Egypt: Analyzing the Opposition, Addressing the Political Hierarchy of Power

As President Hosni Mubarak slowly reemerges from his recent gall bladder procedure, Nathan Brown of the Carnegie Endowment takes to FP’s Middle East Channel to explore Egypt’s chain of command as well the implications of its “stultifying political environment,” particularly with regard to reform. Because the government initiated a broad security campaign to crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood following its electoral success in 2005, and with the understanding that the Brotherhood is the only opposition force with both a coherent vision and solid constituency, Brown worries that “the Egyptian regime will be facing an opposition of inchoate protests and armchair intellectuals.” Yet he interprets the “ElBaradei phenomenon” as a sign that the Mubarak government may also be losing it’s “raison d’être,” saying that “only a regime without much credibility or legitimacy could be spooked by an international civil servant long absent from the country.”

In terms of identifying who within the regime actually holds the strings of power, Michael Collins Dunn surmises that members of Egypt’s security apparatus maintain tremendous influence as well as various leaders within Mubarak’s own National Democratic Party. But he contends that Gamal Mubarak, thought by many to be the most likely presidential successor, has yet to truly emerge as the “supreme” political actor.