The Social Contract as History

Abstract

The three parts of the book investigate the social history of the Egyptian social contract chronologically. The first part examines the social contract under Egypt’s constitutional monarchy, 1922–1952; the second part studies it under Nasser, 1952–1970; and the third part explores the long search for a new social contract between the early 1970s and the 2011 Uprising. Part One of the book,“From Social Reform to Social Justice,” explores the transformation from the liberal social contract that emerged following semi-independence (1922) to a statist effendi social contract that started to take shape after the mid-1930s. Part Two of the book “The Social Contract in Nasser’s Effendi State,” offers significant revisions of our current understanding of Nasser’s social contract. Part Three of the book, “The Tortuous Search for a New Social Contract,” narrates the seeming breaking down yet great persistence of the effendi social contract between the 1970s and the 2011 Uprising.