward Reform or Succession?” Arab Reform Bulletin 4 (October 2006). 15. Jane Perlez, “Egyptians See U.S. as Meddling in Their Politics,” New York Times, 3 October 2002. 16. Joel S. Hellman, “Winners Take All: The Politics of Partial Reform in Postcommunist Transitions, World Politics 50 (January 1998): 203–234. 17. Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions About Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). 18. A protracted internal security campaign against the Islamic Group and Islamic Jihad during the 1990s produced a ceasefire that has prevented the recurrence of widespread militancy. See Mohammed Hafez, Why Muslims Rebel: Repression and Resistance in the Islamic World (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2003), 71–76, 82–91. 19. “Newsmaker: Ahmed Nazif,” NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, 20 May 2005. 20. “Egypt NDP Member Hints at Gamal for President,” Reuters News, 19 September 2006. 21. Roula Khalaf and James Drummond, “Why Mubarak’s son will not lead Egypt,” Financial Times, 23 April 2001; “U.S.-Egyptian Relations,” Middle East Policy 8 (June 2001); Carol Giacomo, “Will the son succeed the father as Egypt’s president?” Reuters News, 29 June 2003. 22. Muhammad Abdul Aziz and Youssef Hussein, “The President, the Son, and the Military: Succession in Egypt,” Arab Studies Journal 9/10 (Fall 2001/Spring 2002): 80. 23. Ouda, Jihad, Negad El-Borai, and Hafez Abu Se’ada, A Door Onto the Desert: The Egyptian Parliamentary Elections of 2000, Course, Dilemmas, and Recommendations for the Future (Cairo: United Group, 2001). 24. Abdul Aziz and Hussein, “The President, the Son, and the Military;” Samer Shehata, “Political Succession in Egypt,” Middle East Policy 9 (September 2002); Mary Anne Weaver, “Pharaohs-In-Waiting,” The Atlantic (October 2003). 25. Charles M. Sennott, “Arab Sons of Privilege Inherit Power and Instill Doubts,” Boston Globe, June 14, 2000); Brian Whitaker, “Hereditary Republics in Arab States,” Guardian Unlimited, 28 August 2001;
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A New Generation of Autocracy in Egypt Editorial Board, “Dynastic Regimes,” New York Times, 25 August 2003. 26. Gordon Tullock, Autocracy (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1987), 151–157, 161, 166, 215. 27. Riordan Roett, “Paraguay After Stroessner,” Foreign Affairs 68 (Spring 1989): 124–142; Richard Snyder, “Explaining Transitions from Neopatrimonial Dictatorships,” Comparative Politics 24 (July 1992), 391. 28. Heba Saleh, “Rice tones down criticism of ‘difficult’ Egypt reform,” Financial Times, 26 March 2007; Anthony Shadid, “Apathy Marks Constitutional Vote in Egypt,” Washington Post, 27 March 2007. 29. Freedom House, “Proposed Egyptian Constitutional Amendments Another Blow to Hopes for Egyptian Democracy,” 23 March 2007, http://www.freedomhouse.org/printer_friendly. cfm?page=70&release=475; Amnesty International, “Egypt: Proposed Constitutional Amendment Greatest Erosion of Human Rights in 26 Years,” 18 March 2007, http://news.amnesty.org/index/ENGMDE120082007 (accessed 23 April 2007). 30. Nathan J. Brown, Michele Dunne, and Amr Hamzawy, “Egypt’s Controversial Constitutional Amendments,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC, 23 March 2007. 31. In elections this past June for the upper (consultative) house of Egypt’s parliament, all of the Muslim Brotherhood’s nineteen candidates went down to defeat (amid reports of voting fraud and voter intimidation), while NDP candidates won 84 of 88 seats contested (a 95% majority). See Dan Murphy, “Egypt vote shows unease with democracy,” Christian Science Monitor, 12 June 2007; Maamoun Youssef, “Ruling party grabs nearly all parliament seats in runoff vote,” Associated Press, 19 June 2007. 32. Nazif stuck to this assessment in a Sunday morning interview on Tim Russert’s Meet the Press. Meet the Press, 15 May 2005. 33. Nancy Bermeo, “Myths of Moderation: Confrontation and Conflict during Democratic Transitions,” Comparative Politics 29 (April 1997): 305-322.
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