ABSTRACT
It is remarkable how stable the Egyptian political system has remained over many years, in spite of its numerous and escalating problems. The reasons for this are multiple: a political culture that is both bureaucratic and constitutional in its own way, a political-security machine that has grown very much in size and sophistication, and-especially since Mubarak-a populace that is no more certain than its leader about where it wants to go. Having lived through a semblance of both socialism (under Nasser) and capitalism (under Sadat), neither of which has delivered, nobody seems to be sure where to go next. The same applies to foreign policy issues: the country has lived with the Arabs, and lived, more or less, without them; it felt the heavy hand of the Soviets and experienced the armtwisting of the Americans. None of the options has been without pain. Only the religious militants seem to know what they want: ‘Islam is the solution’, they cry, but their intellectual concerns remain as vague operationally and as marginal to the details of modern life as ever. Stability is therefore to some extent the function of inertia, and of a perceived lack of alternatives.
