Imposed Stability: Assessing the Egyptian Political System

Introduction
The phenomena of political stability and political instability have been given different attention by the academic community. In fact, scholars have offered many conceptual explanations of why and how people rebel, the causes of war and the dynamics of revolutions but few academic work have been devoted to explain the phenomenon of stability. This maybe because stability is the rule (in terms that everybody wants stability) and instability an exception, being much more challenging to study and explain deviations or anomalies than explaining what is commonly known, accepted and desirable.

Borrowing the concepts of negative and positive peace from the theories of conflict resolution, negative stability would be the mere absence of violent confrontation among the different actors within the political system while positive stability would be more than the absence of violence to include the absence of threats and the common acceptance of the prevailing political system by all groups in the political competition. This being the case, the former is much more suitable to explain the situation in countries where the process of modernization and nation-building is still weak, uncertain and the allocation of scarce resources is always not pacific. The later, used to explain the situation in wealthy and democratic countries facing few challenges whether from within or from without.

Put in this way, the present paper assume that the Egyptian political system has been stable since 1952, though witnessed small islands of instability. Central for this position is the fact that stability does not simply occur; it is often fostered, imposed, encouraged or maintained and, successive Egyptian governments have consistently combined different strategies to foster, impose and maintain stability. Those strategies include: Strong security services and the legal apparatus, elimination or co-optation of potential dissidents and elusive participation.

First of all we will bring the understanding of the concept of political system for this paper as well as try to forge a framework that can help us to understand political stability and instability. Secondly we will characterize the Egyptian political system. Thirdly we will identify the potential sources of instability for the Egyptian political system. Finally we are going to bring about the strategies used by the government to maintain stability.

A tentative Framework of Analysis
According to Roberts (1992: 216), the term Political System is often used to refer to the political arrangements of a society and thus is almost synonymous to the word “State”. More specifically, the term means the set of structures, process and institutions which interacts with each and other, and across the bounders of the system with the environment, and generally performs those functions such as conflict resolution and political recruitment to positions of authority. For this paper, we will consider Political System as a system of interactions within a society where authoritive decisions are executed in the allocation of resources or as Kienle (2001:6) puts it “ …the organization of political relations throughout the polity or political community as a whole with particular reference to the relationship between the ruled and the rulers”. Beyond the State organs (executive, legislative and judiciary), the political system does include different political parties, interest groups, NGO’s and institutions alike. It is within the political system where events like elections, unrests and revolutions take place.

The Political System is usually conceived as being an open system involved in exchanges with its environment and an adaptive system, capable of responding to stress as well as adjusting its outputs to the input conditions through feedback mechanism. However, it can also be a closed system where the leadership dictates its own policies with less or no consideration to the demands of the other political actors mentioned above. This being the case, a Political System usually becomes unstable when a group or alignment decides collectively to escalate the conflict or in extreme instance tries to overthrow the incumbent regime with clear intention not only to change the regime (political elite) but also, and mainly, to change the framework of the political game while the incumbent regime faces difficulties to defend and impose the actual framework.

Characterizing the Egyptian Political System
We can distinguish two main periods in the Egyptian political system. The first during Nasser was a populist authoritarian emphasizing an alliance between the rulers and masses in what have been called “social contract”. According to Baker (1978:61), a formula according with all social segments should give up their individual and collective civic rights in favor of a national project of development, managed by the government that would guarantee social justice by an equally distribution of national resources. The second period was inaugurated by Sadat with the new constitution of 1970. This period which still prevailing to date, is characterized by being apparently democratic, or put in other words, democratic principles are constitutionally accepted and democratic institutions such as parliament and judiciary are implemented and given an independent role. There is a virtual competition but the regime controls all the political game and often manipulates political processes including popular votes in its own favor.

From the above description, the Egyptian political system is not and has never been an open space of interaction where different groups freely express their demands (inputs) and the regime considers those demands in the police formulation (outputs). On the contrary, the Egyptian political system can be perceived as closed and exclusive in which the regime exert a monopolistic control over all formal canals of participation and dictate its own policies without a consistent consideration of the others groups demands mainly when such demands goes against its interests. This being the case, the stability of the Egyptian political system does not mean necessarily an equilibrium in terms of power among different groups that support or oppose the regime but, the regime’s capacity to mobilize the state’s resources to impose its own vision without being constrained or threatened by oppositionist groups.

Potential Sources of Instability
Although claiming to be a secular state, Egypt lacks most of the elements defining a secularist state in a broader sense. The regime as maintained its authoritarian character inherited from Nasser. The economic growth has been uneven being most of the wealth concentrated in the hands of few well established elite. Demographic pressures affect the country and large former rural uneducated communities have rapidly urbanized and become literate. Religious militancy is widespread threatening the political system. Any of these problems alone could lead to unrest and thus instability. Together they seam to signal a disaster.

Political exclusion
Some of the most potent grievances in the Egyptian political system opposing the regime and the different groups of interests are the lack of participation, violation of individual and collective freedoms and the lack of governmental accountability.

During Nasser’s era, a corporatist mechanism was implemented to prevent participation outside the national project of progress and development. Although Sadat introduced some political reforms permitting different groups to express freely and form political parties, the participation remained elusive and much worst during Mubarak’s era due to the over control of the instruments of participation by the regime. Decision- making still dominated by one man – the President – whom the constitution allows to extend his powers to legislative and judiciary branches, and the recruitment function of the political system is negatively affected by the patron-client relationship which gives privileges to some people in terms of kinship and not by merit enabling the creation of a net of vertical loyalties controlled at the highest level by the President himself. Furthermore, institutions for organizing political opposition are limited and have no real impact within the political system. Means to ensure accountability or checks on the government authority – a free press, an independent judiciary and a strong civil society – are either weak or kept quiet by the regime’s apparatus.

Economic and Demographic Problem
On the Economic side the situation has been going from worst to worst. In fact, most of the Egyptian population, particularly those young people recently graduated from the university, suffers what can be called frustration provoked by a combination of high expectation and lack of opportunities: a potentially explosive combination. The levels of unemployment amongst the youth have been growing since the late 70s and early 80s with the fall of the oil prices. Since that time, the Egyptian government lost direct rents from oil and most of indirect rents that were guaranteed by the remittances from abroad.

Knowing the bad experience from the 1977 bread riots, the regime is unwilling to implement major economic reforms. The formula is easy: Introducing reforms and loses control over society but permitting economic viability or not introducing real reforms keeps the control over society with economic stagnation. The government has chosen the later way and the strategic reforms have beneficiated a small number of people with no reflection in the society as a whole. However, rapid population growth is potential of destabilization by exerting pressures on the government to expand education, medical care and social service at the same time that the government has to limit its budget.


Religious Militancy
Religious militancy has posed a serious threat to the stability of the system in three different waves. First, at the beginning of the revolutionary leadership with an attempt to Nasser’s life that led to the banishment of the Muslim Brothers form public life. The second wave began after the defeat of 1967 and afterwards fueled by Sadat in his attempts to divide and rule. In fact, Sadat encouraged religious organizations to re-organize, correctly anticipating that this would reduce the influence of the then dominant school of Arab nationalism. In doing so, however, Sadat strengthened the groups that would later challenge the system, being himself a victim of his own re-creation with his assassination in 1981. The third wave emerged during the 90s targeting secularist advocates, religious minorities and tourist interests as a way to undermine the system.

Strategies of Control
Given this black picture, how the Egyptian system tends to survive and keeps its stability? The answer for this question can be found in the strategies that the government has been using to maintain stability. The ruling elite has proven skilled at anticipating and preventing political violence before it explodes by applying mixtures of strategies, using aggressive security services to monitor and at times suppress opposition.

Strong security services and the legal apparatus
The Egyptian regime has not hesitated to suppress all kinds of opposition against the system. Although most of the measures targeted Islamic oppositionists, Kienle (2001: 102) finds that actions of coercion are not only limited to Islamic groups but also shape intellectual environment by monitoring the work of intellectuals (academics and Journalists) leading them to make an auto censorship and avoid strong anti-government or anti-systemic statements.

Vital to restrain anger, protect the system and maintain stability is the use of the legal apparatus being the emergency low the cornerstone of such legal provisions. In fact, Egypt has been in a virtually permanent state of emergency since 1952 and since 1981 the emergence low has been successively renewed until nowadays. This constant renewal and instrumentalization of the emergence low by the regime to prevent vaguely defined dangers – diagnosed by the president – makes almost everything opposing the establishment as crime against the system and thus subjected to censorship.

Alongside with the emergency low, parallel lows have been adopted to protect the system. Under Sadat we find the cases of law n. 33 of 1978 concerning the protection of the internal front and social peace providing sanctions against those who questioned the principles of the revolution and the law n. 95 of 1980 concerning the protection of values from shame, known as the law of shame which allowed the punishment of any act contrary to morality, as defined by the regime (Kienle, 2001:19). Under Mubarak we can point the law 108 of 1992 directed against the rise of political Islam and other forms of political mobilization by prohibiting party activities by any group before acquiring official recognition by the committee for political parties affairs.


Elimination or co-optation of potential dissidents
The use of the military courts to judge and sentence civilians is another strategy used by the regime to eliminate potential dissidents by sentencing them to death or life imprisonment without giving them an opportunity to appeal from such decision. Although some of the trials in the military courts have to do with questions of national security, most of them are politically motivated in terms that such person or group represented a serious threat for the stability of the regime and not the system as a whole. Fahmy (2002:105) describes this form of control as co-integrationism, mening the “system of state’s control over the various interest groups through a strategy of co-optation of top group leaders into the system and integrating their interests with that of the state using special privileges, patronage networks and institutional corruption”. The difference with the former system of corporatism used by Nasser is, according to the same source, while corporatism benefits the broader segment of group members economically and socially, co-integrationism benefits only selected leaders and is achieved at the expense of the broader segments of group members.

Furthermore, using the NDP (National Democratic Party) to recruit and domesticate potentially oppositionists is another form used by the regime to contain and control potential dissidents. In fact, in electoral times, people running as independent with strong possibilities to be elected are always invited to join the ruling party providing them with privileges while silencing their critical voice. During Nasser, the co-optation was secured by the corporatist mechanism which provided the National Union and its successor the Arab Socialist Union as the single space of participation being the participation in different mass organizations conditioned by membership in the Arab Socialist Union until mid 70s.

Elusive participation
During Nasser the pseudo participation was performed within National Union and its successor ASU, however, such participation did not include opposition against the regime. Different segments of the society should be united not to criticize the choices made by the regime but to perform specific functions within the common vision which was believed would drive Egypt to development. By doing so, the regime managed to control the society and give to each member of society the sense of ownership of the national project. Since everybody owners the political system, in this specific case, no opposition was supposed to emerge.

Sadat initiated what was supposed to evolve into democratic system with free participation in the political life. However this project was stagnated and the only thing Egyptian have is participating in facade election to choose their representatives in the parliament and confirming the president in a non competitive referendum. In fact, elections are neither supposed to bring about changes nor to reflect the public choice but to confirm the continuity of the regime and the prevailing system. This being the case, the regime assume the role of organizing the electoral processes as well as counting and discounting the popular votes to make sure that oppositionist elements are not elected and thus guaranteeing the monopoly of the formal instruments of participation. Kassem (1999) concludes that the process of allowing for the continuation of multiparty participation within this tightly controlled political arena, therefore, appears to suggest that the aim is not to provide political opponents with the opportunity to emerge as potential challengers to power but to incorporate them into the same structure of clientelist dependence.

Conclusion
While political discontent is obviously present in Egypt, the regime does not appear to be in any immediate danger mostly due to its frequent recourse to the coercive apparatus to suppress any sign of political unrest. The wise use of the referred three strategies (security services and legal apparatus, elimination or co-optation of political dissidents and elusive participation) to control the society resulted in defusing potential explosive social issues, preventing them from leading to violence. The government also inhibited social organization in terms that did not allow individuals or groups to mobilize and use violence.

Despite the considerable stability several problems may arise in the future. Such problems are related with economic reforms since any attempt to implement real economic reforms in Egypt requires cuts in social services and removal of all kinds of subsidies on one hand while enabling the emergence of a large middle class with different interests from those of the regime and out of the regime’s control. The resulting problems will be a huge social discontent from the losers, the low classes and enormous political demands from the winners, the middle class which the government will not be able to answer. As soon as the government is able to delay economic reform and maintain the actual authoritarian formula of repression and imposition no instability will emerge.




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