Political and Institutional Transition in North Africa: Egypt and Tunisia in Comparative Perspective by Silvia Colombo

Author:Silvia Colombo [Colombo, Silvia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Middle Eastern, Social Science, Political Science, World, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781351169783
Google: uWJgDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 39218529
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-06-13T12:14:44+00:00

Egypt: the phantom of ‘electocracy’

Too many elections?

The period between 2011 and the beginning of 2014 was characterised by the repeated summoning to the polls of the Egyptian population (Brown 2013a). It seems redundant to state here that, in themselves, elections are neither a step forward towards a more democratic type of polity nor the cause of a country’s failed political transition. In the case of Egypt, electoral politics in the initial phase of the transition had an unprecedented bearing on the whole process of institutional development, particularly with regard to the relationship among the main political actors – the political parties, the military, the judiciary, and the ‘revolutionary’ movement. The way in which the voting process was shaped and the results it produced contributed to throwing the growing fissures in the Egyptian political architecture into stark relief and sometimes aggravated them.

In late 2011 and early 2012, Egyptians were called upon to vote in three rounds for the Lower House of parliament. This was met by unprecedented enthusiasm. The three voting stages ran from 28–29 November 2011 to 10–11 January 2012. Voters were supposed to elect 498 representatives in the People’s Assembly, to which would be added ten seats appointed by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).4 The elections for the Upper House of parliament, the Shura Council, followed in three stages between 29 January and 22 February 2012.5 These elections resulted in a resounding Islamist majority (Table 4.1). The newly constituted Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) was one of the protagonists of the electoral contest. Established in April 2011 as a direct spinoff of the illegal but tolerated Muslim Brotherhood organisation,6 FJP members initially suggested that they would seek to win only a third – and to that end put up candidates in only half – of the seats in the People’s Assembly.7 Nevertheless, before the elections they went back on this and eventually ran for two-thirds of them. According to some views, this was triggered by the decision of the Salafists – traditionally a quietist and apolitical movement, squarely hostile to the very notion of political parties as they allegedly divide the community of believers – to launch their own political parties and enter the electoral arena (Roberts 2013). The FJP’s decision to run for two-thirds of the seats might superficially seem to have been vindicated by the elections’ outcome. The Democratic Alliance for Egypt, the FJP-dominated coalition of 11 parties, obtained 37.5 percent of the vote and 225 seats, i.e., 45.2 percent of the total, followed by the Salafist Al-Nour party and its allies, which came in second place with 27.8 percent of the vote and 125 seats (25.0 percent). The secular, liberal, and centre-left political parties and coalitions followed. All in all, the sweeping victory of the Islamists – both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists – represented an earthquake for the still fragile post-Mubarak political system.8

Table 4.1 Distribution of seats in Egypt’s Lower House

Coalition/Party Number of seats Percentage of seats

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