ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, I surveyed more than a dozen different attempts at alliance building and cooperation between Islamists and secularists in the Egyptian opposition over the past three decades, in three different arenas, namely parliamentary elections, issue-based movements and committees, and professional syndicates. In this chapter, I use the process-tracing method to show that alliance building and cooperation were more likely to occur during the 1980s and the period 2000-2005 because there existed during these two periods greater ideological convergence and mobilizational symmetries between Islamists and secularists, in addition to a favorable political opportunity structure. In contrast, I argue that there was little by way of successful cooperation between Islamists and secularists during much of the 1990s, and in the wake of the 2005 elections, because of growing ideological polarization and mobilizational asymmetries between Islamists and secularists, and an unfavorable political opportunity structure.
