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The Second Republic: Remaking Egypt Under Abdel Fattah el-Sisi

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s “new republic” is recasting Egypt through a punitive social contract, a new state capitalism, and exceptional presidential power under military guardianship, creating a cohesive but politically brittle order.

الجمهورية الثانية: إعادة تشكيل مصر في عهد عبد الفتاح السيسي
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace · By Yezid Sayigh · 12 May 2025 · read the original in Arabic →

Yezid Sayighيزيد صايغ

The Second Republic: Remaking Egypt Under Abdel Fattah el-Sisiالجمهورية الثانية: إعادة تشكيل مصر في عهد عبد الفتاح السيسي

الرئيس المصري عبد الفتاح السيسي في صدد بناء جمهورية جديدة تستند إلى مبدأ "مفيش حاجة ببلاش"، وشكلٍ جديدٍ من رأسمالية الدولة، فضلًا عن صلاحيات رئاسية فائقة في إطار وصاية عسكرية تضمن تماسك النظام إلّا أنها تتركه عاجزًا عن حلّ التحديات السياسية والاقتصادية والاجتماعية الكثيرة.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is building a new republic founded on the principle that “nothing is for free,” on a new form of state capitalism, and on extraordinary presidential powers within a framework of military tutelage that ensures the regime’s cohesion while leaving it unable to resolve its many political, economic, and social challenges.

Summaryملخّص

يسعى الرئيس عبد الفتاح السيسي إلى تحديث مصر. وتستند "الجمهورية الجديدة" التي يعكف على بنائها إلى إعادة تحديدٍ جذرية للعقد الاجتماعي الذي أُرسيت دعائمه بعد العام 1952، كما تنطوي على إنتاج شكلٍ جديد من رأسمالية الدولة، وتكريس سلطاتٍ رئاسية موسّعة في إطار الوصاية العسكرية الناشئة. ومع أن النظام قوي ومتماسك في أعلى الهرم، تبقى الجمهورية الثانية عرضةً لخطر التفكّك بسبب عجز النظام عن تحقيق الهيمنة الاجتماعية والسياسية واعتماده المفرط على الأدوات القسرية.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi seeks to modernize Egypt. The “new republic” he is building rests on a radical redefinition of the social contract whose foundations were laid after 1952; it also entails the production of a new form of state capitalism and the entrenchment of expanded presidential powers within an emerging military tutelage. Although the regime is strong and cohesive at the apex, the second republic remains vulnerable to fragmentation because of the regime’s inability to achieve social and political hegemony and its excessive reliance on coercive instruments.

Key Pointsنقاط أساسية

- Sisi has replaced the expansive social welfare programs and redistributive policies that prevailed under the post-1952 republic with the principle of “mafish haga bebalaash” (nothing is for free), while marginalizing the public sector, which had formerly constituted the regime’s principal social and political base.

- The president has granted himself “super” presidential powers far broader than those exercised by any of Egypt’s previous presidents.

- The political hegemony of the armed forces is an entrenched and essential factor in the formation of the second republic.

- Sisi’s model of state capitalism, centered on quasi-governmental entities under his control, is establishing a hybrid economy involving partnerships among different public-sector bodies, as well as the subordination of private capital to the needs of the state.

- There is an intrinsic conflict among the political, economic, and social goals Sisi is seeking to achieve, threatening the sustainability of the new republic he is building.

Findings and Recommendationsنتائج وتوصيات

- The Egyptian regime is strong and cohesive at the top, but it rests on weak political and ideological structures, forcing it to expand its patronage networks to include a wider circle of beneficiaries despite the shrinking financial resources available to the state.

- The regime invests in repression and ideological domination by controlling the media space and by adopting mitigating economic measures such as cash-support programs for the poor. Yet these initiatives remain insufficient to confer upon it any meaningful social and political consensus, given the sharp decline in spending on social services and the reluctance to undertake structural reforms that would liberate market forces.

- Repeated financial inflows from external partners alone have prevented the regime from entering a spiral of major crisis, but they have allowed it to continue pursuing public policies and investment strategies that have aggravated existing economic problems and left it ill-equipped to face coming challenges.

- The second republic may not outlast Sisi’s presidency, but there is no return from its rupture with the post-1952 republic; the legacy of the new republic therefore seems likely to endure, whether its effects are positive or negative.

- The accumulation of private wealth by members of the regime’s narrow circle makes them part of the class of capital and property owners, pointing to a new process of integration between them and the upper stratum of the middle class. This may be the second republic’s most lasting outcome.

Introductionمقدّمة

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is remaking Egypt. In March 2021 he proclaimed “the birth of a new state and a new republic,” as the New Administrative Capital was inaugurated to replace Cairo, the old capital.1 For all the hubris that seemed to mark this declaration, talk of a transition to a new republic succeeding the one created by the Egyptian armed forces after 1952 was not mere exaggeration. Indeed, the deep rupture produced by the popular revolution that erupted in 2011, and then by the counterrevolution led in 2013 by the armed forces under Sisi, then minister of defense, cannot be understated. Comparisons are often made between Sisi’s presidential approach and those of Egypt’s earlier presidents, especially Gamal Abdel Nasser, who ruled from 1954 to 1970, but such resemblances are superficial. The nature of the present centralized, militarily backed system of rule led by a strong and charismatic figure represents a break with the previous legacy more than a continuation of it.2

The “new republic” is a rhetorical phrase embodying Sisi’s efforts to modernize Egypt. This is evident in the reconstruction of its urban spaces, the expansion of its national infrastructure, and the development of the capabilities of its armed forces, projects for which the president demands the people’s compliance in return. The “second republic” is still taking shape, but its departure from the legacies and trajectories of the past is clear in three ways. First, there has been what may be described as a dismantling, even an undermining, of key elements of the previous sociopolitical order. This includes the complete elimination of the already limited margin for lawful political competition and peaceful opposition; a radical redefinition of the social contract; a strategic shift in the country’s economic direction; and the weakening of the government bureaucracy and the civilian wing of the state, including oversight bodies and the judiciary.

Second, efforts have been made to refashion the instruments of power and to deprive potential political competitors of any room for maneuver. This has involved engaging in excessive repression and expanding the powers of the state’s coercive security agencies, dominating the media space and public discourse, disseminating an ideology based on hypernationalism and suspicion, and forming a new cadre of young people loyal to the ruling regime and of model bureaucrats.

Third, the ruling regime and its inner core have been transformed through the concentration of power in the hands of Sisi and his narrow circle of intimates. This has produced the absence of the contending power centers that long troubled Sisi’s predecessors and has entrenched military tutelage over civilian life in Egypt. The emergence of quasi-governmental bodies answerable to the president, alongside the marginalization of government-run public-sector institutions, has brought about a notable structural transformation that allows the state to exercise influence over the business class and enables senior regime figures to join the class of capital and property owners.

Together these three mechanisms constitute a radical program for remaking Egypt. In many respects, Sisi’s administration appears simply to be following global trends, including the revival of state capitalism, the application of austerity policies that widen the gap between rich and poor and blur the lines between the middle class and low-income groups, the systematic repression of overt forms of opposition, the restriction of civil society activity, and the use of legislation and digital transformation to consolidate authoritarian rule and its policies.3 Yet what distinguishes Sisi’s administration to some extent is that it has created neither a ruling party nor stable alliances with prominent social forces, choosing instead to govern through an authoritarian system in which decisions are imposed from the apex downward, relying largely on state institutions. In this sense, the ruling regime that has emerged since Sisi assumed the presidency in 2014 is socially and politically narrower than any Egyptian regime established since 1952. As a result, the present regime has so far been unable to translate its coercive power into broader political hegemony, though it is uncertain whether it even intends to do so, given its intensive reliance on repression at the expense of seeking to build consensus.

In general, the things Sisi wants appear constantly to conflict with one another: to impose authoritarian rule through instruments and agencies loyal to him but not politicized; to attract private capital while maintaining state control over the economy and domination of the market; to curb corruption while entrenching patronage; to establish routine institutional rule while centering it on the person of the president; and to enjoy near-total autonomy in presidential executive decisionmaking while accepting the interests of powerful partners within the coalition of state institutions that consolidates the president’s rule. Because these tensions are among the particular features of Sisi’s administration and an integral part of the new republic he is building, they threaten that republic’s long-term sustainability.

Even so, Sisi appears to be betting on his ability to preserve the “infrastructure” of hegemony in order to ensure the continuation of the present course on all fronts throughout what, under the constitutional amendments adopted in 2019, is supposed to be his final presidential term. If he succeeds, he will most likely seek a new constitutional amendment allowing him to renew his mandate for an additional term after 2030, the year his current term ends. But this scenario may depend on his administration’s ability to confront the mounting challenges of the next five years: chronic capital shortages, high levels of public debt, growing poverty and social fragmentation, an environmental crisis that will worsen both, and regional conflicts surrounding Egypt and threatening its national security and economy, including the repercussions of the civil war in Sudan that cast their shadow over Egypt, the interlinked threats in the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, including the dispute with Ethiopia over the waters of the Nile, instability in Libya, and the continuing Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The stakes, then, are extremely high. U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal in early 2025 to resettle large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza in Egypt shows how narrow the margin for error is for a state whose armed forces depend heavily on U.S. military aid and that needs Washington’s political support just as much in order to receive financing from international financial institutions. Under current trends, it seems almost certain that the Egyptian armed forces, the main pillar of Sisi’s authority since he assumed the presidency in 2014, will continue to support him, including for an additional term. But if Egypt’s challenges worsen, the armed forces may demand more benefits in exchange for their loyalty, or they may seek an alternative to succeed Sisi. The decisive question, however, is broader: what fate awaits the second republic? Will its foundations be consolidated, will it stagnate, or will it collapse? Now that we have witnessed the waning of the post-1952 republic, will Sisi be able to transform Egypt enough to ensure that his political legacy endures after he leaves power?

The Rupture With the Past and Its Dismantlingالقطيعة مع الماضي وتفكيكه

Sisi’s first objective after the Egyptian armed forces seized power in 2013 was to dismantle the system through which his predecessor Hosni Mubarak had ruled the country. Sisi and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces saw the relative political and economic liberalization that marked the last decade of Mubarak’s rule as excessively permissive, and therefore blamed it for the outbreak of the 2011 revolution and the political turmoil and economic contraction that followed. The armed forces also blamed Mubarak for the rise of two potential competitors to their privileged position: the class of businessmen tied to power who had acquired considerable influence under President Mubarak’s son, Gamal, and whose return to their former influence the armed forces prevented after Mubarak was overthrown in February 2011; and the Muslim Brotherhood, whose candidate Mohamed Morsi won the presidential election in 2012 and became the first civilian president in Egypt’s history.

This rupture with the past took two main forms. The first was a sustained assault aimed at eliminating public political life and choking civil society, while simultaneously subjecting the business class to a punitive model of state capitalism. Here, a comparison between the Sisi and Nasser eras appears reasonable. The second form involved a direct assault on two other major aspects of Nasser’s legacy: the post-1952 social contract and the state bureaucracy. The “renewed authoritarianism” consecrated as a “way of life” has hollowed out all these domains severely, leaving the ruling regime entrenched in power but with a narrower social base and greater political fragility than the regimes that preceded it.4 Emptying the Political Field

Sisi’s aversion to independent political organization and activity translated into a three-pronged assault intended to empty political life in Egypt completely. The first prong consists of undermining partisan political activity at its roots, while preserving a formal democratic process through periodic elections and maintaining the appearance of parliamentary life. As Egypt analyst Marina Ottaway has put it, emptying the political field as an “arena of competition among organized political forces representing the demands of different groups” has led to “the death of politics,” leaving parties “so weak that they have become irrelevant.”5 Indeed, the government’s State Information Service noted in 2022 that the old parties founded before 2013 were still “struggling between renewal and extinction” in the new republic.6

More importantly, the principal security agencies encouraged the emergence of a large number of loyalist parties whose primary role is to display popular support for Sisi and his policies. Unlike the Mubarak-era regime, which relied on a single instrument of social control and elite circulation, the National Democratic Party, Sisi’s regime has followed a more decentralized model of delegated political control. Most of the existing loyalist parties were thus created after the 2013 coup, and their rise and connection to patronage networks accelerated the decline of genuine political parties. The security agencies routinely select candidates and party lists and form parliamentary blocs, which they control to a degree unprecedented even under Mubarak, who was known for this kind of manipulation. This trend was entrenched after new legislation was issued abolishing judicial supervision of elections starting in 2024.7 As a result, the liberal Free Egyptians Party, which had won more seats than any pro-government party in the 2015 elections, suffered a crushing defeat in the 2020 elections, failing to win a single seat, while the Nation’s Future Party, a regime creation, won a majority of seats in both parliament and the recently revived Senate, a body that is largely only advisory.8

The second prong of Sisi’s assault on political life was the marginalization of the People’s Assembly, Egypt’s parliament, as a principal forum for peaceful and legally permissible political disagreement with government policies and legislation. Parliament was never a vibrant democratic forum, let alone a powerful one, but since Sisi assumed the presidency its role has been reduced more clearly than ever to that of a mere rubber stamp for presidential decrees and government-proposed bills. Imposing the dominance of regime-loyal parties and parliamentary blocs was a first step, but by stripping parliament of its importance and weight, Sisi’s administration can use it as a façade suggesting some semblance of political openness through the periodic creation of new parties and platforms. One example is the National Front Party, founded in December 2024 and celebrated by state media as a sign of political recovery.9 Sisi’s National Dialogue initiative, launched in April 2022, served a similar function, while also pushing political parties into “actual participation in Egyptian decisionmaking outside the traditional framework related to parliament,” in the words of the State Information Service.10

The third prong of the Sisi administration’s approach to public affairs is to channel political and social activity into fields intended to absorb and neutralize its impact. The early focus was on suppressing Islamic nongovernmental service organizations, which were seen as a political threat.11 Law No. 149 of 2019 regulating the practice of civil work aimed to produce an effect similar to the marginalization of parliament by confining NGO work to “community development... with due regard for the state’s development plans and society’s needs.” This vague wording legitimized the government’s repression of the work of human rights organizations, while permitting, for example, environmental advocacy.12 Yet even in this case, the law prohibits accredited NGOs from publishing the results of opinion polls and field studies without prior approval from the government’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics. It also requires civil associations to obtain Interior Ministry approval to receive local donations or foreign funding.13 Similarly, the clear purpose of creating the National Alliance for Civil Development Work in 2022, reportedly at the initiative of the presidency and the General Intelligence Service, was to contain sociopolitical activity.14 Although the alliance was described as an independent, nonprofit body, the president was granted the power to appoint four of its eighteen board members and, more oddly still, the power to issue decrees adding public bodies and their branches to the alliance.15 Redefining the Social Contract

The recasting of Egypt’s social contract is a conscious objective of the government, not merely an incidental outcome of its policies or a consequence of pressure from international lenders. For example, the reduction of bread subsidies, which produced a 400 percent rise in the price of a loaf in May 2024, was not among the International Monetary Fund’s demands; nor did the World Bank make its financing of the government cash-support programs Takaful and Karama, introduced in 2015, conditional on children attending school or beneficiaries undergoing a medical assessment, for instance.16 Shortly after his election in 2014, Sisi said subsidy reform was necessary because “the rich may be getting more from subsidies than the poor get.”17 But he and government ministers made clear their aim of establishing a new social contract in which no one gets anything for free (“mafish haga bebalaash”). This has deepened poverty since 2013, shrunk the middle class, and produced an extravagantly wealthy elite, bringing about an unprecedented transformation in Egypt’s social landscape and forming one of the most prominent features of the transition to the second republic.

Austerity policies involving reductions in state-provided social welfare are a global phenomenon, and Egypt is no exception in this regard. Nor do the ideological motives, financial incentives, or social consequences differ fundamentally. What is striking in the Egyptian case, however, is Sisi’s ability to make radical changes, with little popular protest, to what had been considered a social contract consecrated in the Nasser era. The reduction of food and energy subsidies, and the accompanying rise in prices for basic goods and fees for various services and utilities, took place on a scale and at a pace that would have been unimaginable under Sisi’s predecessors. This reflects, to some extent, the effectiveness of state repression and the spread of fear, but it also reveals a shift in the attitudes of the military establishment. Whereas the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces saw the government privatization program during the last decade of Mubarak’s rule as a threat to social and political stability, prompting it to facilitate Mubarak’s ouster in 2011, it has voiced no comparable concern under Sisi.18

The new social contract is accompanied by an emphasis on reducing population growth, framed in terms of the need to enhance economic output and fiscal sustainability. In a speech in early 2021, for example, Sisi called for reducing population growth to “at least 400,000 people annually” - though the population rose by 1.4 million in 2024 - adding, “As long as this is not achieved [as long as population numbers are not controlled], you will not feel that there is real spending appropriate for you.”19 In parallel, Sisi has repeatedly promoted what Western sociology describes as the Protestant work ethic, saying: “Countries do not nest, grow, and become great just like that. No, they grow and become great through work, hardship, sacrifice, sincerity, and honesty, not talk.”20 Thus, Sisi’s administration treats large numbers of Egyptians as “a surplus population unable to secure its livelihood through wage labor, and subject to police-security management,” in the words of political scientist Jamie Allinson.21

The social consequences of this are striking. The government has withheld poverty statistics since 2020, when the officially announced poverty rate was 29.7 percent.22 The World Bank projected a 3.6 percent increase in poverty by 2024 as a result of factors including the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, currency depreciation, and inflation, even after taking hardship-mitigation measures into account, such as the government’s successful cash-assistance programs.23 An independent study using the adopted inflation rate estimated that the poverty rate had risen to 36.7 percent by July 2022, and that the number of the “nonpoor” had fallen from 45 percent in 2020 to 36 percent.24 More than a year later, in December 2023, presidential candidate Hazem Omar said that the poverty rate had exceeded 60 percent.25 Moreover, food insecurity and malnutrition are also a growing problem, with 69 million citizens, out of a population of 112 million, receiving support to buy bread as of January 2025.26 As always, rural areas bear the greatest burden of multidimensional poverty, at a rate twice that of urban areas.27

The relatively successful cash-support program has mitigated the consequences of redefining the social contract for the poorest sectors of Egyptian society, but it also illuminates the two-tier system in force under Sisi. The “traditional” beneficiaries, as political scientist Bruce K. Rutherford calls them, receive partial protection from financial distress in order to avert popular discontent.28 Measures such as raising the minimum wage, which benefits workers in the formal sector, serve a similar purpose, but informal employment has risen sharply under Sisi, reaching 44.3 percent of all private-sector workers, who enjoy neither social security nor legal protection.29 By contrast, the regime’s core loyal constituencies have received larger increases in wages and other benefits.30 Most importantly, military salaries and pensions increased tenfold between 2014 and 2019, far outstripping the increases granted to civil servants and public-sector employees.31

The growing number of poor or needy households also reflects a kind of socioeconomic “flattening,” in light of the declining purchasing power of the middle class. Particularly striking is the undermining of what political scientist Robert Springborg calls the “state-dependent middle class,” given that the public sector had been the sociopolitical mainstay of all ruling regimes from 1952 onward.32 This flattening was partly the result of the sustained campaign against the public sector since 2014, which has suffered a net decline in real wages because of repeated devaluations of the pound in 2016 and in 2022 and 2023, and especially the sharp rise in inflation rates since then. In parallel, the share of workers earning insufficient wages rose by 18.3 percent, reaching 73.3 percent between 2006 and 2018.33 Sharp cuts in spending on healthcare and education, to levels below the constitutionally mandated ratios of 3 and 6 percent respectively, have also increasingly undermined the economic opportunities available to the middle and poor classes and their access to them.34

This financial distress has begun to reach even higher-income households that do not depend on public-sector employment. Successive devaluations of the pound have halved the value of these households’ savings, affecting their ability to afford private education or private healthcare, both of which have become increasingly necessary in light of the deterioration of public services in Egypt today, or to afford travel. Those with the financial capacity buy property abroad, while a large part of the boom in the local real estate market is attributable to the search for a safe investment haven for savings, not to evidence of wealth. Ironically, the government’s improved collection of income and other taxes, thanks to digital transformation, is helping to narrow the margin of untaxed income from which middle-class households previously benefited, pushing them toward the informal economy for a wide range of goods and services.

Wage and income inequality, measured by the Gini index, is high in Egypt and rising.35 What indicates that this is not a side effect but a defining feature of the second republic is the relentless effort by Sisi’s administration to reshape spatial space according to its conceptions of the place and role of different social groups. The spread of gated residential compounds is a global phenomenon that began to emerge in Egypt under Mubarak, alongside the construction of new cities to which some middle-class households moved. But Sisi’s administration has gone much further, expanding and accelerating this process and organizing what had previously been informal spatial segregation according to income brackets. Moreover, the upscale new cities are linked by massive highways, high-speed and monorail train networks, allowing the wealthy to live and move without passing through poor areas, while being served by workers who live in separate cities. Older middle-class neighborhoods have been left to deteriorate or to suffer the incursion of military-backed commercial franchises, while low-income groups living in informal neighborhoods are moved to entirely new sites on city outskirts, under the pretext of rehabilitating slum areas, thereby isolating them from their workplaces and habitual markets. The acquisition and commercial exploitation by military companies of prime real estate in central Cairo and along Cairo’s riverfront and Alexandria’s seafront have entrenched “the spatial distribution of social differences and inequalities,” as scholar Dina Khalil has argued.36 Reversing the Economic Direction

Sisi has overseen the revival of Egyptian state capitalism since assuming power, effectively reversing the general direction of economic management that accompanied the privatization program launched under Mubarak in 1991. Yet state capitalism in Egypt today differs radically from that created by Nasser in the 1960s, which involved the nationalization of most of the nonagricultural private sector through the transfer of private companies and enterprises into public ownership, as well as the establishment of economic policies aimed at income redistribution and comprehensive social welfare. State capitalism under Sisi, by contrast, is marked by neoliberal austerity policies, the monetization of state-owned assets, the imposition of user fees on public goods and services, and the growing concentration of wealth. Sisi’s administration actively seeks to inject private capital into state-owned assets while retaining control over them. The administration’s economic behavior is not grounded in a coherent vision of growth and development, capitalist or otherwise, nor does it represent a deliberate strategy of wealth accumulation; it is driven by considerations of preserving power.

Sisi’s administration pursues what political scientist Béatrice Hibou, in the Tunisian context, called the “political economy of domination,” in which the economic behavior of institutional and social actors is shaped by pressures stemming from the state’s coercive power.37 The administration’s approach therefore involves tensions and contradictory tendencies manifested in three ways. First, there is no unified political framework for formulating economic objectives and investment strategies and reconciling them, nor even for incorporating the concept of social utility, meaning activities that benefit society or particular social groups. Second, the political logic governing economic practice in an increasingly repressive authoritarian context has rearranged patronage and clientelist networks, regime-connected firms, and rent extraction. Third, because this kind of political economy impedes private-sector growth and the generation of domestic savings and investment, Sisi’s administration relies heavily on external partners rather than the Egyptian business class for political support and capital inflows.

It is worth noting that the Egyptian government has announced six documents on economic reform or privatization programs since 2018, none of which has been completed or even seriously pursued.38 The structural reform agenda agreed with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 2021 evaporated without a trace, while the memorandum of economic and financial policies submitted by the government to the International Monetary Fund in 2022 directly annulled the state ownership policy the government had drafted and approved that same year.39 Ironically, the IMF and other donors such as the European Commission regard the State Ownership Policy Document as a benchmark for structural reforms in Egypt; yet a critical reading shows it to be a declared statement for maintaining state ownership and intervention throughout the economy, or even increasing them in some cases.40 Successive government proposals for partially privatizing state-owned companies between 2018 and 2025 have almost all failed to produce tangible results because of the government’s improvised approach and reluctance to relinquish effective control over privatized assets. These defects were evident at the economic conference the government hastily convened at Sisi’s request in October 2022, where key financial bodies such as the Central Bank of Egypt were not consulted on the agenda, and where the president seized the opportunity to lecture participants rather than examine problems and solutions.

This policy confusion points to entrenched patterns of rule based on modern neopatrimonialism and to the resistance of deeply rooted vested interests to reform, while at the same time allowing the reorganization of clientelist relations and patterns of rent distribution in keeping with the emergence of the new republic. The spread of gated residential compounds has increased demand for security services and specialized markets, such as food and beverage delivery, services often provided by regime-linked companies. In addition, military and intelligence agencies, along with influential officers and officials, exploit their control over land use and licensing to expand the spread of military-owned fast-food restaurants and other commercial franchises in urban areas and along riverfronts and seafronts.

The foregoing reveals a rearrangement of the political economy in ways that serve the interests of the narrowest group of beneficiaries Egypt has known under any previous presidency. This stratum includes favored businessmen and the upper segment of the middle class, many of whom conduct numerous activities outside the official accounts. Egypt’s low tax-to-GDP ratio, the lowest in Africa in 2022 at 14.2 percent, indicates that a great deal of money is concentrated in their hands.41 Instead of preventing this behavior, the administration incentivizes it, thereby effectively turning a blind eye to money laundering. The military establishment and other regime-linked entities reap large profits from real estate speculation and other government-financed projects. A number of armed forces officers also secure additional sources of income by creating small companies to win subcontracts in large projects managed by the military establishment; one may be granted a portion of a road-building or canal-lining project, while another is given a plot of land in an urban renewal project.

This model of political economy plays a central role in strengthening regime cohesion by intensifying rent-seeking practices within the narrow circle of the regime’s principal bodies and intimates, which also explains why megaprojects never slow down, let alone stop, even during the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, with the exception of the real estate and energy sectors, the real economy has remained largely stagnant under the second republic, as shown by the continuous contraction of non-oil private-sector activity for 93 out of 108 months through late 2024, a period almost equal to Sisi’s entire presidency.42 Private-sector access to credit has remained low because government borrowing crowds it out of available resources; its average share of investment over the past decade has not exceeded 6.3 percent of GDP, roughly one-fifth the level in middle-income countries and even lower than it was under Egypt’s socialist laws in the 1960s.43

Sisi’s administration’s reluctance to modify its investment model, alongside its refusal to undertake structural reforms, has greatly constrained its ability to generate domestic surpluses. It has therefore been able to preserve its stability thanks to inflows of at least $200 billion since 2013 in the form of loans, grants, in-kind assistance, and politically motivated investments from Gulf states, international financial institutions, and development agencies, not to mention U.S. military aid totaling about $13 billion and arms deals worth roughly the same amount, whose financing was guaranteed by European governments during the same period.44 Access to global capital markets is plainly of critical importance to Egypt’s public finances, which is why the government attaches great importance to international credit ratings and resorts to accounting devices, such as keeping megaprojects off the official state budget so they do not affect ratings, all with the full knowledge and tacit complicity of its external partners.

The State Bureaucracy: Ally or Enemy?

While Sisi is rebuilding a radically modified form of Egyptian state capitalism, he is hollowing out the civilian wing of the state and deinstitutionalizing key aspects of governance. This stems from his perception that the public sector is inefficient, and also from his conviction that only active leadership of the kind he embodies can build a new state and achieve national renaissance.45 According to this logic, reversing the decline of existing state institutions and increasing efficiency require concentrating decisionmaking authority in the hands of the president, a tendency manifested over the past decade through the bypassing of government regulations in order to operate independently of existing institutional constraints. The military establishment, which shares Sisi’s general vision, has spearheaded his initiatives in administration, the economy, and the media, thereby effectively acquiring the status of a shadow government.

Sisi has placed unprecedented pressure on the public sector in his effort to build a new state. There was a genuine need for administrative reform when he took power, given the bloating of the state administrative apparatus and its low productivity and efficiency: it employed 31 percent of Egypt’s total workforce in 2012, on the eve of the military establishment’s seizure of power, and by some estimates more than half of all employees were surplus to requirements and working in jobs that did not fully use their qualifications.46 Civil Service Law No. 81 of 2016 contributed to a net reduction in the public-sector wage bill of roughly 3.5 percent of GDP by 2019 compared with 2014, exceeding the target agreed with the IMF of 5.5 percent of GDP by fiscal year 2020-2021.47 Conditions for entering the civil service were tightened and new hiring was frozen in many sectors, reflecting the government’s commitment to reduce public employment by 38 percent over ten years.48 This produced, among other things, a shortage of 469,000 teachers in public education by 2024.49 At the same time, Sisi’s administration sought to contain discontent within the public sector, raising wages eight times between 2017 and 2024. Yet despite the social services from which this segment of the middle class benefits, its purchasing power deteriorated sharply after the two major devaluations of the Egyptian pound since 2016, accompanying inflation, and the substantial reduction of subsidies.

In parallel, Sisi centralized his administrative powers by taking direct control of Egypt’s most important oversight bodies. In October 2017, the loyalist parliament voted to end the Administrative Control Authority’s previous independent status by enabling the president of the republic to appoint and dismiss its head.50 The authority is Egypt’s most powerful oversight body, thanks to its powers of judicial investigation, and successive presidents have used it to punish opponents and discipline supporters.51 Its inclusion as a government body whose contracts are classified as secret “for reasons related to national security” further exempts it from ordinary government regulations and procedures. Similarly, the Central Auditing Organization, which monitors the performance and financial compliance of all public bodies, was placed under direct presidential control, while its annual reports, previously published openly, were withheld.52 The judiciary, arguably the only branch of government that had been genuinely independent, was also subordinated. In 2019, Sisi introduced constitutional amendments making him head of the Supreme Council for Judicial Bodies and Authorities, giving the president of the republic absolute authority over judicial affairs, including the appointment of judges.53

No less important, the 2019 constitution incorporated the military judiciary into the broader judicial structure, granting it the same rights as its civilian counterpart.54 In July 2022, Sisi appointed the head of the Military Judiciary Authority as first deputy president of the Supreme Constitutional Court.55 These two developments underscore the central role of the Egyptian armed forces in consolidating Sisi’s administration and in defining the contours of the second republic; they also legitimize and normalize the growing resort to military courts to try civilians in cases unrelated to armed forces personnel or facilities. Such cases include “crimes that harm the basic needs of society,” including food and nonfood goods and essential products such as fuel.56 This role has expanded under successive presidential decrees since 2014 that assigned the armed forces to protect public facilities and infrastructure and granted their members judicial police powers to enforce the law. Parliament then approved in January 2024 a draft law incorporating these provisions into a single law, claiming they were a constitutional right of the armed forces.57

This reality has produced contradictory results. The second republic is defined first and foremost by the authority of a state that is at once tyrannical and exhausted. Sisi’s sustained, direct assault on the state bureaucracy, and his subordination of oversight bodies to his direct control, have marginalized the public sector and weakened the institutions he needs in order to function efficiently and achieve his ambitions more generally. Yet his insistence on this approach attests to the paramount importance he attaches to consolidating his political control, realizing his social vision, and satisfying the aspirations of his core constituency, specifically the principal state institutions that make up his ruling coalition and his supporters in the upper stratum of the middle class. Added to this is the transfer of state assets and sources of revenue to bodies under his authority, like a reverse merger of regime networks into state administrations, which increasingly blurs the boundaries between public and private ownership and gives rise to a hybrid economy combining two separate public sectors: one headed by the cabinet, the other directly subordinate to the president.

Shaping Egypt’s Second Republicتشكيل الجمهورية الثانية في مصر

The way Sisi is reshaping authoritarian rule in Egypt reveals fundamental flaws and contradictions that obstruct his quest to impose complete political control, if not hegemony.58 These flaws and contradictions are visible in the four pillars on which the second republic rests: the systematic resort to severe repression and routine violence; control of the media and domination of public discourse; an emphasis on hypernationalist asabiyya and conspiracy-based indoctrination; and the preparation of cadres of young leaders and model bureaucrats who are depoliticized but loyal to the regime.

Taken as a whole, Egypt under Sisi appears to be a return to what political scientist Robert Paxton described as “national-populist developmental dictatorships with fascist trappings.”59 But Sisi’s model differs considerably in its reliance on a highly state-centered economy in which the emergence of independent social classes is severely impeded. It therefore differs substantially in its methods of political mobilization and social coalition-building. Indeed, it has deliberately refrained from establishing a mechanism for mass political mobilization and from clearly allying itself with big capital. As a result, the second republic is being built entirely from the top down, relying excessively on the four pillars mentioned above as a substitute for politics. This ultimately paves the way for the possible failure of Sisi’s developmental dictatorship, that is, an authoritarian regime that claims to deliver sustained economic growth.

Repression: A Carceral Stateالقمع: دولة سجنيّة

The Egyptian regime relies on the use of violence to preserve political control, manifested in the normalization and legitimization of enforced disappearance, torture, extrajudicial killing, mass imprisonment, and professionalized digital surveillance against anyone who publicly objects to any aspect of government policy or the conduct of any government body.60 In particular, the regime’s willingness to use violence was a major source of its legitimacy among sectors of the Egyptian population that viewed the Muslim Brotherhood, which briefly held the presidency and dominated parliament in 2012-2013, as an existential threat to their way of life.61 Since then, every form of protest has been classified as terrorism in order to legitimize the regime’s repression and impunity. In fact, the broad legal immunity enjoyed by the state’s repressive agencies gives them wide latitude to use arbitrary force and unlawful detention, while the reciprocal nature of relations within the ruling coalition enables different bodies to behave in this way independently of one another. Repression is thus practiced in a decentralized fashion, with lower levels of the agencies able to act without referring to the presidency, in ways that can undermine the administration’s policy objectives in other areas.

Sisi’s administration has followed the global trend of issuing legislation that gives the executive broad powers to prosecute opposition in the name of counterterrorism. The Law Regulating Lists of Terrorist Entities, No. 8 of 2015, and the Counterterrorism Law, No. 94 of 2015, along with their subsequent amendments in 2020 and 2021, use extremely broad definitions of terrorism to restrict freedom of expression and protest on the grounds of “harming national unity” and “disturbing public order,” while expanding the range of crimes punishable by death.62 According to an assessment by the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, which has special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, these laws effectively enable Egypt’s security agencies to commit “crimes of enforced disappearance, torture, and extrajudicial killing.”63 In addition, these laws have been used systematically to paralyze the capacities of human rights and civil organizations and political activists, and even companies, labor unions, and other associations, all of whose funds and assets can legally be frozen before trial or conviction. Charges of terrorism and spreading false information have also been brought against opponents in exile, who have been surveilled while abroad, while their assets have been frozen and members of their families in Egypt intimidated and arrested.64 Digital transformation has enabled Sisi’s administration to develop tools of repression, for example by importing spyware technology and installing surveillance systems to collect data from the country’s communications networks.65 Together, these repressive techniques have allowed Sisi to eliminate opposition, compared with Mubarak, who merely “managed” it, according to Egyptian journalist and activist Hossam el-Hamalawy.66

Mass imprisonment of opponents is an integral part of what Human Rights Watch has described as Egypt’s assembly line of torture.67 Although the Prisons Authority has not released figures on the number of prisoners since the 1990s, the U.S. State Department cited estimates by Egyptian human rights organizations that there were 80,000 convicted prisoners and 40,000 pretrial detainees by late 2023, a rate of about 116 prisoners per 100,000 people.68 The revolving-door policy applied since 2013 exposes detainees released by the public prosecutor to “disappearance” in police stations or facilities run by the National Security Sector until new charges are brought against them.69 Further complicating any estimate of total prisoner numbers is “precautionary detention,” which requires those released to spend half the day detained in police stations.70 In any case, dozens of new prisons have been built to accommodate the growing number of people detained, bringing the total number of prisons to 168 by 2021.71 Hegemony Over Public Discourse

Sisi’s administration has continually sought to dominate the public sphere in order to praise its achievements, especially in the economy and infrastructure, and to promote the figure of the president and the image of the armed forces. It has done so through the direct acquisition of media outlets and production companies, the subjection of editorial policy and media content to presidential control, and the suppression of dissenting opinions through censorship and outright bans. In the absence of opinion polls, it is impossible to fully assess the effect of efforts to dominate public discourse completely and reduce it to a single regime-approved narrative about Egyptians’ aspirations and loyalties. But the authoritarian, top-down approach pursued by Sisi’s administration has proved financially costly and inadequate to market the regime as effectively as Sisi desires.

The clearest embodiment of this approach is the regime’s acquisition of a number of Egypt’s leading private media companies through investment and holding companies operating on behalf of the General Intelligence Service and Military Intelligence.72 These two agencies reportedly seized some private companies by force and pushed others out of the media market by redirecting production and broadcasting contracts to the newly acquired companies.73 By 2024, front companies belonging to the General Intelligence Service and Military Intelligence were running roughly forty institutions, including satellite television networks, radio stations, newspapers and websites, advertising agencies, ticketing companies, and the country’s largest television and film production company.74 The presidency is also directly involved in dominating the public sphere: for example, a former armed forces officer working in the president’s office sends daily instructions to media editors through a WhatsApp group, dictating topics and guidelines for talk shows.75

Censorship is inevitably a complementary aspect of direct domination of the media. In this regard, a 2023 report by the British Home Office on Egypt stated the following:

Multiple laws allow the authorities to censor online content without needing a judicial warrant, and to block any website they deem a threat to national security, a broad formulation that can easily be abused. Since 2017, Egyptian authorities have banned hundreds of websites and continued to do so in 2022. Amendments introduced to certain provisions of the Penal Code in 2021 tightened penalties against journalists who cover criminal trial sessions without prior authorization, and increased the penalty for divulging state secrets. The amendments also raised the fines that may be imposed and included prison sentences for those who commit these offenses ranging from six months to five years.76

In parallel, the Cybercrime Law allows the authorities to block websites they deem criminal or a threat to national security and the economy. The security agencies have used this legal framework to arrest journalists before important events such as parliamentary elections and to prevent media outlets under their control from covering news related to opposition groups.77 Moreover, a 2021 amendment to the Penal Code provides for the punishment of anyone who collects questionnaires or statistics, or conducts studies of any information or data related to the armed forces or their missions in any field - which would theoretically include their much-promoted activities in business and public works - without prior written authorization from the Ministry of Defense.78

Regime-affiliated media continually promote Sisi and the armed forces. The best example is the television series The Choice, first aired during Ramadan in 2020 under the sponsorship of the armed forces’ Department of Moral Affairs. It portrayed the president heroically and drew on the fatwas of the Sunni scholar Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328), who held that believers had a duty to obey their rulers even if they were tyrants.79 The armed forces have also launched other media projects, including the Masri project, inaugurated in 2022, a new “integrated cultural project” in cooperation with government-controlled media outlets, through which “a series of festivals, celebrations, and competitions are organized in schools and universities in coordination with the Popular Defense Forces.”80 The head of the armed forces’ Department of Moral Affairs managed many of the regime’s media initiatives after 2014 before becoming director of the president’s office in 2018, then the president’s media adviser, and joining the General Intelligence Service-affiliated United Media Services holding company after its board was reshuffled in 2024. Control of the media also helps the regime confront the influence of the only Islamic religious body that enjoys some independence, Al-Azhar, the country’s highest religious authority for Muslims, headed by the grand imam and including the Council of Senior Scholars, after the regime had imposed full control over the Ministry of Endowments and Dar al-Ifta, the body responsible for religious guidance and legal fatwas within the Ministry of Justice.81

The change in the leadership of United Media Services exposed shortcomings that reportedly included huge financial losses caused by poor production quality and mismanagement.82 Mada Masr, one of the few voices that still retains independence, reported that the president’s office has been planning since late 2024 to conduct a financial review of United Media Services’ accounts to address irregularities such as inflated salaries and bonuses, inflated purchase prices, and unnecessary foreign travel costs.83 At the same time, the suspension of prominent media figures after they went off script and criticized certain government projects further highlighted the intolerance of any content that casts the regime in a negative light and the preference for broadcasting pure propaganda.84 In addition, the security agencies’ intervention in November 2024 in the appointment of new board members to the three bodies created in 2018 to monitor and regulate Egypt’s audiovisual media and print press - the Supreme Council for Media Regulation, the National Press Authority, and the National Media Authority - likewise refuted claims of a desire to achieve greater intellectual diversity and media independence.85 The Quest to Impose Ideological Hegemony

Like other authoritarian regimes, Sisi’s administration has felt the need to use ideological discourse to legitimize its rule and demonstrate its competence. Although the principle that “nothing is for free” powerfully expresses the regime’s post-2013 social approach, it is not a substitute for the previous social contract, which had been one of the most important ideological pillars of the post-1952 republic. The regime has seemed unable to formulate a unified social ideology because of stark socioeconomic disparities and inequalities, and because of its refusal to contemplate weaving actual alliances and partnerships among social classes. Instead, it has resorted to promoting its projects, adopting a mixture of defensive nationalism and conspiracy theories, and increasingly militarizing education and the civil service. But the president’s repeated statements criticizing his people indicate that the ideological hegemony the regime exercises over the public sphere from the top down has failed to generate social and political consensus at the base.

The relentless promotion of the regime’s achievements is a distinctive feature of Sisi’s administration, through which it tries to demonstrate its competence. Officials and media outlets therefore regularly highlight the inauguration of what are described as the world’s largest spinning mill, largest date farm, and largest agricultural wastewater treatment plant; or the largest marble industrial complex, largest infant formula factory, largest polyethylene industrial complex, largest container-handling station, and largest leather factory in the Middle East and North Africa.86 The New Administrative Capital, whose managing company has been described as “the largest real estate developer in the world,” boasts the Octagon complex, one of the world’s largest defense ministry headquarters, as well as the world’s second-largest mosque, Africa’s second-largest stadium, the largest cathedral in the Middle East and North Africa, the tallest tower on the African continent, and a pharaonic-style presidential palace also counted among the largest in the world.87 Unsurprisingly, it has also reportedly included the world’s tallest flagpole. These and other state-funded accomplishments are said to meet “the highest international standards,” in an attempt to entrench Egypt’s place among the nations of the world.

The other side of praising the Sisi administration’s achievements is the adoption of a discourse that holds Egyptians responsible for worsening the major financial problems facing the country and the poor socioeconomic conditions they endure, if not for causing them. Sisi in particular has woven a narrative that blames supporters of the 2011 revolution for inflicting enormous economic damage on the country, leaving it vulnerable to external shocks, and also holds them responsible for excessive population growth, portrayed as obstructing economic growth and placing pressure on state resources.88 He commented: “You revolt, go out into the streets, and destroy your country”; and repeated: “Do not keep destroying your country every little while.”89 He warned that “conditions do not improve unless our population growth rate is commensurate with our capacities... our economic capacities, our employment capacities, and the state’s general budget.”90 Speaking in September 2023, at the height of the financial crisis caused by massive government spending on Sisi’s favored megaprojects, he delivered a blunt message: “If the price of progress and prosperity for the nation is that it does not eat and drink the way people eat and drink, then we will not eat and drink.”91 But he adopted a more conciliatory tone when he promised Egyptians that despite the country’s enemies, whom he did not name: “If your rates of movement and growth remain like this, [after] ten or fifteen years you will be in a completely different place,” under his successor.92

This discourse is plainly directed primarily at Egypt’s poor, but the sharp deterioration in the socioeconomic conditions of the middle class required an argument within the ideological narrative of the second republic: that the Egyptian state faces an existential threat as part of a conspiracy being plotted against it. According to this narrative, Egypt faces a “fourth-generation war” waged in the political, social, economic, technological, and military domains.93 Officials of the new administration and its associated media began promoting this idea immediately after the 2013 coup, showing that the narrative was intended to preserve middle-class loyalty to the regime after its members had demonstrated in large numbers against President Mohamed Morsi, paving the way for his overthrow. Since then, armed forces officers and regime-loyal academics have tried to give this narrative a pseudo-scientific character, and have also taught it as part of official curricula for civil servants, police, prosecutors, and students in the armed forces, while promoting it intensively in state-controlled media, children’s educational materials, youth conferences, and religious sermons.94 Sisi regularly stresses this message, claiming again in December 2024 that unnamed, but foreign, intelligence agencies were behind “a very large volume of rumors and lies” circulating on social media in order to “move the [entire] world” against Egypt.95

Yet the real pillar of the second republic’s ideological narrative lies in the militarization of civilian life, such as education, civil-service employment, and training. In practice, this entails disciplining the behavior of middle-class citizens most affected by the sharp deterioration in their purchasing power and unlikely to be impressed by the president’s achievements. Militarization has accelerated since 2017, when Egyptian diplomats were required to complete a six-month training course that included nationalist ideological indoctrination at the Military Academy.96 In 2020, Sisi approved legal amendments stipulating that every governor in the country’s twenty-seven governorates would have a military adviser whose responsibilities include supervising the implementation of the military education curriculum, according to rules set by the Ministry of Defense, at the secondary and higher education levels.97 In April 2023, the government issued a decision requiring all those wishing to take civil-service jobs to undergo a six-month qualification course inside the Military Academy as a prerequisite for appointment, alongside passing the qualifying athletic and psychological tests.98 Military committees now assess and test applicants for civil-service jobs, and reports have revealed that the Military Academy has become the primary authority in promotions and appointments within the state administrative apparatus.99 Preparing a Politically Loyal Administrative Elite

The militarization of education and training to form a “politically loyal technocratic administrative elite” is part of Sisi’s response to the political predicament facing the country as a result of his deliberate refusal to create a ruling party.100 But it has not solved the related problem of finding candidates and interlocutors who help preserve a formal electoral appearance, pass Sisi’s agenda in parliament, and mobilize popular support for the president.101 This has led to experiments with different political models aimed at achieving these outcomes on condition that they remain obedient to the regime. The security and intelligence agencies play the central role in this context, routinely founding parties, forming new parliamentary blocs, and controlling the selection of their leaders and electoral candidates. Yet Sisi has remained reluctant to support even the most obsequious of these façade parties, fearing a repeat of the experience of the National Democratic Party, which managed under Mubarak to acquire real influence in policymaking and to represent the interests of an independent social class.

A large number of new regime-loyal parties emerged “from the womb of the June 30 revolution,” that is, the military coup of 2013, and were linked to various intelligence agencies, but Sisi initially sought to avoid party politics altogether.102 Beginning in 2014, pro-regime civilian youth activists who had helped with the military coup underwent “military-national” training under the Presidential Leadership Program, launched by Sisi in 2015 to fill the state administrative apparatus with competent government employees.103 This effort was reinforced by the creation of the National Training Academy in 2017, which said it had trained more than 6,000 young people by 2020.104 Many of these model technocrats later assumed positions in the state administrative apparatus and intelligence-controlled media, but they could not provide the new regime with the political patronage network it sought to build nationally. The regime therefore shifted its focus from the youth qualification program to the founding of the Nation’s Future Party in 2015. Yet the latter lacked the national organization needed to field 55,000 candidates for municipal council elections, so in 2016 the regime enlisted veterans of the National Democratic Party to supply a new political entity called For Egypt with their organizational expertise. Given the absence of political or programmatic differences between the two new parties, For Egypt merged in 2020 with the Nation’s Future Party, which won a majority of parliamentary seats in that year’s elections. The remaining youth activists with “security certification” joined the Coordination of Youth Parties and Politicians, which won forty-three seats in the Senate and House of Representatives in 2020, further underscoring the interchangeability of regime-loyal parties without any change in the political landscape.105

The presidency and the principal security agencies remain the country’s basic political bodies because of their control over the mechanisms that distribute rewards in exchange for loyalty. Political parties operate mainly as tools for mobilizing electoral votes, whether to help pass presidential decrees in the People’s Assembly or to present an appearance of overwhelming popular support for Sisi ahead of important events. For example, forty parties formed a temporary alliance under the direction of the General Intelligence Service in August 2023 to support Sisi’s election to a second presidential term, even before he had confirmed his candidacy.106 In December 2024, former government officials launched a new party, the National Front Party, in preparation for parliamentary elections planned for 2025. Their stated intention to “restore confidence in the political process” by following “a balanced approach in which [the party] maintains equal distance between loyalists and opposition” was meant to soothe growing popular discontent over inflation by suggesting an easing of political restrictions.107 The Nature of the Regime Under the New Republic

The principle that “nothing is for free” is therefore one of the two characteristics that distinguish the second republic from the post-1952 republic. The second is the shift to what may be described as a “super-presidential capacity regime,” in which Sisi has consecrated for himself a special legal status. His authority to suspend or bypass legal and constitutional checks and balances, which could previously be invoked only temporarily or during a declared state of emergency, has thus become normal and permanent, as the republic is reshaped through the consecration of military tutelage over civilian life.108 What most distinguishes this regime from Mubarak’s is the extent to which influence is concentrated in Sisi’s hands, and the exercise of power in a tighter and more homogeneous fashion than in the past.

As a result, Sisi rules at the head of a regime that is stable and largely internally cohesive, in which essential governmental functions are subordinated to the presidency and to the “sovereign” agencies, foremost among them the armed forces; these bodies therefore effectively constitute a parallel state. Businessmen are forced to operate within this hybrid structure, and thus seek to “co-opt, manipulate, or bypass the state’s coercive instruments, given their lack of independent instruments of influence of their own,” in the assessment of political economist Amr Adly.109 Yet as private wealth has accumulated among figures in the regime’s narrow circle because of their holding public office, they too have become part of the class of capital and property owners in a manner with no precedent in the post-1952 republic. It has thus become increasingly difficult to distinguish them from the upper strata of the business class and high-income elites, whether in displays of wealth or social aspirations.

The Regime’s Coreنواة النظام

Sisi presides over a regime whose core consists of two circles: an inner circle known as the “work cell,” which is the closest thing to a form of collective consultation within a highly personalized structure of power, if not to collective decisionmaking; and an outer circle composed of several dozen senior officers and civilian officials who convey presidential decisions and policy directives downward and report upward on implementation and needs.110 A third level, made up of former military and security officials, usually retired, and civil servants, constitutes a broader pool of trusted loyalists who can be appointed to head important state bodies and national councils and who are often moved from one post to another. A fourth level consists of the next generation of active-duty officers and civil servants awaiting promotion to leadership positions in their agencies, who implement presidential directives within their areas of responsibility.

…the essay continues at the source.

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