Whatever happened to the Egyptian road to Democracy?

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 2011, Egypt saw one of the largest protest movements in its modern history: the 25th of January revolution. One of its major demands was the call for democracy and end of dictatorship after 30 years of Mubarak’s rule. After ousting Mubarak, the Egyptian public sphere witnessed an openness. Even with increasing levels of oppression and violence, there were open spaces for freedom of association, expression, and demonstration, etc. Yet, in 2013 and with the intense protests against the elected Muslim Brotherhood (MB) president, the military interfered and ousted the elected president. In light of these events, Egypt witnessed a backlash against democracy under the pretext of fighting ‘terrorism’. Since then, Egypt has been seeing manifestations of this relapse on almost all levels, in terms of legislations, decrees, practices that closed the public space to any protesting voices, with higher levels of oppression and violence against the opposition and not only the so-called ‘terrorists’. In this context, this paper proposes to dissect the Egyptian stumbling road to democratisation since 2011. It examines internal factors as well as the role of regional and international actors in orchestrating developments in Egypt. The paper proposes that the process of democratisation in Egypt has faced multiple drawbacks, not only related to regime type (military rule) but also with respect to social movements, the involvement of regional actors, etc..