Humanities & Social Sciences
October 2024
Egypt and the rise of fluid authoritarianism
Political ecology, power and the crisis of legitimacy
by Maria Gloria Polimeno
Egypt and the rise of fluid authoritarianism focuses on the struggle of the post-2013 political authorities for internal political legitimacy after the crisis following the 2013 coup d'état. It explores the microstructural and macro-systemic dynamics of leadership, power, protests and the authority-making process in political systems. These cannot simply be defined as structural, political, social and economic projections of the authoritarianism of the past, but rather as a rupture with that past. The book offers a complex, ground-breaking socio-political and economic analysis into how the forging of an internal political legitimacy claim has eventually modified the regime in Egypt along the authoritarian spectrum, turning into a fluid autocracy closer to a non-exclusivist personalist regime. This shift had implications that resonated both politically and economically.
