ABSTRACT
Egypt has entered a critical period in its search for solutions to domestic problems. Serious social and economic pressures are fed by urban crowding, large-scale unemployment, challenges to traditional society, popular political disillusionment and, some would argue, insufficiently stringent and misdirected government policies. Increasingly, the Egyptian government has had to grapple with popular unhappiness arising from its inability to fulfil its part of the ‘social contract’ for economic prosperity. Nor can domestic and external affairs be separated: Egypt’s foreign and domestic policies interact, just as do the economic, social and political components of internal affairs.
