Abstract:

The coup of July 3, 2013 brought a decisive end to Egypt’s brief experiment with elected civilian governance that followed the downfall of President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. Early attempts to understand the downfall of the “Second Egyptian Republic” focused largely around the events that immediately preceded the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. This presentation adds historical depth to these discussions by analyzing the role of institutional legacies in contributing to that outcome. Specifically, decades-old state interventions have structured Egypt’s political field in ways that encourage defections from pacted transitions in the present moment.

 

Speaker Bio:

Hesham Sallam is a research associate at CDDRL and serves as the associate director of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy. He is also a co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine and a former program specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace. His research focuses on Islamist movements and the politics of economic reform in the Arab World. Sallam’s research has previously received the support of the Social Science Research Council and the U.S. Institute of Peace. Past institutional affiliations include Middle East Institute, Asharq Al-Awsat, and the World Security Institute. He is editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013). Sallam received a Ph.D. in government (2015) and an M.A. in Arab studies (2006) from Georgetown University, and a B.A. in political science from the University of Pittsburgh (2003).