ABSTRACT

Thirty-five years after the 1952 coup, Egypt is once more on the boil. There is a generalized, confused feeling in society, a sense that the identity of state and population achieved under Nasser has been lost. The signs of the alienation which led to the instability of the late 1940s and early 1950s, and eventually to the military takeover, have reappeared. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the manifestations of Egypt’s ills during the first half of the 1980s, linking these ills to the increased alienation of the greater part of the people from the mechanisms as well as the ideals of the political process, and speculating upon the political repercussions of this alienation.