Foreign Policy Magazine
The Middle East Channel offers unique analysis and insights on this diverse and vital region of more than 400 million.
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Politicizing Egypt’s economic reform
By Emily Regan Wills | Thursday, November 29, 2012Morsi's extension of powers and the constitution-drafting process have been at center stage recently in Cairo, but the controversy over a $4.8 billion IMF loan to the Egyptian government is rooted in the same concern -- that political power is too concentrated in Egypt. Read More »
POST
Egyptian labor between Morsi and Mubarak
Dina Bishara Wednesday, November 28, 2012
While few noticed in the midst of an intense political crisis, Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi issued another controversial decree recently: Decree no. 97 of 2012, introducing a few important amendments to Egypt's long-standing 1976 labor law. The highly controversial law has already garnered significant opposition from a wide array of labor activists especially as it threatens to extend a long history of state control over labor affairs. While this may not be directly linked to the battle over Morsi's decree claiming unlimited Presidential power, many Egyptians see it as part of a broader bid for executive and partisan power.
The most controversial amendments include a provision to remove any Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) union board member who is over 60 years of age. The ETUF has been historically close to Egypt's rulers and most of its current top leadership is comprised of loyalists to the Mubarak regime. The current leadership was elected in 2006, a year that many activists claim was particularly marred with state intervention to prevent reformist candidates from running and ensure the success of loyalist candidates. According to the law, removed unionists would be replaced by candidates who had received the second largest number of votes in the last union elections (2006). Importantly, however, the law authorizes the highest authority (in this case the minister of manpower -- currently also a member of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, Khaled al-Azhari) to fill any remaining posts that could not be filled for whatever legal reason. Another amendment entails extending the current electoral term for ETUF leaders for an additional six months or until a new trade union law is enacted, whichever comes first.
These amendments raise two key questions: what implications does the content have for the future of state-labor relations in Egypt; and what is the significance of the timing of these amendments? Read More »
POST
Morsi’s majoritarian mindset
Michael Wahid Hanna Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi turned Egyptian politics on its head on Thanksgiving eve with his now familiar style of governance: a unilateral, surprise decree, the fourth of its kind since Morsi assumed his position in June. Each of these decisions has proceeded with little to no consultation and, regardless of their intent, each proclamation was notable for carving out further and broader authorities for the executive. The common thread linking these decisions is the majoritarian lens though which the Muslim Brotherhood understands political life and democratic politics -- one which bodes ill at this foundational moment when Egypt is attempting to refashion its social compact and establish a sustainable constitutional and political order.
Morsi's majoritarian mindset is not anti-democratic per se, but depends upon a distinctive conception of winner-takes-all politics and the denigration of political opposition. Winning elections, by this perspective, entitles the victors to govern unchecked by the concerns of the losers. This chronic overreach has cemented the divide between Islamists and non-Islamists and heightened suspicions of the Brotherhood's ultimate intentions. Read More »
POST
Arafat's ghost
Omar Dajani Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Yasir Arafat had a canny knack for ensuring that Palestine never strayed too far from the world's headlines. His ghost may turn out to be no less resourceful. Today, a multinational team of medical and forensic experts exhumed the late Palestinian president's remains, as part of an investigation to determine whether he was poisoned. And, Thursday, the United Nations General Assembly, Arafat's favorite international forum, appears poised to confer the status of "non-member observer state" upon Palestine. The timing of these two developments appears coincidental, but what happens next may determine the fate of another apparent victim of foul play: the Middle East peace process.
The decision to exhume Arafat's remains, almost eight years after his demise, is itself illuminating. Why, many have asked, wasn't it done earlier, when potential evidence of wrongdoing remained fresh? Although it is tempting to suspect a conspiracy, the reality likely hews closer to Hamlet than Julius Caesar. Just after Arafat's death in 2004, a negotiated settlement of the conflict remained a tantalizing prospect: Israel withdrew its troops from the Gaza Strip in 2005, a new Palestinian-Israeli agreement on movement and access was concluded later the same year, and Palestinians returned to the polls in 2006 for the first time in a decade. While many Palestinians suspected from the start that Arafat died from unnatural causes, their leadership, like the court of Denmark in Hamlet, preferred not to be confronted with potentially unpleasant facts about the late patriarch's death. Why inflame the situation just as tempers were cooling? Why risk souring relations with Israel and the United States when progress was close at hand? Wasn't it possible, after all, that Arafat had been the obstacle to peace all along? Read More »
POST
Monarchism matters
Michael Herb Monday, November 26, 2012
The Arab Spring was hard on Arab presidents: most of the personalist presidential autocracies are now gone. But no Arab monarchs fell during the Arab Spring. Why did the monarchs fare so well? The strong correlation between monarchism and survival suggests, of course, that monarchism had something (or everything) to do with it. Some scholars, however, have argued the success of the monarchs does not have much to do with their monarchism, but can be traced to other factors, especially oil and foreign support. These factors are not irrelevant, but monarchism still mattered, and for two reasons. The monarchs benefited, first, from their ability to promise reform and, second, from the sense amongst their citizens that, while not ideal, monarchical rule was better than the republican alternatives. These factors, however, are not permanent, and the ability of the monarchs to weather the recent storms does not mean that they will fare as well the next time unrest sweeps the Arab world. Read More »
Morsi's Mixed Moves
What do Morsi's international and domestic moves mean for Egypt's future?
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Syrian Internet goes dark
By David Kenner
Read More »
Bearing Witness
By Mosa'ab Elshamy
Exclusive photographs from inside besieged Gaza. Read More »
- U.N. General Assembly will likely pass Palestinian observer state status
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Politicizing Egypt’s economic reform
By Emily Regan Wills
Morsi's extension of powers and the constitution-drafting process have been at center stage recently in Cairo, but the controversy over a $4.8 billion IMF loan to the Egyptian government is rooted in the same concern -- that political power is too concentrated in Egypt. Read More »
Egyptian labor between Morsi and Mubarak
By Dina Bishara
Following a controversial presidential decree last week that sparked widespread unrest, President Morsi has ammended Egypt's long-standing 1976 labor law, in a move that many critics charge reflects the Muslim Brotherhood's attempt to control the Egyptian trade union movement. Read More »