Electoral institutions in non-democratic regimes: The impact of the 1990 electoral reform on patterns of party development in Mubarak's Egypt.

This PhD researches the development of political parties in Egypt between 1981 and 2000 under the presidency of Husni Mubarak. The starting point of this investigation is the failure of Egypt's parties to develop into politically-relevant organisations with strong constituency support in society. What we find instead are parties that - since the inception of multipartism in 1977 - remain characterised by their marginal role within the polity and politics of the state, that are little entrenched in society and that expose an underdeveloped and oftentimes fragmented internal structure. What is more, not only have these parties remained persistently weak, but since the early 1990s they experienced a further weakening of their position in the Egyptian polity. Essentially, this weakening was evident at both the electoral and parliamentary level. In both these domains of politics parties were far more vocal and visibly present during the 1980s than during the 1990s. During the latter decade, in fact, the country's main parties had become entirely marginalized actors in the electoral and parliamentary arenas. This PhD argues that the marginalisation of Egypt's parties was critically influenced by the 1990 reform of the parliamentary electoral law. This reform entailed a shift from a PR list- based regime to an absolute majority two-round system. Following the electoral connection literature, it is demonstrated that this particular inter-system change, rather than supporting the development of strong mass-based organisations, actually contributed to the further weakening of Egypt's parties as collective actors in the electoral arena. This was the case because the new electoral law created an institutional environment that adversely affect the capacity of party headquarters to control the nomination and placement of candidates and the willingness of party candidates to pursue a party over a personal reputation-seeking strategy in the elections. Both these factors together, it is maintained, severely undermined the capacity of parties to enhance levels of internal unity and visible representation in the electoral arena, and as such contributed to their observed marginalisation in the Egyptian polity

Bullets over ballots: Islamist groups, the state and electoral violence in Egypt and Morocco

This article is concerned with state-sponsored electoral violence in liberalized autocracies. The first section of the paper identifies a number of variables that can help explain the decision calculus of authoritarian incumbents to deploy force against strong electoral challengers. The second section then examines these propositions with reference to Egypt and Morocco. Drawing on recent parliamentary elections in both countries the article questions why, despite facing the challenge of political Islam, the two regimes differed so markedly in their willingness to manipulate the polls by recourse to violence. Whilst the Egyptian authorities decided to abrogate all pretence of peaceful elections in favour of violent repression against the Muslim Brotherhood candidates and sympathizers, no such tactics were deployed by the ruling elite in Morocco. We suggest that three principal factors influenced the regimes' response to this electoral challenge: (1) the centrality of the elected institution to authoritarian survival; (2) the availability of alternative electioneering tools; and (3) the anticipated response of the international community. The article concludes by suggesting that in order to understand better when and how states deploy violence in elections, we need to focus on a more complex set of factors rather than simply on the electoral potency of key opposition challengers or the authoritarian nature of the state

Parties of Power as Roadblocks to Democracy: The Cases of Ukraine and Egypt. CEPS Policy Briefs No. 81, 1 August 2005

As typified by Ukraine and Egypt, most of the semi- or non-democratic countries in the EU’s neighbourhood pretend to offer a degree of political pluralism. The standard is for a plurality of parties to run in national elections and participate in parliamentary sessions. In contrast to fully fledged democracies, however, these electoral rituals have little bearing on the composition of government and its policy output, which remains entirely dominated by the executive institutions and parties of power. This paper argues that the trademarks of these types of parties are a serious stumbling block for the development of a multi-party system based on competing ideological currents. For democracy to take hold in the EU’s eastern and southern neighbourhood of the EU, it is crucial that the logic of parties of power be replaced by one structured around autonomous and ideologically cohesive parties. Thus, both ideological and organisational party-building should be an integral part of the EU’s policy agenda to promote the spread of democracy in these regions

The state of e-services delivery in Kuwait: opportunities and challenges

This paper reviews the state of e-government services delivery in Kuwait as of 2011. Disaggregating e-government to its component units, it compares and contrasts the functionality and maturity of e-services provided on individual ministry websites and the Kuwait Government Online (KGO) portal, which was established in 2008 to provide a ‘one-stop’ centre for government-to-citizens (G2C) and government-to-business (G2B) interactions and transactions. Drawing on field research in the country, the paper argues that whilst significant strides have been made in the development of e-government since the early 2000s, key challenges remain in the delivery of user-friendly and customer-oriented web-based e-services to citizens and residents. These pertain to an incomplete synchronization of e-services between the KGO portal and individual ministry websites, the limited availability of full e-services across government agencies, the absence of any integrated e-services involving multiple agencies, and the questionable value of some of the e-services provided. According to the authors, progress in the development of integrated e-services is impeded not so much by technological barriers, or by human capacity problems and levels of information and computer technology (ICT) usage, as by the absence of an enabling regulatory environment and the limited efforts presently made by government agencies at cross-departmental cooperation

SPSS Arab coalitions Dataset

This database covers a total of 60 multiparty coalition governments formed in the countries of the Arab Middle East between 1990 and 2022. It includes coalition events in Algeria, Iraq, (Iraqi Kurdistan), Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen. Amongst others, the dataset comprises information on coalition start/end dates, duration in days, periods of caretaker governance, coalition size, ideological composition and causes for coalition termination

Kuwait’s Islamist Proto-parties and the Arab Uprisings: Between Opposition, Pragmatism and the Pursuit of Cross-Ideological Cooperation

Exploring the evolution of Islamist proto-parties in Kuwait, this chapter revealed that in the aft ermath of the Arab uprisings their behaviour was guided mostly by pragmatism, albeit with diff erent outcomes. As we have seen, within the Sunni Islamist political current this pragmatism was manifest in a focus by most proto-parties on political reform (and not rupture) as well as a willingness to set aside ideological diff erences and work closely with liberal-national and populist-left ist forces in driving this reform agenda forward. It was also evident to some extent in the downplaying of their traditional social/religious agenda, although, of course, its pursuit was never entirely abandoned, as evident in the legislative initiatives put forward by some of the Salafi proto-parties during the post-uprising period. Within the principle Shi‘a Islamist constituency, meanwhile, pragmatism, as espoused by the NIA, was manifest in the protoparty’s steadfast show of loyalty to, and support for, the government and its policies in light of growing regional sectarian tensions and the crackdown on Shi‘a (Islamist) forces and activists in Bahrain. Reminiscent of the 2005–6 period, cross-ideological cooperation to advance political reforms thus once again earmarked the nature of oppositional politics in and outside parliament in the years following the Arab uprisings. Indeed, it provided not only the opposition with greater muscle to press for constitutional reforms, but also political cover for the country’s principle Islamist proto-parties in the face of growing region-wide anti-MB sentiment, particularly from 2013 onwards. Whether these collaborative endeavours between Islamist and secular opposition will survive in the longue durée and entice the al-Sabah regime to accede to the opposition’s long-standing reform demands remains, however, far from certain. For one thing, the euphoria of the Arab uprisings has long since made way for an authoritarian re-entrenchment in many parts of the MENA, with governments no longer showing any appetite for liberalising reforms, and with Arab societies growing increasingly weary of the turmoil and confl ict the uprisings have brought about. In this climate, the Amir and the Kuwaiti government may well feel litt le inclination to succumb to any reform pressures at home from civil/political society. More signifi cantly, there remain serious question-marks over the sustainability and scope of such cross-ideological cooperation among Kuwaiti proto-parties. With suspicion running deep within the liberal-national currents about the ulterior motives of Islamist proto-parties, such cooperation remains prone to friction and breakdown. Moreover, so long as fundamental diff erences remain between the country’s various ideological currents on matt ers of religion and state, cooperation is likely to remain shallow, and directed towards procedural change, rather than more comprehensively towards a multiplicity of questions pertaining to the future identity of the Kuwaiti polity. In fact, so long as Islamist proto-parties show litt le willingness in principle to modify their long-term goal of Islamising Kuwaiti society and politics, the pragmatism alluded to above cannot, and should not be construed as policy moderation