The Political Economy of Revolution: Karl Polanyi in Tahrir Square

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  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: 5. Interrogating Social Action and Political Leadership II

Abstract

The causes and consequences of revolutionary change have long been the subject of scholarly analysis. This research extends extant theory of revolution through a systematic integration of Polanyian international political economy into an analysis of contemporary transformations in Egypt. The primary research question of this paper is thus: to what extent can Karl Polanyi’s Double Movement theorization explain the Egyptian Revolution of 2011?
This research contributes to the current body of knowledge in two ways. First, it extends Karl Polanyi’s double movement model by applying it to the Egyptian case study. Through extracted key pillars, this research demonstrates the broad congruence between the dynamics of social change in Egypt and the central elements of Polanyi’s work. Second, by demonstrating the effectiveness of the Polanyian framework in understanding Egypt’s revolutionary change, the research highlights the value of introducing political economic elements to existing literatures on revolution, expands the depth and variety of the theory of revolution, and extends existing analyses between neoliberalism and revolution in political economy literatures.

Author

• Hany Khaled Ahmed Mohieldin Zayed, University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign