Conclusion: Old Social Contract, New Social Contract

Summary

This book has set out to explore the puzzle of the social contract in Egypt – why did many of the tenets of the revolutionary social contract still hold strong decades after Nasser? Why has a new social contract still yet to materialise, despite the erosion of the older social contract? The analysis in this book has pushed against two central previous readings of the social contract in Egypt (and, more broadly, in the Middle East): that it has been mostly a top-down authoritarian bargain, and that it has been a populist bargain. Instead, offered here is a history of the social contract through an exploration of state–middle class relations and how those have shaped the social contract over time.

I have studied the trajectory of the social contract on three levels: the political discourse that brought about the making and remaking of the social contract; the relevant legislation, particularly the Egyptian constitutions in which the social contract was officially inscribed; and the actual implementation of the social contract through an analysis of state institutional capacity and state allocation of resources according to various articles of the social contract. Such cross-referencing has enabled the study of both the explicit and the implicit in Egypt's social contract, and often also the gaps between the two. The analysis demonstrates how the Egyptian social contract interacted with changing global trends in socio-economic development and governance. Such global trends, or global best practices, influenced the changing visions of the Egyptian social contract, but also its realms of possibility.

My analysis of the Egyptian social contract echoes Franz Fanon's critique of the post-colonial process in newly liberated states. I concur with Fanon that the political dominance of national middle classes created a gap between national liberation and the liberation of those most in need within the nation because this middle class followed its own self-interests rather than those of the masses. I have studied how a self-centred effendi vision and practice of socio-economic development shaped that of the nation, and how an effendi social contract directed socio-economic development in Egypt over time.