Post-Revolutionary Egypt: Agents of Transformation between Openness and Cloture of the Political Structure

Since 2010, countries in the Middle East and North Africa have been undergoing constant changes of political and social nature. Protests were directed by youth-led, non-ideological, horizontal, leaderless movements who benefited from the openness of political structure in the aftermath of the uprising. Despite, their participation in the overthrow of the old regimes, the revolutionary movements were almost excluded from the key decision-making positions during the political transformation processes.

In particular, and with emphasis on Egypt, the paper has two interrelated aims: First, it examines the openness and closure of political structure during the political transformation period that we split into three phases :1) the military phase; 2) the Muslim Brotherhood phase and; 3) the actual polarization phase. The analysis focuses on the extent to which social movements benefited from political opening to increase their inclusion in the political sphere in post-revolutionary Egypt. As well as to the degree in which social movements succeeded or failed in challenging the repressive measures taken by the current regime to exclude them from the public space. The emphasis is on the change interaction between state-society relations on the one hand, and fragmented revolutionary movements relations, on the other hand, which were split into secular and Islamists coalitions. This focus may indicate how the different actors shaped the trajectory of each phase of the transformation process. The first aim of the paper will serve to: a) enhance our understanding of the strategies adopted by social movements either to sustain or suspend their mobilization in each phase of the transformational process and then; b) identify the response of the political structure to social movements mobilization in a shifting context.