This paper analyzes the changing balance of power between the Egyptian military, the business elite, the United States, and a range of activist groups during the year that President Morsi was in power. Empirically, I provide a micro-periodization of the mobilization leading up to June 30, which is based on interviews, protest data, and real-time ethnography of the events as I witnessed them in Cairo. I combine two contrasting approaches to revolutions: (1) the structural or state-centered approach that focuses on divisions within the regime, including external pressure on the state; and (2) a strategic or agency-based approach that focuses on the dynamic interaction between the state and the opposition. Theoretically the paper brings together the literature on bottom-up revolutionary movements and top-down military coups, which have usually been studied as discreet phenomena.

When is protest repressed? In recent decades, scholars have parsed this question in context of protest policing in mature Western democracies. Their findings lend themselves to the conclusion that the institutional constraints of democracy are a key factor in mediating repression. Far less is known about when governments repress protest in non-democracies, and in particular, what threatens non-democratic regimes and what factors, if any, inhibit repression. We examine protests in Egypt against the military coup of July 2013, primarily by the Muslim Brothers and their allies, using interviews with protesters along with an original event catalogue of over two thousand protest events. Results show that larger protests and protests that occurred in ‘sensitive spaces’ – public squares, government buildings and major thoroughfares – were disproportionately more likely to be attacked, while protests that occurred during the holy month of Ramadan, or those organized by women, were significantly less vulnerable to repression. We also find strong evidence for protestor adaptation determining which protest events were repressed. Taken together, the paper’s findings have important implications for our understanding both of the trajectory of the 25th January Egyptian Revolution, but also for what constrains and enables repression and mobilization in the wider MENA region and beyond.

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.

In Egypt’s post-uprising context, many ordinary people have mobilised against deteriorating public services. These rather socioeconomic microprotests denouncing often old, endemic problems such as water and power cuts, fuel shortages and environmental pollution, have largely gone unnoticed. Their relative containment at the local level did not significantly alarm the authorities, leaving popular discontent increasing. Yet, their scope often goes beyond the neighbourhood or the village where they erupt, reflecting a broader demand for state intervention to correct a negligence or reverse an injustice. I argue that the initial success of the 2011 uprising made many ordinary Egyptians, including in rural areas, gain confidence in their ability to mobilise for the resolution of long-standing problems. However, many Upper Egyptians who had participated in the 30 June demonstrations against the Muslim Brotherhood have now largely demobilised, despite the persistence of the same problems. Why and how do ordinary citizens devoid of previous activist experience, come, at certain times, to stage protests, block roads, close public administrations, or occupy public spaces, in order to reclaim what they consider as their right? Based on fieldwork undertaken after President Morsi’s fall in three Upper Egyptian villages, this paper provides a micro-level account of the dynamics of mobilisation and demobilisation against deteriorating public services. Beyond the social movement theory, which mainly studies urban and organised movements, it focuses on these microprotests isolated from other movements, characterised by a basic organisation and a strong local anchorage, which exceed Asef Bayat’s ‘nonmovements’ and are more audible than ‘quiet encroachments’. It also sheds light on how the 2011 and 2013 uprisings respectively affected mobilisation levels and processes in the remote Upper Egyptian provinces. I argue that local brokers using their own activist experience and connections, as well as a multitude of overlapping ordinary networks based on shared activities, spaces or identities, facilitated mobilisations between February 2011 and July 2013. The belief in legitimate demands also drove many ordinary people to go to the streets to reclaim their citizenship, and even their humanity. However, in addition to repression, these essentially networked movements constantly remain vulnerable to the demobilising strategies not only of external entities such as the media, but also of local actors attempting to co-opt them in a context persistently characterised by clientelism and patronage. I argue that these exposures explain the limits in scope and time of the microprotests against deteriorating public services.