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Regime Strategy and Protester Response: Workers in Sisi’s Egypt
Abstract
How have protests and repressive reactions to them evolved in Egypt under the new government of Abdel Fattah El-Sisi? Recent governments have been forced to deal with the largest and most persistent period of worker unrest in Egypt's modern history. Strategies have ranged from violence, to cooptation, to capitulation to end strikes and get laborers back to work. Since the military coup that removed Mohammed Morsi from power, the regime of Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has modified the repertoire of repression with a focus on asset seizure and "war on terrorism" rhetoric that has spread from the Muslim Brotherhood to socialist and liberal organizations. Based on interviews throughout the transition period, this paper argues that the failures of the labor movement to form consistent and unified leadership protects them from some of the techniques used by the Sisi government, while increasingly vulnerable to others. These findings have implications for our understanding of labor in the currently transitioning Arab regimes, but also for labor protests under military-backed authoritarian regimes more generally.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Egypt
Sub Area
Political Economy