Bahgat Korany, Rabab El-Mahdi, Arab Spring in Egypt. Revolution and Beyond

Bahgat Korany, Rabab El-Mahdi, Arab Spring in Egypt. Revolution and Beyond (Cairo & New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 2012) The present volume is a collection of well-documented essays on the Arab Spring in Egypt--a subject which held the headlines of international news for months and it still does so at the present moment. Most of the authors of the twelve different studies are Americans, most of them having direct work relations with the American University in Cairo, but some of the authors are native Egyptian and Canadian specialists. The volume was born as an effort explain events of the Arab Spring in Egypt, examine its proceedings and consequences, but also, as the editors say, to go beyond the impasse of choosing between the agency and structure emphasize their interaction and codetermination. In its abstract, the book aims answer three questions. First, why was the world surprised by the arrival of the Arab Spring? Second, who are the protesters who occupied the Tahrir square? Third, how did they manage obtain the resignation of President Mubarak.? The authors managed fulfil their objective quite well. Maybe there was room for more but what they did, by itself, can represent a good resource for the reader form a comprehensive image of the recent events in Egypt. The main common argument of the volume is that the current situation can be understood, but for a Western audience, its issues can be very complex. The thematic studies were designed in a way give a comprehensive image of current Egyptian social and political forces and dynamics. The thirteen chapters are divided into four interrelated parts, each written by an expert in the respective fields of study. The main goal was turn the series of individual works into a comprehensive structure, which can help the reader understand, starting from the general issues and heading toward the particulars, and manages offer a comprehensive image of current day Egypt. The specific goal was offer representative case-studies from Egypt other researchers involved in political history, gender studies and so on. As a consequence, the target audience is quite large and the book can be read by anyone interested in its thematic, or in any of its distinct chapters. Following the two introductions written by the editors--the general foreword and the introductory study bearing the title The Protesting Middle East--is the part containing studies with a more general character of historical background. The study by Ann Lesch, entitled Concentrated Power Breeds Corruption, Repression and Resistance, deals with the issue of internal erosion of Mubarak's regime. The author details surprisingly well the processes of the last two decades, such as the link between corruption and privatization reform, the lack of popularity of Gamal Mubarak, the limits of public speech and the brutality of repressive state organs, often related general elections She emphasizes how the reaction of certain social forces had reached a boiling point for those events. Samer Soliman's work, The Political Economy of Mubarak's Fall, deals with the economic issues of the Mubarak regime's Egypt, pointing out one of the major sources of social tensions be the abusive and largely unregulated system of taxation. The last chapter of this part, the Dynamics of a Stagnant Religious Discourse and the Rise of New Secular Movements in Egypt by Nadine Sika explains the dual nature of transition processes in Egyptian society: on one hand, religious discourse became hegemonic during the last years, which allowed the rise of Islamist movements with their own solutions for social issues. On the other hand, due the relatively liberalized economic system of Egypt and its contacts with the West, need for secularization was also rising. …

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