A Liberal Social Contract

Abstract

Chapter one discusses how Egypt’s constitutional monarchy was founded on nineteenth-century principles of global liberalism that became enshrined in the 1923 constitution. To make this point, the chapter analyzes the minutes of the constitutional commission that drafted and debated the constitution. The chapter further studies “productivist welfare”—the conservative social reform that emanated from the liberal social contract—a reform associated with an austere state budget and therefore with private, as opposed to state, benevolence. This budget centered on educating peasants and, increasingly, the urban poor, in practices of self-help. The chapter also investigates the rather sharp contrast to this conservative social reform: the surge in state investment in elitist and higher education and the rise in state employment—both of which allowed the growth of an effendi middle class.