Youth Activism And Contentious Politics In Egypt

This book studies the role of youth movements in the Arab uprisings of 2010 and 2011, and the regime's responses to these movements.

This book studies the role of youth movements in the Arab uprisings of 2010 and 2011, and the regime's responses to these movements.

An eye-opening look at youth in contemporary Egypt, from the role they play in advancing political change to their everyday struggles In Youth in Egypt, Nadine Sika explores the political world of young people in Egypt, focusing on their experiences under authoritarianism. From the reigns of Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat to that of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, she offers an on-the-ground perspective through the eyes of multiple generations of young people who lived through consecutive periods of political upheaval and state militarization. Drawing on surveys, interviews, and focus groups, Sika shines a light on youth who have participated in protest movements, civil society organizations, and political parties. She shows us the different opportunities for economic and political participation that exist for them, explaining why young Egyptians may choose to either mobilize against or—surprisingly—in support of the regime. Sika underscores how youth in Egypt have been regarded as both the “hope of the nation” and a “threat to the nation.” Youth in Egypt shines a light on the rising generation of young people that represents Egypt's future and also has significant implications for the broader Middle East and North Africa region.

In this book, Ahmed Tohamy analyses the often-neglected trajectory that led up to the protests in Egypt that culminated in the fall of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. Tohamy's assertion is that by examining the decade preceding this momentous event, we see that the youth movement far from being inert was extremely active. Tohamy uses the Social Movements Theory to argue how Egyptian youth became a new agent of change in the Middle East. By positioning the youth activists as dynamically engaging with their social and political contexts within a framework of opportunities and constraints, his analysis strikes at the heart of the debates concerning the nature and substance of revolution and its effects on state and society."

This book examines the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa, and how it impacts young people’s civic and political participation today. The edited volume analyses the extent to which young people influence public policies, social, cultural and economic structures, and how on the other hand these young people are influenced by the same structures. It focuses on the politics and agency of youth, and how they impact social change and continuity in the Middle East and North Africa. The book will be of great value to students, scholars and researchers interested in Youth Movements, MENA, Comparative Politics and Political Economy. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Mediterranean Politics.

Civil Society in the Middle East analyzes the impact of repression on civil society activism in the Middle East through analyzing the cases of Egypt and Jordan. Sika argues that authoritarian regimes' repressive strategies toward civil society actors vary depending on recent historical experience with regime breakdown and/or continuity. Authoritarian regimes that go through breakdown and that transition from one autocratic rule to another increase repression against all civil society actors in an effort to pre-empt large-scale mobilization. This instils fear into civil society actors, who as a result either disengage from civic and political activism or turn to different forms of participation, such as social entrepreneurship. On the other hand, long-standing authoritarian regimes that have not faced breakdown utilize targeted repression and co-optation strategies while tolerating civic and political activism, as well as some forms of contentious activities. Civil society actors in these regimes are able to grasp political opportunities to mobilize for demonstrations at certain times and in certain spaces, and to develop coalition partnerships to push the regime to advance some reforms and change.

While the Arab people took center stage in the Arab Spring protests, academic studies have focused more on structural factors to understand the limitations of these popular uprisings. This book analyzes the role and complexities of popular agency in the Arab Spring through the framework of contentious politics and social movement theory.

"The April 6th Youth Movement began as a Facebook page that sought to mobilize young Egyptians' support for striking industrial workers. Established in Egypt in 2008 when over 100,000 Facebook users joined, the movement consisted mainly of young Egyptians who had never been involved in politics before. The group's unprecedented popularity meant that it eventually coalesced into a political movement and played a key role in the revolution against Hosni Mubarak's rule. This book investigates the rise and fall of the April 6th Movement to explain the contentious dynamics of social activism in Egypt. Despite the Movement's initial success, it was banned by an Egyptian court and its main founders arrested after it later turned against the military-installed regime. The formal transition process following Mubarak's fall had posed ideological and organizational challenges to the Movement, leading to internal fragmentations and the gradual loss of its mobilizing capacity. But Ali Sonay argues here that social movements around the world faced very similar opportunities and constraints, and that the political and socio-economic dynamics in Egypt cannot be understood by referring to concepts such as the 'West' and 'Middle East'. Instead, according to Sonay, the Arab uprisings were embedded in the increasingly volatile global political and socio-economic context that reached way beyond the Middle East and was exacerbated by the financial crisis in 2008. Based on first-hand and in-depth empirical findings, Sonay sheds new light on the so-called Arab Spring and presents the April 6th Movement as a manifestation of a global political discourse."--Bloomsbury Publishing.