The Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt's Succession Crisis: The Politics of Liberalisation and Reform in the Middle East (review)

The Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt's Succession Crisis tantalizes readers by invoking two of the most popular topics about contemporary Egypt. New information on the Brotherhood or the twilight of Husni Mubarak's reign is sure to entice scholars and policy makers. Mohammed Zahid's main title, however, tells only half the story. The book's subtitle peers backward into earlier questions of political liberalization, and the book often reads as if it is several different projects. While the author makes a valiant effort to cover these subjects, the final product is an expansive mishmash. Regrettably, the book is also riddled with factual errors and grammatical mistakes that further detract from the effort. All told, readers are likely to walk away unsatisfied by this examination of Egypt's Brotherhood and its ruling elites.

Zahid provides an excellent overview by revisiting many of the topics scholars have struggled with for the past two decades. For example, in Chapter Two alone, the author guides readers on a tour that weighs causal mechanisms between economic and political reform, culture and democracy, authoritarianism and democracy, the character of civil society, US foreign policy and its democratizing propensity, and the complex relationship of the military-state-business power elites and persistent autocracy. Presented together, however, and the author loses his voice as well as the book's compass. The fact that the author resists passing judgment on any side compounds the problem. Hence, the reader rarely glimpses the illuminating insights Zahid may have to share.

When he turns to Egypt, Zahid fails to engage the relevant theoretical debates. While many of the collected charts and statistics are useful, the writing style undermines the analysis as events jump from topic to topic. These leaps make tough reading. For example, Zahid states, "From 1999 to 2002 legislation imposed new restrictions on civil society. The arrest of Saad Eddin Ibrahim sent a clear message to all leading civil society activists, to keep quiet or face the state coercion. The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights that had operated in Egyptian since 1985 was in 1998 denied a licence to operate officially, following the arrest of its founder Hafez Abu Saeda" (p. 65). His statements are empirically correct but chronologically jumbled. And there are plain factual gaffs. The author claims that Husni Mubarak became president in 1980 (not 1981) (pp. 64, 107), and the first parliamentary elections under Mubarak were conducted in 1983 (1984) (pp. 97, 98, 126). Individual mistakes can be forgiven, but repetition undermines expertise.

Zahid's sections on the Muslim Brotherhood are cursory and tenuous, resting on a series of popular assumptions. He portrays Egypt's largest mass organization as the General Guide's personal fiefdom, bandying terms like "old guard" and "authoritarian" without tying them to precise meanings. Government leaders get the same treatment as Egypt's "regime" takes on a protean quality, operating without rhyme or reason. Whether making policy, deploying repression, or planning succession, Mubarak and his entourage act haphazardly. They are then pitted by Zahid against the Brotherhood in a nascent battle royale just as simplistic as the image of the contestants. Scholars who have spent time in Egypt may look askance at this rudimentary and at points random portrait of power.

Finally, and most surprising given the book's title, Zahid cites no interviews with government officials, ruling party elites, or Muslim Brotherhood members. Research conditions in the Middle East are notoriously tough, but the author's effort to overcome them seems lackluster. Rather than questioning the principals, he sticks to the intelligentsia: specialists at the Al-Ahram think tank, civil society activists, and media pundits. In summary, The Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt's Succession Crisis does not dip below the surface of Egyptian politics or extend the field's leading lines of...