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ARTICLES ON LAW AND THE TRANSITION TO MARKET: THE CASE OF EGYPT Lama Abu-Odeh∗ INTRODUCTION On the eve of independence from European colonialism, Egypt, like most other developing countries, undertook the project of de-linking itself from colonial economy by initiating domestic industrialization.1 The economic project known as Import Substitution Industrialization ("ISI")2 was designed to liberate Egypt from raw commodity production—specifically, agricultural and mineral—servicing its previous colonial master, Great Britain.3 The engine of development would be an expanding public sector with nationalization and socialism as leitmotifs.4 In re-orienting the economy towards industrial production, Egypt hoped that the terms of trade with the international economy would significantly improve, thereby leading to an improvement in the living standards of its population.5 And, like most other developing countries (with ∗ Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center; S.J.D., Harvard Law School; M.A., University of York, England; LL.M., University of Bristol, England; LL.B., University of Jordan. 1 JOHN WATERBURY, THE EGYPT OF NASSER AND SADAT 51 (1983). Cotton and agriculture had constituted the bulk of the Egyptian economy since the British colonization in 1882 and tied a new landowning class to the British presence in Egypt and the British cotton markets. Id. Neither this class nor the British had any major incentive to promote the country's industrialization, and despite modest attempts to modernize by the end of the Second World War, agriculture continued to account for about a third of the country's gross domestic product ("GDP"). Id. 2 See generally JAMES M. CYPHER & JAMES L. DIETZ, THE PROCESS OF ECONOMICS 253–58 (2d ed. 2004). 3 WATERBURY, supra note 1, at 51. After the revolution in 1952, the Nasser regime was determined to restore Egyptian power with full independence, political sovereignty, and military capacity and avoided alliances with either superpower. Id. The ISI project that the regime adopted meant to diversify the economy and break the economic linkages to the British metropolis that perpetuated Egypt's backwardness. Id. 4 See id. at 57. 5 Id. at 51–53. The country's heavy reliance on cotton and its market had chained the peasant (fallah) to a never ending cycle of cotton production and made him vulnerable to the unpredictable fluctuations in cotton prices. Id. at 51. As land and capital stayed scarce, the population grew, continually diminishing the relative 352 EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 23 the exception of the East Asian Tigers), Egypt failed.6 A symptom of its failure was a severe debt crisis that hurled Egypt into the brutal embrace of the International Financial Institutions ("IFIs"): the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund ("IMF").7 To be rescued from its debt crisis, Egypt had to concede to the neo-liberal economic program of these institutions, otherwise known as the Washington Consensus.8 The program aimed to improve Egypt's capacity to repay its debts to international creditors by: re-linking it to the global economy via trade liberalization and through the re-regulation of its domestic economy to be more market oriented with the private sector, henceforth, being the engine.9 And like most other debtor- countries, Egypt had to go through an austerity program to improve its savings.10 Transitioning from an economy in which the public sector played a primary role to one in which this role is significantly reduced in favor of a domestic private sector is no easy matter. This was especially true in postcolonial Egypt because the public sector became, perhaps inevitably, the site not just of economic growth,11 but also of distribution,12 and, equally importantly, the place in which those who came to rule Egypt were incubated, i.e., the state elites.13 These state elites intermittently used the discourse of nationalist socialism to mobilize the population behind the project of domestic industrialization,14 value of the peasant's labor. Id. At the time of the revolution of 1952, the per capita gross national product ("GNP") remained the same as at end of the First World War. Id. 6 Id. at 80–81, 286–88. 7 KHALID IKRAM, THE EGYPTIAN ECONOMY 1952–2000: PERFORMANCE, POLICIES, AND ISSUES 61 (2006). 8 See id. at 72–73; see generally John Williamson, What Washington Means by Policy Reform, in LATIN AMERICAN ADJUSTMENT: HOW MUCH HAS HAPPENED? (John Williamson ed., 1990) (providing background on the Washington Consensus). 9 IKRAM, supra note 7, at 63–64. 10 Id. 11 NAZIH H. AYUBI, OVER-STATING THE ARAB STATE: POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE EAST 298– 301 (1996). 12 Id. at 199–200. 13 Gamal Abdelnasser, Egypt: Succession Politics, in ARAB ELITES: NEGOTIATING THE POLITICS OF CHANGE 117–23 (Volker Perthes ed., 2004). In a study on elites in Egypt, state technocrats are together with the ruling party placed in the center of elite circles. Id. In the second circle we find influential businessmen, trade unionists, and parliamentarians. Id. In the third outer circle are the judges of the Supreme Constitutional Court ("SCC") and influential non-governmental organizations ("NGOs"). Id. 14 AYUBI, supra note 11, at 196–200, 298. It was nationalist to have one's own domestic industry and, in the name of socialism, the State, via its public sector, was responsible for the well-being of the new national body. See id. at 196. 2009] ON LAW AND THE TRANSITION TO MARKET 353 but were, for the most part, populists.15 Political representation of the various social forces, especially emergent ones, was corporatized through state-based unions, associations, and cooperatives.16 Soon the political trade-off of (I give you) economic well-being for (you give me) political power took hold.17 Essentially, the transition from an ISI-based economy driven by a public sector to the market-based economy meant a transition from the relatively blurred class map of the public-sector-driven developing economy to a more differentiated one.18 The transition also meant that those tasks/ideologies/institutions associated with the public sector—growth, distribution, nationalism, socialism, populism, corporatism—had to be unbundled and given up.19 As they were unbundled and became associated with the social forces of the new class map, both rising ones and declining ones, they took on new incarnations making them shadows of their previous selves.20 The Egyptian story of transition is complicated by the fact that Egypt receives "rent" from three strategic sources: the Suez Canal, oil and natural gas, and geo-political location (U.S. aid).21 Since both the Suez Canal and oil and natural gas are administered by public companies, the revenues reach the coffers of the state directly.22 Revenues from these sources are rent in that while they deploy a minimal amount of local labor, they potentially yield large revenue.23 While the amount of this revenue could be sizable, it could also be 15 Id. at 203–11. Populism is a "political movement which enjoys the support of the mass of the urban working class and/or peasantry but which does not result from the autonomous organizational power of either of these two sectors. It is also supported by non-working class sectors upholding an anti-status quo ideology." Id. at 206. 16 See id. at 215. 17 Id. at 215–16. 18 Id. at 217–18. 19 See id. at 340. 20 See id. at 352. 21 SAMIR SULAYMAN, AL-NIZAMAL AL-QAWIYY WAL-DAWLA AL-DHACFIYAA [THE STRONG REGIME AND THE WEAK STATE] 20–21 (2005). 22 Id. 23 Hazem Beblawi, one of the original theorists of the "rentier state" insists on three essential features: (1) [R]ent cannot be the only kind of income in the economy, but it should predominate; (2) the origin of the rent must be external to the economy, as 'pure internal rent boils down to a situation of domestic payments transfer'; [and] (3) a minority in the population must be engaged in the generation of the rent, while the majority is involved only in the distribution or utilisation of it. Hazem Beblawi & Giacomo Luciani, Introduction to THE RENTIER STATE 12 (Hazem Beblawi & Giacomo Luciani eds., 1987). See also SULAYMAN, supra note 21, at 21 (indicating that when a government receives its money from sources other than taxes, it is not beholden to its people, and therefore it is not sustainable). 354 EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 23 fragile.24 Forces outside of Egypt's control, such as the international market or Egypt's geopolitical value to the United States, determine the amount of revenue.25 Although Egypt's rent revenue is not comparable in size to that of the oil producing countries of the Gulf region,26 its intermittent availability in sizable amounts triggers a dynamic that approximates that of rent societies. Elites are dependent on rent revenue to preserve their hold on power through allocative activities while "rentiered" beneficiaries offer passive political loyalty in return.27 Rent surplus makes the state elite relatively autonomous by providing economic benefits to social groups that otherwise might challenge existing structures.28 Therefore, rentierism enters the dynamic of transition from ISI to the market in Egypt contributing its own dynamic, itself determined by the rise and fall of rent revenue. This adds to the story of transition another layer of complexity that needs to be captured. Another layer of complexity is what I call the "Islamic Sector." While the condensation of growth/distribution/political power within the public sector of ISI yielded the social forces undergoing "privatization,"29 it also constituted the social forces outside it through exclusion. Islamist ideology, in moderate or radical form, found a home within social groups existing "autonomously from the state";30 they were either never beneficiaries of the public sector, or they came to the social force through the rent economy occurring outside the public sector, fed by worker remittances, or were children of those who benefited from the public sector but found themselves excluded from it due to 24 GALAL AMIN, EGYPT'S ECONOMIC PREDICAMENT: A STUDY IN THE INTERACTION OF EXTERNAL PRESSURE, POLITICAL FOLLY, AND SOCIAL TENSION IN EGYPT, 1960–1990, at 40–46, 53 (1995). 25 Id. Moreover, Egypt is located within an oil-rich region that finds itself the periodic overseer of petrodollars searching for labor and investment opportunities. This has allowed Egypt to export its labor to these countries utilizing their remittances at opportune moments of its economic history as a source of badly needed hard currency. In the same vein, foreign investment has often meant for Egypt petrodollar money from the Gulf countries looking to invest in Egypt. Id. 26 In 2007, Egypt produced on average 665.08 thousand barrels of oil a day, ranking it twenty-seventh among world producers. Energy Information Administration, International Energy Data and Analysis for Egypt, http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/country/country_energy_data.cfm?fips=EG (last visited Oct. 10, 2009). The same year, the natural gas production of 1,501 billion cubic feet made it the nineteenth biggest producer. Id. 27 Beblawi, supra note 23, at 53. 28 See AYUBI, supra note 11, at 234–35. 29 See id. 30 In Egypt, "the main mobilization against the state bourgeoisie and its authoritarian apparatus has so far not come from the economic private sector but rather from the 'socio-cultural' private sector: From the radical Islamic movements and from the informal so-called 'Islamic business' groups with alternative network of schools, hospitals and social services." AYUBI, supra note 11, at 408. 2009] ON LAW AND THE TRANSITION TO MARKET 355 the transition to the market.31 While most other social forces live out the drama of their exclusion from the public sector, the Islamic Sector sees itself as the alternative to the state, not in the form of private sector replacing public sector, but a kind of alternative parallel state.32 But because it was constituted through exclusion by the ISI public sector, it lives in the shadow of the state: mimicking its discourses, tools, and institutions; engaging with it; and conspiring to annex it.33 In the transition from ISI to market, law played an important role.34 Just as the elites of Egypt received globalized ideas about the economy—first in the form of ISI as a response to the colonial economic legacy, globalized among postcolonial elites, and later on the Washington Consensus of International Finance Institutions, globalized in the form of an imposition on state elites as a response to the failure of ISI—so did legal elites receive globalized ideas about law that they too needed to contend with.35 Egyptian jurists received the "social" in law during the ISI era,36 and during the later neo-liberal era they were influenced by American-style constitutionalism, where rights were married to the market (reasoned in neo-formalist37 and post-realist mode38).39 31 See generally CARRIE ROSEFSKY WICKHAM, MOBILIZING ISLAM: RELIGION, ACTIVISM, AND POLITICAL CHANGE IN EGYPT (2002). 32 The nucleus of this parallel state exists in the hospitals, clinics, mosques, and banks administered by Islamists and used to provide both welfare services to the poor population and investment opportunities for those with money, completely autonomously from the state. The capacity of the Islamic sector to step in during the earthquake that hit Cairo in 1992 by providing badly needed services—revealing the inadequacy of the public sector—is well documented. BRUCE K. RUTHERFORD, EGYPT AFTER MUBARAK: LIBERALISM, ISLAM, AND DEMOCRACY IN THE ARAB WORLD 85–86 (2008) (specifically discussing aid provided by the Muslim Brotherhood following the 1992 earthquake). 33 A conflict between the Islamic business sector and the state has, in recent years, materialized in challenges over the "legality" of the status and practices of these companies. However, as Ayubi writes, "it is . . . likely that the state saw in . . . this group . . . the movement of a civil society that was seeking genuine autonomy from the state." AYUBI, supra note 11, at 408. 34 See, e.g., MALAK ZAALOUK, POWER, CLASS AND FOREIGN CAPITAL IN EGYPT: THE RISE OF THE NEW BOURGEOISIE 83–85 (1989) (describing several specific laws that facilitated the transition to a more open market economy). 35 See generally Duncan Kennedy, Three Globalizations of Law and Legal Thought: 1850–2000, in THE NEW LAW AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 19 (David M. Trubek & Alvaro Santos eds., 2006). 36 On judicial independence, see generally Adel Omar Sherif & Nathan J. Brown, Judicial Independence in the Arab World, Program of Arab Governance of the UNDP (2002), available at http://www.undppogar.org/ publications/index.asp?tid=9&src=1&type=0&so=0. Judges and jurists are themselves a fraction of the state elites although they guard their autonomy from the political elites through a commitment they share to judicial autonomy. Id. 37 See Mahkramat al-Naqd [Sup. Const. Ct.], Case No. 11, Judicial Year 16, July 3, 1995 (Egypt) (showing how the court uses a constitutional provision to deduce a new basis for discrimination through analogy, which it treats as unconstitutional, a hallmark of formalist reasoning). 356 EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 23 Legal rules serviced both economic strategies,40 ISI and subsequently the market, in that a set of rules and legal institutions had to be put in place to implement each economic mode in turn. Not only is law used by elites to "implement" an economic strategy and interpreted by judges in "the spirit of the times," it is also deployed among the contending social forces of the transition.41 For the purposes of improving the bargaining power of one side at the expense of the other, law is used in the form of a proposed constitutional amendment here or a legislative reform there.42 State elites pass constitutional amendments that tighten their grip on the politics of transition; market-oriented reformists propose a clearer separation of powers, married to the market as an improvement of their own bargaining power vis-à-vis the state elites; the working class agitates for the capacity to unionize independently from the state to improve its bargaining position both vis-à-vis the state elites and the new market with the hope of improving its declining living standards resulting from the transition to All Egyptian constitutions stress the principle of equality and treat it as the basis for justice freedom and social peace. . . . However, these particular bases of discrimination are enumerated in the constitution by virtue of their commonality, but the list is not limited to them. . . . [E]ven though the list is limited it includes every aspect of differentiation, restriction, preference. . . . That this law privileges doctors over other lessees despite the fact that they share the same legal status, and without objective basis, renders the law unconstitutional. Id. (translation by author). 38 See id. for an example of the use of the post-realist mode of American reasoning noting the recurring use in the Court's language of "balancing" and "weighing:" While it is permissible for a legislator in a state that combines individual freedom with state intervention to restrict use of property by the holder for a social purpose, this restriction however does not occur in a vacuum nor should it be conducted arbitrarily. The nature of the right itself, the purpose of this restriction, and the social circumstances under which this restriction takes place should all be taken into consideration. In this context, the legislator weighs the alternatives and chooses the interests most worthy of protection. . . . Right of property should therefore be regulated in a manner that balances interests. . . . Lessor and lessee should combine their interests in a manner that promotes economic development. The balance between them should not weigh in favor of one at the expense of the other; otherwise it would lead to injustice. It is hard to imagine that the exploited of yesterday has become the exploiter of today as a result of the skewed balance through legislative intervention to its favor. Id. (translation by author) (emphasis added). 39 Lama Abu-Odeh, The Rise and Fall of the Supreme Court of Egypt, 41, 53 (Nov. 5, 2009) (unpublished manuscript, on file with author). 40 See infra notes 115–36 and accompanying text. 41 See Amr Abdel-Rahman, A Look at Democratic Struggle in One Year: The End of Reform or Discovering the True Path to Change, AL-BOSLA, Oct. 31, 2007, available at http://bosla.org/node/78. 42 Id. 2009] ON LAW AND THE TRANSITION TO MARKET 357 market.43 And the Islamic Sector uses the courts to pass off its Islamicization agenda in the face of a highly secularized, post-ISI state.44 This paper is an attempt to describe this drama of transition from within the tradition of political economy that combines the study of the economy with that of the social forces and political systems constituted by and interacting with economic regimes. It starts with a historical review of economic/political phenomena prevailing in Egypt, beginning with the regime of Nasser and ending with that of Mubarak. After inserting the Islamic Sector into the drama, the paper continues with describing how law is used for each orientation and its actor. It finishes by describing four strategies for the state elite to remain in power. It is a description with an underlying normative agenda. It tries to describe the situation in a way that (hopefully) leads the reader to ask the following two questions: First, what is the response, indeed alternative to the Washington Consensus as a response to the failure of ISI; and second, which social force in the context of Egypt is most likely to produce this alternative? I. HISTORICAL REVIEW A. The Nasser Era (1952–1970) Nasser initiated ISI as soon as he came to power in 1952.45 Rather than promote industrialization through regulatory and macroeconomic measures favoring domestic private industry, as occurred in the East Asian Tigers, Nasser engineered the creation of a big public sector charged with the task of promoting full industrialization.46 Nasser responded to the massive popular demand for economic reform by passing a series of special legislations that took their base in land reforms.47 These were meant to remove the resource base of Egypt's previous land elite, to redistribute rural assets, and to be an incentive for previous landowners with economic means to invest in industry.48 43 Id. 44 See generally Lama Abu Odeh, Modernizing Muslim Family Law: The Case of Egypt, 37 VAND. J. TRANSNAT'L L. 1043 (2004) ("An example of Islamist Sector advancing its views through the legal system can be displayed by the practice of adherence to strict Islamic law for family law issues, whereas, the remainder of law in Egypt is largely secular."). 45 WATERBURY, supra note 1, at 60. 46 Id. at 60–61. 47 Id. at 61. 48 Land reforms, starting in September 1952, and continuing over time, ended up banning land ownership in excess of fifty acres per individual and 100 acres per family. T. Khattab, Land Law, in EGYPT AND ITS LAWS 126–27 (Nathalie Bernard-Maugiron & Baudouin Dupret eds., 2002). The reform actually dropped the 358 EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 23 In addition to being the locus of industrial oriented economic growth (ISI), an oversized public sector49 came to serve two purposes for the regime of Nasser. First, it was the locus of resource transfer from the countryside to the city,50 distributed through price controls and job creation51 (ISI + socialism + populism); and second, it was the vehicle for the emergence of state elites (the new authoritarians).52 In exchange for employment and social benefits offered by the state, Nasser corporatized53 the political (corporatist populism).54 Each social group had its corporate entity that represented its interests and was part of the state.55 Thus, in the nationalization process, the objective was not restricted to property but also included social movements, associations, and syndicates.56 The regime excluded only "conservative/reactionary social groups"57 and became the representative of all social interests in the political sphere.58 total to fifty feddans per individual and 100 feddans per family. Id. A feddan is equal to 1.038 acres. Id. Land properties exceeding this were expropriated by the state and sold back to the peasants cheaply. Id. Foreign nationals were stripped of their Egyptian holdings. Id. Rent control in land tenancy gave tenures far reaching rights to the land. Id. 49 Waterbury, supra note 1, at 76. Waterbury lists the following as falling in the hands of the state as a result of measures Nasser took when he came to power: banking and insurance, foreign trade, all "strategic" industries, most maritime and all air transport, urban mass transport, modest public housing, some urban retail trade, major department stores, hotels, cinemas and theatres, all newspapers and publishing houses, all reclaimed land, irrigation and drainage canals, major construction companies, the High Dam and the Suez Canal. Id. Only the following escaped: private cultivators, small scale retail and service firms, most wholesale traders, and small manufacturers. Id. 50 Id. at 61, 66. 51 Id. at 66. 52 AYUBI, supra note 11, at 277. During an initial stage of "bureaucratic-authoritarian" regimes, the demands of the "popular classes" are to some degree met. But after a "ceiling" is reached, a new "alliance between the military-technocracy and the upper bourgeoisie in cooperation with (subordination to) international capital" is reached and seeks to constrain the demands of the popular classes by exclusionary measures. Id. 53 In corporatism, "[t]he tendency is to move downward through the re-stratification of the public into corporate functional groupings relevant to development and system-maintenance. Not class, but corporate grouping, is characteristic: hence a kind of 'corporate representation' in primary stage modernizing, mobilization systems is seen as the means of reconciling populism with functional expertise." DAVID APTER, RETHINKING DEVELOPMENT: MODERNIZATION, DEPENDENCY, AND POSTMODERN POLITICS, 148–49 (1987), quoted in AYUBI, supra note 11, at 207. 54 AYUBI, supra note 11, at 207–08. 55 Id. at 213–14. 56 See id. at 208, 215. 57 HAMID ANSARI, EGYPT: THE STALLED SOCIETY 173 (1986). Sequestration was not only used to force a change in the social order but was also used against what the regime considered increasing security threats. Law No. 119 of 1964 (Egypt) was aimed against the increase in activity by the Muslim Brotherhood and a third type of sequestration was aimed against a rising left. Id. 58 SULAYMAN, supra note 21, at 15–16. 2009] ON LAW AND THE TRANSITION TO MARKET 359 In its early stages, the public-sector-based development achieved high rates of economic growth.59 However, this quickly changed for reasons related to the nature of the economic tasks undertaken: overambitious developmental programs not matched by local capacity; distribution considerations taking precedence over growth ones;60 the fragmentation of the public sector into "bureaucratic factions, clientelist networks and personalist cliques";61 reasons related to international politics;62 and regional politics.63 The political possibilities of salvaging ISI were blocked by Nasser's attack on the forces of the opposition from the left and the right.64 Those who refused to be "corporatized" were put in jail.65 Sadat came to power in 1970,66 inheriting a country heavily indebted as a result of its post-war reconstruction efforts. B. The Sadat Era (1970–1981) By the time he was assassinated in 1981,67 Sadat left the following legacy: (1) he entered a war with Israel in 1973 (in alliance with Syria) in which the Egyptian army performed spectacularly well, gaining a great deal of political legitimacy for Sadat in its aftermath;68 (2) he demoted those of the state elites 59 IKRAM, supra note 7, at 12. Revenue growth passed that of nominal GDP during the 1960s. Id. 60 Id. "Large amounts of investment had been channeled into branches of manufacturing industry with low social profitability, while . . . activities with higher social profitabilities had been denied the necessary capital." Id. at 9–10, 12. 61 AYUBI, supra note 11, at 208. 62 WATERBURY, supra note 1, at 399. The United State's antagonism toward Nasser forced him, internationally, into an alliance with the Soviet Union and, domestically, to increase political repression against forces he feared might be allied with the U.S. Id. 63 Id. at 94–100, 331. Even before the costly 1967 war with Israel, Egypt's defense expenses had, in 1965, risen drastically to 12% of the GNP with much spent on the prolonged war in the Yemen and the war of attrition against Israeli forces. Id. at 94–95. 64 See id. at 93–100. 65 "Conservative/reactionary social forces," i.e. the former landowning aristocracy in alliance with foreign business, were disenfranchised economically and politically by Nasser. AYUBI, supra note 11, at 17, 209–16. However, "[u]nlike Southeast Asia, Egypt is not represented by a situation of social conflict and polarization. The Nasserist regime in 1952 ended an active period of such polarization . . . . The Egyptian case, then represents a different model from that of third world countries that have succeeded in capitalism: the military dictatorship it witnessed came earlier than its counterparts[,]" giving the Nasser regime a great deal of autonomy from the society. SULAYMAN, supra note 21, at 15–16 (translation by author). 66 See discussion infra Part I.B. 67 AMIN, supra note 24, at 47. 68 ANSARI, supra note 57, at 177–78. 360 EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 23 favoring socialism and promoted those favoring "opening up the economy";69 (3) he facilitated the return of landowners to the countryside and the reconsolidation of their economic power through the relaxation of land reforms initiated by Nasser;70 (4) he initiated market reforms in what came to be called the "Open Door Policy," primarily oriented towards liberalizing trade and encouraging "foreign Arab investment";71 and (5) he unleashed the forces of the religious right in an attempt to marginalize the left as part of his agenda of transition to market.72 The beginning of the rise in oil prices in 1975 heralded Egypt's entry into the dynamics of a rentier economy.73 Rent revenue entered the coffers of the state through publicly owned oil and natural gas companies.74 Given Egypt's location in a region that was receiving a rent windfall and was, therefore, labor starved, Egypt conveniently exported a good part of its labor force.75 Labor remittances became a feature of the Egyptian GNP landscape.76 However, an economic orientation was already in place by the time the rent windfall settled. The transition to market ("Open Door Policy") initiated by Sadat was mostly a "market" in its orientation towards trade liberalization.77 69 The Soviet military mission was ended in 1971, and Sadat purged the figures that were pro-Soviet in the regime, attempting liberalization. ZAALOUK, supra note 34, at 57. 70 A policy of de-sequestration was implemented by which land was to return to its rightful owners. ANSARI, supra note 57, at 172–84. All sequestrations that occurred in 1961–64 were annulled; former owners were granted full restoration of the property or full economic compensation; third parties who had benefited or received property through the sequestration were taken into consideration. Id. Just as under Nasser, the sequestration policies coincided with political ambitions and security concerns, the laws on de-sequestration mirrored Sadat's crackdown on opposition forces. Id. Depending on the time and reason for sequestration, different laws of compensation applied. Id. 71 The Open Door Policy prioritized export related projects and was meant to bring in advanced technology and enhance Egypt's strategic position: foreign investors could now take majority interests in some firms that had been reserved for the public sector monopoly of banking; Arab investment was granted special privileges to attract Arab petrodollars; any project approved within its terms would automatically be considered part of the private sector; forty-nine percent of all equity in public sector firms was to be put up for private subscription; and weak companies would be sold off or liquidated, while strong ones would be put up for general share subscriptions. WATERBURY, supra note 1, at 131–39. Private investment projects were not subject to labor laws, stipulations of worker representation on management boards, profit-sharing formulas, and salary ceilings applied to the public sector. Id. 72 ANSARI, supra note 57, at 237–38. 73 AMIN, supra note 24, at 40–41. 74 Id. at 47. 75 Id. 76 Id.; IKRAM, supra note 7, at 214–16. 77 In other words, the transition to market at that period included trade liberalization without the privatization of public sector companies. IKRAM, supra note 7, at 18. While Sadat's Open Door Policy set the tone for forthcoming privatization, actual legal steps for privatization did not occur until the 1990s. Id. 2009] ON LAW AND THE TRANSITION TO MARKET 361 Trade liberalization resulted in a massive increase of imports: food imports (primarily wheat), luxury goods, and capital and intermediate goods.78 This ultimately aggravated the balance-of-payment deficit inherited from the Nasser era as external debt was used to foot the import bill.79 Thus, rentierism arrived as Nasser's ISI was liberalized through trade only. Its advent reinforced already existing patterns in the economy (orientation in imports/exports, investment, and output).80 However, the sectors that were fed the rent revenue (same as the ones that expanded through trade liberalization) had limited employment creation potential.81 Furthermore, the employment that was created was contingent on the availability of rent (services and housing sectors),82 and given that Nasser's ISI public sector (with the exception of the mineral industry) remained in decline, social conflict was not far afield.83 The export of labor to the oil-rich Gulf region averted such a conflict while the patterns of (non-)production in the economy remained the same.84 In other words, while social conflict was averted, the dynamics of wealth disparity were in motion and waiting to tighten their grip once the rent depleted. Indeed, this is what happened beginning in the mid-eighties when the decline in oil prices and the recession in the Gulf region drove Egyptian labor migrants back home.85 Despite the plentiful availability of foreign exchange during this period, Egypt's debt was compounded with a notable increase in state expenditure.86 C. The Mubarak Era (1981–present) Sadat's economic legacies to Mubarak were twofold: (1) a much bigger external debt,87 and (2) a more distorted economic structure, with the rent economy surpassing that of the productive economy, whether agricultural or industrial.88 78 Despite liberalizing measures, the trade deficit rose under Sadat from £E260 million in 1972 to £E1 billion in 1975, depending heavily on foreign loans. ZAALOUK, supra note 34, at 58–59. 79 WATERBURY, supra note 1, at 95–96. 80 ZAALOUK, supra note 34, at 58–59. 81 IKRAM, supra note 7, at 214. 82 AMIN, supra note 24, at 138–40. 83 Id. at 85–99. 84 Id. at 46–52. 85 Id. at 47. 86 Most of the state expenditure was spent on the military. SULAYMAN, supra note 21, at 54–55. 87 $14.3 billion in external debt—an eightfold increase from Nasser's days. AMIN, supra note 24, at 12. 88 Oil, labor remittances, the Suez Canal, and tourism accounted for 75% of Egypt's total current receipts of foreign exchange in 1981. AMIN, supra note 24, at 40. 362 EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 23 These severe structural deficiencies in the economy drove the country to the precipice with the collapse of oil prices in 1986.89 Decline in the productive economy meant that the post-ISI elites were unable to provide jobs to those whose fate was undermined by the decline in the rent economy and that the income from these sectors was unable to replace the hard currency income lost in the rent economy.90 However, to preserve its hold on power and buy social peace, the regime could not decrease public expenditure to absorb what it could of those driven to unemployment.91 The crisis drove Egypt to sign an economic reform agreement with the IMF in May 1987, according to which the government agreed to reduce expenditures, liquidate all losing public companies, and liberalize the Egyptian pound relative to the dollar to attract expatriate savings, especially from the Gulf.92 It also undertook to raise interest rates to encourage savings and curb consumerism.93 Following the agreement with the IMF, the Egyptian regime went to the Paris Club and got consent to reschedule its external debt.94 Egypt's situation was greatly improved when the United States sought an international coalition in 1990 to roll back Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.95 In return for Egypt's support for the U.S. war, creditor countries agreed to cancel half of Egypt's debts, though they made this promise contingent upon Egypt carrying out economic reforms.96 Cancellation of debt took place incrementally; the cancellation of each part was contingent upon implementation of a set of policies agreed upon in the 1987 agreement with the IMF.97 89 With oil prices collapsing, Egyptian oil income declined from $2.26 billion dollars in 1985 to $1.2 billion in 1986, and income from the Suez Canal declined from $1 billion to $900 million. SULAYMAN, supra note 21, at 54–55. In addition to the collapsing oil prices, the U.S. government decided at this time to condition $265 million in economic aid to Egypt on the implementation of reforms advocated by the IMF. Id. 90 AMIN, supra note 24, at 137–40. 91 SULAYMAN, supra note 21, at 59. 92 Id. at 54–55. 93 Id. at 55. 94 However, the deal of 1987 proved to be a gross failure: public expenditure as a ratio of GDP increased by 5.4% in 1986–87 and 57.2% for the year 1987–88. Id. Net deficit increased from 5.3% in 1986–87 to 8.6% in 1987–88. Id. The regime went on financing its deficit by printing money, which was reflected in the rate of inflation, increasing it by 20% in the late 1980s. Id. 95 Id. at 57. 96 Id. 97 Id. 2009] ON LAW AND THE TRANSITION TO MARKET 363 Since 1987, and particularly after a May meeting with the IMF in 1991,98 Egypt began to implement the demands of the IMF and the World Bank. It liberalized the pound,99 initiated privatization of public companies,100 and started to control the budget deficit.101 While privatization efforts were initially slow, upon the appointment of Ahmed Nazif as Prime Minister in 2004, Western-educated "technocrats" in the government invigorated privatization, slashing tariffs and taxes and amending investment laws.102 However, the structural dependence of the state elites on huge governmental expenditures to stay in power means that Egypt's capacity to reduce governmental expenditure is limited. When it succeeds in reducing the budget deficit, it is usually not the result of a decrease in governmental expenditure but of an increase in revenues due to international factors.103 In other words, in the patronage-based authoritarian system of the regime, the elites depend on the political support and control that they receive in exchange for distributing benefits. This does not allow for a decrease in public expenditure.104 Thus, one of the failures of the ISI model is that it has produced state elites that are path-dependent in terms of their public expenditure patterns to stay in power and have intermittent access to surplus revenues.105 When available, surplus revenue reinforces expenditure patterns, and when depleted it drives the state into financial crises of increasing debt.106 This situation further reinforces the bargaining position of the IFIs in relation to these elites.107 Having abandoned the economic strategy of ISI and subjected the country to 98 AMIN, supra note 24, at 20–21. 99 IKRAM, supra note 7, at 71. 100 Celine Kauffman & Lucia Wegner, Privatisation in the MEDA Region: Where Do We Stand? 22 (Org. for Econ. Co-Operation and Dev., Working Paper No. 261, 2007). Since 2004, the privatization scheme has included selling shares in Suez Cement Company and Telecom Egypt, and there are plans to sell shares in Egypt Air. Id. 101 See IKRAM, supra note 7, at 65–69. 102 Thomas Demmelhuber, Egypt's Moment of Reform and Its Reform Actors: The Variety-Capability Gap, 16 DEMOCRATIZATION 119, 122 (2009); Will the Dam Burst?, ECONOMIST, Sept. 13, 2008, at 32; RUTHERFORD, supra note 32, at 198. 103 Will the Dam Burst?, supra note 102, at 32. A recent increase in revenues is due primarily to "a doubling of income from the Suez Canal, a surge in industrial exports, and a doubling of tourist arrivals." Id. 104 SULAYMAN, supra note 21, at 39, 51, 64–65. 105 See AMIN, supra note 24, at 57–62. Although income from the Suez Canal is fairly steady, revenues for tourism have a "tendency for violent year-to-year fluctuations." Id. 106 See id. at 62–65; see also IKRAM, supra note 7, at 47, 162–63. 107 See AMIN, supra note 24, at 36–39, 123. 364 EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 23 recurring financial crises, the elites are left with the IFIs' neo-liberal program to implement as the only alternative.108 In isolation from a rent economy, implementation of the neo-liberal program creates an economic orientation that diminishes the role of domestic industry (due to the withdrawal of the state from the economy which domestic industry is dependent upon for protection) and encourages commodity production for export (agricultural and mineral)109—both reminiscent of the colonial economy.110 In the context of a rent economy, implementation of the neo-liberal program highlights the role of those sectors of the economy dependent on rent: tourism, oil, commerce, and services.111 Both shifts lead to a differentiated class map in the countryside and the city.112 The incremental implementation of neo-liberalism leads to shifts in class differentiation. The intermittent and on-going implementation of the neo-liberal program increases the popularity and hegemony of this model within Egypt and dispels any notions of the model as a solution to the economic crisis of Egypt—Egypt is always transitioning to Market. The result is a public sector that has increased in size (through rent) but lost symbolically (the failure of ISI discredited it) leading to its neglect, and a private sector that is small in size (due to resistance) but has succeeded in monopolizing the symbolic and ideological space. II. THREE ORIENTATIONS: A COMPARISON OF THREE POLITICAL ECONOMIES Today, Egypt has three economic orientations: (1) ISI-on-the-decline; (2) intermittent-Rentierism; and (3) Market-on-the-rise.113 These three orientations exist in combination, each with its own peculiar features that sometimes cohere and sometimes pull in opposite directions. 108 WATERBURY, supra note 1, at 133. 109 IKRAM, supra note 7, at 283–84. 110 Id. 111 See AMIN, supra note 24, at 40–65. 112 See AYUBI, supra note 11, at 217–18. 113 See Abdelnasser, supra note 13, at 126. 2009] ON LAW AND THE TRANSITION TO MARKET 365 Thus: ISI Rentierism Market Role of State in State-based State as recipient and Withdrawal of the Economy allocator of rent state from the economy Public Sector/ (State protected) Raw commodity The private sector: Private Sector industry as the engine export through public services, tourism, of economic growth companies telecom, mineral, reminiscent of pre- agribusiness, ISI housing, commerce, and incrementally industrial Distribution Redistribution Distribution Distribution upward downward through the downward and through privatization state and transfer of upward depending on and withdrawal of resources from the availability of subsidies of basic agriculture to industry rent commodities Nature of Populist authoritarian Populist authoritarian Bureaucratic Political Regime when rent is available authoritarian and bureaucratic authoritarian when it is not Political Forms of political When rent is State corporatist in Representation representations are available the state relation to the middle corporatist in relation corporatist is class, the working to the middle class and reinforced; when it is class, and the new the working class: not, a shift is made to capital; businessmen professional the associationist come to have their associations, unions, corporatist own corporatist cooperatives, etc. where families, institutions: tribes, and sects Chambers of become Commerce, Chamber representative of their of Industrialists, members vis-à-vis Federation of the rentier state Businessmen, etc.; incremental democratic representation through elections and political party representation 366 EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 23 Ideology Nationalist socialist Relationship with the Neo-liberalism allocative state is direct and de- ideologized Class A blurred class map A blurred class map A differentiated class map Law ISI law: Budgetary laws Market law: foreign agricultural reforms investment law, law, nationalization privatization law, law, property corporate law, confiscation law, rent telecom law, new control laws, labor law, labor laws, export public companies law, processing zones law, law of associations, new industrial cities tax law; regulations law, etc. pertaining to exchange rates, tariffs, customary duties, price controls, etc.; various laws on special tribunals III. THE ISLAMIC SECTOR Although the Islamic Sector is inserted into this overall picture, it is not treated as an "economic orientation," but rather a parallel state-in-the-making. It is undermined by an ongoing repressive assault by the state elites114 but nevertheless has an economic base, an economic ideology, a relationship to law, and forms of political representation.115 But, it is also a parallel state that has the ambition of annexing the formal state with the intention of transforming it. Therefore, it uses its parallel existence to make various assaults on the institutions of that state. For example, it participates in the elections of the Egyptian Parliament,116 takes over in various state corporatist 114 See RUTHERFORD, supra note 32, at 163; Jailan Halawi, All's Not Well on the Domestic Front: A Force to Reckon With, AL-AHRAM WEEKLY ONLINE, Dec. 27, 2007, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/877/eg2.htm. 115 See Abdelnasser, supra note 13, at 133–35. 116 Abdel-Moneim Said, What Lies Ahead?, AL-AHRAM WEEKLY ONLINE, Jan. 1, 2009, http://weekly. ahram.org.eg/2009/928/eg3.htm. In the 2005 parliamentary elections, members of the Muslim Brotherhood, running as independents, gained eighty-eight seats, or 20%, which was an increase from seventeen seats in 2000. Id. 2009] ON LAW AND THE TRANSITION TO MARKET 367 structures,117 and builds fortunes in the private sector that is emerging as a result of liberalization and privatization.118 Islamic companies and Islamic banks are the most famous representations of "Islamic capital" that sees itself as an alternative to the secular capital promoted by the state elites.119 Notably, while Islamists have succeeded in infiltrating the corporatist structures of the middle class, like professional associations, they seem to have failed in infiltrating labor unions.120 The urban working class seems, thus far, the most immune to Islamist influence. 117 See Demmelhuber, supra note 102, at 125. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, members of the Muslim Brotherhood won majorities or absolute majorities in the elections for the boards of the Engineers', Doctors', Lawyers', Pharmacists', and Scientists' Syndicates. Id. Although most active and present in student politics like at Cairo University, Muslim Brotherhood students have been banned from participating in student unions. Mustafa el-Menshaw, A Different Kind of Fraternity, AL-AHRAM WEEKLY ONLINE, Nov. 24, 2005, http:// weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/770/eg10.htm. 118 Successful Islamist businessmen have impeded the progress of the regime, which has moved to confiscate business assets and to prosecute successful Islamist businessmen under charges of money laundering, terrorism, and plotting to overthrow the regime. In 2007, forty businessmen and members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including deputy leader Khairat al-Shatir, were tried before a military tribunal. Halawi, supra note 114. 119 See AMIN, supra note 24, 137–40. 120 The Muslim Brotherhood has never enjoyed a strong base in the industrial working class, possibly due to reluctance from the affluent businessmen who dominate the leadership to mobilize workers. Joel Beinin & Hossam el-Hamalawy, Strikes in Egypt Spread from Center of Gravity, MIDDLE EAST REPORT ONLINE, May 9, 2007, http://www.merip.org/mero/mero050907.html. 368 EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 23 Thus: The Islamic Sector Role of State in Economy Withdrawal of the state from the economy Public Sector/Private Sector The private sector as the engine of growth Distribution Distribution downward to those left out by the failed ISI state, especially the informal economy, through rent collected from religious institutions Nature of Political Regime Islamist populist Political Representation Islamist corporatist (Islamic societies and associations ) and state corporatist infiltrated by Islamists with the exception of labor unions Ideology Ethical capitalism combined with Islamic commonwealth-ism Class Differentiated class map tempered by the disbursement of Islamic charity Law Use of supreme constitutional law to strike down legislation perceived un-Islamic: family law reforms, interest rate laws IV. LAW AND ADJUDICATION IN THE SHADOW OF THE THREE POLITICAL ECONOMIES When it comes to law, there is no doubt that legal rules are the handmaidens for the economic strategies of ISI and the Market respectively. Rentier rule also dips into legal rules.121 For the ISI-orientation, the tone was set by Nasser in 1962 with the National Charter—nationalization and socialism were the Charter's main tenants.122 The legal structure includes rules that move the economic resources 121 See generally IKRAM, supra note 7. 122 Id. at 7–8. 2009] ON LAW AND THE TRANSITION TO MARKET 369 toward the industrial sector (investment laws;123 public companies laws;124 tax laws;125 and regulatory rules touching on foreign exchange,126 tariff protection,127 customs duties,128 etc.), as well as redistributive rules designed to shift the labor force from the countryside to the industrialized urban centers (agricultural legal reforms,129 land tenancy laws,130 rent-control in residential buildings,131 labor laws,132 laws of associations,133 food subsidies,134 price controls,135 etc.). 123 Id. at 5, 9. For example, Law No. 21 of 1958 (Egypt) on the regulation of Egyptian industry stipulated a five-year plan for industry in which the state financed 60%. Id. at 5. Presidential Decree No. 44 of 1961 (Egypt) provided for annexation of the capital of National Bank of Egypt. See generally id. at 6–7 (discussing bank nationalization). 124 Id. at 7. According to the National Charter, economic infrastructure and a majority of heavy and medium industries should be publicly owned. Id. For example, Laws Nos. 69, 70, 71 of 1961 (Egypt) nationalized the cotton market. ZAALOUK, supra note 34, at 30 (discussing the 1961 cotton nationalization). 125 Tax laws are not found in a single act of legislation but in a wide range of laws. See, e.g., Law No. 7 of 1953 (Egypt) (transferring existing law on taxation of capital income to commercial and industrial profit); Law No. 254 of 1954 (Egypt) (regarding income tax); Law No. 370 of 1953 (Egypt) (regarding taxation relief for small agricultural landowners); Law No. 463 of 1953 (Egypt) (regarding taxation of arable land); Law No. 202 of 1960 (Egypt) (imposing tax on inheritance). 126 See, e.g., Law No. 156 of 1953 (Egypt); Law No. 475 of 1954 (Egypt) (regarding foreign capital in investment); Presidential Decree No. 581 of 1969 (Egypt) (regarding the non-exchange income from the Suez Canal in foreign currency); Presidential Decree No. 1037 of 1960 (Egypt) (regarding the establishment of a ministerial committee for foreign trade and exchange); Ministerial Decree No. 34 of 1956 (Egypt) (regarding the determination of the Egyptian pound exchange rate for foreign currencies). 127 For laws on tariffs and excise duties, see, e.g., Law No. 513 of 1954 (Egypt), Law No. 365 of 1956 (Egypt), and Law No. 482 of 1955 (Egypt). For laws amending Law No. 2 of 1930 (Egypt) on customs tariffs, see, e.g., Law No. 602 of 1953 (Egypt) and Law No. 173 of 1956 (Egypt). 128 See, e.g., Law No. 476 of 1959 (Egypt) (providing the establishment of a Central Administration of Customs). 129 See WATERBURY, supra note 1, at 265–67 (1983) (discussing the effects of Law No. 178 of 1952 (Egypt), Law No. 152 of 1957 (Egypt), Law No. 127 of 1961 (Egypt), and Law No. 150 of 1964 (Egypt) on Egyptian agrarian land ownership). 130 See Milad M. Hanna, Real Estate Rights in Urban Egypt: The Changing Sociopolitical Winds, in PROPERTY, SOCIAL STRUCTURE, AND LAW IN THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST 189, 192–95 (Ann Elizabeth Mayer ed., 1985) (discussing the effects of Law No. 199 of 1952 (Egypt)). For laws on Egyptian tenancy agreements and rental rates, see, e.g., Law No. 55 of 1958 (Egypt), Law No. 168 of 1961 (Egypt), and Law No. 7 of 1965 (Egypt). 131 See, e.g., Law No. 178 of 1952 (Egypt) (regarding tenancy regulation); Law No. 49 of 1977 art. 29 (Egypt); Law No. 199 of 1952 (Egypt) (bringing tenancies from 1944–1952 under rent control and freezing them at a reduced level); Law No. 55 of 1958 (Egypt); Law No. 168 of 1961 (Egypt) (reducing the rent level further); Law No. 7 of 1965 (Egypt); Law No. 52 of 1969 (Egypt) (as amended with Military Regulation 4 of 1976); Law No. 49 of 1977 (Egypt); Law No. 136 of 1981 (Egypt). See Hanna, supra note 130, at 192–95; Betsy Birns McCall, The Effects of Rent Control in Egypt: Part I, 3 ARAB L. Q. 151 (1988). 132 See, e.g., Employments of Workers Law, Law No. 244 of 1953 (Egypt); Employment of Workers in Mines and Quarries Law, Law No. 46 of 1958 (Egypt); Labor Law, Law No. 91 of 1959 (Egypt) (providing the first comprehensive labor law, replacing all previous labor laws). 133 See, e.g., Presidential Decree No. 319 of 1952 (Egypt) (regarding trade unions). 370 EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 23 For Rentierism, budgetary laws used by the government to distribute the returns from rent went to the various segments of this civil service.136 And for the Market-orientation, the goal is to create a robust domestic private sector with a shift of resources from labor to capital. The legal structure137 is guided by the triple prong of liberalizing trade (foreign investments laws,138 corporate governance laws,139 etc.), privatizing public companies (privatization laws,140 bank laws,141 etc.), and de-regulating or re- regulating the economy (new labor laws,142 tax laws,143 etc.). 134 On the Egyptian food subsidy system, see AKHTER U. AHMED ET AL., THE EGYPTIAN FOOD SUBSIDY SYSTEM: STRUCTURE, PERFORMANCE, AND OPTIONS FOR REFORM, RESEARCH REPORT 199 (2001); see also IKRAM, supra note 7, at 14, 307; SULAYMAN, supra note 21, at 52–53. 135 See, e.g., Law No. 32 of 1952 (Egypt); Law No. 254 of 1954 (Egypt) (regarding cotton prices); Law No. 296 of 1952 (Egypt) (regarding prices for the crop of 1952). 136 SULAYMAN, supra note 21, at 24. 137 The de-sequestration policy was complicated due to the multiple types of sequestration and came to reflect the security interest of Sadat. Law No. 49 of 1971 (Egypt) called for speedy settlements of claims of compensation; Law No. 69 of 1974 (Egypt) annulled all sequestrations that had occurred during 1961–64 and granted full restoration of the property or full economic compensation. ANSARI, supra note 57, at 179–80. Law No. 43 of 1974 (Egypt) laid the foundation of Sadat's Open Door Policy. Id. at 179–80. Although Sadat's Open Door Policy set the tone for forthcoming privatization, actual legal steps for privatization did not occur until the 1990s. IKRAM, supra note 7, at 18. 138 See, e.g., Law No. 32 of 1977 (Egypt) (aiming to facilitate capital transfers); Law No. 8 of 1997 (Egypt) (regarding investment guarantees and incentives); Law No. 13 of 2005 (Egypt) (regarding investment). 139 See, e.g., Ministerial Decree No. 149 of 1996 (Egypt) (regarding the organization of procedures for the nomination and election of employee representatives to bodies of corporate governance); Dispute Settlement Law, Law No. 27 of 1994 (Egypt) (as amended by Law No. 9 of 1997 (Egypt)). 140 See, e.g., Presidential Decree No. 262 of 1975 (Egypt) (authorizing 49% of all equity in public sector firms to be put up for private subscription); Law No. 111 of 1975 (Egypt) (providing that weak companies would be sold off or liquidated, while strong ones would be put up for general share subscription); Law No. 203 of 1991 (Egypt) (stipulating a sale of assets and shares in public enterprises and during the 1990s profitable companies in the industrial market were sold). 141 In 1998, the legal preparations for privatizing the banking system took off. See Mahmoud Mohieldin & Sahar Nasr, On Bank Privatization: The Case of Egypt, 46 Q. REV. ECON. & FIN. 710 (2007). The process was initially slow, and, as of June 2005, state-owned banks accounted for more than 60% of total assets and 85% of branch networks. Id. However, in 2003, a new law on the Central Bank was issued with Law No. 88 of 2003 (Egypt), and in October 2006, the state sold the smallest of its banks, Bank of Alexandria, with Italian Sanpaolo IMI acquiring an 80% share. Bank Information Center, WB, IMF and AfDB-backed Program to Privatize Egyptian Banks Arouses Controversy (Aug. 1 2007), available at http://www.bicusa.org/en/Article. 3455.aspx. In 2007, there was talk of a merger of the two state owned banks, Banque du Caire and Banque Misr, but in July of the same year the government announced instead that 80% of Banque du Caire was up for sale. Id. According to the Word Bank Country Assistance Strategy for 2006–2008, the government is to sell off its shares in thirteen of the seventeen joint venture banks. WORLD BANK GROUP, INT'L BANK FOR RECONSTRUCTION & DEV., COUNTRY ASSISTANCE PROGRESS STRATEGY REPORT, FOR THE ARAB REPUBLIC OF EGYPT, FOR THE PERIOD FY06–FY08, at 2 (June 9, 2008). 142 See, e.g., Labor Code No. 137 of 1981 (Egypt); Labor Code No. 12 of 2003 (Egypt). 2009] ON LAW AND THE TRANSITION TO MARKET 371 The judiciary is structured according to the needs of each economic strategy.144 The launching of the ISI-orientation witnessed a diffusion of judicial authority in the mode of spin-off specialized tribunals.145 Tribunals implemented special legislation (be it redistributive legislation or compensatory legislation dealing with reimbursing the losers from the transfer of resources), either as panels of final instance or as first instance courts whose judgments are appealed in regular courts.146 Such judicial bodies were manned by technocrats with expertise in the particular area they were adjudicating (agricultural credit, tax law, etc.). Higher courts upheld many of the decisions of these lower courts, and the High Administrative Court treated the bulk of ISI special legislation as valid under the doctrine of "Ordre Publique."147 Contrary to the ISI phenomenon of judicial proliferation from the bottom, the Market-orientation has relied for its implementation on the Supreme Constitutional Court ("SCC")148 playing the role from the top of the judicial structure and striking down the special legislation of the ISI era. Using the pet rules of the market (contract and property located in the Egyptian Civil Code), the SCC has overturned much of what it treated as "distortive" legislation passed under ISI.149 To do so, the SCC has marshaled the assistance of 143 See, e.g., Unified Income Tax Law, Law No. 157 of 1981 (Egypt); Sales Tax Law, Law No. 11 of 1991 (Egypt); Investment Law, Law No. 8 of 1997 art. 2 (Egypt) (authorizing fields of tax holiday); Income Tax Law, Law No. 91 of 2005 (Egypt). 144 See Abu-Odeh, supra note 39, at 34–35. 145 EGYPT AND ITS LAWS 138 (Nathalie Bernard-Maugiron & Baudouin Dupret eds., 2002). 146 See, e.g., Law No. 494 of 953 (Egypt) (as amended by Law No. 524 of 1954 (Egypt)) (regarding courts hearing disputes over land reform law); Law No. 476 of 1953 (Egypt) & Law No. 529 of 1954 (Egypt) (regarding courts hearing disputes over farmland leases); Law No. 160 of 1952 (Egypt) (as amended by Law No. 105 of 1953 (Egypt) (regarding judicial committees in ministries considering the disputes of civil servants); Ministerial Laws Nos. 2, 4 of 1953 (Egypt) (regarding Workers District Court); Law No. 119 of 1957 (Egypt) (regarding Court of Accounts). 147 See, for example, decisions by the Egyptian Court of Cassation refusing to overturn legislation on agricultural reforms in the name of "Public Order": Decision No. 235, Judicial Year 23, 1957 (Egypt); Decision No. 1865, Judicial Year 50, 1987 (Egypt); Decision No. 597, Judicial Year 48, 1983 (Egypt); Decision No. 459, Judicial Year 50, 1981 (Egypt); Decision No. 107, Judicial Year 25, 1959 (Egypt). 148 Article 175 of the Egyptian Constitution of 1971 and Law No. 48 of 1979 (Egypt) set out that the SCC is "an independent judicial body" whose jurisdiction includes judicial review of laws and decrees, interpretation of legislation according to the provisions of the Constitution, and resolution of conflicts over judicial jurisdiction and decisions. See TAMIR MOUSTAFA, THE STRUGGLE FOR CONSTITUTIONAL POWER: LAW, POLITICS, AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN EGYPT 266–67, 275, 280 (2007). "The President of the Republic appoints the Chief Justice." Id. at 276. As for the other SCC Justices, the General Assembly of the SCC and the Chief Justice each nominate a member, and the President, in consultation with the Supreme Council of the Judicial Bodies, picks one. Id. 149 For example, a series of cases exists in which the SCC dismantled rent control regulations in residential buildings on the basis that many such regulations violate the property rights of the landlord. See 372 EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 23 comparative constitutional jurisprudence with heavy American influence to rationalize its comprehensive intervention, reversing the two-decade-long course of adjudication by regular courts.150 I hypothesize that dipping into comparative constitutional jurisprudence has helped the SCC subdue opposition from within the judiciary itself to the radical course of action it was pursuing. While the special legislation of ISI brought forth a new, urbanized middle class in Egypt, the ISI corporate structures contained political dissent in the system and even eliminated the political altogether (through the mobilizing ideologies of socialism and nationalism).151 The Market has not been so fortunate. Social conflict in the era of the neo-liberal policies could not be so contained and discontent peaked its head, bared by the eroding flesh of corporatism. The development of the SCC in the early eighties was contemporaneous with the introduction of liberalized political forms of representation with political parties152 and regular elections.153 Change Case No. 44, Judicial Year 17, 1997 (Egypt) (invalidating Egyptian Law No. 49 of 1977 art. 29 (Egypt) (allowing relatives of the tenant to inherit the tenancy contract)); Case No. 71, Judicial Year 19, 1996 (Egypt) (invalidating Law No. 29 of 1977 art. 7 (Egypt) (allowing tenants to exchange their tenancies in rental units)); Case No. 21, Judicial Year 7, 1989 (Egypt) (invalidating Law No. 136 of 1981 (Egypt) (prohibiting landlords of space "used for cultural or religious purposes" from receiving annual increments in rent)); see also MOUSTAFA, supra note 148, at 123–24, 126. 150 According to Al-Morr, Chief Justice of the SCC from 1991–1998: The adoption of the constitutional jurisprudence of the US and that of other foreign countries comes from the court's belief that it has at its disposal a huge tradition of constitutional judicial review that should be made use of. "Science" evolves as a result of a cumulative effort, of each benefiting from the work of others, adding to it and developing it further. The work of the court in this context is no more than a form of participation in values (rights and freedoms) shared by all countries no matter what the unique culture of each might be. Abu-Odeh, supra note 39, at 41. 151 Id. at 20–21. 152 The Law on Parties, Law No. 40 of 1977 (Egypt) was issued under Sadat, but only three parties were created at this time. See generally Egyptian State Information Service: Laws and Mandates, http://www2.sis.gov.eg/En/Politics/PElection/election/Laws/040202040000000005.htm (last visited Jan. 9, 2010). The creation of parties is subjected to approval by the Political Parties Committee ("PPC"), which is effectively in the control of the regime. Decisions by the PPC may be appealed in court. But, given that the PPC has granted only one party license in twenty-five years, most of the twenty-four currently existing political parties are, thus, creations of courts. See Joshua Stacher, Parties Over: The Demise of Egypt's Opposition Parties, 31 BRIT. J. MIDDLE E. STUD. 215, 218–22 (2004). 153 The first parliamentary election under President Mubarak was in 1984; the following elections were in 1987, 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005. See Mohamed Younis, Daughters of the Nile: The Evolution of Feminism in Egypt, 13 WASH. & LEE J. OF CIV. RTS. & SOC. JUST. 463, 465 n.7 (2007); Egypt's Parliamentary Elections: An Assessment of the Results, ESTIMATE (The Int'l Estimate, Inc., Falls Church, Va.), Nov. 17, 2000, available at http://www.theestimate.com/public/111700.html. 2009] ON LAW AND THE TRANSITION TO MARKET 373 allowed the system to shift the task of absorbing political dissent to these liberal structures of political representation and called upon the Court to adjudicate political conflict, now expressed in legal terms.154 The topics of adjudication were election laws155 and political party laws.156 While the judiciary as a social group can be seen as part of the state elites, with its lineage firmly based in the state bureaucracy, it is nevertheless autonomous in two senses: (1) an ethic of autonomy is shared among its members which constrains and conditions its subordination to the interests of the political state elites;157 and (2) ideological influence comes to the judiciary in the language of legal discourse, which means that the judiciary's trafficking of the ideology is mediated through a legal consciousness that runs parallel to, although autonomously from, political consciousness.158 Thus, under ISI, the judiciary adjudicated within a globalized legal consciousness of "the social," while over the course of the past thirty years the legal thought that dominated its consciousness was based on the idea of "rights," interpreted to mean economic rights such as property and contract, coupled with political rights.159 Thus, when the SCC was asked to adjudicate political conflicts in the name of rights enumerated in the Egyptian Constitution (free speech, freedom of the press, assembly, freedom of association, education and equal opportunity, trial 154 MOUSTAFA, supra note 148, at 102–04. 155 The elections in 1987 and 1990 were voided by the SCC. See Mahkramat al-Naqd [Sup. Const. Ct.], Case No. 37, May 19, 1990 (Egypt) (invalidating the law that reserved only one seat in each constituency to be contested by both non-party candidates and candidates of political parties, while more than one seat was reserved for candidates belonging to political parties arguing that it discriminated against independents); see also RUTHERFORD, supra note 32, at 72. 156 Mahkramat al-Naqd [Sup. Const. Ct.], Case No. 23, April 15, 1989 (Egypt) (invalidating Law No. 120 of 1980 art. 8 (Egypt) which excluded independent candidates from being nominated for the Shura Council); Mahkramat al-Naqd [Sup. Const. Ct.], Case No. 55, 1988 (Egypt) (invalidating a law that allowed for the exclusion of leaders who were critical of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel from party creation); Mahkramat al-Naqd [Sup. Const. Ct.], Case No. 56, June 21, 1986 (Egypt) (invalidating Law No. 33 of 1978 because it excluded those who "had corrupted political life" prior to the Revolution of 1952 from joining existing political parties on the basis that it violated Article 62 of the Constitution that provides for the right to participate in public life). See generally RUTHERFORD, supra note 32, at 64–65. 157 See IKRAM, supra note 7. An ethic of autonomy is manifest in a continuing power struggle over election supervision: In July 2000, in an interpretation of Article 88 of the Constitution, the SCC found that elections required judicial supervision. MOUSTAFA, supra note 148, at 191. However, the 2007 amendments to the Constitution removed this requirement. See infra note 178. 158 See generally DUNCAN KENNEDY: THE RISE AND FALL OF CLASSIC LEGAL THOUGHT (1975) (discussing legal consciousness). 159 Duncan Kennedy, Three Globalizations of Law and Legal Thought: 1850–2000, in THE NEW LAW AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 19, 22, 33, 58–59 (David M. Trubek & Alvaro Santos eds., 2006). 374 EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 23 by law, privacy, property, etc.),160 it saw the Egyptian landscape studded with economic and political regulation, which it deemed unconstitutional.161 The SCC treated statutes regulating political parties and elections (passed in the 1980s) that make it difficult to contest the dominance of the ruling party in the parliament162 on par with statutes that regulate the property rights of landlords and landowners to the benefit of residential tenants and tenant farmers.163 Similarly, the SCC treated legislation that ensured the redistribution of resources, such as education across the class structure, by requiring the rich to subsidize the education of the poor164 on par with corporatist legislation of the ISI era that ensured representation of all social groups involved in the production process or professional practice in public companies, boards of professional associations, and labor unions.165 In other words, by viewing all laws through the same lens, the SCC equated the legalization of authoritarian practices with that of corporatist ones and redistributive ones.166 They were all bad because they violated several constitutional rights, such as the freedom of expression, the freedom of association, the right to property, and the right to education.167 Moreover, the SCC took a very libertarian approach and struck down various tax programs designed to increase the state coffers when rent is depleted, in the process costing the state millions of dollars in lost revenue.168 160 CONSTITUTION OF THE ARAB REPUBLIC OF EGYPT arts. 8, 18, 36, 45, 47, 48, 54, 55, 66. 161 See MOUSTAFA, supra note 148, at 126; see also RUTHERFORD, supra note 32, at 64–68. 162 MOUSTAFA, supra note 148, at 96–99. 163 Abu-Odeh, supra note 39, at 34–35; see also MOUSTAFA, supra note 148, at 128. 164 Law No. 139 of 1981 (Egypt) (regarding the right to education for all Egyptian children over six years of age); see also Mahkramat al-Naqd [Sup. Const. Ct.], Case No. 20, Judicial Year 16, Sept. 2, 1995 (Egypt) (referring to the right to education in finding the differentiation between medical insurances for students unconstitutional). 165 See Mahkramat al-Naqd [Sup. Const. Ct.], Case No. 6, Judicial Year 15, Apr. 15, 1995 (Egypt) (limiting the right of members of professional syndicates to serve on the board of a workers syndicate); Mahkramat al-Naqd [Sup. Const. Ct.], Case No. 17, Judicial Year 14, Jan. 14, 1995 (Egypt) (preventing high level administrative employees in the public sector from being nominated to membership of their companies' boards of directors). 166 MOUSTAFA, supra note 148, at 97, 101–02, 231. 167 See RUTHERFORD, supra note 32, at 58–59, 64–68. 168 See Mahkramat al-Naqd [Sup. Const. Ct.], Case No. 125, Judicial Year 18, Dec. 11, 2005 (Egypt); Mahkramat al-Naqd [Sup. Const. Ct.], Case No. 332, Judicial Year 23, May 8, 2005 (Egypt); Mahkramat al- Naqd [Sup. Const. Ct.], Case No. 250, Judicial Year 23, Feb. 8, 2004 (Egypt); Mahkramat al-Naqd [Sup. Const. Ct.], Case No. 129, Judicial Year 22, Jan. 12, 2003 (Egypt); Mahkramat al-Naqd [Sup. Const. Ct.], Case No. 54, Judicial Year 19, Mar. 7, 1998 (Egypt); Mahkramat al-Naqd [Sup. Const. Ct.], Case No. 86, Judicial Year 17, Feb. 7, 1998 (Egypt); Mahkramat al-Naqd [Sup. Const. Ct.], Case No. 26, Nov. 16, 1996 (Egypt); Mahkramat al-Naqd [Sup. Const. Ct.], Case No. 33, Judicial Year 16, Feb. 3, 1996 (Egypt); Mahkramat al- Naqd [Sup. Const. Ct.], Case No. 43, Judicial Year 13, Dec. 6, 1993 (Egypt); Mahkramat al-Naqd [Sup. Const. 2009] ON LAW AND THE TRANSITION TO MARKET 375 Additionally, while the SCC decisions opened up political party contestations and allowed Islamic party candidates to run as independents, the SCC nevertheless dealt swiftly and adroitly with Islamist litigants who argued for the Islamacization of secular legislation based on Article 2 of the Egyptian Constitution.169 Procedurally, it did so by dismissing their claims or by appearing to earnestly interpret the Islamic texts.170 It repeatedly concluded that secular legislation is indeed Islamic.171 Towards the end of the 1990s, the SCC finished dismantling both the regulatory structures of ISI (redistributive and corporatist) and that of the mono-party rule in Egypt.172 Meanwhile, the SCC's relationship with the political elites was in crisis. It had serviced the regime's project of legalizing the political fallout from the implementation of neo-liberal policies by turning the Court, as opposed to the street, into a site of political dissent, thereby minimizing the cost of transition for the regime.173 Yet conversely, and perhaps even perversely, the SCC increased costs for the regime in dealing with political dissent by opening up the political system to political parties of the opposition in parliament.174 At the same time, the SCC simultaneously curried favor with human rights advocates by being a champion of civil and political rights while taking them by surprise with its extreme hostility to economic regulation.175 Ct.], Case No. 5, Judicial Year 10, June 19, 1993 (Egypt); Mahkramat al-Naqd [Sup. Const. Ct.], Case No. 6, Judicial Year 2, May 9, 1981 (Egypt) (discussing the taxation of Egyptians working abroad). 169 See generally Abu-Odeh, supra note 39. 170 See Note, Supreme Constitutional Court (Egypt)–Sharica and Riba; Decision in Case No. 20 of Judicial Year No. 1, 1 ARAB L.Q. 100, 107 (1985) (discussing how Article 2 of the Constitution was limited in its application to legislation passed after 1980, when this Article was introduced through an amendment to the Constitution). The SCC thereby refused to declare the interest rate unconstitutional as provided by Article 266 of the Egyptian Civil Code, as the claimant, the Rector of El-Azhar University, requested. Id. 171 See Case No. 7, Judicial Year 8, 1993 (Egypt) (refusing, among other things, to declare Article 18 of the Personal Status Code, which awarded women divorced against their wishes alimony for two years (Motaa), unconstitutional according to Article 2 of the Constitution); see also Clark B. Lombardi & Nathan J. Brown, Do Constitutions Requiring Adherence to Sharica Threaten Human Rights?: How Egypt's Constitutional Court Reconciles Islamic Law with the Liberal Rule of Law, 21 AM. U. INT'L L. REV. 379, 425 (2006). According to Article 2 of the Constitution, only legislation that violated the foundational "Islamic Sharica principles" violated such an article. See CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN ISLAM: JUDICIAL PROCEDURE IN THE SHARĪcA 15 n.23 (Muhammad Abdel Haleem, Adel Omar Sherif & Kate Daniels eds., 2003). All other legislation is within the discretion of the modern state to legislate for the interest of all. See Frank E. Vogel, Conformity with Islamic Sharica and Constitutionality Under Article 2: Some Issues of Theory, Practice, and Comparison, in DEMOCRACY, THE RULE OF LAW AND ISLAM 525, 534 (Eugene Cotran & Adel Omar Sheri eds., 1999). 172 See generally Abu-Odeh, supra note 39. 173 MOUSTAFA, supra note 148, at 90–91. 174 See id. 175 See id. at 232–33. 376 EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 23 Sandwiched between two ambivalences, the SCC's strategy could not be sustained. Al-Morr, the President of the SCC in the nineties, retired and was succeeded by four consecutively appointed presidents.176 These presidents, who emerged from the bosom of the state bureaucracy, clearly identified with the interests of the regime.177 More importantly, while the SCC consolidated its interventions in the economic sphere, its interventions of the nineties in the political sphere were almost completely reversed through the passage of constitutional amendments in March 2007.178 Currently, neo-liberalism is in a tight constitutional embrace with mono-party rule. V. STRATEGIES OF THE CURRENT STATE ELITES: SPLITTING OFF Having conceded to the neo-liberal program of the IFIs,179 the current state elites have found themselves confronting a conundrum. The implementation of the IFI-program led to the unbundling of the constellation of growth, distribution, and political power that was the feature of the public-sector-driven ISI strategy that they had incubated and that had birthed them in return. An enlarged public sector is the home of those state elites and the instrument through which they have historically exercised control over the various social groupings. The failure of this public sector to produce development and the annexation of the ideological sphere by the "market," however, has left them with little choice but to give "it" up.180 This essentially means that the state elites stand to lose control. Therefore, they proceed by cautiously inventing various strategies aimed to turn the economy towards the market with as little 176 Awad Muhammad Awad al-Murr was replaced in 1998 by Muhammad Wali al-Din Galal (1998– 2001), Muhammad Fathi Nagib (2001–2003), Mamduh Mohi al-Din Maraci (2003–2006), and Maher Abd al- Wahed (2006–2009). See Supreme Constitutional Court, http://www.hccourt.gov.eg/CourtMembers/ SupremeCourtChairmans.asp (last visited Jan. 9, 2010); see also MOUSTAFA, supra note 148, at 239. 177 See, e.g., Mohamed A. El-Khawas & J. A. Ndumbe, Egypt's Democracy: Will the Transformation Ever Be Complete?, in 5 POLITICS AND ECONOMICS OF AFRICA 69, 75–76 (Olufemi Wusu ed., 2007). 178 Among the thirty-four constitutional amendments introduced by President Mubarak are provisions that: (1) prohibit parties from using religion as a basis for political activity, (2) provide for drafting of a new anti-terrorism law which will replace the emergency legislation, (3) make it easier for the President to dissolve Parliament, and (4) end judicial monitoring of elections. See NATHAN J. BROWN, MICHELE DUNNE & AMR HAMZAWY, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE, EGYPT'S CONTROVERSIAL CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS: A TEXTUAL ANALYSIS 2–8 (2007), http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/egypt_ constitution_webcommentary01.pdf (commenting on the constitutional amendments). Opposition members of Parliament withdrew from voting on the proposed changes, and only 27% of the registered voters went to the polling stations in the referendum. Id. 179 MOUSTAFA, supra note 148, at 220–24. 180 Id. at 128–32. 2009] ON LAW AND THE TRANSITION TO MARKET 377 loss as possible to their control.181 I call these strategies "splitting," in the sense that tasks, powers, and privileges associated with the public sector are split off to other social groups and institutional practices. The split in each case is carefully engineered not to jeopardize those state elites' control. I identify four modes of splitting that they have pursued: (1) splitting off to the private sector; (2) splitting off to democracy; (3) splitting off to the judiciary; and (4) splitting off to distribution. It is important to assert that there is nothing stable about these split-off strategies. They shift over time and, indeed, could be reversed depending on the consequences for the state elites. A second important assertion is that those strategies are not necessarily coherent. For example, the split-off to an autonomous judiciary could undermine a carefully designed split-off to democratic practice, when an overzealous SCC throws the former off- balance.182 A. The Split-Off to the Private Sector Privatizing the public sector gives rise to private capital contending for representation of its interests within the state. The public sector historically included industrial companies, mineral extraction companies, and public companies administering services such as transportation, insurance, and banking.183 The state elites of Egypt pursued an incremental strategy of privatization.184 Although privatization sped up after 2004, state elites remain in control over the bulk of the national un-privatized banking system.185 Their control over banks significantly undermines the autonomy of the private sector vis-à-vis the state.186 The state elites also retain control by continuously shifting state support among the contending segments of the private sector: sometimes empowering the commercial trade-based capital and other times providing protection to domestic industry allied with foreign capital, only to shift and support export-oriented agribusiness.187 When rent is available, the state elites' autonomy vis-à-vis private capital is increased; when rent is 181 Id. at 118–36. 182 See id. at 118–77; see also supra text accompanying note 148 (discussing the SCC). 183 See WATERBURY, supra note 1, at 40. 184 See DENIS JOSEPH SULLIVAN, PRIVATE VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATIONS IN EGYPT, ISLAMIC DEVELOPMENT, PRIVATE INITIATIVE, AND STATE CONTROL 109 (1949). 185 See RUTHERFORD, supra note 32, at 223–24. 186 See JOHN P. ENTELIS, ISLAM, DEMOCRACY, AND THE STATE IN NORTH AFRICA 192 (1997). 187 Samer Soliman, State and Industrial Capitalism in Egypt, 21 CAIRO PAPERS IN SOCIAL SCIENCE 1, 28– 35 (1998). 378 EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 23 depleted, the state elites turn to private capital for taxes and contributions to infrastructure projects in the various localities.188 In turn, the various segments of private capital strategize to increase their bargaining power vis-à-vis the state elites: They infiltrate the ruling National Democratic Party—home of the state elites—and run for elections under its umbrella,189 and their intelligentsia (advocates of Market) find a foothold in the state bureaucracy through the parallel bureaucratic structures put in place by the World Bank.190 Thus far, the new capital seems inclined to the strategy of infiltrating the state to improve the terms of negotiation with the state elites. Serious democratization does not seem to be on its agenda, as it seems inclined to get what it wants through the strategy of infiltrating contemporary political, bureaucratic, and corporatist structures.191 B. The Split-Off to Democratic Practice The failure of development and the ongoing economic crisis have alerted the state elites to the following macro-political trade-off as a strategy of survival: opening up democratic practice in return for giving up part of the distributional role associated with public-sector-driven development. The rolling back of the distributional role of the public sector is now relegated to the Parliament to vote on through a series of legislation.192 It is Parliament, not government, that could now take the blame for the ensuing immiseration.193 That is the upside of this strategy. The downside is that any opening up of democratic practice increases the power of the Islamic sector at the expense of the National Democratic Party. And given its parallel power, state elites are always inclined to reverse and restrict liberties they bestow according to this strategy.194 188 Id. at 65–66. 189 Demmelhuber, supra note 102, at 121–22; Issandr El Amrani, Controlled Reform in Egypt: Neither Reformist nor Controlled, MIDDLE EAST REPORT ONLINE, Dec. 15, 2005, http://www.merip.org/mero/mero 121505.html. Today, reform minded politicians, cabinet members, and parliamentarians surrounding Gamal Mubarak come from the business sector, and there is a great overlap of people in business and National Democratic Party politics. Demmelhuber, supra note 102, at 121–22; El Amrani, supra. 190 See The World Bank, Egypt: Project and Program Assistance, http://web.worldbank.org/external/ default/main?menuPK=287188&pagePK=141155&piPK=141124&theSitePK=256307 (last visited Oct. 8, 2009) (providing examples such as Health Sector Reform, Airport Development Project, etc.). 191 See generally Soliman, supra note 187, at 28–35; Demmelhuber, supra note 102, at 121–22; The World Bank, supra note 190. 192 See generally El Amrani, supra note 189. 193 See generally id. 194 See generally id. 2009] ON LAW AND THE TRANSITION TO MARKET 379 C. The Split-Off to the Judiciary The SCC's empowerment is symptomatic of this strategy. It too is part of a macro-political trade-off: increased judicialization at the expense of political mobilization.195 Through the empowerment of the SCC, the state elites seem to have succeeded in: (1) transferring the blame for the ongoing turn to Market to the SCC and (2) encouraging individual adjudicatory solutions to political problems that could have otherwise had a powerful mobilizing force.196 In the discussion of the SCC above, we have seen how the Court reinforced the state elites' strategy towards the private sector while throwing off-balance its strategy towards democratization.197 Meanwhile, the striking down by the SCC of various tax laws has thrown off-balance the split-off strategy to distribution.198 D. The Split-Off to Distribution This strategy refers to the state elites' practice of increasing public expenditure when rent is available. The increase in expenditure typically targets the public sector bureaucracy—the political base of the state elites.199 What such expenditure usually does is increase salaries and benefits for this bureaucratic class.200 The state elites' relationship to this political base is contingent on the availability of rent.201 While it resorts to this form for downward distribution to buy political passivity from this base, it is nevertheless incapable of reviving the public sector as the engine of the economy, given its ideological commitment to the market. In other words, distribution depends on rent while the devaluation of the public sector makes it unlikely that growth would emerge from this sector to replace rent as the source of the improvement in the life of the bureaucracy. I call it a "split-off" because it splits off the growth aspect of the public sector (to private capital) and preserves the distributional one through use of rent revenue to buy social peace. 195 See MOUSTAFA, supra note 148, at 5–9, 41–46. 196 See id. See generally Sherif & Brown, supra note 36, at 9–16. 197 See id. 198 See supra note 168 (citing the relevant cases). 199 See Soliman, supra note 187, at 20–21. 200 See id.; AYUBI, supra note 11, at 298–301. 201 See id. See generally Beblawi & Luciani, supra note 23. 380 EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 23 CONCLUSION One asks on behalf of Egypt: What is the alternative to this deliberate blundering of development by state elites? What social force is situated to provide the answer? In my discussion of the nature of the new capital, I showed its limitation. It had chosen to be the "buddy" of the state elites. Indeed, some of this capital has emerged from its very bosom. The middle class? Those segments of it that are downwardly mobile are swayed by Islamist ideology whose alternative to the system is ethical capitalism. Those segments that are upwardly mobile in the flourishing private sectors of telecom, tourism, services, and oil fixate on the constitutional separation of powers as the condition for their own empowerment.202 They are wedded to the market-based ethics of meritocracy and efficiency, and they see the corruption in the bureaucracy and the lack of transparent governance as a violation of those twin values.203 More transparency and increased separation of powers seem to gratify the conditions of their national belonging.204 They are drawn to human rights discourse as the de-politicized response to the authoritarianism of the state elites.205 Human rights and the market are the twin faiths of the rising Egyptian middle class. The working class watches the middle class's obliviousness to its ongoing agitation.206 Labor strikes stud the Egyptian scene, yet barely get any mainstream media coverage.207 Workers of public companies find that financial losses caused by the corruption and mismanagement of the state elites are passed off to them in the form of a decline in wages and benefits.208 Their unions, historically controlled by the state and dominated by populist rhetoric, no longer represent the workers and misspeak on their behalf.209 The new working class emerges in the new industrial cities and export processing zones, birthed by new labor laws that restrict unionization, and remains new to labor agitation given its rural routes.210 But given its recent birth, it is at least 202 See AMIN, supra note 24, at 40–46, 53; Kauffmann & Wegner, supra note 100, at 22–23. 203 See Kauffmann & Wegner, supra note 100, at 45–47, 46 fig.3. 204 See id. 205 See id. 206 See generally Beinin & el-Hamalawy, supra note 120. 207 Cf. id. 208 See id. 209 See id. 210 See id. 2009] ON LAW AND THE TRANSITION TO MARKET 381 disinclined to be dominated by corporatized unions and the populist discourse that dominate the official, or traditional, working class. Trapped in the interstices of: (1) the ideological hegemony of the market that rationalizes its worsening conditions, (2) the populist discourse of corporatized unions that misrepresent its interests, and (3) the non-alternative Islamist discourse of ethical capitalism—the working class stands to be the biggest loser in the transition from ISI to Market.211 211 See generally Abdel-Rahman, supra note 41. The argument made in the Conclusion is an adaptation of the argument made by Amr Abdel-Rahman.
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San Diego City Tour
- City coach tour of San Diego with optional upgrades
- See the most popular sights of San Diego including the Gaslamp Quarter, La Jolla and Balboa Park
- Capture photos of Old Town, PETCO Park and Mt Soledad
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Make your way through beautiful and scenic Balboa Park, and stop for photos of the park's Botanical Building, featuring a multitude of vibrant plants and flowers. Continue to the affluent, seaside area of La Jolla to see natural sea caves and seals and delight in panoramic views of San Diego from Mt Soledad. Take in the lively atmosphere and see the many shops and restaurants in Old Town, considered the birthplace of California because it was where the first Europeans settled in the 1700s. Your four-hour coach tour of San Diego concludes with drop-off at your hotel.
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Stay as long as you wish at the museum or shopping village and make your own way back to your hotel, or request drop-off at your hotel when you're ready.
Customer Reviews
June 2015
city tours are always a highlight for me, gives us an idea of where we want to go back and explore
April 2015
We had little problem with the booking office.They had said the tour was cancelled as the response was poor.We were called afterwards and was collected. The guide and the tour were excellent.

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A collection of news and information related to James Jones (football) published by this site and its partners.
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Jets Run Past Raiders
Jets ground Raiders in 19-14 victory
After sluggish start, Ravens can't recover in 19-17 loss to Packers
Ngata strained left elbow, return probable, James Jones injures left leg
NFL Week 2: Chargers put their season in turnaround, beat Eagles
Ravens must be alert against Green Bay Packers playmaker Randall Cobb
Andre Johnson, Clinton Portis, James Jones among UM Sports Hall of Fame inducteesStory | Nov 7, 2013 | 10:15 AMHouston Texans receiver Andre Johnson and Miami Heat forward/guard James Jones are among the eight former Hurricanes athletes selected for induction into the UM Sports Hall of Fame next year. The class, which will be introduced during Miami's Nov. 23rd...
Snap judgments: Breaking down the 'Madden 25' Bears
First half is the story for Redskins in loss to PackersStory | Sep 15, 2013 | 9:06 PM— A season that began with such promise for the Washington Redskins has unraveled in rapid fashion. The team's record dropped to 0-2 here Sunday, and they looked stunningly overmatched in the process, surrendering the game's first 31 points as the...
Looking back at the Packers' win over the Detroit Lions
Talking Ravens-Packers with Zach Kruse, a Packers blogger for Cheesehead TV


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- Newsarama is the best source for comic book and genre entertainment news online. Find out everything there is to know about IDW Publishing and stay updated on the latest IDW Publishing news with the comprehensive articles, interactive features, images and
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And This Too Shall Pass
By E. Lynn Harris
(Anchor Books, Paperback, 9780385480314, 368pp.)
Publication Date: February 14, 1997
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A stellar quarterback, an ambitious sportscaster. What happens when rising stars collide?In "And This Too Shall Pass," Harris takes us into the locker rooms and newsrooms of Chicago, where four lives are about to intersect in romance and scandal. At the heart of the novel is the celibate Zurich, a rookiequarterback for the Chicago Cougars whose trajectory for superstardom is interrupted by a sexual assault charge by Mia, a sportscaster with her own sights on fame. With his career in jeopardy, Zurich hires Tamela, a high-powered attorney, to defend him, while Sean, a gay sportswriter, covers the story and uncovers his heart.All of these characters face the challenge of keeping the faith--in themselves and in God--while Harris's heartfelt storytelling reveals how the love of family can help one to face the terrible legacy of long-held secrets. Throughout these characters' search for self-knowledge, Harris weaves the stories of MamaCee, Zurich's grandmother, whose lessons of faith teach one and all that "this too shall pass."Breaking new ground in contemporary fiction, "And This Too Shall Pass" entertains and affirms with its stirring message about the healing power of family and faith.
About the AuthorE. Lynn Harris (1955 2009) was a "New York Times" bestselling and critically acclaimed author. His twelve novels include "Basketball Jones" and "If This World Were Mine".


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Version 6.0.5: 1. Collage supports importing photos from other album. 2. Quick access to Easy Camera is available on homepage. 3. Easy and quick share after shooting. 4. Return to original Magic Skin Effects. 5. Fixed bug. Now photos exported from external SD card can now be saved successfully after editing.