ABSTRACT
Minutes after Hosni Mubarak abdicated power in favour of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces on the 11 February 2011, the streets of Cairo echoed with the chant ‘the people and the army are one hand’. The adage is reflective of the complex relationships and associations which have become characteristic of the modern Egyptian state. In an astonishing feat of survival, the institution which has monopolized the cultural, political and economic life of the nation for sixty years succeeded, at least momentarily, in distancing itself from the failings, ineffectiveness and authoritarianism that have characterized this period.
