to which the governments of Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak have introduced democracy into the Egyptian political environment, as well as the extent to which the level of democracy that is present in the country is substantiative, as opposed to simply having declared formally. In the process several relevant issues will be examined. These issues include (1) the role of Islamic fundamentalism in Egypt, the impact of Islamic principles on economic and political development in the country, the effect of economic development on attempts to democratize the Egyptian political environment, the relationship between the military and democracy in Egypt, and the impact of international relations on democratic initiatives in the country.
David Easton said that an attempt can be made to "try to understand political life by viewing each of its aspects piecemeal," or by trying to "view political life as a system of interrelated activities."2 A major problem associated with the examination of a political system is that government and politics do not exist in a vacuum they are embedded in, and closely
2David Easton, "An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems," World Politics, 9 (April 1957): 380.related to, many other activities in a society. It is, thus, more profitable to analyze the process of political development as a system of interrelated activities, as opposed to a piecemeal analysis of the components of the development, for the process of political development, as is true of a functioning political system, is an integral part of the society within which it occurs.
Models of political development must be just that models. They may provide a general framework within which the development process within a specific country may be understood. Further, a political system is expected to change over time, because the environments in which people live change over time.
Models of political development are often functional in...