Counter-revolution as international phenomenon: the case of Egypt

Abstract

This article argues that the case of the Egyptian 2011 revolution forces us to rethink accounts of counter-revolution in International Relations. The debate over whether the events of 2011–13 in Egypt should be considered a ‘revolution’ or merely a ‘revolt’ or ‘uprising’ reflects an understanding of revolutions as closed and discrete events, and therefore of international counter-revolution as significant only after revolutionary movements have seized sovereign power. Against this account, which maintains the idea of sovereignty as the boundary between domestic/social and international/ geopolitical phenomena, I argue that counter-revolutions can operate across boundaries during revolutionary situations before and to prevent revolutionary transformation and therefore affect whether a revolutionary sovereign power is established at all. Such counter-revolutions draw upon both the ideological inheritance of historical strategies of international ‘catch-up’, and the cross-border class relations that these different strategies bring into being. In the Egyptian case, the counter-revolution thus relied upon two factors deriving from this strategy: the ideological inheritance of Nasserism as a response to international hierarchy, and the integration of the post-Nasser Egyptian ruling elite with Gulf financial, and US security, networks.

Catholic Clergy at Home and in Rome: Intersocial Processes in French Counterrevolution (1848–52)

“…Though originally intended as a comparative case study between various states and processes of revolution and counterrevolution in Europe in 1848, the encounter with the empirical data led the research in a different direction. In its inception, the plan was to perform a straightforward deductive test of Allinson's (2019b) general framework on 1848 France. This was partially explored in the previously mentioned pilot study.…”

“…Directly cited is Trotsky, but there are others then and now which have stressed the transnational nature of political developments (see Luxemburg 2008;Rosenberg 2013;Trotsky [1936Trotsky [ ] 2004Trotsky [ , [1972Trotsky [ ] 2008Trotsky [ , 2012Trotsky [ , [1930 2017). Building on this, the closest to a true exploration of counterrevolution in this sense has been done by Allinson (2019b) in his work on the counterrevolution in Egypt. It is with this tradition in mind that I set out to understand the counterrevolutionary case of the Second French Republic and its tie to counterrevolution in Europe as a whole at the time.…”

“…Any new theoretical development has to fit into an established web of understanding. The immediate surrounding web constitutes, in so far as this paper is concerned, the recent theoretical developments in Allinson (2019b), the processual ontology pursued by Lawson (2016Lawson ( :111, 2019, and the established international and structural tradition found in both recent and older scholarship (see Ritter 2015;Rosenberg 2013;Skocpol 1979;Tilly 1978Tilly , 1992Tilly , 1993Trotsky [1930] 2017). It also briefly borrows from network theory in order to contextualise intersocial agent placement between states.…”

“…In the analysis of Egypt, the contribution of Allinson (2019b) has been to push towards an understanding of counterrevolution as tied to social processes that transcend borders; what has been termed "intersocial" by Lawson (2019:8). Allinson's paper briefly identifies how counterrevolution following the Arab spring in Egypt successfully took power both through the incorporation of revolutionary discourse as well as through intersocial forces organising across borders with a political agenda.…”

“…The theory formulated on the basis of this case study helps to shift the focus of international ties from the official mechanisms of international relations to the unofficial intersocial relations. As with Allinson's (2019b) case study, it shifts from the immediate foreign policy of states, which are nevertheless mentioned, to the impacts of the interests of regional and global agents. In so doing, the theory helps to bridge the understanding of counterrevolution across borders which historians failed to address when dealing with the Spring of Nations.…”