Avvya Sharma
Political Philosophy
Easter Term, 2024
Cambridge Journal of Political Affairs, 5(1), pp. 228-247

I: Introduction: A post-Arab Spring Egypt

The nature and feasibility of democracy in Egypt was fundamentally transformed following the Arab Spring protests – a series of political uprisings in February 2011 which forced the resignation of long-term President Hosni Mubarak. On June 30th 2012, Mohamed Morsi came to power after winning Egypt’s first resolutely competitive election. However, marred by political gridlock and public discontent, Morsi’s government was ‘unilaterally dissolved’ by the military, and the constitution passed during his rule was suspended (Sharp 2021, 3). Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, then a defence-minister, rose to power following the 2013 military coup, later winning elections in both 2014 and 2018 — with a reported 97% of the vote in the latter — during which low turnout and the use of voter intimidation and state media to ‘support Sisi’s candidacy’ were reported (Freedom House 2021, 3). Egypt continues to exist in a democratic grey zone, where de jure democratic authority and constitutionalism are superseded by de facto autocratic repression of such institutions. It may be argued that pseudo-democratic practices have been sustained largely to legitimise the El-Sisi government domestically, appealing to the post-revolutionary state’s desire for both democracy and stability. However, such practices may, largely serve to advance multilateral ties with the West – whose economic and military support often necessitates a framework of superficial democratisation – particularly at a time of increasing demand for an economically dependent Arab ally (Ardıç 2012). Therefore, understanding why Egypt exists in a democratic-grey zone is fundamental to understanding wider trends of superficial democratisation within the global capitalist system.

The structure of this article is as follows. Section II.i explores the concept of legitimacy in governance, drawing on perspectives from the philosophers Kant, Rousseau, and Weber. It highlights the importance of consent and democratic participation in establishing legitimacy to suggest that pseudo-democratic practices may satisfy both demands for participation and desires for stability in the Egyptian populace, despite underlying tension regarding the superficiality of such democratisation. In II.ii, the alignment of Egyptian values with democratic ideals following the Arab Spring is then considered to suggest El-Sisi’s adoption of democratic mechanisms as a response to growing domestic demands for democracy. Section II.iii critiques the Western narrative equating democracy with liberalism, arguing that Middle Eastern interpretations often prioritise majoritarianism over liberalism. A lack of commitment to individual liberties reflects a populistic framework that accepts majoritarianism but rejects liberal protections, likely stemming from a cultural incongruity towards individualism as opposed to inherent illiberalism of the Egyptian populace. Section II.iv suggests that social fragmentation after the Arab Spring exacerbated tensions between political actors due to the re-emergence of multiparty electoral competition, leading to a societal inclination towards stability. The El-Sisi government capitalised on this desire to introduce repressive measures which promoted stability (at the expense of democracy) to foster the legitimisation of their authority. Section II.v discusses the inherent tension between Islamic law and legal liberalism in Egypt, highlighting historical patterns of legal development that diverged from European models. El-Sisi’s utilisation of the illiberal judiciary further solidifies his non-democratic regime, highlighting the centralisation of state control while maintaining the façade of democratic institutions.

Section III suggests that El-Sisi’s appeal to the West enables the legitimisation of his government by tying domestic policy making to economic interdependence. While Western rhetoric often promotes democracy, foreign aid is often conditional on superficial democratisation and may serve to maintain autocratic allies without prompting significant structural changes. Subsection III.i suggests that, due to Egypt’s increasing dependence on intergovernmental financial institutions (IMF) and G7 states, domestic policy making within the state has become more susceptible to ideological influence from the West, prompting ideological shifts towards liberal egalitarianism to align with Western democratic norms. In III.ii, historical patterns of Western ambivalence to democratic reform in favour of the maintenance of a regional stronghold are considered. An evaluation of the growth in arms sales and diplomatic ties towards Egypt is used to suggest that there exists a substantive divide between Western political rhetoric, and their economic relations with pseudo-democratic states like Egypt. Finally, subsection III.iii suggests that disparity in aid distribution and oversight in USAID programs likely contributed to Egyptian ambivalence towards true democratic reform, particularly when tied to foreign assistance.

II: Democratisation and the legitimization of the al-Sisi government

Firstly, a consideration of the theoretical frameworks that yield authoritative legitimacy will be considered, followed by an evaluation of the extent to which El-Sisi can exploit public sentiment in favour of democratic reform to centralise state control. Further, the universalization of Western liberal democracy and its compatibility with the cultural ethos of Egypt will be analysed to suggest that Western conceptualizations of liberal democracy do not align with Egyptian calls for majoritarianism and traditionalism, and therefore El-Sisi has little incentive to adopt a political structure analogous to that of Western states. Further, it may be argued that the Egyptian desire for stability, due to its post-revolutionary nature, enables El-Sisi’s use of repressive measures to quell public discontent without significantly jeopardising the soft power associated with quasi-democratization.

i: Theoretical frameworks for the basis of legitimacy

Legitimacy is most widely established on the principle of consent , according to Kant, or of democratic participation, according to Rousseau (Peter 2010). The Egyptian government is thus incentivized to ensure that its bureaucratic framework is, or at least appears to be, built upon mechanisms that foster such consent or democratic participation as a means to garner legitimacy. As suggested by Rousseau, to ‘distinguish a regular and legitimate act from a seditious tumult’ requires distinction between the ‘will of a whole people from the clamour of a faction’ (Rousseau 2014). Legitimacy thus serves as a foundation upon which government authority is grounded, prolonging the longevity of the regime through the validation of government action as an expression of the will of the people. Therefore, for the Egyptian government, ensuring that its bureaucratic framework reflects principles of consent and democratic participation is not merely a matter of governance but a strategic imperative for maintaining social order and reflecting its legitimacy to the general populace. When considering subjective dimensions of legitimacy and its necessity within a political framework, Weber identified the macro-social value of legitimate authority and emphasised that the structure of a society governed by widely accepted or such authority incentivizes even those who do not subscribe to or recognize the legitimacy to ‘behave as if they did’ (Hurd n.d.,1). Weber suggests that ‘every genuine form of domination implies a minimum of voluntary compliance, that is, an interest (based on ulterior motives or genuine acceptance) in obedience’; fostering an environment in which authority is perceived as legitimate on the basis of the consent of the governed therefore facilitates citizen obedience (Weber 1968, 212). Allen Buchanan further suggests that some empirical or quantifiable threshold that validates the legitimacy of a state and international legal system must be established and defined through a recognition of human rights and a ‘full or perfect’ justice system (Buchanan 2003, 432). It is specifically prescribed that ‘states should be accepted as legitimate (and therefore welcomed into international society) to the extent that they live up to the substantive goal of respecting individual human rights’ (Hurd n.d.).

Through this lens, and assuming a recognition on the part of El-Sisi of the value of liberal democratic ideals in cementing legitimacy, it is likely that the use of pseudo-democratic practices that promote individual liberty and a fair justice system, as outlined in Article 4 of the Egyptian constitution, is a proxy via which the legitimacy of the state may be established, consequently amplifying domestic electoral support for his government (Constitute Project 2014). However, one must also consider the theoretical model of instrumental rationality when evaluating the basis of legitimacy, which suggests that individuals endow legitimacy to institutions or authorities in the interest of self-preservation/interest. Such a model presents an alternative avenue for the Egyptian government’s legitimacy, wherein the potential to garner populist appeal through the promise of stability, as valued by citizens of post-revolutionary states, may be more effective than true democratic reform in legitimising al-Sisi’s authority (Blau 2020). As such, the conditions of pseudo-democracy satisfy both the demand for democratic participation, as well as the desire for political stability (arguably undermined by clashes between the Muslim Brotherhood and their secular opponents (Yazaki 2014) within the Egyptian populace.

ii. Post-Arab Spring Egypt

In line with Rousseau’s theoretical framework – i.e., the legitimization of authority through appeals to the will of the demos – a motivation for pursuing a democratic government may be to align with the explicit shift in Egyptian values following the Arab Spring (Howard & Hussain 2013). This is exemplified in the results of a 2014 poll, which highlighted that 66% of Egyptians believed that democracy was preferable to other forms of government and valued democratic institutions such as a fair judiciary and freedom of the press (Wike et al. 2014). Democracy imbued the El-Sisi government with legitimacy largely because, in the contemporary era, Volpi suggests that ‘democracy is the only broadly legitimate regime form, and regimes have felt unprecedented pressure (international and domestic) to adopt—or at least to mimic—the democratic form’ (Volpi 2004, 1063). It may be suggested that, in such a political setting, autocratic centralization of power is ‘masked’ by the establishment of formally democratic institutions. Therefore, pseudo-democratic practices may be primarily implemented on a national level to appeal to growing Egyptian calls for democracy.

iii. The universalization of Western liberal democracy

We need to be careful, however, in how we qualify the appeals of Egyptian democracy; the predominant narrative in Western scholarship to think of democracy and liberalism as synonymous is largely inapplicable to much of the Middle East (Yazaki 2014). Though the Arab spring and following ideological shift across the MENA region seemingly substantiate Fukuyama’s claim of ‘the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government’ (Fukuyama 1989, 4), Middle Eastern interpretations of democracy largely champion majoritarianism over liberalism. As such, although Egypt displays pseudo-democratic practices as characterised by Western schools of democratic thought, such practices may align with Middle Eastern interpretations of democracy. In Egypt, approximately 37% of the population believe in legal gender equality, and 32% believe in freedom of religious expression for religious minorities, highlighting that although democratic institutions such as a fair electorate are desired, the protection of individual liberties is largely not, which may enable El-Sisi’s superficial liberal democracy (Wike et al. 2014). The Egyptian framework may thus be conceptualised more appropriately as an expression of populism, which ‘accepts principles of popular sovereignty and majoritarianism,’ but rejects ‘constitutionalism and liberal protection for individuals’ (Galston 2018, 12). Such a framework enables the reconciliation of the view that illiberalism and a majoritarian democracy may coexist. The desire for the preservation of enduring cultural values– but the cessation of the enduring political system – enabled El-Sisi’s superficial integration of democratic mechanisms in the electoral process, which was exemplified by the lack of political pluralism in the 2014 election. However, to claim that majoritarian democracy may be considered preferable to liberal democracy simply because of, as Fareed Zakaria says, the ‘illiberal nature of Muslim communities’ (Zakaria, cited in Volpi 2004, 1064), is superficial. Instead, because liberal ‘democratisation may entail curtailing some of the prerogatives of the demos for the benefit of a liberal constitutional ideal’ (Volpi 2004, 1064), the widespread call for direct democracy in Egypt is undermined by cultural incongruity towards individualism.

iv: A post-revolutionary state: the tension between stability and democracy

Of course, when considering the overarching demand for majoritarian democracy in Egypt the maintenance of El-Sisi’s power seems abnormal. However, likely as a result of its nature as a post-revolutionary state (Maloney 2012), about 54% of Egypt’s citizens also believed that having a stable government was more important than a democratic but unstable one, and support for a stable government rose by 11% from 2013 to 2014 (Wike et al. 2014, 4). Social fragmentation due to the ‘inherently adversarial nature of post-revolution democracies’ (Yazaki 2014, 1), particularly due to the re-emergence of multiparty electoral competition (e.g. Islamist vs. secular parties) exacerbated latent social and cultural violence/rifts, as described by Galtung. Post-revolutionary cultural hostility may have therefore provided a basis for Egyptian inclination towards stability over democracy. In a system of eudaimonic legitimacy, according to Niblock, ‘the right to rule comes from the regime being deemed to constitute the best means for the population to fulfil its needs’ (Sholes 2016, 4). Morsi’s democratically elected government perhaps possessed initial legitimacy through legal-rational authority,postulated by Weber as authority centred on ‘rational grounds – resting on a belief in the legality of enacted rules and the right of those elevated to authority under such rules to issues commands’ (Weber 1968, 215). However, its failure to realise the economic eudaemonia of its populace undermined its long-lasting political legitimacy (Sholes 2016). El-Sisi, in contrast, appealed to Egyptians’ desire for economic stability and maintenance of traditionalism through the preservation of ‘family values’ in law, desires which justified the introduction of repressive, authoritative measures, such as anti-terrorism laws which targeted activists and journalists. True democratic reform, therefore, is secondary to the establishment of stability-conferred legitimacy, regardless of the precise means by which such legitimacy is derived.

Edmund Burke, when speaking of the outcomes of post-revolutionary France, stated that ‘free and fair elections were indeed held, but political freedom was soon silenced by the representatives who were elected’ (Cropsey & Milikh 2011, 51), and we can see clear parallels with the rise of Egyptian autocracy following the Arab Spring. Tocqueville, also suggested that the primary underlying contradictions of modern liberal democracies would be in large part a result of the incongruity between ‘liberty and government-assured well-being’ (Cropsey & Milikh 2011, 52). Tocqueville suggested that a desire for democracy stemming from a highly specific ‘removable cause’ (Cropsey & Milikh 2011, 54), such as a despotic government, would provide for short-lived independence (Tocqueville 2012). Though originally speaking with reference to late 18th-century France, Tocqueville’s conceptualization of democracy in post-revolutionary states can be applied to the case of Egypt. Certainly, the conditions for revolution in both states varied, but the explicit parallel between post-Arab Spring Egypt and the pioneer of modern liberal democracy, France, does suggest that some adoption of democratic reform, albeit possibly superficial, was necessitated in both cases.

The superficial implementation of various democratic frameworks awards the El-Sisi government legitimacy because it promotes both stability and democracy. The contradictions of the Anti-Cyber and Information Technology Crimes Law N.175 and Article 65 of the Egyptian Constitution, are two important examples. The law enables the National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority to block platforms or websites violating ‘content norms and laws’ or that ‘jeopardise the national security or economy’ under Article 7 of the Constitution (Ben-Hassine 2018). Therefore it appeals to a desire for national stability. The use of vague, overarching, and undefined terms such as ‘national security’, ‘public morals’ and ‘family values’ throughout the articles allows penalties of the law to extend to practically any act deemed inappropriate and enables censorship under the justification of the protection of traditional values (Ben-Hassine 2018). It also directly undermines provisions of the Egyptian Constitution outlined in Articles 64-72, including the right to privacy — which may not be ‘violated’ or ‘infringed upon,’ — the right to ‘freedom of thought’, and the rights of individuals to ‘express their opinion through speech, writing…’ (Constitute Project 2014, 16). As such, the law appeals to the widespread Egyptian desire for traditionalism over social liberalism. The use of constitutional illiberalism and traditionalism to promote ideals of stability in such cases does, to a large extent, therefore serve to legitimise the El-Sisi government.

v: The contradiction of Islamic law and formalist legal liberalism: El-Sisi’s appeal to the judiciary

In addition to enduring traditionalism within Egypt , there exists, according to Max Weber, an ‘inherent incompatibility between Islam and democracy’ (Weber, cited in Tabraz 2014, 21), particularly in the contradictions between Islamic law and legal liberalism. Weber specifically suggests that there existed an ‘extraordinary legal insecurity of the taxpaying population’ resulting from patrimonial bureaucracy within the Islamic legal tradition (Weber 1968, 1016). Historically, the inherent procedural vagueness of Islamic law (ijtihad) as a result of its reliance (until the 18th and 19th centuries) on interpretations of the Quran starkly contrasts legal development in Europe, where major shifts in patterns of polity, self-governance, and legal autonomy began to occur in the 12th and 13th centuries. Patterns which, it may be argued, have provided a foundation for constitutionalism and institutional democracy (Huff 2019). As such, patterns of legal development in Egypt, and much of the Islamic world until the 19th century, followed a path different to the one that led to the liberal rule of law. As conceptualised by Locke, liberal rule of law foregrounds the centrality of a divide between religion and the state and necessitates a codified set of laws, but this is incongruous with Islamic law’s interpretive nature (Fahmy & Faruqi 2017, 54). For this reason, legal liberalism within Egypt is not necessitated as a tenet of democratic reform; therefore, El-Sisi’s continued attacks on the rule of law, while illiberal, do not directly undermine widespread desire for the preservation of Islamic legal and cultural values. While Egyptian liberal thinkers, such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh — informed heavily by European liberal beliefs, — emulated this more secular attitude towards the interplay of religion and law during the Arab Liberal Age (or Nahda), such an adoption largely failed to propagate among the wider public. A 2011 poll demonstrates that 60% of Egyptians believed law should ‘strictly follow the Quran’ (Fahmy & Faruqi 2017, 49). Such a degree of support for a non-Western approach to the judiciary highlights the enduring primacy of Islamic legal tradition (Wike et al. 2014). Such a disparity between liberalism and law in Egypt is further reflected within El-Sisi’s relationship with the judiciary, where the exploitation of the illiberal judiciary may have also helped legitimise El-Sisi’s non-democratic regime. The common Western tendency to characterise the Egyptian judiciary as ‘a relatively liberal institution within an otherwise illiberal political context’ generally neglects to consider its central role in the de-democratisation of Egypt (Fahmy & Faruqi 2017, 255). El-Sisi’s co-option of the judiciary enables the centralization of state control and, simultaneously, the endurance of an apparently democratic institution.

III: Egoistic altruism: the conditional generosity of the West

Although it is evident that El-Sisi utilises pseudo-democracy in a multi-pronged manner to secure domestic legitimacy, the regional and global context (particularly when considering Egyptian economic dependence on foreign benefactors) informs his actions and should also be evaluated. Both because non-democratic regimes in MENA have historically been supported by hegemonic Western actors and due to the economic and ideological interests of the international community,the West has enabled the legitimization of El-Sisi’s government and continues to protect the current order by tying domestic policy making to economic interdependence (Ardıç 2012). This interdependence means that citizens are economically tied to the state and so Western influence is legitimised by, as well as a legitimising force on, El-Sisi’s government. The fundamental postulate of post-9/11 democracy promotion in the MENA region is the cultivation of economic relations with the West, which evidently does not require true institutional reform. Furthermore, Arab states suffered economic repercussions due to cultural modernization and the global capitalist system, which have led growing discontent with authoritarian regimes because of ‘disequilibrium within the social system’ and ‘resource mobilisation among different socio-economic groups,’ which are also often the primary causes of revolution (Ardıç 2012, 12). As such, the El-Sisi government’s cultivation of economic ties with Western states enables Egypt to more closely align with the current global economic system and, again, through the promotion of economic eudaimonia, facilitates the legitimacy of state authority. This may ensure that economic wellbeing in such a system is prioritised over the protection of individual liberties so that a revolutionary consciousness does not once again arise.

Certainly, Western states continue to echo a pro-democracy rhetoric and display a widespread trend of utilising ‘press and … establishment-oriented writers to whitewash Western client regimes’, likely to garner domestic support for foreign policy decisions (Perry 2004, 92). US foreign aid directed to ‘democratisation efforts’ – such as the House FY2023 Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs bill H.R. 8282, which provides $1.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing to Egypt – was conditional on Egypt ‘meeting specific democracy-related conditions’ (Sharp 2021, 2). However, increased obscuring of the distinction between democracy and degrees of democratisation (that actually preserve autocratic institutions) enables donor states to bolster hard power through economic interdependence without prompting their Western populations to demand structural changes in foreign autocratic states (Perry 2004).

This likely also enables the dispersion of ideological values (soft power) grounded in liberalism, arguably reflecting ideological colonialism, wherein economically powerful states utilise their cultural hegemony to impose upon LEDCs cultural and political conventions derived from a governing ideology of ‘expressive individualism’, even when such ideologies and the subsequent legal and ethical norms informed by them are contradictory to their cultural context (Ekeocha & George 2018, 9). Fundamentally, the notion of ideological colonialism and its economic manifestations are particularly relevant to the case of Egypt, and demonstrate why El-Sisi is incentivized to promote (albeit superficially) democratic reform.

i: Egyptian dependence on Western wealth and the necessity of (superficial) democratisation

Arguably, neo-liberal economic policies and their consequences (high unemployment and inflation) in the Arab region precipitated the Arab Spring, highlighting the role of economic wellbeing in maintaining stability. Reflecting the economic landscape of the 2010s, both global and domestic monetary conditions have provoked a rise in Egyptian borrowing costs (Sharp 2021). Due to its significant foreign debt of over $120 billion and recent loss of $20 billion in foreign capital, as well as the general rise in interest rates in Western markets, Egypt is facing a sharp economic downturn (Sharp 2021). The national deficit is set to be $30 billion in the 2022 fiscal year, and Egypt’s credit rating outlook recently fell from ‘stable to negative’ due to risks associated with its ‘external shock absorption capacity’ (Sharp 2021, 6). Egyptian dependence on external economic benefactors is, consequently, growing; specifically, Egypt’s relations with Gulf Arab states have been underscored by the necessity to stabilise its foreign exchange reserves (Sharp 2021). Largely because of Egypt’s dependence on intergovernmental financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund, domestic policy making within the state has likely been more susceptible to ideological influence from both neighbouring states and the West, as is reflected by its partial democratisation.

According to IRIS, consolidation of the economy is a primary objective of the military-led government, perhaps resulting in subsequent ideological appeals to foreign benefactors who largely support Egyptian financial institutions (Abdel Ghafar 2018, 17). Consequently, economic reform in Egypt has seen an acceleration since 2016, when the state signed onto a $12 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) loan agreement with the IMF, which aimed to address a range of structural post-revolutionary challenges, including high public debt, an overvalued currency, and a foreign exchange shortage, as well as attract foreign direct investment (Momani 2018). A precondition to the agreement required Egypt to raise about $6 billion in funds, leading to a shift in Egyptian dependence on foreign benefactors away from Gulf states (particularly Saudi Arabia) towards the G7 nations (Momani 2018). A degree of liberalisation, both economic and political, underpinned the agreement, which included requirements for measures to support women through increased funding towards daycares and school meals, highlighting that ideological shifts towards liberal egalitarianism (in accordance with Western democratic convention) are necessitated by Egyptian dependence on predominantly Western-backed IGOs.

ii: Western indifference to institutional democratic reform

However, increasing Egyptian dependence on Western benefactors, although reliant on superficial social liberalisation, does not require genuine democratic reform. Western states, although often ‘self-appointed protectors of democracy’, generally prioritise domestic economic interests over democracy promotion in Arab states. This is exemplified in the 1953 US-UK organised coup against the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, demonstrating Western indifference to democratic reform when it does not align with their political and economic interests (Ahmad 2011). This claim is further substantiated by the de-democratisation of Bahrain in the 1970s ‘during the transition from British to American hegemony over the Persian Gulf’ (Holmes 2014, 1). American defence officials, despite opposition from the Bahraini parliament, rejected demands to evict the state, and ‘gave precedence to maintaining basing access over supporting the parliament’, and hence were ‘complicit in the de-democratization of Bahrain’ (Holmes 2014, 25). In particular, the post-revolutionary context of Bahrain’s brief democratisation parallels Egypt’s, and as such may act as an appropriate basis on which to analyse the pattern of Western ambivalence to democracy in favour of the maintenance of a regional stronghold.

Wider Western indifference towards democratic reform in Egypt is evinced by the sequential rises in foreign aid and arms trade, as well as increasing diplomatic ties between the two states despite criticisms of human rights abuses in Egypt. El-Sisi’s 2017 visit to the US, which marked the first visit of an Egyptian leader to the White House since the Arab Spring, exemplified the growing Egypt-US ties following the ouster of the post-2011 Morsi government (BBC News 2020). Furthermore, between 2013 and 2017, arms sales from Western states increased significantly when compared to the period between 2008 and 2012 during which European states provided $906 million in arms. In contrast, Western European states such as France and Germany have provided $4.2 billion worth of arms sales to Egypt in recent years (The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy 2018). Certainly, such increases in diplomatic and military relations between Egypt and Western states cannot be entirely attributed to the (pseudo-)democratisation of the state; general trends in globalisation as well as the necessity of a Western axiom of influence in the Arab region may have incentivised Western states to strengthen their relations with Egypt, but the fact that such interactions were catalysed by, or at the very least occurred following, the introduction of majoritarian measures in Egyptian institutions points to a correlation between the apparent democratisation of Egypt and growing Western inaction or indifference towards its human rights abuses. Despite criticism from leftist political parties, German arms sales to Egypt have risen by 205%, demonstrating that despite actively touting for the democratisation of the Middle East, there exists a central substantive divide between the orthodoxy of Western political thought (resting on the potential merits of liberalisation and individualism) and their economic relations to pseudo-democratic or repressive states (The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy 2018).

iii: The role of the West on Egyptian ambivalence towards democratic reform

One could also argue that Egypt is adopting the ‘Israeli framework’, often characterised by the reciprocal presence of democratic institutions and Western economic and military support. The 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and advance of diplomatic ties between the two states prompted substantial economic assistance by the US towards both parties, committing over $4 billion in aid (Bahnasy 2022). However, the asymmetric distribution of the aid packages, with $2 billion allocated to Egypt, conditional on extensive stipulations regarding the allocation of funding, and over $3 billion to Israel (with comparatively fewer allocation requirements) inadvertently served to undermine the legitimacy of USAID programs and their promotion of democracy (Bahnasy 2022). The contrast between the direct cash transfers to Israel and an amendment later supported by US Congress that ‘gave USAID full oversight and discretion over democracy aid sent to Egypt’ further undermined the sovereignty of the Egyptian state and limited their power in relation to the US, even on domestic soil, likely causing ‘Egyptian ambivalence towards reform, specifically that falling into the category of democracy assistance’ (Snider & Faris 2018, 51).

IV: Conclusion

Egypt undoubtedly utilises pseudo-democracy in a twofold manner domestically. The implementation of an apparent liberal democratic facade aligns with the post-Arab Spring pressure for the adoption of expressive-individualist principles in governance. Simultaneously, however, the reliance on majoritarianism rather than liberal democracy enables the preservation of enduring cultural values and embraces the need for stability in a post-revolutionary state. Further, Western ideological influence, informed by tenets of liberal democracy, has likely taken root in Egypt as a result of its dependence on foreign economic and militaristic benefactors. Despite such a reliance, Egypt’s superficial adoption of democratic reform is entirely adequate on an international level, as Western states also benefit from stability rather than democracy in the MENA region. The careful balance of majoritarianism and superficial constitutionalism is utilised by the Egyptian government to a significant extent to foster a system of domestic eudaimonic legitimacy, but has undoubtedly (though to a lesser extent) also aided its international position and directly contributed to the rise of multilateral treaties with Western states.

Ultimately, the ideological foundations of democracy are informed by Western values and schools of thought, so, though it may be Eurocentric to suggest that Egyptian democracy is the direct result of Egyptian dependence on Western wealth, it is undeniable that there exists an inherent relation between Egyptian democratic reform and the West. Though a Western conceptualisation of democracy may not align with the current cultural context of Egypt, the use of pseudo-democracy has enabled it to reap the benefits of both national and international legitimacy, as well as minimise the polarity between Islamic and liberal democratic values.