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Businessmen, Clientelism, and Authoritarianism in Egypt pp 11–35Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Uprising, Authoritarianism, and Political Transformation

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Abstract

By the beginning of 2011, the economic and political climate in Egypt was highly charged. On the economic level, the economic reforms that started in the early 1990s produced some success, like an increase in the growth rate of the gross domestic product (GDP) by an average of 4.5 percent over the previous two decades.1 In 2007, foreign direct investment increased to $11 billion compared to $400 million in 2004, and Egypt’s exports increased by 20 percent.2 However, the majority of the population was hurt by the economic eforms. For example, economic growth failed to translate into providing an adequate amount of jobs. During the last years of Mubarak’s rule, unemployment among university graduates reached 40 percent for men and 50 percent for women.3 The proportion of the population living below the national poverty line rose from 16.7 percent in 2000 to 22 percent in 2008.4 The number of shanty towns increased to more than one thousand, spread around twenty governorates, with a total population of 17.7 million.5

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Notes

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© 2015 Safinaz El Tarouty

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Tarouty, S.E. (2015). The Uprising, Authoritarianism, and Political Transformation. In: Businessmen, Clientelism, and Authoritarianism in Egypt. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137493385_2

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