Abstract
Across Egypt, medical charities linked to Islamist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood provide a valuable alternative for those unable to afford upscale private hospitals or who dread a trip to Egypt’s notoriously poor public facilities. Yet very little is known about where these services exist, what logic guides their distribution, and how these facilities relate to important sociopolitical outcomes, including government spending, health indicators, economic characteristics, and voting patterns. The literature predicts varying relationships. For instance, Clark (2004) argues that these are a largely middle class phenomenon, while Farag (2010) suggests the largest impact comes in the slums. Wickham (2002) and Cammet and Issar (2010) suggest these facilities drive in-group cohesion and facilitate mobilization, while Berman (2003) and Davis and Robinson (2012) suggest that these facilities are targeted towards the non-aligned. Meanwhile, numerous anecdotal reports suggest that these facilities are in some way tied to Islamist electoral mobilization. In order to adjudicate among these hypotheses, I use GIS software to analyze a unique dataset, comprising almost 40 years of socioeconomic and political statistics in addition to a comprehensive listing of both Islamic and governmental medical facilities in Egypt. This research provides a novel way to both capture and analyze how Islamist groups have reacted to the social, political, and economic transformations underway in the Middle East and, perhaps more importantly, to how those interactions have changed the Islamist groups themselves.
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