This chapter explores the emergence of a ‘new social contract’ – a planning initiative among Egyptian planners and international developers – and the social reform envisioned in it. The chapter first traces the emergence of the new social contract to planning initiatives conducted during the second part of the 1970s, particularly, to the 1978–82 Development Plan. The chapter later outlines the continuity in planning for socio-economic change in Egypt over time, and the re-emergence of the call for a new social contract in the Egypt Human Development Report project between 1994 and 2010. The second part of this chapter asks why, despite more than three decades of active planning, the new social contract continued to put forth similar policy recommendations when the government clearly did little to follow through with their application. I demonstrate that planning turned into a tool for obtaining economic and political rent that postponed or diluted the introduction of a new social contract in Egypt.

The birth of the new social contract

In 1961, the same year in which Egypt's initiative for the National Charter was introduced, the Egyptian Ministry for Social Affairs and Employment published a book titled The Social Constitution of the United Arab Republic. In the ‘Introduction’, Muhammad Muhammad Tawfiq ‘Abd al-Fatah, the responsible minister, explains that the purpose of this book is pedagogical – to enlighten the people, but also educators and decision makers, on the various venues available for achieving the social goals of national development. The social constitution here was a meta-text on how to guide society, as the constitution was the source of all laws. This meta-text constituted a social contract, according to ‘Abd al-Fatah, that had been narrated by the leader of the revolution and the president of the state. Arranged in ten thematic chapters, this book includes quotations from President Nasser's various public expressions that reflect different aspects of this social contract regarding social culture, the social revolution, the basic principles of society, social justice, the family, youth, rural areas, work and workers, production, cooperation and Arab nationalism.