Conceptualizing Egypt’s Democratization Waves
According to the standard Polity IV scale, the Middle East has some of the lowest levels of democracy in the world. Most have strong autocratic regimes rather than working democracies. 1 The Arab world appears to have been completely bypassed by the three waves of democratization outlined by Huntington . 2 According to Huntington, democracy was adopted in three waves. The first happened across North America and Western Europe in the nineteenth century as a result of the French and American revolutions. The second started following Second World War. And the third began in Southern Europe in the mid-1970s, continued to Latin America in the 1980s and into 1990s. The next phase of the third wave consisted of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the transformation of Central and Eastern Europe beginning in 1989. Many (unsustained) democratic transitions took place in sub-Saharan Africa starting in the early 1990s and also occurred in various parts of Asia from the 1980s to the 2000s. 3 In each wave, there was a sudden increase in the number of countries embracing democratic ideals. The third wave, for instance, saw the number of democratic nations go from 39 in 1974 to 123 in 2005. The Arab world was interestingly the only major region in the world thought to be completely bypassed by the third wave—a phenomenon described as ‘Arab exceptionalism.’ 4
The sudden outbreak of the Arab uprising in 2010–2011 that removed the leadership of four authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya , and Yemen led to a reconsideration of ‘Arab exceptionalism.’ Some scholars argued that the uprisings brought a wave democratization over the Arab world, prompting some to argue that a ‘fourth wave’ had begun. 5 Advocates of this fourth wave stated that there were many similar elements to the wave in Latin America in the 1980s when pro-democracy demonstrations pressured authoritarian regimes to undergo reform. These similar elements led Middle Eastern scholars, including Plattner , 6 to suggest that the process and outcomes of the Arab Spring would mirror those of the third wave of democratization . 7 Also, Ahmed Ibrahim Abushouk stated that the ‘causative factors, features, and democratic transitions ’ of the Arab uprisings shared many commonalities with the third global wave. 8 Ali Sarıhan on the other hand concludes that he is unable to definitively define the Arab spring as third or fourth wave. 9 Additionally, some scholars opposed the idea and remained skeptical over the Arab uprisings . For instance, Henry Kissinger argued that the Arab Spring was not a democratic manifestation but a ‘populist manifestation.’ 10
It is argued here that, contrary to the literature, Egypt has in some way experienced and made reforms that coincided with all three waves of democratization suggested by Huntington . However, the trends, trajectories, and the outcomes of the democratization waves in Egypt were not similar to that of Huntington’s. The Myth of Sisyphus can be used to describe Egypt’s arguably failed attempts at democratic transition. These delayed and aborted transitions and fresh beginnings allowed for deepening authoritarianism as democratic reforms were employed by incumbents as a political tool to ensure their legitimacy was not questioned.
In fact, Egypt’s institutional and constitutional reforms started in 1866 and hence coincided with Huntington’s first wave of democratization. Egypt’s revolutionary waves occurred at the time of Huntington’s second wave of democratization, starting after the Second World War and ending in 1952 when King Farouq (1920–1965) was removed from power in a bloodless coup d’état. Additionally, the cautious political liberalization adopted at three different times in Egypt (from the 1970s to 1980s, from 1990 to 2007, and the 2011) share some similarities, in terms of causes and transition processes, with the third wave of democratization suggested by Samuel Huntington . Here, however, the Arab spring in Egypt is not considered part of a third or fourth wave but rather the first phase of the sixth wave of democratization, which extended from the summer of 2010 to the spring of 2011. The first wave of democratization in Egypt lasted from 1866 to the 1930s when the monarchy abolished the 1923 constitution and replaced it with the 1930 constitution. As a result, Egypt entered into its first short reverse wave of democratization, which lasted from 1930s to the 1940s. The second wave democratization of Egypt occurred from the 1940s to 1954, at which time revolutionary forces worked toward removing King Farouq and establishing democracy . The Free Officer Movement 11 both completed the primary goal of the revolutionaries and, at the same time, ended the wave of democratization when Nasser received power officially in 1954 and abolished multi-party politics and established the one-party system instead—the party of the regime. The third wave of Egypt’s democratization (the 1970s–1980s) coincides with Huntington’s third wave. Reforms adopted by the Sadat regime resulted from domestic pressure culminating in the 2-day nationwide ‘bread riots’ on January 18–19, 1977. 12
These riots were a result of Sadat removing subsidies from staples at the bequest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in order to qualify for international loans. 13 Only the deployment of military and the reinstitution of the subsidies ended the riots. However, the main reason for Sadat’s liberalization reforms was to build legitimacy, not to work toward democracy . Egypt’s third wave of democratization in the 1970s was a time when Sadat initiated political and economic liberalization not seen since the 1952 coup . He abolished Egypt’s centralized economy and ended the one-party system —reinstating a multi-partisan system instead. However, in contrast to the semi-liberal experiment Egypt had between 1923 and 1952 when the Egypt’s true liberal political elite flourished, Sadat developed a semi-liberal system but without any true liberals. Rather, Sadat’s reforms helped create a new non-liberal political and economic elite allied and loyal to the regime. The fourth wave of Egypt democratization from the 1980s to 1990s came as a result of domestic pressure, increasing socioeconomic problems, and external pressures such as the downfall of the Soviet Union and the rise of democratization waves in Eastern Europe . The fifth wave was the liberalization reforms adopted by Mubarak in 2004–2005, which resulted from both internal and external pressures. However, from 2007 to 2010, Egypt witnessed the third reverse wave of democratization when Mubarak retreated in his liberalization efforts as a result of lessening American pressure. The third reverse wave paved the way for the first phase of the sixth wave of democratization in Egypt, which began in the summer of 2010 and reached its zenith on January 25, 2011, when protests led to the military removing Mubarak from power in a ‘soft coup .’ However, as a result of transforming his power to the non-democratic SCAF, and the emergence of the key anti-democratic political forces, the MB and Salafist groups, Egypt entered into the third reverse democratization wave. The fourth reverse wave extended from February 11, 2011, to June 30, 2012, when Morsi received power and became the...