ABSTRACT
This chapter examines why one of the most promising of the Arab uprisings, in which expectations for revolutionary change ran high, resulted instead in what many would consider a series of counterrevolutions. It analyzes long-term developments in the political economy that underpinned revolutionary upheaval, considering the widespread social, political, and economic grievances that precipitated sustained cycles of popular street protests. The chapter explores the tumultuous period of uncertainty, economic crisis, and political polarization that emerged in Egypt after 2011, resulting in a new regime that very much resembled the old. Egypt resorted to sustaining public investment and subsidies by external borrowing on international credit markets and increasingly relied on worker remittances sent back from Egyptians working in the newly flush oil economies of the Persian Gulf. By the late 1980s, Egypt had one of the largest debt burdens in the world—184 percent of GDP, if calculated at the free-market exchange rate.
