ABSTRACT
At the turn of the century, Egypt faces the twin challenges of economic and political structural adjustments. Criteria to evaluate the success of the former are reasonably standard and easily measured. On the other hand, criteria to evaluate political structural adjustment are more ambiguous and there is less consensus about them. In recent years, however, various multilateral and bilateral donor agencies – anxious to include progress towards democracy as one of their criteria in evaluating-aid worthiness of potential recipients, including Egypt – have been developing such measures. In this chapter, the five criteria developed by the United States Agency for International Development USAID (1998) are used.1 These criteria are: consensus, rule of law, competition, inclusion in political participation and good governance. In this chapter Egypt’s position at the beginning of the new millennium along these five dimensions will be assessed, followed by some conclusions about political challenges that confront the country at the outset of the twenty-first century.
