Weaponizing Democratization: Street Battles and Transformation in Post-Revolutionary Egypt

Abstract

: Scholarship on the connection between democratization and political violence typically views democracy through a liberal prism prioritizing elections and elite dynamics and qualifies violence through the lens of civil war or organized armed conflict, which leaves the political salience and effects of alternative modes of violent contentious mobilization underexamined. This study analyzes the connection between the weaponization of Egypt’s post-revolutionary democratizing roadmap and politically transformative street battles that divided and reconfigured social and political alliances through bloodshed, grievance and betrayal. Weaponization describes a process in which Egypt’s transitional democratizing roadmap championed free and fair elections while revolutionary activists were systematically repressed and stigmatized. The resultant polarization from street battles, particularly between the Muslim Brotherhood and their opponents, significantly contributed to support for the Tamarrod (rebellion) campaign, leading to mass mobilization and the ousting of President Mohamed Morsi of the Brotherhood. This ushered in an authoritarian restoration structured through heightened political polarization and repression. The analysis largely draws from the accounts of informal political actors, not least in order to address the underrepresentation of such experiences within orthodox democratization scholarship. The Battle of Mohamed Mahmoud Street and the Ittehadiyya presidential palace clashes are developed as two exemplar empirical cases (re)directing Egypt’s transitional trajectory, which enrich wider debates on democratization, authoritarian entrenchment, political violence and the fluidity of transitional politics.