Hazem Kandil
Hazem Kandil is a Lecturer in Sociology and St. Catharine’s College Fellow at Cambridge University. He has also taught at the American University in Cairo and the University of California, Los Angeles.Blog
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What to Read on Egypt and the Arab Spring
If 2011 saw a monumental change in the governments of the Middle East, 2012 has demonstrated that revolution takes some time, that conflict is sustained and that some of the same challenges are not consigned to history.
Protests continue in Egypt’s capital Cairo, as over one hundred thousand demonstrators have recently taken to the streets and gathered once again in Tahrir Square in opposition to dictatorial decrees by President Mohammed Morsi. With only one hundred days in power, Morsi’s fledgling tenure as president has resulted in examples of sweeping authority, transferring all executive and legislative powers from the military council to his offices.
Such actions are reminiscent of the power exercised by former President Hosni Mubarak. The on-going distrust of Morsi’s presidency returns the chant of the 2011 revolution: "The people want to bring down the regime".
These are Verso’s key titles on the challenges facing Egypt and the Middle East, where uprising continues from the hopefulness of the Arab Spring to the challenges ahead.
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Hazem Kandil on post-revolutionary Egypt
Today in Dissent, Hazem Kandil—author of Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen: Egypt's Road to Revolt, forthcoming from Verso in November—writes on the occasion of the Egyptian presidential results, "Whither the Egyptian Revolution?"
Kandil considers that—in light of the candidate options for Egypt's presidency, between the old guard of Omar Suleiman and Ahmed Shafiq, and the ultimate winner, the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi, with its ambivalence to the revolution—"Though a year and a half have gone by, the final verdict on the Egyptian Revolution—including whether it actually was one—is still to come."Kandil’s analysis of post-revolt politics here is grounded in the feeling that “it is clear that the uprising fell short of its declared goal of overthrowing the regime.” The deeply entrenched tripartite alliance between the military, security, and political institutions held a strong preventive grip on revolutionary movements before the revolt, and they remained in place in the post-revolt police state. Kandil then hones in on the various ways Egypt is witnessing a “moment that is neither a relapse to politics as usual nor the emergence of a new regime, but rather the reconstitution of the power balance within the ruling bloc.”
Visit Dissent to read the article in full.
