Reflections on the Failure of the Egyptian Revolution

Abstract: Between January 2011 and July 2013, Egypt underwent a revolutionary period. While the roots and sequences of the Egyptian revolution have been studied comprehensively, much less has been said about the reasons behind the revolution’s defeat. The reason is twofold. On the one hand, scholars prevalently have explored democratization’s failure. On the other hand, the way in which Egyptian events were understood logically prevented the possibility of analyzing the 2011–2013 situation as an example of a failed revolution. By showing that the emergence of democracy was the most unlikely outcome and adopting an inter-social approach, the present article deals with the failure of social revolution in Egypt. In particular, it argues that the interaction between worldwide ideologies, epochal intellectual currents and (supposedly) successful contemporary revolutions on the one hand, and an internal context shaped by the legacies of Nasserism, the peculiar fate of the communist left and the institutional environment on the other, negatively affected the capacity of the subaltern classes even to outline an alternative political system. The non-emergence of popular bodies rendered unlikely the collapse of state apparatuses, making it impossible for revolutionaries to take power by extra-constitutional means and determining the defeat of the revolution.