Democracy in Egypt Proposal

Background and Proposed Research Focus

The Egyptian Constitution was approved by referendum in September 1971. Since that time, Egypt engaged in an armed conflict with Israel (1973), signed a formal peace treaty with Israel (1979), experienced a presidential assassination (1981), and participated in the Gulf War against Iraq (1991). Since 1971, also, the Egyptian population has increased from somewhat over 30 million persons to approximately 55 million. Population growth has been so rapid that Egypt has remained one of the world's poorest countries in the context of per capita income.

Egypt has had two leaders since 1971Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak. Each of these leaders in their own way made attempts to democratize the Egyptian political environment.1 For reasons of both necessity and preference, however, each of these leaders often devoted greater attention to international relations than they have to the internal political environment of Egypt. Within the country's internal political environment, however, population and economic pressures, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, and general frustration among the Egyptian population has fostered the growth of political extremism. The presence of political extremists within the Egyptian population, in turn, has caused it to be even more difficult for the Egyptian leadership to fully

1Raymond A. Hinnebusch, Egyptian Politics Under Sadat: The PostPopulist Develo

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matrix, or model, which may be employed in the analysis and evaluation of the process of political development experienced by specific societies. There exist interrelationships between each of the five crises and, within each of these crises, between each of the components of political development. The crisis model recognizes five specific crises of political development, as follows: 1. The identity crisis refers to "the subjective, but not always emotional, basis for membership in a political community," where the problem of political identity might also be stated as "the tension between the culturally and psychologically determined sense of personalgroup identity and the political definition of the community."5 2. The legitimacy crisis refers to ". . . the change in the nature of the ultimate authority to which political obligation is owed."6 __________ 4L. Binder, J. S. Coleman, J. LaPalombara, L. W. Pye, S. Verba, and M. Weiner, Crises and Sequences in Political Development (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1974), 3440. 5Ibid., 53. 6Ibid. 3. The participation crisis refers to ". . . the individual's freedom to alter the social or
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Approximate Word count = 2076
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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