Youth Activism in Egypt

Islamism, Political Protest and Revolution

Ahmed Tohamy

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780857728920
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia mediorientale

In this book, Ahmed Tohamy analyses the often-neglected trajectory that led up to the protests in Egypt that culminated in the fall of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. Tohamy's assertion is that by examining the decade preceding this momentous event, we see that the youth movement far from being inert was extremely active. Tohamy uses the Social Movements Theory to argue how Egyptian youth became a new agent of change in the Middle East. By positioning the youth activists as dynamically engaging with their social and political contexts within a framework of opportunities and constraints, his analysis strikes at the heart of the debates concerning the nature and substance of revolution and its effects on state and society."

CHAPTER 1

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: SOCIAL MOVEMENT THEORY

Introduction

The perspectives developed by social movement theory (SMT), particularly the political process model (PPM), are valuable in illuminating the intrinsic characteristics of youth activism and explaining their prominence in specific contexts and periods. This study treats youth activists as agents of change and adopts the standard of a social movement questionnaire to provoke questions about youth activism in Egypt. As youth activism is treated as a kind of social movement, it is possible to offer various explanations of the conditions under which youth mobilization emerges and develops. In this regard the PPM assumes that movements emerge as a function of some combination of opportunities, resources and framing. However, the way in which these variables are defined differs from case to case and from one context to another. None can be generalized to explain all cases.

The purpose of this chapter is to reassess certain parts of SMT and particularly the PPM in order to provide and construct analytical frames to be used for the study of Egyptian youth activism. Our starting point reflects the underlying assumption of the PPM. But the study considers other theories and approaches, since scholars analyse social movements from four main perspectives: collective behaviour, NSMs, resource mobilization, and the political process model.

This chapter addresses the main questions and basic definitions of the main concepts of SMT such as PO, MS and FP, and then illustrates the importance of transitional and external factors in the emergence and development of social movements. It also explores some efforts to utilize SMT in a Middle East and Egyptian context, and discusses the limitations of the application of theory to non-Western contexts that are often characterized by political control and limited means for communicative action.

Defining social movements in contentious politics

There are plenty of definitions of social movements that reflect the essence of the concept and distinguish it from other concepts. Tarrow, for example, produced a rather abstract definition, describing them as ‘collective challenges, based on common purposes and social solidarities, in sustained interaction with elites, opponents, and authorities’.¹ Zirakzadeh's definition focused on the aim and level of change as ‘a group of people who endeavour to build a radically new social order, involving political activity by non-elite people from a broad range of social backgrounds employing a mix of socially disruptive tactics and legal tactics’.²

What is common between different definitions is that social movements call for change in certain aspects of societal order and that they interact with other actors in order to achieve this goal, with some sort of opponent or authority that they feel is unjust (Tarrow, 1988a[Q1]). This, plus certain other interesting features, can be found in the definition provided by Della Porta and Diani, who state that social movements are a distinct social process consisting of the mechanisms through which actors engaged in collective action are involved in conflicting relations with clearly identified opponents, are linked by dense informal networks and, finally, are characterized by a distinctive collective identity.³

In this regard, contentious collective action serves as the basis of social movements because it is the main and often the only recourse that most ordinary people possess to demonstrate their claims against better-equipped opponents or powerful states. This means that the role of ordinary people in contentious politics is the most remarkable element to distinguish social movements from other civil society groups, market relations, lobbying or representative politics. Indeed they bring ordinary people into confrontation with opponents, elites or authorities.⁴ Another distinctive aspect of social movements is their sustainability, which means that isolated incidents of contention, for instance a riot or a mob, do not represent a social movement, because the participants in these forms of contention typically have no more than temporary solidarity and cannot sustain their challenges against opponents. It is not a movement unless it is ‘sustained’. However, mobs, riots and spontaneous assemblies may be an indication that movements are in the process of formation rather than movements themselves.⁵

These definitions are useful in studying youth activism and social protest groups as actors that have been involved in contentious politics in Egypt. They are inclusive and allow for exploration of a variety of groups that use different methods to achieve their goals. These wide definitions and perspectives also make it possible to observe interesting variations in the mobilization processes of different groups.

It is noteworthy that there are various theoretical explanations of social movements. These theories can be seen as the building blocks of the sociology of social movements because they represent socially constructed images/perceptions of reality, which trigger collective action.⁶ As noted by Della Porta and Diani, these theories are rather fluctuant, as in many cases concepts and ideas overlap and change over time.⁷ This chapter discusses and reassesses the political process model (one of the four main perspectives used by scholars to analyse social movements, the others being collective behaviour, NSMs and resource mobilization) in order to provide and construct analytical frames to be used for the study of Egyptian youth activism.

The political process model

The PPM stresses the crucial importance of expanding political opportunities as the ultimate spur to collective action.⁸ It shares with resource mobilization theory a rational view of action, but pays more systematic attention to the political and institutional environment.⁹

Our starting point in studying youth activism reflects the underlying assumption of the PPM. It is widely agreed that PPM is currently the ‘hegemonic paradigm among social movement scholars’.¹⁰ It ‘dominates the field of social movement research by powerfully shaping its conceptual landscape, theoretical discourse, and research agenda’. Its domination of the field leads Goodwin and Jasper to declare that it ‘may be criticized, but it cannot be ignored’.¹¹

PPM emphasizes the importance of three broad sets of factors in analysing the emergence and development of social movements. This approach considers social movements as a combination of a movement's organizational strength, providing the means for taking action; their shared cognitions, providing the ideological motivation that inspires people to collective action, group identity and group action; and, finally, political opportunities, highlighting the political context within which groups can engage in contentious politics.¹²

PPM proponents claim that although social movements usually conceive of themselves as being outside of, and opposed to, institutions, acting collectively inserts them into a complex policy network and thus within reach of the state. That is, movements develop in response to an ongoing process of interaction between groups involved in the movement and the larger socio-political environment they seek to change.¹³

Political opportunities

Political opportunity is a concept that deals with the complex environments that the movements face. As Tarrow pointed out, ‘contentious politics emerges in response to changes in political opportunities and constraints’¹⁴ that ‘create the most important incentives for triggering new phases of contention’.¹⁵ However, the broader set of political constraints and opportunities is unique to the national context in which they are embedded.¹⁶

Tarrow identified a number of types of political opportunities, and other authors followed him in doing so.¹⁷ These types include:¹⁸

1. The degree of openness or closure of formal political access.
2. The degree of stability or instability of political alignments.
3. The availability and strategic posture of potential alliance partners and political conflict within and among elites.
4. The state's capacity and propensity for repression.

The main emphasis in the model has been on highlighting the various opportunities opening up to social movements. Collective action is structured by the available political opportunities. The activists can be expected to be encouraged by

relaxation in social control, the granting of electoral access, cleavages in previously stable governing alliances and the routine electoral transfer of institutional power from one group of incumbents to another who interpret the transfer of power as granting them new elite allies.¹⁹

Many researchers have focused on two particular dimensions of opportunity structure that are considered most relevant. Firstly, ‘the formal aspects of the institutionalized political system that involves institution and legislation that enable or prevent movement mobilization’. Secondly, ‘the informal identifying attitudes of, and practices pursued, by the political establishment in regards to opposition’.²⁰

There are many critical points of view to classify these four dimensions and the concept of political opportunity in general. First of all, a number of recent studies suggest additional dimensions to the political opportunity concept.²¹ Several authors do not restrict themselves to this ‘consensual’ list, they have added other political opportunity variables. Goodwin and Jasper argued that the four variables cannot by themselves ‘explain the rise of social movements nor could any other specification of political opportunity’.²² They concluded that political opportunities cannot be well defined because they suffer the fate that ‘resource’ often does within the resource mobilization model: ‘virtually anything that, in retrospect, can be seen as having helped a movement mobilize or attain its goals becomes labelled a political opportunity’.²³ They emphasized that ‘there may be no such thing as objective political opportunities before or beneath interpretation or at least none that matter; they are all interpreted through cultural filters’.²⁴

On the other hand, Tarrow responded to such criticism by confirming that ‘objective opportunities’ do not ‘automatically trigger episodes of contentious politics or social movements, regardless of what people think or feel’. He added that:

individuals need to perceive political opportunities and to be emotionally engaged by their claims if they are to be induced to participate on possibly risky and certainly costly collective actions; and they need to perceive constraints if they are to hesitate to take such action.²⁵

It is also worth noting that even though the definitions of these dimensions may or may not cover a political context ranging from facilitative to repressive towards social movements, the studies of political activism in ‘partial democracies feature an inopportune political environment which, from the outset, hardly offers any openings for social movement mobilization’.²⁶ As suggested by Rosefsky-Wickham, rather than relating political environment to improving political opportunities, ‘authoritarian empirical contexts call for a greater focus on how institutions and legislation shape and restrict movement mobilization’.²⁷ The concept still faces some ambiguity in the definition and ability to interpret all aspects of political and social structure and environment that face the movements. ‘As a result of the difficulties relating to the narrow political opportunity thesis, political process theorists added social/organizational and cultural factors to the latter's political ones.’²⁸

It is worth noting that the collective behaviour perspective, as one strand of structural theory, concentrated on strain as the root cause of social movements, and on individual and social psychological reasons for contention.²⁹ Consequently, social movements were considered a product or at least a manifestation of the social structure.³⁰ Critically, however, Wiktorowicz states, ‘Structural strain and discontent may be necessary, but they are not a sufficient causal explanation.’³¹

In the Egyptian context, the four types of political opportunities produced by Tarrow are far from enough to provide the comprehensive explanations for the emergence of ‘social’ youth activism. Notwithstanding that a specific kind of social structure has a specific kind of social movement, it is important to revise the Middle East political literature to discuss and analyse the political opportunities according to the different approaches and theories about the state–society relationship. In addition to this, the following chapters will te...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Theoretical Framework: Social Movement Theory
• 2. Youth Activism in an Egyptian Context
• 3. The State – Society Relationship and the Cycles of Rise and Decline of Youth Movements 1952–2000
• 4. Expanding Political Opportunities in Egypt 2000–10
• 5. Chronological Development and Formal Structure of Corporatist Arrangements in the Universities
• 6. Strategic Choices, Organization, Framing and Mobilizations: Case Study of Student and Islamist Activism
• 7. Strategic Choices, Organization, Framing and Mobilizations of the New Activism: Case Study of April
• 8. Using Social Movement Theory to Assess Egyptian Youth Activism: Opportunity, Mobilization, Strategies and Cultural Frames
• Conclusion
• Appendices
• Notes
• Bibliography