|
Egypt The "Dominant Party System"
In Egypt's "dominant party system," a big ruling party
straddling the center of the ideological spectrum was flanked by
small opposition "parties of pressure" on its left and right.
The Ruling Party
The ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) was a direct
descendant of Nasser's Arab Socialist Union, albeit shorn of the
left-wing intellectuals and politicized officers who dominated it
in the 1960s. By the 1980s, it incorporated the ruling alliance of
senior bureaucrats, top police and army officers, business people,
and large landowners who dominated the governorates. Most of these
elites had a foot in both state and society, combining public
office and private assets. The party's official ideology expressed
this social composition: it stood for a middle way between
socialism and individualistic capitalism. This middle way would be
compatible with a large public sector, in which the many senior
bureaucrats and state managers had a stake, and with the growing
private and foreign capitalism, on which both officials and
proregime business people were thriving. The party's ideology was
generally too vague and ambivalent to determine government policy,
but it authentically expressed the stake of its constituents in
both a massive state and an open economy. The relative balance
between the party's elements shifted over time; under Sadat the
infitah bourgeoisie rose to prominence, while Mubarak
shifted the balance in favor of the state bourgeoisie and the old
pre-1952 aristocracy.
The NDP, lacking developed organization and ideological
solidarity, was a weak party, in many ways more an appendage of
government than an autonomous political force. But it performed
useful functions for both the regime and its membership. Although
the bureaucracy and academia remained the principal channels of
elite recruitment, party credentials and service became a factor in
such cooptation, and the party represented a ladder of recruitment
for the private sector bourgeoisie. The party did not make high
policy, and many of the policy recommendations of its committees,
such as calls for the application of the sharia and abolition of
the public sector, were simply ignored by the government. But its
parliamentary caucus assumed considerable authority over lesser
matters: it was the source of a constant stream of initiatives and
responses to government meant to defend or to promote the interest
of its largely bourgeois constituency. Thus, the NDP incorporated
major segments of the most strategic social forces into the ruling
coalition; it conceded no accountability to them but provided
enough privileged access to satisfy them.
The party lacked a strong extragovernmental organization,
enjoyed little loyalty from its members, and had few activists;
indeed, police officials played a prominent role in its leadership,
and in the governorates the Ministry of Interior seemed to act for
the party in the absence of a real apparatus. But by way of the
client networks of progovernment notables, the party brought a
portion of the village and urban masses into the regime's camp,
denying the opposition access to them. The party also nominally
incorporated large numbers of government employees and managed to
place its partisans in the top posts of most of the professional
and labor syndicates. The party lacked an interest in mass
mobilization, and, if anything, its function was to enforce
demobilization. The government had to depend on the Ministry of
Interior, village headmen, and local notables to bring out the
vote. But as an organizational bond between the regime and the
local subelites that represented its core support and its linkage
to wider social forces, the party helped protect the government's
societal base.
Data as of December 1990
|
