Book Review: Why Occupy a Square? People, Protests, and Movements in the Egyptian Revolution

Why Occupy a Square? People, Protests, and Movements in the Egyptian Revolution, by Jeroen Gunning & Ilan Zvi Baron. London: Hurst & Company, 2013. 256 pp, £20 paperback 9781849042659

This is a staggeringly good book. After reading so many accounts of the Egyptian Revolution and Arab Spring that are mainly descriptive, or even speculative as to causes, it seemed we were doomed to have to wait many years for the facts to emerge that would provide an analytical, theoretically informed account of the origins of these important events.

Gunning and Baron have proven that we needn’t wait any longer. By focusing on the question of how the Egyptian Revolution emerged in January 2011, and leaving aside its later trajectory and aftermath, these authors are able to focus on the years 2000-2010. They do a brilliant job, drawing on current theories of both revolutions and social movements, and gathering data on the networks and events of social protest that spanned the entire decade.

The authors set themselves a difficult task: to explain the timing (why a large political revolution erupted in January 25), the participants (who was involved and why), the dynamics of the popular mobilization (what happened on each day from the 25th through to February 11th and why, noting the shifts in participants, level of violence, and state response), and the role of leadership and social media - two issues much disputed in early accounts of events.

They demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Egyptian revolution was neither spontaneous, nor leaderless, nor non-violent, nor driven by social media. Rather, it was the culmination of several distinct waves of social protest, which had engaged political protestors, labor protests, general economic/wage protests, and religious protests over the preceding decade. What made the revolution of January 25th possible was the coming together of these previously distinct movements, all driven by police brutality to increasingly focus on protests against the continuation of the Mubarak regime. While each of these separate movements had their roots in structural changes in Egyptian society and state-elite relations, the authors brilliantly show how changes in perceptions among potential protestors and the actions of the government shepherded the protest movements together, creating broader mobilization networks and novel opportunities to seize political and physical space from the regime.

The authors begin by examining the networks and events behind the various protest waves that started in 2000, with political protests in support of Palestinians against Israel. By 2003, protests against the US invasion of Iraq had led to the first occupation of Tahrir Square. In the next few years the Kefaya (‘enough’) movement began to raise middle-class protests against the increasingly closed and corrupt Mubarak regime, joined by the Judges Club and other youth and professional organizations. While all of these remained small, these movements “reclaimed the street as a protest site, united activists across ideological lines,” and began to develop a political protest frame (p. 57).

In 2008, a major strike wave centered in the factory town of Mahalla struck the textile industry, which was being severely hurt by international competition under new economic policies of open trade. The strikes became political, as workers perceived that they were being hurt by state policies that favored internationally-connected businessmen tied to Gamal Mubarak, while hurting local workers. Various other labor groups, including white-collar workers, also engaged in strikes to protest rising prices, while the April 6 Youth Movement was established to rally national support for the workers. However, the government acted energetically to suppress the strikes; the middle class remained quiet, and little was accomplished.

The Muslim Brotherhood engaged in some protests, particularly in support of Palestine and against Israel’s 2008 invasion of Gaza. However, in regard to political contestation with the regime, the Brotherhood preferred to seek electoral gains, having successfully run a large number of candidates as “independents” in the 2005 elections who won election to parliament.

The electoral challenge was widened in 2010 with the return to Egypt of Mohammad ElBaradei, the well-known head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and Nobel prize-winner, who declared himself a candidate for President in the scheduled 2011 elections. ElBaradei was reacting to the increasingly obvious grooming of Gamal Mubarak to succeed his father as President; if not stopped, this threatened to saddle Egypt with yet another 30 years under the Mubarak family. Numerous organizations and social groups rallied to support ElBaradei. Their actions were catalyzed by the brutal beating and death of Khaled Said, a young middle-class man who had been dragged out of an internet café by police and killed at their hands. Pictures of his mangled face and body spread on the internet. Where previously many in the middle-classes had been quiescent, or only engaged in on-line protests, the death of Said crystalized anxieties about the threat posed to the middle classes by the increasing police brutality of Mubarak’s regime.

During 2010, three trends started to accelerate the expansion and integration of protest networks. First, rising food prices (as in 2008) triggered labor protests; but this time they were even more overtly political. Second, youth activists reached out for international guidance to learn about tactics of non-violent protest, including methods to deal with tear gas and the use of “flash mob” protests to disconcert and elude police. Third, the 2010 parliamentary elections, in which the Muslim Brotherhood hoped to build on its 2005 success, was blatantly manipulated by the Mubarak regime to provide its own supporters with an overwhelming victory. This showed both the Brotherhood and secular supporters of ElBaradei that they had no hope of achieving change through elections, and would have to use other means to prevent Gamal Mubarak from coming to power and perpetuating the Mubarak regime.

In late 2010 activist leaders developed a detailed plan for protests on January 25th, the national holiday celebrating the Egyptian Police. The protests were to begin in the slum neighborhoods that had grown up in the last two decades in a ring around central Cairo. These protests would start in the narrow lanes of the slums where police were few; then once the police had been pulled out to deal with them, protestors in a few select areas would start to move toward the center of Cairo. Decoying and outflanking the police, picking up supporters as they went, the crowds eventually converged on Tahrir. The recent collapse of the Tunisian regime gave hope to Egyptians and helped spur a much larger turn-out than had been initially expected. However, it was the careful planning and momentum from previous protest waves that led tens of thousands to not only come out in protests but succeed in reaching and occupying the Square.

Yet by the night of the 25th, the Square had been cleared by vigorous police actions. The next big encounter would occur on the 28th of January, a Friday, when people poured out of the mosques. This time the police were prepared to more violently react to protests. Yet the success of the protests on the 25th encouraged even larger crowds on the 28th, this time joined by tough soccer “ultras” and the well-organized ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as by workers. The result was violent clashes all across Egypt, with hundreds of police stations being burned and thousands injured. This was really the pivotal day when the people demonstrated that the police would not be able to turn back their protests, and that a revolution was truly underway.

Gunning and Baron also do a superb job analyzing the structural background to the revolution – the growth of Cairo’s slums, rising inequality and persistent poverty despite overall GDP growth, the withdrawal of state subsidies, growing cleavages between the regime and the military and between the regime and the middle-classes, rising inflation, and international events. They also show the modest role played by social media – important for the initial organizers, but minimal for the majority of the street protestors. Indeed, they show that due to fear of police following them on-line, social media were often used to issue decoy calls while the key actual coordination was done by distribution of printed documents. In addition to their terrific analysis, the authors provide an appendix rich in data on protests to support their analysis.

Overall, this book offers us the best analysis to date of the emergence of the Egyptian Revolution. In its skilled use of theory and judicious detailed analysis, and its treatment of such diverse elements as mobilization networks, protest waves, structural conditions, leadership and tactics, state-protest interactions, the emotions of protestors, social media, and physical and hybrid spaces, it is a model for all analyses of revolutionary episodes. This book is a distinguished achievement and essential reading for anyone commenting on the Arab Revolutions.

Jack A. Goldstone is Hazel Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University and an expert at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars.