The longtime failure of opposition groups to challenge President Hosni Mubarak’s grip on power was often explained by the regime’s ability to infiltrate, repress, and/or co-opt various opposition figures and parties. Yet when a mass protest movement emerged in January 2011, the Mubarak regime – a model of authoritarian durability – fell within a mere eighteen days. How did this happen, and what kind of transition might this revolt yield? In this paper, I argue that Egypt’s 2011 popular revolt succeeded because of the limits inherent in the Mubarak regime’s strategy of co-optation. While the Mubarak regime had tremendous success in cutting deals with opposition politicians to ensure that their respective parties did not criticize or challenge the regime too directly, this strategy was useless when confronted with the January 25th demonstrations for three reasons. First, the movement’s leadership was diffuse, so the regime struggled to co-opt (or repress) a sufficient number of these leaders to stifle the movement. Second, the movement’s leadership was comprised of activists, as opposed to politicians, which made them far less willing to accept the kinds of deals that co-optation under Mubarak typically entailed. Third, the speed with which the protests mobilized lessened the control of the movement’s leadership over the demonstrations, so even if it had been possible for the regime to co-opt these leaders, this would have done little to end the protests. My paper will further argue, however, that the very factors that made co-optation a useless strategy for ending the anti-Mubarak revolts will also complicate prospects for democratization. After all, the diffuseness of the demonstrations’ leadership, coupled with the fact that most demonstrators had no ties to any specific political movement, means that there are no opposition leaders who can credibly represent the protesters in negotiations with the military. The political weakness of opposition leaders will undermine their ability to achieve liberalizing reforms vis-à-vis the military, which will likely work to appease them with mostly symbolic democratizing gestures. This paper will draw on my experiences covering the first week of these protests in Cairo, and will also be based on interviews with over 100 opposition leaders.

The events of Egypt in January and February 2011 will live on as legend for generations to come. As protesters braved water cannon, tear-gas, rubber bullets, Molotov cocktails, and camel-backed thugs, they proceeded to strip the Egyptian regime to its core before forcing long-time strongman, Hosni Mubarak, from power. Many rightfully celebrated and drowned themselves in the spirit of revolution. But politics continued on after Mubarak’s departure as the Supreme Military Council issued communiqués to begin the transition to civilian governance. The puzzle that this paper explores is what are the greatest differences between the new era of Egyptian politics and the one jettisoned along with Hosni Mubarak. This requires examining the area literature from other regions, such as Eastern Europe and Central Asia, to theoretically inform where Egypt might head. I wish to examine two central aspects. Firstly, I examine transformations in the structure of power as outlined by the old and new constitutions. Then, the role of previously excluded opposition elements and how they become part of a political sphere controlled by the military. Using the theoretical lessons from other cases, I will examine the recent contributions from the case of Egypt. For example, how will the Society of Muslim Brothers fit into Egypt’s fresh landscape? Will the many popular committees that launched the revolution be represented? Is the military actually ceding control to civilians? If so, who and what kinds of civilians? How is power structured in the office of the chief executive? Is their balance of power between branches? This paper will answer these questions through intensive field research in Egypt. By developing a strong, first-hand account of Egypt, I hope to mid-wife Egypt’s example into the broader universe of cases. Using qualitative methods, I will conduct interviews with former elites, new elites, and opposition figures to present an in-depth study of what Egypt’s transition from Mubarak looks like. In addition to interviews, I will be gathering documents in Arabic and English that provide insights to the transition’s progress and obstacles before resituating the case’s revelations into the wider study of post-revolutionary politics.

In the years before Hosni Mubarak's overthrow, Cairo experienced a massive building boom, with megaprojects on the city's desert edge alongside the growth of 'informal' communities scattered throughout the Cairo region. This paper focuses on a particular, political aspect of that urban growth: it argues that the form Cairo's growth took - the building and use of physical space, and the political, administrative, social and economic processes that went along with it - provide a way to examine the nature of the regime itself: its political and social imaginaries, how it envisioned what kind of country Egypt was to become and how it could be integrated into global economic flows, and the regime's (often failed) attempts to bring that vision into reality. In examining how government actors interacted with businesses, outside experts, and the many residents of Cairo in order to exert a degree of control over the city's form and future, the paper analyzes the multiple, often contradictory images and realities involved in managing the growth of the Cairo megacity. In this uncertain period after Mubarak's fall, when a new regime is still coalescing (and which may itself be transitional) and when Egypt is likely to suffer from some as-yet-unknown degree of capital flight, the fate of many projects is unknown. The paper will conclude with new field research on post-Mubarak developments in the planning and politics of Cairo's growth.

As Egypt’s youth took to the streets on 25 January 2011, observers around the world were surprised by the emergence of this leaderless youth movement. During the revolt, these youth expressed their anger over high unemployment, housing costs, food security and the ‘marriage crisis’, which were all issues that the Toshka project was supposed to address. With thirty-seven percent of Egypt’s youth being under the age of fifteen, it raises the questions ‘What was the Egyptian government planning to do to accommodate the needs of the country’s large youth population’ and ‘Why didn’t the government succeed in appeasing Egypt’s youth bulge’. This paper will examine one of the largest sources of discontent, the Toshka project. The Toshka project is Egypt’s attempt to build a second Nile River Valley in the south of the country. The project was originally conceived of in 1958, during the reign of President Gamal Abdul Nasser, but was quickly abandoned. The project was restarted by President Mubarak in 1997 and became Mubarak’s signature project. The short-term goal of the project was to divert ten percent of the water from lake Nasser to irrigate 550,000 feddans of virgin farmland. The long-term goals of the Toshka project were to irrigate two million feddans, which would provide food security, jobs and housing. The government claimed that they eventually planned to relocate twenty percent of the Egyptian populace to the New Valley. The protestors that stormed Tharir Square in 2011 are from the Toshka generation. As the riots culminated, the protestors called for exactly the same services that Toshka was supposed to provide, such as employment opportunities, youth housing and stable food prices. This raises the questions ‘How did the Toshka project fail’ and ‘How did this affect the Toshka generation’. In this paper I draw on original fieldwork conducted in the summer of 2010 to address the discontent that Mubarak’s Toshka project generated among Egypt’s youth. This paper will explore both the government’s strategy for pursuing the Toshka project and the repercussions of this failed promise on Egypt’s youth.