ABSTRACT
Successive Mubarak governments had indeed made many strides to earn a celebrated position. From the 1990s, they had accelerated privatization of public assets, introduced drastic cuts in social expenditure, launched legal reform to guarantee 'flexible' employment, privatized agriculture, removed trade barriers and generally put the interests of capital. The provision of universal education and health care systems as well as the introduction of land reform and the nationalization of private assets translated on the ground to rapidly increasing public service employment in many developing countries. Financial and human resources aside, the Mubarak regime not only turned a blind eye to police excesses in dealing with society but progressively gave it free rein in the use of terror. The Egyptian Centre for Economic Studies (ECES), a think tank established in the 1990s with the support of USAID and a group of powerful businessmen, provided the space for Egypt's new ideologues.
