CAIRO: “I wanted to go deeper into the complexities behind the apparent self-enrichment practices evident in the current government,” said Amr Adly, a PhD candidate at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.
In his research paper, Adly argues that an “uneven distribution of property rights is deeply embedded within broader power relations permeating political regimes in Egypt.”
Adly was among a group of young Egyptian students from universities around the world who presented this week the findings of their research to a panel of experts, businessmen and professors.
As part of the seventh annual Forum of the Economic and Business History of Egypt and the Middle East, the Young Scholars Sessions provided a platform for advanced undergraduates, recent graduates, and graduate students at the MA and early doctorate stages to present their work. In return, students received feedback from scholars and peers in a fairly informal atmosphere.
The event was organized by the Economic and Business History Research Center of the American University in Cairo in collaboration with Middle East Studies Center, Partners in Development for Research, Consulting and Training, the Supreme Council for Culture and the National Center for Translation.
Adly’s paper, titled “Politically-Embedded Cronyism: The Case of Post-Liberalization Egypt,” delves into the politics behind cronyism and nepotism present today.
“The paper develops the concept of politically-embedded cronyism where state incumbents generate and protract uneven distribution of property rights in favor of a few private actors as tactics of regime survival that go beyond the mere interest of self-enrichment,” Adly writes.
Politically-embedded cronyism, he concludes, “is likely to emerge the more state incumbents retain their relative autonomy from their cronies through higher concentration of power in the executive and a declining role of societal groups in general and business in particular in the reproduction of the power of top incumbents.”
“The current regime have been very successful in playing the political game I have described in my paper, as political parties in many other countries have failed to contain self-enrichment practices which has led to them losing their political stability,” Adly adds.
Industrialization to privatization
In a paper titled “Public Sector to Privatization: Egyptian Industry between the Political Economies of Nasser and Sadat,” Nancy Elshami, a graduate from Columbia University, attempts to draw a more comprehensive picture of Egypt’s volatile political and economic situation throughout the rule of presidents Nasser and Sadat.
“While the Nasser period made great strides towards development and industrialization, it undoubtedly had its mishaps, falling victim to the shortcomings of import substitution industrialization which many developing countries experienced,” ElShami argues.
“I am a Nasserist, but I am aware of the issues and problems Nasser had at the time of his rule and believing in a certain ideology does not mean that you have to defend it blindly. I think that the public sector could have been successful if external factors, particularly the war did not hinder the industrialization process,” she comments.
“Egypt also had its own share of unique problems and political impediments which hindered the industrialization program and led to its eventual demise. Social structure and external pressures plaguing Egypt at the time thrust the development program to second tier priority,” she writes.
With regards to Sadat’s era, she again argues that external factors made a difference, but here these factors led Sadat’s “Infitah” (openness) policies to seem more successful than they really were.
“Wherein the political situation and the emergence of ‘windfall’ income due to either political conditions or natural resources were the primary cause of the relative prosperity during this period rather than the policies of openness,” ElShami writes.
She explains that the main problem with Sadat’s economic policies is that all investment went to the lucrative petroleum sector buffering the reform and modernization of other crucial sectors, particularly industry.
“This setup of the economy led to a variation of the ‘Dutch Disease’ where the rapid emergence of oil as a dominant sector diverted funds away from the industrial sector, and made Egyptian manufactures less competitive in the world market,” she concluds.
On worker relations
Dina Makram Ebeid, a doctoral candidate from London School of Economics, also focused on industrialization, but from an anthological perspective. Her presentation titled “Main Findings from Fieldwork: The Experience of the Egyptian Iron and Steel Plant through Time,” is the outcome of a year’s worth of visits to a steel plant.
Ebeid visited a steel plant three days each week for a full year and to observe workers, and her paper explores their experience in public enterprises in Egypt under neo-liberalism.
“Neo-liberal reform introduced by the state in the 1990s has been behind the restructuring of public enterprises and the change in the legal and social status of public sector workers today,” writes Ebeid.
“My research looks at how these workers come together and compete with one another under neo-liberal pressure,” she adds. “I also focus on the affects of neo-liberal reforms on workers’ households, their structures and their coping strategies.”
Ebied concludes that worker relations with higher level workers improve when conditions within the plant are enhanced through modernization.
