Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T15:16:53.831Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Counter-revolution as international phenomenon: the case of Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2019

Jamie Allinson*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
*
*Corresponding author. Email: j.allinson@ed.ac.uk

Abstract

This article argues that the case of the Egyptian 2011 revolution forces us to rethink accounts of counter-revolution in International Relations. The debate over whether the events of 2011–13 in Egypt should be considered a ‘revolution’ or merely a ‘revolt’ or ‘uprising’ reflects an understanding of revolutions as closed and discrete events, and therefore of international counter-revolution as significant only after revolutionary movements have seized sovereign power. Against this account, which maintains the idea of sovereignty as the boundary between domestic/social and international/ geopolitical phenomena, I argue that counter-revolutions can operate across boundaries during revolutionary situations before and to prevent revolutionary transformation and therefore affect whether a revolutionary sovereign power is established at all. Such counter-revolutions draw upon both the ideological inheritance of historical strategies of international ‘catch-up’, and the cross-border class relations that these different strategies bring into being. In the Egyptian case, the counter-revolution thus relied upon two factors deriving from this strategy: the ideological inheritance of Nasserism as a response to international hierarchy, and the integration of the post-Nasser Egyptian ruling elite with Gulf financial, and US security, networks.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© British International Studies Association 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Mark Beissinger, ‘The Changing Face of Revolution 1900–2014’, Social and Political Science Seminar, University of Edinburgh School of, 2015.

2 A transition well mapped in Beck, Colin J., Radicals, Revolutionaries and Terrorists (Cambridge: Polity, 2015)Google Scholar ; Lawson, George, Negotiated Revolutions: The Czech Republic, South Africa and Chile (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005)Google Scholar ; Wydra, Harald, ‘Revolution and democracy: the European experience’, in John Foran, David Lane, and Andreja Zivkovic (eds), Revolution in the Making of the Modern World: Social Identities, Globalization and Modernity (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 2744 Google Scholar .

3 Amr Mostafa, ‘Egypt strikes two revolutions from history textbooks’, Al-Monitor (2017).

4 Bisley, Nick, ‘Counter-revolution, order and international relations’, Review of International Studies, 30:1 (2004), pp. 4969 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

5 Rosenberg, Justin, ‘Why is there no international historical sociology?’, European Journal of International Relations, 12:3 (2006), p. 312 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

6 Skocpol, Theda, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 4 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

7 Brownlee, Jason, Masoud, Tarek, and Reynolds, Nathan, The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Brownlee, Jason, Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the US-Egyptian Alliance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 152153 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; see also Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, ‘This is not a revolution’, New York Review of Books (2012); Roberts, Hugh, ‘The revolution that wasn’t’, London Review of Books, 35:17 (2013)Google Scholar .

8 Brown, Nathan J., ‘Egypt’s failed transition’, Journal of Democracy, 24:4 (2013), pp. 4558 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Brownlee, Masoud, and Reynolds, The Arab Spring, p. 23; Stepan, Alfred and Linz, Juan, ‘Democratization theory and the Arab Spring’, Journal of Democracy, 24:2 (2013), pp. 2122 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

9 Springborg, Robert, ‘The rewards of failure: Persisting military rule in Egypt’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 44:4 (2017), p. 483 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; see also Holger Albrecht, Aurel Croissant, and Fred H. Lawson (eds), ‘Military engagement in mobilizing societies: the research agenda’, in Armies and Insurgencies in the Arab Spring (University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia, 2016), pp. 1–4, who avoid the term ‘revolution’ to describe the Arab Spring in Egypt and elsewhere, preferring ‘revolt’, ‘uprising’, or ‘insurgencies’.

10 Joel Beinin, ‘Was there a 25 January Revolution?’, available at: {http://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/27899/Was-There-A-January-25-Revolution} accessed 9 May 2018; Joel Benin, ‘On Revolutions and Defeated Revolutionary Movements: A Reply to Brecht De Smet’, accessed 10 May 2018; McMahon, Sean, Crisis and Class War in Egypt: Social Reproduction, Factional Realignments and the Global Political Economy (London: Zed Books, 2016), p. 3 Google Scholar .

11 Brownlee, Democracy Prevention, pp. 10, 123.

12 See, for example, Anievas, Alexander, ‘Revolutions and international relations: Rediscovering the classical bourgeois revolutions’, European Journal of International Relations, 21:4 (2015), pp. 841866 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Halliday, Fred, Revolution and World Politics: The Rise and Fall of the Sixth World Power (London: Macmillan, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Halliday, Fred, ‘The great anomaly’, Review of International Studies, 27:4 (2001), pp. 693699 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; George Lawson, ‘Revolutions and the international’, Theory and Society, 44:4 (2015), pp. 299–319; Panah, Maryam H., ‘Social revolution: the emergence of an agenda in international relations’, Review of International Studies, 28:2 (2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

13 These include Armstrong, David, Revolution and World Order: The Revolutionary State in International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Bukovansky, Mlada, ‘The altered state and the state of nature: the French Revolution and international politics’, Review of International Studies, 25:2 (1999), pp. 197216 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Bukovansky, Mlada, Legitimacy and Power Politics: The American and French Revolutions in International Political Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002)Google Scholar ; earlier examples are to be found in Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society (London: Macmillan, 1995)Google Scholar ; Calvert, Peter, Revolution and International Politics (London: Bloomsbury, 2016)Google Scholar ; Jervis, Robert, ‘Socialization, revolutionary states and domestic politics’, International Politics, 52:5 (2015), pp. 609616 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Terhalle, Maximilian, ‘Revolutionary power and socialization: Explaining the persistence of revolutionary zeal in Iran’s foreign policy’, Security Studies, 18:3 (2009), pp. 557586 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Walt, Stephen M., Revolution and War (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1996)Google Scholar ; Walt, Stephen M., ‘Nothing revolutionary’, Review of International Studies, 27:4 (2001), pp. 687692 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Wight, Martin, Power Politics (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1978)Google Scholar .

14 Anievas, ‘Revolutions and international relations’; Beck, Colin, ‘Reflections on the revolutionary wave in 2011’, Theory and Society, 43:2 (2014), pp. 192223 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Beck, Radicals, Revolutionaries and Terrorists; Davidson, Neil, How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? (New York: Haymarket, 2012)Google Scholar ; Foran, John, Taking Power: On the Origins of Third World Revolutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Goldstone, Jack, Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991)Google Scholar ; Goodwin, Jeff, No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements 1945–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Halliday, Revolution and World Politics; Lawson, Negotiated Revolutions; Lawson, ‘Revolutions and the international’; Lawson, George, ‘Revolution, nonviolence, and the Arab uprisings’, Mobilization, 20:4 (2015), pp. 453470 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Ritter, Daniel, The Iron Cage of Liberalism: International Politics and Unarmed Revolutions in the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)Google Scholar .

15 Goldstone, Jack, ‘Understanding the revolutions of 2011’, Foreign Affairs, 90:3 (2011)Google Scholar ; Lawson, ‘Revolution, nonviolence, and the Arab uprisings’; Lawson, George, ‘Within and beyond the “fourth generation” of revolutionary theory’, Sociological Theory, 34:2 (2016), pp. 106127 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Ritter, The Iron Cage of Liberalism; Stephen Walt, ‘ISIS as revolutionary state: New twist on an old story’, Foreign Affairs, November/December (2015).

16 The beginnings of a research programme are evident in Bisley, ‘Counter-revolution, order and international relations’; Lee Jones, ‘Sovereignty, intervention and social order in revolutionary times’, Review of International Studies (2013); Slater, Dan and Rush Smith, Nicholas, ‘The power of counterrevolution: Elitist origins of political order in postcolonial Asia and Africa’, American Journal of Sociology, 121:5 (2016), pp. 14721516 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Weyland, Kurt, ‘Crafting counterrevolution: How reactionaries learned to combat change in 1848’, American Political Science Review, 110:2 (2016), pp. 215231 CrossRefGoogle Scholar , discussed further below.

17 Rosenberg, ‘Why is there no international historical sociology?’, p. 311.

18 Walt, Revolution and War, pp. 4–12; Wight, Power Politics, pp. 90–4; David Armstrong, Revolution and World Order, pp. 4–10; Jervis, ‘Socialization, revolutionary states and domestic politics’, pp. 609–11; Terhalle, ‘Revolutionary power and socialization’, pp. 557–61; Jeff D. Colgan, ‘Domestic revolutionary leaders and international conflict’, World Politics, 65:4 (2013), pp. 656–90.

19 Wight, Power Politics, p. 90.

20 Walt, Revolution and War, pp. 4–6; Walt, ‘Nothing revolutionary’, pp. 689–90.

21 See, for example, Agha and Malley, This is not a revolution; Roberts, ‘The revolution that wasn’t’.

22 The convention of dividing the historical sociological scholarship on revolutions into ‘generations’ has become a widely accepted, if roughly hewn, heuristic. The first generation refers to those interwar scholars, such as Crane Brinton, who viewed revolutionary processes through organicist metaphor rather than systematic comparison; the second, its most representative figure being Ted Gurr, saw the phenomenon rather as simply one subset of violent political behaviour, amenable to statistical and psychological analysis. Both took revolution as a case of pathology, either of individuals or societies. The third and fourth generations, from which most of the scholarship on revolutions has sprung, treats revolution rather as a general, or at least generative, condition of capitalist modernity; the difference between the two lying in the structural emphasis of the former criticised by the (proclaimed) multicausal, conjunctural, and agent-centred research agenda of the latter. This typology is contained in the periodic reviews of the field of revolutionary theory that appear at a rate of roughly one per decade. John Foran, ‘Theories of revolution revisited: Toward a fourth generation’, Sociological Theory, 11:1 (1993), pp. 1–20; Jack Goldstone, ‘Theories of revolution: the third generation’, World Politics, 32:3 (1980), pp. 425–53; Goldstone, ‘Understanding the revolutions of 2011’; Lawson, ‘Within and beyond the “fourth generation”’.

23 Tilly, Charles, European Revolutions 1492–1992 (London: Wiley, 1996), p. 9 Google Scholar ; see also Wickham-Crowley, Timothy, Guerillas and Revolution in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 155 Google Scholar .

24 Brecht De Smet, ‘Theory and its consequences: a reply to Joel Beinin’, accessed 9 May 2018; Smet, Brecht De, ‘Revolution and counter-revolution in Egypt’, Science and Society, 78:1 (2014), pp. 1113 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; De Smet, Brecht, Gramsci on Tahrir (London: Pluto, 2016), pp. 7077 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Abdelrahman, Maha, Egypt’s Long Revolution: Protest Movements and Uprisings (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014), pp. 1013 Google Scholar ; Ketchley, Neil, Egypt in a Time of Revolution: Contentious Politics and the Arab Spring (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 56 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Bennani-Chraïbi, Mounia, ‘Beyond structure and contingency: Toward an interactionist and sequential approach to the 2011 uprisings’, Middle East Critique (2017), pp. 123 Google Scholar ; van de Sande, Mathijs, ‘The prefigurative politics of Tahrir Square – an alternative perspective on the 2011 revolutions’, Res Publica, 19 (2013), pp. 223226 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; see also Abou-El-Fadl, Reem, ‘Introduction: Connecting players and processes in revolutionary Egypt’, in Reem Abou-El-Fadl (ed.), Revolutionary Egypt: Connecting Domestic and International Struggles (London: Routledge, 2015), pp. 56 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

25 De Smet, Gramsci on Tahrir, p. 74; see also Goodwin, No Other Way Out, p. 6.

26 Ketchley, Egypt in a Time of Revolution, p. 5.

27 Lawson, ‘Revolution, nonviolence, and the Arab uprisings’, pp. 457–60; Ritter, The Iron Cage of Liberalism, pp. 17–18.

28 Kandil, Hazem, ‘Why did the Egyptian middle class march to Tahrir Square?’, Mediterranean Politics, 17:2 (2012), pp. 197215 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

29 Ismail, Salwa, ‘The Egyptian Revolution against the police’, Social Research, 79:2 (2012), pp. 444445 Google Scholar ; Ketchley, Egypt in a Time of Revolution, pp. 29–35.

30 Abul-Magd, Zeinab, ‘Occupying Tahrir Square: the myths and the realities of the Egyptian Revolution’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 111:3 (2012), pp. 566571 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

31 Abdelrahman, Egypt’s Long Revolution, p. 64; Anne Alexander and Mostafa Bassiouny, Bread, Freedom and Social Justice: Workers and the Egyptian Revolution (London: Zed Books, 2014), pp. 202–03.

32 Abou-El-Fadl, ‘Introduction’, pp. 9–10.

33 Marfleet, Phil, Egypt: Contested Revolution (London: Pluto, 2016), p. xii CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Shereen Abouelnaga, ‘Reconstituting gender in post-revolution Egypt’, in Rethinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance: Lessons from the Arab World (New York: Zed Books, 2014), pp. 41–7.

34 Matthies-Boon, Vivienne and Head, Naomi, ‘Trauma as counter-revolutionary colonisation: Narratives from (post-)revolutionary Egypt’, Journal of International Political Theory, 14:3 (2017), p. 70 Google Scholar .

35 van de Sande, ‘The prefigurative politics of Tahrir Square’, p. 223.

36 van de Sande, ‘The prefigurative politics of Tahrir Square’; see also Alexander and Bassiouny, Bread, Freedom and Social Justice, p. 2.

37 Corinna Mullin, ‘The geopolitics of revolution: Assessing the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings in the international context’, in Abou-El-Fadl (ed.), Revolutionary Egypt, pp. 179–80.

38 Abou-El-Fadl, ‘Introduction’, p. 13.

39 Reem Abou-El-Fadl, ‘Between Cairo and Washington: Sectarianism and counter-revolution in post-Mubarak Egypt’, in Abou-El-Fadl (ed.), Revolutionary Egypt.

40 De Smet, ‘Revolution and counter-revolution in Egypt’, p. 35.

41 Ibid., p. 38; De Smet, Gramsci on Tahrir, pp. 208–20.

42 Alexander, Anne and Naguib, Sameh, ‘Behind every Caesar a new one? Reflections on revolution and counter-revolution in Egypt in response to Gramsci on Tahrir’, Review of African Political Economy, 45:155 (2018), pp. 100101 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

43 Hesketh, Chris, ‘Passive revolution: a universal concept with geographical seats’, Review of International Studies, 43:3 (2017), p. 399 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; see also Allinson, Jamie C. and Anievas, Alexander, ‘The uneven and combined development of the Meiji restoration: a passive revolutionary road to capitalist modernity?’, Capital and Class, 100 (2010), pp. 470474 Google Scholar ; Thomas, Peter, ‘Modernity as “passive revolution”: Gramsci and the fundamental concepts of historical materialism’, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 17:2 (2006), pp. 7172 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Davidson, Neil, ‘Scotland: Birthplace of passive revolution?’, Capital & Class, 34:3 (2010), pp. 343346 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; David Morton, Adam, ‘The continuum of passive revolution’, Capital & Class, 34:3 (2010), pp. 315342 CrossRefGoogle Scholar outlines a continuum of usage of the concept, in which De Smet’s account of the Egyptian counter-revolution would fit towards the expansive end.

44 Mohammed Bamyeh, ‘Ma hiya al-thawra al-muddada? [What is the counter-revolution?]’, available at: {http://www.jadaliyya.com} accessed 30 January 2018.

45 Khaled Fahmy, ‘Al-thawra al-muddada fi Misr: daur al-khauf-wa-taghul al-ajhaz al-amniyya [The counter-revolution in Egypt: the role of fear and the predominance of the security forces]’, Status Audio Journal (2016).

46 Matthies-Boon and Head, ‘Trauma as counter-revolutionary colonisation’, p. 277.

47 Tilly, European Revolutions 1492–1992, pp. 14–15.

48 Kurzman, Charles, ‘Can understanding undermine explanation? The confused experience of revolution’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 34:3 (2004), pp. 328330 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Lawson, ‘Within and beyond the “fourth generation”‘, pp. 112–15.

49 Chalcraft, John, Popular Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 3638 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

50 Foran, John, Taking Power: On the Origins of Third World Revolutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 202203 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; see also Goodwin, No Other Way Out, p. 45; Wickham-Crowley, Guerillas and Revolution in Latin America, pp. 322–3.

51 Slater and Smith, ‘The power of counterrevolution’, p. 1472.

52 Halliday, Revolution and World Politics, p. 207.

53 Bisley, ‘Counter-revolution, order and international relations’, p. 51.

54 Bisley, ‘Counter-revolution, order and International Relations’, p. 52; Weyland, ‘Crafting counterrevolution’, pp. 221–4.

55 Slater, Dan, Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Prress, 2010), pp. 1213 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Clarke, Killian, ‘Social forces and regime change: Beyond class analysis’, World Politics, 69:3 (2017), pp. 569602 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Clarke, Killian, ‘Unexpected brokers of mobilization: Contingency and networks in the 2011 Egyptian uprising’, Comparative Politics, 46:4 (2014), pp. 379397 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

56 Lawson, George, ‘A global historical sociology of revolution’, in Julian Go and George Lawson (eds), Global Historical Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 89 Google Scholar .

57 A transformation detailed, from differing theoretical perspectives, in Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu, How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism (London: Pluto Press, 2015); Barry Buzan and George Lawson, The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). This history of uneven and combined development, which provides the context for revolutionary upheaval, has of course been the subject of a wide literature, now assembled at: {https://unevenandcombineddevelopment.wordpress.com/writings/}.

58 Anievas, ‘Revolutions and international relations’, pp. 845–7; Rosenberg, Justin, ‘Isaac Deutscher and the lost history of International Relations’, New Left Review, I:125 (1996), pp. 315 Google Scholar ; Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, pp. 23–30; Walt, Revolution and War, pp. 40–5.

59 Lawson, ‘A global historical sociology of revolution’, p. 89.

60 Mayer, Arno, Dynamics of Counterrevolution in Europe, 1870–1956: An Analytic Framework (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), pp. 4447 Google Scholar .

61 Ibid., pp. 60–4.

62 Mayer, Arno, The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (London: Verso, 2010)Google Scholar ; an argument echoed in Halperin, Sandra, War and Social Change in Modern Europe: The Great Transformation Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

63 Mayer, Arno, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 52 Google Scholar .

64 Mayer, Dynamics of Counterrevolution in Europe, 1870–1956, p. 80.

65 Abdelrahman, Egypt’s Long Revolution, pp. 10–13; Alexander and Bassiouny, Bread, Freedom and Social Justice, pp. 10–12; Chalcraft, Popular Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East, pp. 165–9.

66 Kandil, Hazem, Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen; Egypt’s Road to Revolt (London: Verso, 2012), p. 233 Google Scholar .

67 Alexander and Bassiouny, Bread, Freedom and Social Justice, pp. 210–11.

68 Abdelrahman, Egypt’s Long Revolution, pp. 137–9; Ketchley, Egypt in a Time of Revolution, pp. 92–4.

69 Ketchley, Egypt in a Time of Revolution, pp. 97–9.

70 The name means ‘rebel’ in Arabic.

71 Rachel Aspden, ‘Generation revolution: How Egypt’s military state betrayed its youth’, The Guardian (2016).

72 ‘What’s become of Egypt’s Mohammed Morsi?’, BBC News (2016).

73 Omar Robert Hamilton, ‘Sisi’s New Prisons’, available at: {https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/07/14/omar-hamilton/sisis-new-prisons/} accessed 16 July 2016.

74 Matthies-Boon and Head, ‘Trauma as counter-revolutionary colonisation’, pp. 270–8.

75 Linah Alsaafin, ‘Abdel Fattah el-Sisi narrowly misses 100 percent of vote in Egypt’, Al Jazeera (2018). Sisi won approximately 97 per cent of the vote in each election on turnouts of roughly 40 per cent each time.

76 ‘Full English translation of Egypt’s security law’, Ahram Online, available at: {http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/87375.aspx} accessed 9 August 2018.

77 Official Gazette of the Arab Republic of Egypt, No. 33, ‘Anti-Terrorism Law’ (2015).

78 Amy Austin Holmes and Hussein Baoumi, ‘Egypt’s Protests by the Numbers’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, available at: {http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/62627} accessed 9 August 2018.

79 ‘Mu’ashir al-dimuquratiyya: 744 ihtijajat “amilyya mundhu mayu 2016 wa hatta abril 2017 [Democracy Index: 744 worker’s protests from May 2016 to April 2017]’, DemoMeter, available at: {http://demometer.blogspot.com/2017/04/744-2016-2017.html} accessed 9 August 2018.

80 ‘Egypt: Intensifying Crackdown Under Counterterrorism Guise: Emergency Courts Used to Prosecute Activists, Journalists, Bloggers’ (Human Rights Watch, 2018).

81 ‘Intl trade union groups write to Sisi demanding release of 8 Egyptian union members’, Ahram Online, available at: {http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/277754/Egypt/Politics-/Intl-trade-union-groups-write-to-Sisi-demanding-re.aspx} accessed 9 August 2018.

82 Arab Network for Human Rights Information, ‘There is Room for Everyone in Egypt’s Prisons’ (Cairo: Arab Network for Human Rights Information, 2016).

83 Basma Ghoneim and Hadeer El-Mahdawy, ‘Metro fare hike prompts protests and arrests, adds to the burdens of Egyptians’, Mada Masr, available at: {https://www.madamasr.com/en/2018/05/15/feature/politics/metro-fare-hike-prompts-protests-and-arrests-adds-to-the-burdens-of-egyptians/} accessed 9 August 2018.

84 Lawson, ‘A global historical sociology of revolution’, p. 89.

85 Mayer, The Furies, pp. 52–3.

86 Mahmoud Hussein, Class Conflict in Egypt, 1945–1970 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973), pp. 16–17.

87 Routine and violent coercion of labour was still a living memory in the Nile Delta in the 1980s, see Amitav Ghosh, In An Antique Land (London, 2012), pp. 215–16.

88 Beinin, Joel and Lockman, Zachary, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam and the Egyptian Working Class (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1998), pp. 395399 Google Scholar .

89 Hussein, Class Conflict in Egypt, 1945–1970, pp. 38–9.

90 Eppel, Michael, ‘Note about the term Effendiyya in the history of the Middle East’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 41:3 (2009), p. 537 Google Scholar .

91 Kay Trimberger, Ellen, Revolutions from Above (New Brunswick: Transaction Press, 1978), pp. 152153 Google Scholar .

92 Hussein, Class Conflict in Egypt, 1945–1970, pp. 77–80.

93 This incident, later memorialised as ‘Police Day’, occurred on 25 January. The initial demonstrations against the police in 2011 were therefore mounted on this day – hence the ‘25th of January revolution’.

94 Hussein, Class Conflict in Egypt, 1945–1970, p. 96.

95 De Smet, Gramsci on Tahrir, pp. 152–4; Trimberger, Revolutions from Above, pp. 154–5.

96 Hinnebusch, Raymond, ‘The Middle East regional system’, in Raymond Hinnebusch and Annoushiravan Ehteshami (eds), The Foreign Policies of Middle East States (London: Lynne Reiner, 2002)Google Scholar .

97 Hussein, Class Conflict in Egypt, 1945–1970, pp. 114–17.

98 Alexander and Bassiouny, Bread, Freedom and Social Justice, p. 45.

99 Salem, Sara, ‘Critical interventions in debates on the Arab revolutions: centering class’, Review of African Political Economy, 45:155 (2018), pp. 127128 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

100 Hussein, Class Conflict in Egypt, 1945–1970, p. 113. ‘Mahmoud Hussein’ was the nom de plume adopted by these two authors.

101 Hinnebusch, Ray, Egyptian Politics under Sadat: The Post-Populist Development of an Authoritarian-Modernizing State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 28 Google Scholar .

102 Hussein, Class Conflict in Egypt, 1945–1970, p. 177.

103 Alexander and Bassiouny, Bread, Freedom and Social Justice, p. 44.

104 Abdelrahman, Egypt’s Long Revolution, pp. 24–5.

105 Marfleet, Egypt, pp. 179–82.

106 Alexander and Bassiouny, Bread, Freedom and Social Justice, p. 45.

107 Kandil, ‘Why did the Egyptian middle class march to Tahrir Square?’, pp. 210–13.

108 Roccu, Roberto, ‘David Harvey in Tahrir Square: the dispossessed, the discontented and the Egyptian revolution’, Third World Quarterly, 34:3 (2013), p. 430 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

109 Kandil, ‘Why did the Egyptian middle class march to Tahrir Square?’, p. 208.

110 Shana Marshall and Joshua Stacher, ‘Egypt’s Generals and Transnational Capital’, Middle East Report, 262 (2012).

111 Springborg, Robert, Mubarak’s Egypt: Fragmentation of the Political Order (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989), pp. 213214 Google Scholar .

112 Achcar, Gilbert, The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising (London: Saqi, 2013), pp. 284285 Google Scholar .

113 Kandil, ‘Why did the Egyptian middle class march to Tahrir Square?’, pp. 194–8.

114 Andrea Teti, ‘Political and Social Change in Egypt: Preludes to the January Uprising’, Arab Transformations Working Papers (2017), p. 8.

115 Andrea Teti and Pamela Abbot, ‘Building Decent Societies: Economic and Political Cohesion in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia’ (European Commission, 2016), p. 4.

116 Abou-El-Fadl, ‘Introduction’, p. 13.

117 Marfleet, Egypt, p. 15.

118 Abou-El-Fadl, ‘Introduction’, p. 13.

119 Zeinab Abul-Magd, ‘Egypt’s adaptable officers: Business, nationalism and discontent’, in Businessmen in Arms: How the Military and Other Armed Groups Profit in the MENA Region (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), p. 31.

120 Ketchley, Egypt in a Time of Revolution, pp. 66–8.

121 Lawson, ‘A global historical sociology of revolution’, pp. 89–90.

122 Mike Giglio, ‘Mahmoud Badr is the young face of the Anti-Morsi movement’, The Daily Beast (2 July 2013), available at: {https://www.thedailybeast.com/mahmoud-badr-is-the-young-face-of-the-anti-morsi-movement} accessed 20 January 2018.

123 Abdelrahman, Egypt’s Long Revolution, pp. 110.

124 Ketchley, Egypt in a Time of Revolution, pp. 112–3.

125 Ibid., p. 112.

126 Patrick Kingsley, ‘Will #SisiLeaks be Egypt’s Watergate for Abdel Fatah al-Sisi?’, The Guardian (5 March 2015), available at: {https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/05/sisileaks-egypt-watergate-abdel-fatah-al-sisi} accessed 21 January 2018.

127 Giglio, ‘Mahmoud Badr is the young face of the Anti-Morsi movement’; Ketchley, Egypt in a Time of Revolution, p. 113.

128 Ketchley, Egypt in a Time of Revolution, pp. 113–27.

129 Ibid., pp. 113–16.

130 Ibid., pp. 120–1.

131 Rachel Aspden, ‘Generation revolution: How Egypt’s military state betrayed its youth’, The Guardian (2 June 2016), available at: {https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/jun/02/generation-revolution-egypt-military-state-youth} accessed 20 January 2018.

132 Aspden, ‘Generation revolution’.

133 Abdelrahman, Egypt’s Long Revolution, p. 115.

134 De Smet, Gramsci on Tahrir, p. 215.

135 Marfleet, Egypt, pp. 160–1.

136 Abdelrahman, Egypt’s Long Revolution, p. 24.

137 Sarah Carr, ‘Egypt under the New July Republic’, Jadaliyya (2 July 2015), available at: {http://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/32246/Egypt-under-the-New-July-Republic} accessed 21 January 2018; Joshua Hammer, ‘Egypt: the new dictatorship’, New York Review of Books (8 June 2017); Amr Khalifa, ‘Egypt’s age of intellectual fascism’, Middle East Eye (15 May 2017), available at: {http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/egypt-s-age-intellectual-terrorism-940558559} accessed 20 January 2018.

138 Hazem Kandil, ‘Sisi’s Egypt’, New Left Review, 102 (2016).

139 ‘Mubarak-era steel tycoon Ahmed Ezz to pay EGP 1.7 billion deal with Egyptian govt’, Ahram Online, available at: {http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/3/12/291888/Business/Economy/Mubarakera-steel-tycoon-Ahmed-Ezz-to-pay-EGP--bill.aspx} accessed 10 August 2018.

140 Abul-Magd, ‘Egypt’s adaptable officers’, p. 34.

141 This sentiment found expression in an effusion of Sisiana, from cakes baked in the form of the general’s face, to the pop song Tislam el-Ayadi, explicitly invoking the spirit of the 1973 war to praise Sisi. Abul-Magd, ‘Egypt’s adaptable officers’, p. 34.

142 Alexander and Bassiouny, Bread, Freedom and Social Justice, p. 246.

143 Patrick Kingsley, ‘Alaa al-Aswany on why he had to support Egypt’s military crackdown’, The Guardian (2013), available at: {https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/29/alaa-al-aswany-egypt-muslim-brotherhood} accessed 20 January 2018.

144 Lin Noueihed and Tom Perry, ‘With Brotherhood out, old order shapes Egypt’s future’, available at: {http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-protests-oldorder-analysis-idUKBRE97S0LF20130829} accessed 9 June 2017.

145 Marfleet, Egypt, pp. 200–2.

146 Jeremy M. Sharp, Egypt: Background and U.S. Relations (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2017).

147 Ibid., p. 24. The alumni of this programme included the author of a – somewhat perfunctory – essay on ‘Democracy in the Middle East’, one Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

148 Michael Schuer, cited in Mohamed Elmenshawy, ‘Is Egypt still part of America’s extraordinary rendition programme?’, Ahram Online (2013).

149 Brownlee, Democracy Prevention, pp. 114–15.

150 Hilary Rodham Clinton, ‘Question and Answer at the Munich Security Conference’, US Department of State, Former Secretary Clinton’s Remarks (5 February 2011), available at: {https://2009-2017.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2011/02/156045.htm} accessed 21 January 2018; Jake Sullivan, ‘Conference Call to Discuss Egypt’, US Department of State, Press Releases 2011 (9 February 2011), available at: {https://2009-2017.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2011/02/156284.htm} accessed 21 January 2018.

151 Sharp, Egypt, p. 24.

152 ‘Obama: Egypt is not US ally nor an enemy’, BBC News (13 September 2012), available at: {http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19584265} accessed 21 January 2018.

153 Adam Hanieh, ‘Rescaling Egypt’s political economy: Neoliberalism and the transformation of regional space’, in Abou-El-Fadl (ed.), Revolutionary Egypt.

154 Hanieh, ‘Rescaling Egypt’s political economy’, p. 164.

155 Ibid., p. 166.

156 Ibid., pp. 167–8.

157 Heba Saleh, ‘Saudi Arabia closes Cairo embassy’, Financial Times (29 April 2012).

158 Quotation from MB newspaper: ‘Justice and Freedom’, in Ketchley, Egypt in a Time of Revolution, p. 93.

159 Khatib, Lina, ‘Qatar’s foreign policy: the limits of pragmatism’, International Affairs, 89:2 (2013), pp. 417431 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

160 Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, ‘Morsi’s win is Al-Jazeera’s loss’, Al-Jazeera (2 July 2012), available at: {https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2012/al-monitor/morsys-win-is-al-jazeeras-loss.html} accessed 24 January 2018.

161 Khatib, ‘Qatar’s foreign policy’, p. 423.

162 Roberts, David B., ‘Qatar and the Brotherhood’, Survival, 56:4 (2014), pp. 2332 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

163 ‘Egypt returns $2bln to Qatar’, Associated Press (19 September 2013).

164 Al-Rasheed, Madawi, ‘Saudi internal dilemmas and regional responses to the Arab uprisings’, in Fawaz Gerges (ed.), The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 353379 Google Scholar .

165 Al-Rasheed, ‘Saudi internal dilemmas and regional responses to the Arab uprisings’, p. 370.

166 Hanau Santini, Ruth, ‘Bankrolling containment: Saudi linkages with Egypt and Tunisia’, in Thomas Richter and André Bank (eds), Transnational Diffusion and Co-operation in the Middle East (Washington, DC: George Washington University, 2016), pp. 6569 Google Scholar .

167 Kamrava, Mehran, ‘The Arab Spring and the Saudi-led counterrevolution’, Orbis, 56:1 (2012), pp. 96104 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

168 Kingsley, ‘Will #SisiLeaks be Egypt’s Watergate’.

169 David P. Kirkpatrick, ‘Leaks gain credibility and potential to embarrass Egypt’s leaders’, New York Times (12 May 2015), available at: {https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/13/world/middleeast/leaks-gain-credibility-and-potential-to-embarrass-egypts-leaders.html} accessed 21 January 2018.

170 Ibid.

171 Michael Peel, Camilla Hall, and Heba Saleh, ‘Saudi Arabia and UAE prop up Egypt regime with offer of $8bn’, Financial Times (10 July 2013).

172 ‘Egypt got $23 billion in aid from Gulf in 18 months – minister’, Reuters (2 March 2015), available at: {https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-egypt-investment-gulf/egypt-got-23-billion-in-aid-from-gulf-in-18-months-minister-idUKKBN0LY0UT20150302} accessed 25 January 2018.

173 ‘UAE covers cost of Egyptian lobbying in DC’, Mada Masr (5 October 2017), available at: {https://www.madamasr.com/en/2017/10/05/news/u/uae-covers-cost-of-egyptian-lobbying-in-dc/} accessed 24 January 2018.

174 Sharp, Egypt, pp. 6–7.

175 ‘Statement by President Barack Obama on Egypt’, The White House, Office of the Press Secretary (3 July 2013), available at: {https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/07/03/statement-president-barack-obama-egypt} accessed 25 January 2018.

176 Sharp, Egypt, pp. 20–1.

177 Ibid., p. 7.

178 Nael Shama, ‘Egypt’s power game: Why Cairo is boosting its military power’, Jadaliyya, available at: {http://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/34539/Egypt%E2%80%99s-Power-Game-Why-Cairo-is-Boosting-its-Military-Power} accessed 17 August 2018.

179 Ibid.