Location: All Souls Old Library
Speaker: Yezid Sayigh, Senior Fellow, Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Centre, Beirut, Lebanon.
President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi is remaking the Egyptian republic. This involves a double rupture with the First Republic: radical redefinition of the social contract that was established in the decade following the overthrow of the monarchy in 1952 into an ethos of “nothing for free,” and transformation of the presidential system to concentrate Sisi’s powers to normalize a juridical state of exception and recast the republic in the mould of permanent military guardianship. The Second Republic is further characterized by a constant striving to eliminate public politics, and by reliance on an ersatz ideology and the blurring of boundaries between public and private capital to compensate for the deliberate avoidance of organic class alliances. This is why, arguably, Sisi’s new republic cannot achieve social hegemony, setting in contrast with otherwise analogous experiences spanning the 20th century, from fascism in Italy and Spain to the Latin American “bureaucratic authoritarian” states.
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