The Arab Spring: U.S. Democracy Promotion in Egypt

Bread, Justice, or Opportunity? The Determinants of the Arab Awakening Protests

“…Pressured by international democracy promotion efforts, several of the Arab regimes adopted reforms and other measures, such as the multi-candidate Presidential election in Egypt in 2005. Starting with the United Nations Development Programme (2002), the UNDP launched a Democracy Assistance program and, following the Iraq invasion, the U.S. used diplomacy and "bottom-up" approaches to promote civic organizing and political participation in several of the Arab states (Campbell, 2010;Snider & Faris, 2011), which were reinforced by the EU and several member states (Burnell & Youngs, 2010). International democracy promotion legitimized local demands for greater political and civil rights and created openings in several of these regimes that may have facilitated these protests.…”

Successful and failed democratic transitions from military rule in majority Muslim societies: the cases of Indonesia and Egypt

“…The situation in Egypt has been fundamentally different -mostly because all US governments since 1979 have courted the Egyptian military as the guarantor of the country's peace with Israel (Snider andFaris 2011, p. 50, Solomon 2011). This has been reflected in the extent of American aid granted to the Egyptian generals: between 1946 and 2010, they obtained US$57.1 billion.…”

The Impact of Social Media Technologies on the Revolutions

“…At the same time, citizens used modern technologies to flare up tension and fuel frustration with corruption and unrest with a failing political architecture within the countries. Soon after the Tunisian revolution, the domino effect sprawled in neighbouring Egypt and Libya, which eventually led to the overthrow of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and Libya's Muammar Al Qaddafi (Bilal, 2011;Coetzee, 2013;Gelvin, 2012;Snider et al, 2011). Although the vast majority were jubilant after the toppling of previous regimes, there are growing political and religious secular divisions that have left revolutionary Arab societies polarised (Guzansky and Berti, 2013).…”