Elections

Afghanistan: Economic Transition and Transformation

Afghanistan has made enormous progress in reconstruction, development, and lifting per capita income. This progress, including steadily rising per capita income, has occurred despite security challenges and decreasing donor commitments from 2002-2013. Paul Ross, head of the International Monetary Fund’s Afghanistan mission, reported these findings at an Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center discussion on Afghanistan’s […]

Egypt’s Parliamentary Elections Law: A Setback for Democracy

By Khaled Dawoud

Former Egyptian Interim President Adly Mansour had already delivered an emotional farewell speech on June 4, ending nearly one year in office in which he played a largely ceremonial role as he prepared to hand power to the newly elected, former defense minister, President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi on June 8. However, the next day, Mansour issued […]

Egypt’s New Law for Parliamentary Elections Sets Up a Weak Legislature

By Scott Williamson and Nathan J. Brown

In an uncharacteristically immodest burst of activity, Egypt’s humble and stolid acting president, Adly Mansour, issued a series of last-minute decree-laws before handing authority over to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Some dealt with harassment, preaching, and littering. He still showed caution and restraint in some significant areas—for instance, a set of legislative changes designed to […]

On the Price Egypt Paid, Unacceptable Arrogance, and Major Challenges to Come

By Amr Hamzawy

There is a price to be paid for the absence of democracy and for the way that security practices have dominated the system of rule in Egypt, utterly corrupting political life and subjugating it to the social and party elite such that one must either support these power arrangements, along with their decisions and actions, […]

The Field Marshall Plan

By Matthew Hall

What can the Development Corridor mega-project tell us about how Sisi will govern? In a spate of television interviews during the final stretch of the campaign, presidential hopeful Abdel Fattah al-Sisi spoke of the entrenched structural problems facing the nation—an economic rut so deep that Egyptians could not hope to “run” from it, but instead […]

Marginalized in Mansoura

By Eric Knecht

If you were looking for a place to understand why Egypt’s younger voters were the least well represented at the presidential polls in May where the choice came down to presidential hopefuls Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Hamdeen Sabbahi, you could do worse than visiting Mansoura. The bustling Nile delta city, once sharply divided in its […]

Choices for the Government and Opposition after the Presidential Elections

By Amr Hamzawy

As the official results have been announced with President-elect Abdel Fattah al-Sisi winning Egypt’s elections with 97 percent of the vote, major state and societal actors which influence the ruling system in Egypt will face many of the same questions that they have been confronted with in the past.  These questions will continue to be […]

Sisi and Russia: No Replacement for the United States

By Mark N. Katz

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s election as president—which President Vladimir Putin indicated his support for when the two leaders met this past February in Moscow—will see a deepening of the Russian-Egyptian rapprochement that these two leaders have already begun.  Moscow is pleased that Sisi has ended Egyptian support for the Syrian opposition against Assad that ousted President […]