5 - Groundswell
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2012
Summary
While the Freedom Agenda receded, internal challenges to Mubarak escalated. This chapter analyzes how Egyptian politics grew more contentious during 2006--2011. As workers’ actions spread, a “culture of protest” swept the country, and, eventually, millions took to the streets. The January 25 Revolution brought the Egyptian people to the fore of domestic policies and opened the prospect of a more equitable relationship between Cairo and Washington.
The potency of mass demonstrations against Mubarak raises important questions about the resilience of authoritarianism. In my prior book, for example, I maintained that changes from authoritarianism to democracy begin when elites defect from the ruling coalition. In Egypt, core elites stood pat for weeks. Dr. Hossam Badrawi, a quintessential regime “soft-liner,” later admitted he had favored the same limited constitutional changes advanced by Mubarak, Suleiman, and the White House; he never asked Mubarak to resign. Such fealty speaks volumes, for although the Egyptian uprising did not deliver democratization – or even regime change – it demonstrated the power of “bottom-up” mass movements to influence otherwise complacent elites.
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- Democracy PreventionThe Politics of the U.S.-Egyptian Alliance, pp. 123 - 153Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012