Counterrevolutionary Protest during Egypt’s Democratic Experiment, 2012-2013

• In Event: Protest and Regimes

Abstract

Revolutions are achievements in mass mobilization, when large numbers of everyday citizens take to the streets to oust their government. But where do all these protesters go once the dust has settled and the old regime has departed? And how does protest in the aftermath of revolution shape the process of establishing a new political regime?

This study examines patterns of contention in the aftermath of Egypt’s 2011 revolution, using a dataset of roughly 7,000 protests and other contentious events from January 2012 to July 2013, as well as interviews with Egyptian activists and political elites. It makes two arguments. First, revolutions are not only the outcomes of protest but also often catalysts for further protest. Revolutions tend to elevate societal expectations, reduce levels of security and policing, and normalize contention as a mode of claims-making, a formula that is generally conducive to heightened levels of mobilization – potentially even higher than levels witnessed during the revolution itself. Second, the popular unrest that often follows revolution may undermine the process of new regime institutionalization, and, in some cases, provides a reservoir of discontent that counterrevolutionary forces can tap into.

I show how these two dynamics played out during Egypt’s democratic experiment following the 2011 revolution. In June 2012 Egypt witnessed a genuine handover of power from a caretaker military regime to an elected civilian president. But this president, Mohamed Morsi from the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement, lasted only a year in office, before he was ousted in a counterrevolutionary coup that restored military rule. I show that high levels of diffuse social and labor protest that began well before Morsi took office and continued into the first half of his presidency came to be channeled by opposition political elites and sectors of the Egyptian state into a focused counterrevolutionary movement, which created the conditions that made the July 2013 military coup possible.

Author

• Killian Clarke, Princeton University