Authoritarian restitution in bad economic times Egypt and the crisis of global neoliberalism

Abstract

There has been an unmistakable confluence of authoritarian restitution with the re-adoption of neoliberal economic measures in post-2013 Egypt. However, unlike earlier neoliberal restructuring in the 1980s and 1990s, both processes of political and economic restructuring happened against a crisis-ridden neoliberal global order. How have both phenomena been related? This article argues that authoritarian restitution in Egypt allowed the country’s re-insertion into the neoliberal global order in a time of prolonged and multifaceted crises, both domestically and globally. Sustained repression of the opposition and civil society became the primary condition for accessing badly-needed borrowing from IFIs and international bond markets, on relatively favorable terms for the regime (lower rates) and foreign investors (lower risks). The process has been multi-scalar where domestic developments were relatively autonomous yet deeply interrelated with regional and global actors, dynamics and flows with a considerable overlap and interpenetration between geopolitics and economics.