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DRAFT: Please do not cite without author’s permission. From Fragmentation and Competition to Collective Empowerment, and

Back Again:

Impacts of Mubarak-era Public Policies on Egyptian Civil Society’s Role in Political Reform

Catherine E. Herrold

Sanford School of Public Policy Duke University

Abstract

This paper examines how the policies of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak shaped Egyptian civil society’s role in the political reforms that took place after the January 25, 2011 revolution that overthrew the Mubarak regime. Based upon 75 semi-structured interviews with Egyptian civil society actors that were conducted both before and after the January 25 uprisings, the paper argues that formal regulations and informal threats issued by the Mubarak government resulted in a civil society that was fragmented, internally competitive, and ill equipped to collectively lead democratic political reforms even after Mubarak was deposed. The study challenges existing theories that prescribe an automatic role for civil society in leading democratic transitions by elucidating the ways in which a civil society established within the context of a liberalized autocracy lacks the democracy-promotion capabilities of civil societies that developed in less repressive environments. The paper concludes by identifying signs that suggest that Egyptian civil society may yet find ways to act collectively as Egypt’s long political transition continues to unfold.

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Introduction

The January 25, 2011 revolution that overthrew Egyptian president Hosni

Mubarak seemed to offer an unprecedented political opportunity for Egyptian civil

society organizations. For decades, the Mubarak regime had allowed nongovernmental

organizations (NGOs) and philanthropic foundations to proliferate but kept them under

strict government surveillance. The regime used the organizations of civil society as a set

of tools in its social control toolbox, deploying both formal and informal regulations to

divide and conquer oppositional threats. Among the many restrictions placed upon

Egyptian organizations was a prohibition against any form of political or policy-related

activities. Additionally, organizations were banned from forming networks or partnering

to achieve joint goals. NGOs and foundations were therefore ill equipped to take on the

democracy promotion roles that are often ascribed to civil society organizations.

After the January 25 revolution, however, a sense of euphoria permeated Egyptian

civil society. Organizations felt emboldened to lead democratic political reform efforts.

While restrictive laws regulating civil society remained in tact, the Supreme Council of

Armed Forces (SCAF) that led Egypt’s transitional government seemed too preoccupied

with other political and economic transformations to scrutinize the activities of NGOs

and foundations. Organizations took advantage of their newfound freedom by initiating a

variety of political reform projects related to constitutional reform, voter education,

elections monitoring, transitional justice, and human rights. Until the summer of 2011,

Egyptian civil society organizations worked cohesively at the front lines of Egypt’s

political transition.

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By the fall of that same year, though, euphoria was replaced by despair. The

SCAF waged a war against international donors and international NGOs that bled into

Egyptian civil society and injected fear back into many organizations. Funds from

abroad, which supported the bulk of NGOs’ political reform initiatives, were halted by

the government and grantees’ projects were put on hold. Local donors, wary of

succumbing to the same fate as their international counterparts, remained staunchly

focused on socioeconomic development projects. Meanwhile, the government circulated

a new draft Law of Associations that was rumored to be even more repressive than the

Mubarak-era Law 84 of 2002 that governed local NGOs and foundations. Instead of

standing up to the government, most civil society organizations retreated from joint

political reform efforts and refocused on solo social and economic development projects.

This rapid rise and fall of Egyptian civil society in the wake of the January 25

revolution presents a puzzle. Existing literature suggests that civil society organizations

have important roles to play in democratic transition and consolidation. Before and

during a transition to democracy, civil society organizations are hypothesized to provide

spaces of mobilization in which opposition groups can safely convene and build

platforms for political change. After democracy has been installed, civil society

organizations are thought to nurture democratic citizens by promoting values such as

trust, reciprocity, and civic engagement. In Egypt’s political transition, however, the

civil society that led the revolution notably did not mobilize within formal organizations.

Social media and satellite television played a much larger role in driving masses of

citizens to protest sites. While members of NGOs did participate in the January 25

revolution, they stressed that they did so as individuals and not as representatives of their

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organizations. Directly after the revolution NGOs did attempt to lead reform efforts, but

as Egypt’s political transition progressed they were again sidelined.1 Why?

A primary explanation for the weak role of Egyptian civil society organizations in

Egypt’s revolution and subsequent political transition is the fragmented and competitive

nature of Egypt’s organizational landscape. As this paper will argue, such fragmentation

and competition resulted from government policies toward civil society specifically and

toward political liberalization more generally. Unlike civil society organizations in

Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America, which were credited with helping to

bring about their regions’ transitions to democracy (O'Donnell and Schmitter 1986,

Bernhard 1993), Egypt’s civil society organizations did not originate from the grassroots.

Instead, they were cultivated as part of a top-down strategy of controlled liberalization

implemented by the Mubarak regime. In the process, the organizations were pitted

against each other and prevented from forming an oppositional block.

At the same time, many political opposition leaders found homes in civil society

organizations despite the government’s strict oversight. Since opposition political parties

were banned, civil society organizations provided the next best alternative. As a result,

Egyptian organizations began to reflect the deep political, social, and religious

differences that divided Egyptian society. When the opportunity for democracy

presented itself, Egypt’s civil society organizations disagreed over how that democracy

should be structured.

This study is based primarily on data from 75 semi-structured interviews that took

place between January 2010 and June 2012. Interviewees consisted of leaders of

1 At the time of this writing, Egypt was still in the throes of a political transition with its first democratically elected president ousted and a transitional president installed. Whether democracy would take hold and consolidate was not yet clear.

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Egyptian NGOs, Egyptian philanthropic foundations, international donor agencies

(including bilateral and multilateral aid agencies as well as international and regional

philanthropic foundations) and international NGOs operating in Egypt, and experts on

Arab philanthropy. Data were also derived from conferences of Arab philanthropy,

including the 2011 Arab Foundations Forum Annual Meeting, the 2011 and 2012 Takaful

Conferences on Arab Philanthropy and Civic Engagement, and the 2010 Third World

Forum of the World Congress of Muslim Philanthropists. Secondary data were drawn

from official documents of the Government of Egypt as well as publications of Egyptian

and international NGOs and donor organizations.

The study proceeds as follows. The following section juxtaposes two competing

theories about the role of civil society in building and sustaining healthy democracies. In

the West, the organizations of civil society are viewed as “schools of civic virtue”

through which citizens learn to participate politically and challenge government

hegemony. In autocratic states, however, civil society organizations have been found to

be tools not of democratization but rather of consolidated authoritarianism. Building

upon this latter theory of the ways in which autocratic rulers use civil society

organizations to strengthen their grip on power, the next section details the ways in which

the Mubarak regime expanded the NGO sector in Egypt while using both formal and

informal regulations to ensure that civil society lacked the capacity to act as a unified

oppositional force. The study then traces the response of Egyptian civil society to the

January 25 revolution, showing that while organizations were not active during the

uprisings they did take on leadership roles during the early months of Egypt’s political

transition. Donors also vowed to get involved in reform efforts, and their responses to

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the revolution are explained in the following section. Ultimately, however, the

fragmented and competitive nature of Egyptian civil society that resulted from Mubarak-

era policies prevented the NGO and philanthropic sector from maintaining their

leadership on the reform front. As the next section shows, a government crackdown on

civil society in late 2011 brought fissures within the sector back to the fore. While

Egyptian civil society remained fractured at the time of this writing, the conclusion offers

three reasons to believe that NGOs and foundations could ultimately resume their

leadership roles in Egypt’s long political transition.

Civil Society and Democracy: An Overview

The definition of “civil society” is one of the most contested concepts in social

science literature, but scholars generally converge around an understanding of civil

society as an area of voluntary activity outside of the realms of the market, the state, and

the family. This study adopt the definition of civil society as proposed by the London

School of Economic Center for Civil Society:

Civil society refers to the arena of uncoerced collective action around shared interests, purposes and values. In theory its institutional forms are distinct from those of the state, family and market, though in practice the boundaries between state, civil society, family and market are often complex, blurred and negotiated. Civil society commonly embraces a diversity of spaces, actors, and institutional forms, varying in their degree of formality, autonomy and power. Civil societies are often populated by organizations such as registered charities, development non-governmental organizations, community groups, women’s organizations, faith-based organizations, professional associations, trade unions, self-help groups, social movements, business associations, coalitions, and advocacy groups.2

2 http://www.centroedelstein.org.br/PDF/Report/ccs_london.htm, Accessed September 15, 2013.

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Despite disagreements over the precise definition of civil society, the idea that a

vibrant civil society promotes a healthy democracy has become common wisdom in

Western policy circles (Carothers 1997, Abdelrahman 2004, Carapico 2012, Bush 2013,

Snider and Faris 2013). This assumption stems from two related theories of civil

society’s role in bringing about and sustaining democratic forms of governance. The first

theory concerns transitions to democracy. It suggests that the organizations of civil

society act as key sites of mobilization, particularly in autocratic contexts in which

political parties are repressed. A significant strand of the political science transitions

literature has attributed the collapse of autocratic regimes in Central and Eastern Europe,

Latin America, and East Asia to the work of civil society organizations (See, for

example, O'Donnell and Schmitter 1986, Bernhard 1993). Through organizations,

opposition groups built and disseminated platforms for change and marshaled both

domestic and international support for campaigns against the state. Even in the face of

government repression, civil society is viewed as a site of potential mobilization.

The second theory of civil society’s impact on democracy surrounds the role of

organizations in the democratic consolidation phase. Dating back to de Tocqueville, the

theory suggests that the organizations that comprise civil society act as “schools for civic

virtue,” teaching values of tolerance, trust, reciprocity, and civic engagement (de

Tocqueville 2003). When they participate in bowling leagues, parent-teacher

associations, arts and culture organizations, or any other of a wide variety of voluntary

associations, individuals presumably learn values and practice habits that groom them to

be good democratic citizens (Putnam 2000). Organizations also become forums through

which individuals can pursue shared interests and articulate those interests to the state.

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Through organizations, then, citizens act collectively to influence social attitudes and

shape public policies.

These theories about the role of civil society in building and sustaining democracy

are premised on three key assumptions. First, the organizations of civil society should

originate from the grassroots. In other words, civil society organizations can only act as a

bulwark against the state if they are developed by and for citizens who have an interest in

acting collectively to challenge or oppose state hegemony. Relatedly, civil society

organizations must enjoy some degree of autonomy from the state. State oversight of

civil society should be limited to ensuring the sector’s freedom; regulations must not go

so far as to restrict the sector’s independence. Finally, while a plurality of organizations

representing a variety of interests is desirable, a general consensus around the desirability

of democracy should act as a unifying force.

A growing body of literature suggests that these assumptions do not hold in the

context of liberalized autocracies. Also known as “hybrid” or “semi-autocratic” regimes,

liberalized autocracies are led by dictators who have partially opened their political and

economic systems (Brumberg 2002, Brownlee 2007). The openings are intended not to

lead the countries on paths to democratization, but, paradoxically, to solidify the rulers’

tight grips on power. Liberalization is instituted as an act of appeasement to the

international community and opposition groups advocating for democracy, but its

controlled nature is meant to ensure that significant threats to the ruling party’s

hegemony will not materialize.

Within liberalized autocracies, civil society acts not as a counterweight to the

state but rather a tool that serves a number of purposes within the regime’s “survival

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strategy” (Brumberg 2002: 56). First, the growth of a large associational sector presents

a guise of liberalism to both domestic citizens and external stakeholders, convincing

observers that political openings are under way. In this same vein, civil society

organizations offer opposition groups a “steam valve” (Brumberg 2003) through which

they can enjoy minimal levels of expression without undermining the regime’s

dominance. Also, by tightly regulating civil society organizations, regimes gain a

window through which to monitor society and quell signs of protest before they become

unmanageable (Wiktorowicz 2000). Finally, by encouraging many small organizations to

proliferate and pitting them against each other, regimes can extend tactics of “divide and

rule” to opposition groups operating outside of official government institutions

(Brumberg 2002).

Within such contexts of controlled liberalization, the organizations of civil society

cannot fully develop from the grassroots. Their registration, governance structures, and

activities are all tightly regulated by the state. Furthermore, that regulation is designed to

pit organizations against each other with the goal of fragmenting groups that could

otherwise form an opposition bloc. As a result, civil society organizations within

liberalized autocracies lack both the independence and the cohesiveness to act

collectively against despotism and for democratic reform. Instead, organizations regard

each other with suspicion and thus struggle to develop common goals for, or paths to,

reform (Yom 2005). At the same time, they seek to ingratiate themselves to the state in

order to avoid government repression.

Civil Society in Mubarak’s Egypt: Controlled and Fragmented

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Prior to the revolution of January 25, 2011, Egypt displayed the quintessential

features of a liberalized autocracy. Beginning in the 1980s, then president Hosni

Mubarak embarked on a series of economic and political liberalization schemes that were

billed as reforms but were in truth aimed at ensuring regime dominance. In addition to

partially privatizing the Egyptian economy, the Mubarak government allowed elections

(if not free or fair ones) to be held and encouraged civil society organizations to

proliferate. As this section will show, the recent growth of civil society in Egypt was not

an organic development but rather the result of a controlled liberalization strategy that

was tightly managed by the state.

While the drastic expansion of civil society organizations in Egypt occurred in the

past couple of decades (unofficial reports suggest that the number of NGOs in Egypt

more than doubled from approximately 14,000 in1991 to around 30,000 2013), charitable

organizations enjoy a long history in Egyptian society. Their development can be broken

down into three phases, the first of which encompasses the time leading up to the 1952

revolution. Dating back to Ottoman times, voluntary organizations provided a variety of

social services within their local communities. Soup kitchens, hospitals, schools, and

even wells and bridges were organized privately and funded primarily by donations from

awqaf, or Islamic endowments (Baer 1997, Cizakca 1998, Kuran 2001, Pioppi 2007).

This system of private philanthropy flourished until the 1952 military coup by the Free

Officers Movement that brought Gamal Abdel Nasser to power. As part of his nationalist

agenda, Nasser instituted a widespread campaign to appropriate NGOs and awqaf into

state institutions. Welfare services that were previously provided by private

organizations became the purview of the state, and by the early 1960s public sector

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spending accounted for 40 per cent of Egypt’s gross domestic product (GDP) (Atia

2008a: 24-25).

Despite preliminary moves toward economic liberalization in the late 1960s and

the initiation of an Open Door Policy in 1970, public spending continued to rise and

reached 62 per cent of GDP in 1981 (Soliman 2011: 39). This spending was largely

funded by rental income from petroleum, Suez Canal transit fees, and foreign aid. All of

these revenues plunged in 1986, forcing the Mubarak regime to undergo economic

reforms prescribed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (Soliman 2011). In 1992,

Egypt launched a structural adjustment policy that expanded economic privatization. As

part of that policy, the government relinquished many of its social welfare responsibilities

and looked to the private voluntary sector to pick up the slack. As a result, the number of

NGOs in Egypt skyrocketed and philanthropic foundations were established to financially

support the growing sector (Atia 2008a).

The Mubarak regime tightly controlled this expansion of Egyptian civil society

organizations. Through a series of official laws and informal security oversight, the

regime manipulated civil society to act on the government’s behalf. By regulating

organizations’ activities and by ensuring compliance through penetration by the State

Security Services (SSI), the Muabark regime constructed a sector of civil society

organizations that was well positioned to fulfill social welfare needs but was debilitated

politically. Regulations were structured to instill both fear and fragmentation into civil

society in order to prevent it from becoming an oppositional bloc.

The primary tool that the Mubarak government used to oversee Egyptian civil

society was the Law of Associations, Law 84 of 2002. The genius of the law, in terms of

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its impact on organizational control, was not its restrictive nature (although this was

significant) but rather its vague language that afforded governing agencies wide

discretion in the law’s application. The law required all NGOs to register with the

Ministry of Social Solidarity (MOSS) and gave that Ministry jurisdiction over

organizations’ establishment, activities, governance, funding, and dissolution. Among

prohibited activities were any “threatening national unity, violating public order or

morals, or calling for discrimination between citizens of race, origin, color, language,

religion or creed” and any activities that can be deemed “political” (Government of Egypt

2002).

While this sweeping language gave MOSS great leeway in deeming various

activities illegal, the law simultaneously prescribed a set of eighteen categories of activity

that were permitted. Upon registration, organizations were required to declare the

activity areas in which they would work. While organizations were permitted to register

in multiple fields of activity (and often did, according to Yerkes (2012a)), they were

officially banned from collaborating and unofficially discouraged from growing to a large

scale (Atia 2008b). Collaborations and large organizations were both seen as threats to

regime dominance as they had the potential to foster consensus around issues that could

be used to build popular support (Yom 2005). According to Mona Atia, a “major

reason…for the huge number of [organizations in Egypt] is the unspoken understanding

that organizations that grow too large, or have too much of an influence, will be seen as a

threat to the government and begin to run into problems” (Atia 2008b: 24). This

“unspoken understanding” led to an implicit understanding not only with MOSS but also

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with the SSI, who were known to infiltrate organizations and report “suspicious”

activities to government authorities with official jurisdiction (Yerkes 2012a).

Officially, Law 84 of 2002 distinguished between welfare organizations and

community development associations (CDAs). The former focused on one or more areas

of social development, whereas the latter, which were generally more tightly connected to

the government, were responsible for the overall development of entire communities. In

reality, however, the landscape of civil society organizations in Egypt is far more

complex than this broad distinction suggests. Because opposition political parties were

largely prohibited under Mubarak’s reign, many leading opposition figures turned instead

to civil society organizations as bases through which to build their reform platforms. As

we have seen, even these organizations did not provide full independence or safety from

government interference. They were, however, the best option opposition leaders had.

As a result, Egypt’s topography of civil society organizations began to represent the deep

ideological divisions that characterized Egyptian society writ large.

As Larry Diamond points out, pluralism within a civil society sector can be

desirable and conducive to both democratic vibrancy and healthy competition (Diamond

1997). Within a pluralist civil society can still exist a “civic community” in which a

diverse array of organizations cooperate to attain overarching goals. “Extreme

pluralism,” however, has the potential to produce “disempowering fragmentation”

(Diamond 1997: 24). This was precisely the case in Egypt prior to the January 25

revolution. Maha Abdelrahman identifies three primary types of Egyptian civil society

organizations, drawing her distinction primarily on religious grounds. Her categories

include Islamic organizations, Coptic organizations, and secular organizations

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(Abdelrahman 2002). Atia (Atia 2008: b) adds political movements as a fourth category

and elucidates the variations within each category.

Within these categories, for example, organizations self-identified as charitable,

development, and advocacy (or human rights) organizations. Charitable organizations

provided basic welfare services such as food, shelter, and health care, and in doing so

sought to ameliorate immediate suffering. Development organizations worked primarily

in fields such as education, job training, health, and community infrastructure and aimed

to eliminate the root causes of social problems. While the differences between these two

types of organizations seem benign, and indeed one could argue that both are essential to

a society in which the government has retreated from the welfare sphere, the distinction

between charity and development drew heated responses from interviewees in this study.

Among development officials, for example, charity work was seen as passé and

insufficient to tackle society’s current challenges. For their part, development

organizations were often viewed as being projects of Egypt’s corrupt business

community.

Advocacy organizations formed another distinct category of organization. While

small in number (Elagati (2013) suggests that about 60 advocacy organizations operate in

Egypt) these organizations were prominent for being the only organizations daring

enough to criticize the government. In order to get around the restrictions of Law 84 of

2002 that banned such activities, many advocacy organizations registered as civil

corporations or law firms. They also received almost all of their funding from

international donors. Thus advocacy organizations were widely seen as a separate class

of organizations not only because of their legal status but also because of their

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relationships to the West. Leaders of charitable and development organizations criticized

advocacy organizations as being “tools” of Western powers that were disconnected from

Egypt’s grassroots communities.

Prior to Egypt’s January 25 revolution, then, the policies of the Mubarak regime

fostered a civil society sector that was fragmented and competitive. Law 84 of 2002

prohibited collaborations and the threat of intervention by the State Security Services

created an environment of fear and suspicion within Egypt’s NGO community.

Meanwhile, Mubarak’s ban on oppositional political parties drove opposition leaders into

the NGO sector thus creating a sector marked by ideological divisions. Organizations

were split first along religious lines (Abdelrahman 2002). Secular organizations argued

that Islamic organizations had no interest in democracy and that they were using their

charitable networks to gain adherents to their political vision of an Islamic state. For

their part, Islamic organizations criticized secular organizations for pandering to Western

interests. But even within secular and religious categories, cleavages existed between

charity, development, and advocacy organizations. Instead of viewing each other as

complementary, these three types of organizations were embroiled in debates over which

strategy was “best” for the country.

Post-Revolution Euphoria: A Cohesive Civil Society to Lead Political Reform

In the wake of Egypt’s January 25 revolution that overthrew Mubarak, many

Western observers were quick to credit NGOs with bringing about the uprisings. One

notable Washington Post article credited US grants to Egyptian NGOs with nurturing

“hundreds of Egypt’s rising democrats” (Hanley 2011). Egypt’s advocacy organizations

were recognized for having laid the ideological groundwork for the revolution’s aims,

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while youth empowerment NGOs were lauded for their success in cultivating a will to

change among Egypt’s youth.

Local observers, however, argued that the formal organizations of Egyptian civil

society played little to no role in bringing about or sustaining the January 25 uprisings.

American University in Cairo (AUC) scholar Jennifer Bremer described the protests as

“spontaneous combustion,” not civil society. “Despite millions of donor dollars directed

to boosting the non-Islamic elements of civil society,” Bremer wrote, “what we got was

not CS [(civil society)] but SC – spontaneous combustion” (2011: 1). Building upon the

work of scholars who find the democratizing elements of Arab civil society not in formal

organizations but rather in informal networks and movements (Singerman 1995, Carapico

1998, Ismail 2006, Wedeen 2008, Bayat 2009), Bremer and Sheila Carapico, another

scholar based at AUC during the revolution, argued that the mobilization that supported

the January 25 uprisings was spurred not by organizations but by horizontal networks that

were expanded by social networking websites and satellite TV. Indeed, interviewees

included in this study stressed that they went to Tahrir to protest as individuals, not as

representatives of their organizations.

In the months following the revolution, however, Egyptian NGOs sprang into

action and began to work collectively to advance democratic political reforms.

Development organizations that had previously focused exclusively on economic and

social issues augmented their work with projects related to elections, constitutional

reform, transitional justice, and human rights. Organizations flocked to apply for

“transition” grants from Western donors aimed at supporting what the donors hoped

would be Egypt’s transition to democracy. Lines of interested applicants stretched down

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city streets when the US Agency for International Development (USAID) hosted

information sessions about their transitions awards (Chick 2011).

Existing NGOs were not the only organizations hoping to play leading roles in

Egypt’s political transition. A number of protestors, particularly youth, established new

NGOs as vehicles through which to carry out their reform goals. To be sure, these

organizations were not necessarily political in nature. Many targeted economic and

social development, and their leaders kept their politics outside of their organizations.

Nonetheless, the organizations were built with revolutionary zeal and located themselves

within a newly energized civil society that they believed would collectively lead the

country’s political transition. Through her research on the relationship between civil

society and the state in post-revolution Egypt, Sarah Yerkes found that, “civil society

organizations that had previously isolated themselves and refused to share resources and

best practices for fear of regime reprisal joined not one but multiple networks to connect

with others as widely as possible across the civil society spectrum” (Yerkes 2012: 10).

Another sign of organizational enthusiasm and cohesion came from the legan, or

popular committees, that were established during the January 25 uprisings. Legan

formed spontaneously in the early days of the revolution as neighborhood leaders built

committees to protect their communities from looting. While some legan dissolved after

Mubarak’s resignation, others remained organized and began to register as NGOs

(Bremer 2011, El-Meehy 2012). The community development work of the legan, along

with other organizational efforts in the wake of the January 25 uprisings, reflected a

newfound sense of community engagement among Egyptians. The fear that permeated

civil society under Mubarak was gone, and it was replaced by enthusiasm for collective

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action toward what many assumed was a common goal of democracy. As a program

manager at one Egyptian NGO that worked on both socioeconomic development and

political reform issues explained, “Our mandate is to mobilize citizens to be active in the

democratic process. Through our programs we mobilized thousands of citizens to be

active participants both before and after the revolution. We build capacities of students,

teachers, NGOs, youth, etc. This has helped in the democratic process.”3

A Role for Philanthropists

NGOs were not the only Egyptian organizations to adopt leading roles in Egypt’s

political transition. Local philanthropic foundations also declared their intention to

grapple with politics and policy head on in order to both guide and support civil society’s

reform efforts. In May of 2011, leaders of Egypt’s foundations joined their colleagues

from throughout the Arab region at the annual meeting of the Arab Foundations Forum,

an umbrella group for Arab philanthropic foundations. For three days in Beirut, senior

foundation staff grappled with questions of how their organizations should respond to the

enormous changes that were sweeping the region. While acknowledging the challenges

of speedy organizational change, conference participants agreed that their foundations

needed to adapt quickly to the new social, economic, and political realities. The sha’ab

(people) had made it clear that an era of fear was over and that, while alliances would

continue to be negotiated, a new social order in which the people had a voice was very

much at hand. In order to be respected by the Egyptian people in this new order,

foundations would have to disentangle themselves from governments and join forces with

civil society. “We may remain victims of lagging behind justice if we do not support the

sha’ab,” one foundation leader declared. 3 Confidential interview, Egyptian NGO, February 20, 2012.

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This pledge marked a major shift for Egypt’s foundations. Like the NGOs that

they financially backed, Egyptian foundations were established during Egypt’s structural

adjustment period. Private foundations made up the bulk of Egyptian foundations and

were founded by business people who prospered from Mubarak-era privatization

schemes.4 As the state backed out of the welfare arena and looked to NGOs to fill service

gaps, the regime also turned to its business partners to help fund the NGOs. Foundation-

based philanthropy became an act of loyalty to the regime through which donors traded

philanthropic grants for business favors such as contracts and tax breaks (Soliman 2011).

In their efforts to ingratiate themselves to the government, Egypt’s private foundations

competed against each other to fund the most innovative and high-impact projects.

Instead of banding together to determine how to best support civil society, Egypt’s

private foundations worked in relative secrecy in order to prevent their ideas from being

adopted by other donors.5 After the January 25 revolution, however, Egypt’s foundations

signed on to the Arab Foundations Forum’s efforts to build a cohesive sector with vigor

and committed to working as a group to support civil society’s political reform initiatives.

Unlike local funders, international donors to Egypt had a history of coordinating

their grantmaking. While funding partnerships were rare, Western donors did seek to

streamline their aid through the Development Partners Group (DPG). Launched in the

late 1990s, in 2013 the DPG consisted of 27 bilateral aid agencies, 11 multilateral aid

agencies, and two private philanthropic foundations.6 DPG members met regularly, both

amongst themselves and with government officials, to coordinate aid strategies and

4 Egypt is also home to two community foundations. These organizations were much more closely connected to, and trusted by, civil society than their private foundation counterparts. 5 Confidential interviews, Egyptian philanthropic foundations, January – March 2010. 6 Confidential interview, International Aid Organization, February 2, 2012.

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discuss issues related to their grantmaking. Prior to the January 25 revolution, the DPG’s

goals centered primarily on socioeconomic development objectives. This was due to the

close relationship that the DPG maintained with the government. DPG members worked

jointly with the Government of Egypt to develop the “Cairo Agenda for Action on Aid

Effectiveness” that guided their grantmaking strategies. Of the nineteen development

targets identified by the Cairo Agenda, only two – “women’s and children’s rights” and

“political participation” – addressed overtly political development goals.

Western donors’ coordination with the government to address socioeconomic

development concerns, coupled with the short shrift they gave to political reform

objectives, reflected their home countries’ foreign policies toward Egypt. Western

governments gave lip service to democracy in the Arab region, but ultimately their

primary objectives were peace and stability in the region (Cook 2012). While publicly

prodding Arab dictators to adopt liberalizing reforms, Western governments quietly

backed rulers that guaranteed oil flows and regional peace.

After the January 25 revolution, however, and along with their local foundation

counterparts, international donors proclaimed a shift in their alliances from the

government to civil society. Not only would they increase funding for democracy and

good governance projects, they would also channel some of those funds directly to

NGOs. Prior to the revolution, most Western aid passed through the Egyptian

government before making its way to NGOs. As part of their post-revolution

commitment to aligning themselves with civil society, though, international donors began

to funnel some of their grants directly to beneficiary NGOs. Thus in the months

immediately following the January 25, 2011 Egyptian revolution, it appeared that local

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and international donors, along with Egyptian NGOs, had congealed into a cohesive civil

society oriented toward a common goal of democratic political reform.

From Euphoria to Crackdown: A Return to Government Repression and Civil Society Fragmentation

By late 2011, however, Egyptian civil society’s democracy promotion efforts

screeched virtually to a halt. In a crackdown that would reverberate throughout Egyptian

civil society, Egypt’s transitional government raided the offices of 17 international

NGOs, placed 43 of their employees on trial for operating illegal organizations and

meddling in Egyptian affairs. The government also suspended approval for projects of

both international and local NGOs that received their funding from abroad (or from

international donors operating in Egypt). Virtually all of international donors’ grants

related to political reform were held up indefinitely by the government and prevented

from reaching their intended recipients.

Egyptian state media amplified the government’s war against international donors

and NGOs by publishing reports intended to stoke xenophobic fears that these

organizations were spies seeking to alter the course of Egypt’s political transition. The

media’s campaign worked, and local NGOs began to think twice before applying for

grants from international donors that would brand them as tools of foreign interests.

Despite efforts to incorporate Egyptian civil society’s input into their post-revolution

grantmaking strategies, international donors wound up facing a crisis of legitimacy as

that same civil society became skeptical of international organizations’ motives. Within

22

a year, Egypt’s largest international donor, USAID, dropped its budget for “Democracy,

Human Rights, and Governance,” to below pre-revolution levels.7

For their part, local Egyptian foundations never embarked on the reform efforts

that they vowed to champion at the 2011 Arab Foundations Forum meeting. Instead of

taking on issues related to politics or public policy, Egypt’s private foundations remained

staunchly focused on social and economic development projects. Citing the

government’s crackdown on international NGOs and donors as well as the uncertainty

surrounding both Egypt’s political system and its economy, private foundations decided

to “wait and see” how Egypt’s future would play out before making any drastic shifts in

strategies.

As donors fell back into their pre-revolution modes, so too did Egypt’s NGOs. A

fear of government repression again set in, causing organizations to choose their

activities and their affiliations cautiously. Old divisions within the NGO sector returned,

with charity, development, and advocacy NGOs battling over which method would best

serve Egypt’s political transition. Secular organizations redoubled their criticisms of

Islamic organizations, suggesting that Islamic groups’ charitable activities were

politically drive and played a large role in the success of Islamist parties in post-

revolution parliamentary and presidential elections. Islamic organizations again took up

their portrayal of secular organizations as tools of the West.

To make matters worse, the government of President Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s

first democratically elected leader, drafted a new Law of Associations that was rumored

to be even more draconian than Law 84 of 2002. According to reports by international

7 http://foreignassistance.gov/OU.aspx?FY=2014&OUID=165&AgencyID=0&FromRGA=true&budTab=tab_Bud_Planned#ObjAnchor. Accessed August 20, 2013.

23

NGOs monitors, the draft law, if approved, would define NGOs’ funds as public money;

create a “Coordinating Committee” with the power to veto foreign funding to Egyptian

NGOs; raise the number of members and endowment size required to form an NGO;

prohibit multiple organizations from sharing the same premises; give the government

even greater oversight of NGOs’ activities and allow it to impose harsh penalties,

including fines of up to 100,000 Egyptian pounds (approximately $15,000 US), for

spending money on activities for which it was not officially established; and require

advocacy organizations that previously registered as law firms or civil corporations to

register as NGOs and thus operate under the jurisdiction of the new law.8

Egyptian NGOs showed, in the months after the January 25 revolution, that

periods of crisis and transformation could spur them to act collectively. To some extent,

Egypt’s NGOs rallied together against this proposed law. Groups of NGOs gathered to

both publicly oppose the draft law and propose amendments to the law that would make

it friendlier to civil society and freedom of expression. Again, however, divisions

emerged. Advocacy organizations formed one coalition, while development

organizations worked together in another group. Islamic organizations had their own

objectives for legal reform, and worked together to further those aims (Cairo Institute for

Human Rights Studies 2013). As a result of decades of repressive government policies

upheld by the Mubarak regime, Egypt’s civil society remained so fractured after the

January 25 revolution that it lacked the capacity even to act collectively against a law that

threatened even greater government hostility toward the sector.

8 See a 2013 Freedom House Press Release at http://www.freedomhouse.org/article/draft-ngo-law-will-cripple-egyptian-civil-society and the Egypt NGO Law Monitor published June 6, 2013 by the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law at http://www.icnl.org/research/monitor/egypt.pdf, both of which were accessed on September 15, 2013.

24

Conclusion

Just one year after the January 25, 2011 revolution, American University in Cairo

professor Holger Albrecht predicted that Egypt would witness not a transition to

democracy but rather a transformation of authoritarianism (Albrecht 2012). Events

during the summer of 2013 suggested that his predictions were, at least in the near term,

accurate. On July 3, the Egyptian military responded to mass protests against Egypt’s

first democratically elected leader, Mohamed Morsi, by overthrowing the president in a

military coup (Kingsley and Chulov 2013). At the time of this writing a civilian,

installed by the military, was acting as interim president. Military rulers remained

prominent behind the scenes, however, and it appeared that the words of one NGO leader

interviewed for this study were proven true. “You can’t assume that there has been much

change between January 25 and today,” he told me. “Yes, [Mubarak] is gone. But you

can’t see much fundamental change in how the country is ruled. Given that, you can’t

assume that there are major changes in the way that [civil society] is working.”9

Despite this dire outlook, there are some promising signs that suggest that

Egyptian civil society may find ways to work more collectively as Egypt’s long political

transition continues. First, umbrella organizations such as the Arab Foundations Forum,

the American University in Cairo’s Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic

Engagement, the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, and the World Congress of Muslim

Philanthropists are all working overtime to build a strong and cohesive sector of Arab

foundations that have the capacity to unite the disparate elements of Arab and Egyptian

civil societies. These organizations are encouraging foundations to be more transparent

about their financial data and their activities and to be more accountable both to each 9 Confidential interview, Egyptian NGO, September 26, 2011.

25

other and to Arab NGOs. While public reporting requirements do not exist in Egypt,

these umbrella organizations are developing standards for self-regulation and self-

reporting that local foundations are beginning to adopt.

Second, community-based philanthropy and activism has experienced a boom

since the revolution. As mentioned earlier, many legan remained in tact after the January

25 uprisings and began the process of registering as NGOs. As El-Meehy (2012) points

out, such formalization could threaten the grassroots, horizontal nature of the legan, a

characteristic that facilitated their inclusivity and adaptability. Bremer, however, shows

that the legan embraced a “new strategy” in Egypt of “exerting pressure on governments

to deliver social services and infrastructure” (Bremer 2011). While not political

advocacy per se, the very act of making collective demands on the government was an

intrinsically political act in the context of authoritarianism. Egypt’s two community

foundations also fostered community-based activism in the wake of the revolution.

Unlike Egypt’s more numerous private foundations, which failed to involve themselves

with NGOs’ political reform efforts, Egypt’s community foundations wove political

education, advocacy, and civic participation into their post-revolution grantmaking

strategies. In doing so, they served as community gathering places in which NGOs and

individuals could safely develop joint agendas for change.

Third, an array of new organizations that were formed in the months following the

January 25 revolution never knew the repressive treatment of the Mubarak regime toward

their organizations. They birthed their NGOs during a period of euphoria in which civil

society actors, including both individuals and NGOs, believed that they could work

together to build Eygpt’s future. It is too early to determine whether these organizations

26

will succeed in carrying on the revolutionary zeal that fleetingly united civil society.

Early signs, however, suggest that they are building new norms of voluntarism and

collective action both within and amongst their organizations.

Interviewees included in this study lamented the uncertainty inherent in Egypt’s

political transition. They were quite sure, however, of one thing: Egypt’s transition

would be long and tumultuous. So far, they have been right. Unfortunately, the

fragmented nature of Egyptian civil society that carried over from Mubarak-era policies

has prohibited the sector from acting collectively as a steady force within the tumult.

There is still time, however, for civil society to unite and lead future phases of Egypt’s

long political transition.

27

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