What factors underpin the "Islamist Advantage" at the ballot box? We argue that an embedded, nationwide infrastructure of mosques disproportionately benefits Islamist candidates while disadvantaging their non-Islamist competitors. We support for the theory through a variety of original spatial data, coupling geolocated ballot-box level election returns from Egypt's first presidential elections with web-scraped data on the country's Muslim and Christian religious infrastructure. We find that, at the level of the individual ballot box, both mosque proximity and mosque density were powerful predictors of electoral success for Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi. Further, the proximity and density of churches were similarly-powerful predictors of success for Morsi's opponent, former Mubarak Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq. Together, these findings emphasize the importance of considering the local ecologies of electoral mobilization, and suggest the promise of spatial methods to understand political outcomes in the Middle East.

Examining street art as an aesthetic expression of political dissent, this paper explores Egypt’s transforming political landscape post-2011 through an analysis of the changing street art of Tahrir Square. This paper examines identity politics and the shifting Egyptian public opinion, political expression, and negotiation of citizenship rights as demonstrated in the changing visual culture and physical space of Tahrir Square. On a grassroots level, when unity is formed in common struggle, traditional divisions along sectarian lines can be temporarily suspended or dissolved completely. On January 25, 2011, Egyptians of diverse ages, political expressions and religious and socio-economic backgrounds took to the streets in mass anti-government protests. As events unfolded, citizens joined in protests across Egypt and in the diaspora in what became the “Arab Spring.” Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators occupied Tahrir Square; making it the most iconic image of Egypt’s Arab uprising as well as the most politically active locale in Egypt for populist political dissent post-2011. Five years later, amidst a dynamic negotiation between identity politics, nationalism, and Egyptian citizenship debates, the revolutionary street art on the walls of Tahrir Square represents the changing political environment of the nation. This aesthetic expression of political dissent demonstrated a fluctuating public opinion. Egyptian political exchange drastically changed alongside the transforming political landscape—overthrowing the Mubarak regime, experimenting with Muslim Brotherhood leadership, and the eventual return to military dictatorship. The varying populist reactions to these changes were memorialized in Tahrir Square—slogans and imagery in Tahrir Square were both in opposition and support for Islamist groups and military rule. Notably, through their street art, protestors were able to visually and physically occupy Tahrir Square with their political dissent long after the demonstrations were dissolved. The visual culture of Tahrir Square was not entirely unmediated. Though populist figures were the originators of these organic artistic productions, what was allowed to remain on the walls of Tahrir—and what was eventually taken down—demonstrates a tension and negotiation of power between the Egyptian people and the changing Egyptian authority figures. This paper examines the visual material culture and the negotiation of power over this contested space as a reflection of the shaping of identity politics in Egypt post-2011. Moreover, this paper engages with questions of nationalism and citizenship debates between various segments of Egyptian society, and across divergent socio-economic backgrounds, that came to the forefront amidst this struggle over changing Tahrir.

From 2011 until 2013 with the ouster of Mohamed Mursi, the first elected Islamist president, youth civic and political participation increased through various conventional means like participation in civil society organizations or political parties and through unconventional means like developing new protest movements or new youth led initiatives to change various aspects of their political, economic, social and political life. Nevertheless with the advent of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to power, young people’s access to civic and political participation became largely constrained. The state’s crack down on youth activists increased and new policies and laws have been enacted to end activism and protest movements. Within this context, this paper seeks to understand why are young activists still active civically and politically and the ways in which they participate under new authoritarian rule. The paper will address the role of youth collective agency in adopting social change, and “the nature of youth as both an ideological symbol and political actor.” How do they frame and elaborate their status as “being young” and what is their transformative role in society? How and to what extent is civic and political engagement dependent on young people’s social, economic, political and gender identification? To understand these main questions, the following study will first analyze the structural factors, which favor or constrain young people’s civic and political participation. It will then analyze the way in which young people behave civically and politically within these circumstances. The analysis is based 34 semi structured interviews and five focus groups conducted with young people in Egypt, during the period from May until October 2015. The interviews were conducted with 21 young men and with 13 young women whose average age is 25. The majority of the interviewees (23) resides in Cairo, has a Bachelor degree (21), and attended public tertiary education (24). The analysis of the focus groups (FGs) is based on five focus groups, with a total of 36 participants, 26 males and 10 females.