New Texts Out Now: Safinaz El Tarouty, Businessmen, Clientelism, and Authoritarianism in Egypt

[Cover of Safinaz El Tarouty, \"Businessmen, Clientelism, and Authoritarianism in Egypt\"] [Cover of Safinaz El Tarouty, \"Businessmen, Clientelism, and Authoritarianism in Egypt\"]

New Texts Out Now: Safinaz El Tarouty, Businessmen, Clientelism, and Authoritarianism in Egypt

By : Safinaz El Tarouty

Safinaz El Tarouty, Businessmen, Clientelism, and Authoritarianism in Egypt. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Safinaz El Tarouty (SET): This book is based on my PhD dissertation that I completed in 2014 at the University of East Anglia. The topic I chose for my dissertation was authoritarian survival in Egypt. I decided to examine this topic by focusing on the role of Egyptian businessmen in politics and their relationship to authoritarian survival. Since 2000, the visibility of businessmen in politics has been growing. This was evident in their election to the parliament, appointment in the ruling party, and in the cabinet. The increasing engagement of businessmen in politics motivated me to explore their role in sustaining Mubarak’s regime.

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

SET: This book addresses the question: To what degree did businessmen contribute to the survival of authoritarianism over the three decades of Mubarak’s rule (1981–2011)? Other sub questions emerged from this question that the book attempted to answer: 1) Why did businessmen get involved in politics under the authoritarian rule of former President Mubarak? 2) Why did the regime allow businessmen to become engaged in politics? 3) What was the relationship between the regime and those businessmen who did not engage in politics? 4) Did all businessmen support the regime? If not, how did the regime deal with businessmen opposing the regime?

In light of the book’s research questions, I have classified the literature on authoritarian survival and renewal into two groups: the political economy approach and the institutional approach. The political economy approach explained the different relations that developed between the businessmen and authoritarianism, ranging from coercion to dependency to bargaining to predation; however, this approach could not explain the institutions in which these relations occurred. This is why I complemented the gap in the political economy approach by using the institutional approach. In the book, I review the literature on the different institutional mechanisms for regime’s co-option of supporters and containment of opponents.

One of the main issues this book addresses is that there is a gap in the existing literature on authoritarian renewal regarding co-option. This literature does not explain the fact that co-option between the regime and businessmen is flexible and can take different forms—for example, authoritarian clientelism, semi-clientelism, patron-broker client relationships, and, in exceptional cases, mutual dependency. By looking at the varieties and flexibility of co-option, we can understand how Mubarak’s authoritarian regime renewed its authoritarianism, especially after the introduction of economic liberalization, which increased the structural and financial power of businessmen.

One of the issues that I discovered through my research is that businessmen’s support for or opposition to authoritarianism is not always contingent on their economic interests. On the one hand, there are businessmen who played a role in supporting Mubarak’s authoritarianism for their own economic interests, since they were economically dependent on the regime. On the other hand, through my empirical research I found out that businessmen associated with the Muslim Brothers opposed Mubarak’s regime because of their ideological views rather than their belief in democracy. Their opposition to Mubarak’s regime was at the expense of scarifying their wealth and private businesses.

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

SET: The original empirical material and new theoretical contributions make this book useful for academics in undergraduate and graduate courses on authoritarian regimes, Egyptian politics, and the political economy of authoritarianism. The book is also written in a language accessible to non-academic readers, who may be just interested in reading about businessmen and their relation to Mubarak’s authoritarian regime. The book uncovers how economic liberalization under Mubarak resulted in more authoritarianism and provided new opportunities for economic predation, state capture, and market monopoly on the part of businessmen. Economic liberalization, by its own standards, should have instead improved economic efficiency and increased the degree of private sector competition. I hope my book could be a reference for policy makers and businessmen to learn from the mistakes of the Mubarak regime’s economic liberalization.

J: What methodologies did you use in your research for this book?

SET: I used qualitative methods to answer my research questions on the role of businessmen in authoritarian survival. Through interviews, newspaper articles, secondary sources, and interpellations submitted to parliament, I was able to construct case studies about different types of businessmen and their relationships with the regime. Through these case studies, I analyze the role of businessmen in authoritarian survival and renewal. I selected the interviewees after making a short list of large-scale businessmen who come from different political backgrounds: businessmen from the National Democratic Party (NDP), independent businessmen, and businessmen from opposition political parties, as well as opposition organizations and movements.

I chose a case study approach to allow for an in-depth understanding and analysis of businessmen’s relationships with the authoritarian regime. Businessmen who were examined in this research entered into clientelistic relations with the regime, and they have been classified based on the institutional tool by which the regime co-opted them: 1) businessmen who were co-opted by running for parliament as NDP members or independents; 2) other businessmen who did not engage in politics and were co-opted through social-network relations with Mubarak and his family; and 3) other businessmen who were co-opted by joining the loyal opposition parties. This is why I examine these three categories of businessmen in three different chapters: “Parliamentary Businessmen,” “The Social Networks of the Mubarak Family and Businessmen,” and “Businessmen in the Opposition.”

I believe that these classifications provide a comprehensive examination of samples of different types of large-scale businessmen who were co-opted by the regime through different institutional mechanisms. In order to complement my case study approach to businessmen and authoritarianism, I examine in each of these classification examples of the businessmen who refused to be co-opted by the regime.

Excerpts from Businessmen, Clientelism, and Authoritarianism in Egypt

This work examines the different institutional mechanisms of the Mubarak regime’s co-option of businessmen. It went beyond the conception of co-option as dyadic and static. This work demonstrates that in light of economic liberalization, the political economy of authoritarianism intersected with different types of clientelistic relationships. Co-option became flexible and took a variety of forms (for example, authoritarian clientelism, semiclientelism, patron-broker-client relationships, and mutual dependency). The varied means of co-opting businessmen demonstrate how the regime prevented them from playing a democratizing role in politics.

Ramy Lakah in Chapter Three; Ahmed Bahgat, Ibrahim El Moallam, and Mohamed Nosseir in Chapter Four; and El Sayyid El Badawi in Chapter Five entered into authoritarian clientelistic relationships with the regime. These clientelistic relationships were based on their subordination to the regime and were reinforced by credible threats of coercion. The regime used Lakah’s file of financial corruption at the Prosecutor General’s Office to threaten him. Even after Lakah returned to Egypt and reconciled with the regime by settling his debts with the banks, he was still under a credible threat of having the file documenting his corruption opened at any time, which made him continue in his support of Mubarak and in his subordination to the regime. In the case of Bahgat, the regime used his debts to public banks to threaten his business in case he became disobedient. This ensured that both he and his private channel, Dream TV, were subordinate to the regime. In the case of El Moallam, when his Al-Sherouk newspaper criticized the project of hereditary succession and Mubarak’s authoritarian regime in one of its articles, the regime used credible threats of coercion by closing his carton factory, claiming as its reason that the factory did not have a fire extinguisher. Nosseir’s authoritarian clientelistic relation with the regime was demonstrated by his subordination to Mubarak when he was ordered to establish a financial center, which he called “the Citadel project.” This subordination was reinforced by credible threats of coercion when he became one of those businessmen who had to provide support to the regime in the form of charitable activities. El Sayyid El Badawi’s economic and political careers were dependent on the regime for survival. This dependency forced him into an authoritarian clientelistic relationship with the regime based on credible threats of losing both his business and his political career if he were disobedient. Therefore, he obeyed the regime when he was ordered to buy the radical newspaper Al-Destour in order to tame it. Other businessmen entered into semiclientelistic relationships with the regime—for example, the loan MPs in Chapter Three and Wagih Siag in Chapter Four. In the case of the loan MPs, as a result of economic liberalization, the credit ceilings of banks were abolished, which allowed businessmen to loot banks’ money. This increased the structural and financial power of businessmen allowed them to enter into semiclientelistic relationships with the regime based on bargaining and less subordination. Similarly, the increase in the financial power of Siag after winning his case against the Egyptian government allowed him to enter into a bargaining relationship with the regime. The loan MPs’ bargain with the regime allowed them to pay back only part of the money they had looted from the banks. Siag’s bargaining with the regime allowed him to return to Egypt to resume his private business. In both cases, the bargaining relationships induced compliance by the threat of the removal of benefits (for example, the benefit of paying back only part of the money businessmen had looted from the banks in the case of loan MPs and the benefit of returning to invest in Egypt in the case of Siag) and not by threat of coercion.

This work has demonstrated that economic liberalization transformed the relationship between the regime and parliamentary businessmen into a triadic relationship, as mentioned in Chapter Three. This triadic relation involved the regime (as a patron), the parliamentary businessmen (as brokers), and the voters (as clients). In this triadic relationship, parliamentary businessmen played the role of brokers and replaced the state in providing social services to their constituencies.

The varied ways of co-opting businessmen demonstrate how the regime renewed its survival after the introduction of economic liberalization. One group of businessmen entered into authoritarian clientelistic relationships with the regime based on subordination. These relationships were reinforced by credible threats of coercion. Another group of businessmen entered into semiclientelistic relationships with the regime based on bargaining. The clientelistic relationships based on bargaining induced compliance by the threat of the removal of benefits rather than threats of coercion. A third group of businessmen entered into patron-broker-client relationships with the regime and replaced the state in the provision of social services. In exceptional cases, businessmen Ahmed Ezz and Naguib Sawiris formed a relationship of mutual dependency with the regime. Businessmen who refused to be co-opted by the regime—as in the cases of Ibrahim Kamel and Anwar Esmat El Sadat, discussed in Chapter 3—were punished by the regime and were prevented from engaging in politics. This means that the regime’s co-option of businessmen should not be understood in terms of only one type of co-option. In other words, the regime could not maintain its survival by using only threats of coercion with all businessmen, by bargaining with all businessmen, or by using all businessmen as brokers to replace the state’s role in providing services. Instead, the regime maintained its survival and renewed its authoritarianism after the introduction of economic liberalization by using a variety of clientelistic relationships with businessmen.

[Excerpted from Safinaz El Tarouty, Businessmen, Clientelism, and Authoritarianism in Egypt, by permission of the author. © 2015 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. For more information, or to purchase this book, click here.] 

NEWTON 2014 Year in Review

Once again this year, as the editors of the New Texts Out Now (NEWTON) Page, we have been honored to have the opportunity to feature an astonishing range of books, articles, special issues of journals, and films for Jadaliyya readers in 2014. With authors generously agreeing to discuss their new works, offer background information on their research, and allow us to post excerpts from their books and articles, we have been able to offer first looks at some of the most important new work in the field, from established names and rising stars alike.

Here on the eve of 2015, with a new set of texts on the horizon, we have an opportune moment to look back at the previous year on NEWTON. The work below spans disciplines, regions, and methodological and theoretical approaches. We offer it for scholars working in the field, as well as teachers and students looking for recently published sources in Middle East studies.

As always, if you wish to recommend a book to be featured in New Texts Out Now, or if you have just published a book, a peer-reviewed article, or the special issue of a journal, please email us at reviews@jadaliyya.com. See you in 2015.

Myriam Ababsa, Atlas of Jordan: History, Territories, and Society

Rula Jurdi Abisaab and Malek Abisaab, The Shi‘ites of Lebanon: Modernism, Communism, and Hizbullah’s Islamists

Maha Abdelrahman, Egypt`s Long Revolution: Protest Movements and Uprisings

Niki Akhavan, Electronic Iran: The Cultural Politics of an Online Evolution

Abdullah Al-Arian, Answering the Call: Popular Islamic Activism in Sadat’s Egypt

Anthony Alessandrini, Frantz Fanon and the Future of Cultural Politics

Anthony Alessandrini, Nazan Ustundag, and Emrah Yildiz, “Resistance Everywhere”: The Gezi Protests and Dissident Visions of Turkey

VJ Um Amel, “A Digital Humanities Approach: Text, the Internet, and the Egyptian Uprising”

Zayde Antrim, Routes and Realms: The Power of Place in the Early Islamic World

Hani Bawardi, The Making of Arab Americans: From Syrian Nationalism to US Citizenship

Claire Beaugrand, Amélie Le Renard, et Roman Stadnicki, Villes et dynamiques urbaines en péninsule Arabique / Cities and Urban Dynamics in the Arabian Peninsula

Rawia Bishara, Olives, Lemons & Za’atar: The Best Middle Eastern Home Cooking

Shampa Biswas, Nuclear Desire: Power and the Postcolonial Nuclear Order

Laurie A. Brand, Official Stories: Politics and National Narratives in Egypt and Algeria

Edmund Burke III, The Ethnographic State: France and the Invention of Moroccan Islam

Melani Cammett, Compassionate Communalism: Welfare and Sectarianism in Lebanon

Sheila Carapico, Political Aid and Arab Activism: Democracy Promotion, Justice, and Representation

Reem Charif, Mohamad Hafeda, and Joumana al Jabri, Creative Refuge

Jean-Claude David et Thierry Boissiere, Alep et ses territoires. Fabrique et politique d’une ville (1868-2011)

Muriam Haleh Davis, The Afterlives of the Algerian Revolution

Ahmed El Shamsy, The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History

Gulcin Erdi-Lelandais, Understanding the City: Henri Lefebvre and Urban Studies

Abir Hamdar, The Female Suffering Body: Illness and Disability in Modern Arabic Literature

Adam Hanieh, Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East

Linda Herrera, Revolution in the Age of Social Media: The Egyptian Popular Insurrection and the Internet

Linda Herrera, Wired Citizenship: Youth Learning and Activism in the Middle East

Annika Marlen Hinze, Turkish Berlin: Integration Policy and Urban Space

Valeska Huber, Channelling Mobilities: Migration and Globalisation in the Suez Canal Region and Beyond

India: Wounded States (Special Issue of Warscapes)

Jacobin Magazine, Special Section on the Gulf Cooperation Council

Rebecca Joubin, The Politics of Love: Sexuality, Gender, and Marriage in Syrian Television Drama

Mohammad Ali Kadivar, “Alliances and Perception Profiles in the Iranian Reform Movement, 1997 to 2005”

John Tofik Karam, “On the Trail and Trial of a Palestinian Diaspora: Mapping South America in the Arab–Israeli Conflict, 1967–1972”

Paul Kelemen, The British Left and Zionism: History of a Divorce

Andrea Khalil, Crowds and Politics in North Africa: Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya

Andrea Khalil, Women, Gender, and the Arab Spring

Lina Khatib, Dina Matar, and Atef Alshaer, The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication

Kurdish Studies, Volume 1, Issue 1

Reinoud Leenders, Spoils of Truce: Corruption and State-Building in Postwar Lebanon

Mark LeVine, The Arab Uprisings of 2011 (Special Issue of Middle East Critique)

Elisabeth Longuenesse et Cyril Roussel, Developper en Syrie. Retour sur une experience historique

Sunaina Maira and Piya Chatterjee, The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent

Nazan Maksudyan, Orphans and Destitute Children in the Late Ottoman Empire

Kamran Matin, Recasting Iranian Modernity: International Relations and Social Change

Pascal Menoret, Joyriding in Riyadh: Oil, Urbanism, and Revolt

Palestine, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Primer (Revised and Updated Edition)

Leila Piran, Institutional Change in Turkey: The Impact of European Union Reforms on Human Rights and Policy

Erin Runions, The Babylon Complex: Theopolitical Fantasies of War, Sex, and Sovereignty

Kimberly Wedeven Segall, Performing Democracy in Iraq and South Africa

Nimer Sultany, “Religion and Constitutionalism: Lessons from American and Islamic Constitutionalism”

Lisa Wedeen, “Ideology and Humor in Dark Times: Notes from Syria”

Isabelle Werenfels, “Beyond Authoritarian Upgrading: The Re-Emergence of Sufi Orders in Maghrebi Politics”