How Democracy Could Return to Egypt
Egypt’s opposition could help bring democracy back via three possible avenues: an institutional democratic coup, mounting another mass uprising, or harnessing an external shock to the regime.
by Scott Williamson
Three years after the January 25 Revolution, Egypt is no longer in a democratic transition, but the situation does not have to stay that way forever. Though the country currently finds itself caught up in an ambitious attempt to reconstruct an authoritarian political system—which will soon take its next step with the election of former defense minister Abdel Fattah El Sisi to the presidency—the project could still fail. And if it does, democratic politics could make a comeback in Egypt. As political scientists Michael Albertus and Victor Menaldo write, “Democracy is rarely cultivated in a Petri dish overnight, but it is also rarely doomed once an experiment in self-rule has begun. History instead suggests that new democracies often muddle through, meandering fitfully to a stable democratic future.”
How might Egypt find its way back to a more democratic system? Other countries that have suffered through similar experiences—a military coup and strongman rule ending a period of democratic politics—could offer examples of possible pathways for Egypt. To that end, Pakistan, Chile, South Korea, and Argentina are briefly examined below. These cases highlight three possible avenues through which Egypt’s opposition—currently a disparate mix of Islamists, revolutionary youth, and liberals—could help bring the country back to democracy: leveraging the regime’s democratic institutions to oust the strongman, mounting another mass uprising that topples the ruler, or harnessing an external shock to the regime.
