Soon after the ousting of Mubarak on February 11, 2011, and for many months afterward—including both before and after the first parliamentary elections held after the revolution, from November 28, 2011 to January 11, 2012—talk continued to circulate within political circles about something called revolutionary legitimacy. Khaled Abdel Hameed, one of
the founders of the Youth Coalition of the Revolution, told me that the first time the slogan, “The Legitimacy is for the Square” appeared was during the 18 days of the revolution, specifically on February 1, 2011, in opposition to the idea of negotiating with the regime. It was coined in conjunction with another slogan, “No Negotiation Until Mubarak Leaves.” But even once Mubarak was gone, “The Legitimacy is for the Square” revealed itself to be more than just a slogan; it was an idea with profound political purchase both in Tahrir Square and beyond. After the parliamentary elections, heated discussions talked about a presumed conflict between
“electoral legitimacy” and “revolutionary legitimacy.” The former, the regime (now controlled by SCAF and the MB) argued, came to the fore with the election of the new parliament, whereas the latter, according to many activists and protestors, continued to reside with the revolution, as embodied in the space of Tahrir. 138 For this second group, a form of revolutionary legitimacy emerged during those 18 days in Tahrir that was grounded in, yet not limited to the actual square;
nor, they argued, did that legitimacy dissipate when the protests subsided and SCAF took power.139 And it was this legitimacy, they argued, that should still be acknowledged and used as a guide in the transition period. Politicians, academics, and protestors debated the issue and many continued to explicitly connect this idea of revolutionary legitimacy to the symbol and space of Tahrir (Adly 2012; Bamyeh 2012; Helal 2012).
138 For the argument that legitimacy now rested with Parliament, see “Parliament, not Tahrir, now the legitimate authority, says Brotherhood leader,” Ahram Online, 24 January 2012; available at:
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/32579/Egypt/Politics-/Parliament,-not-Tahrir,-now-the-legitimate-authori.aspx (last accessed June 1, 2014); also the comments of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and intellectual leader of the MB and also the chairman of the International Union for Muslim scholars, available at: http://www.shorouknews.com/news/view.aspx?cdate=15022012&id=36209e08-1dde-4588-95a6-1d99b50677eb (last accessed June 1, 2014). Not surprisingly, most of the voices arguing that parliament was now the legitimate authority were either from SCAF or pro-SCAF or from the MB or pro Islamists, now that the parliament was dominated by the MB.
139 See http://www.almasryalyoum.com/news/details/218046 (last accessed June 1, 2014);
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/news/details/213762 (last accessed June 1, 2014); http://www1.youm7.
com/News.asp?NewsID=651945#.UzGWKv0RB4M (last accessed June 1, 2014); and also
http://www.aawsat.com/leader.asp?section=3&article=664516&issueno=12137 (last accessed June 1, 2014).
Legitimacy is a relational concept; it refers to how and why citizens are willing to obey the commands of a ruler. Sociologists know, of course, the famous three sources of legitimacy defined by Max Weber: tradition, charisma, and legality (Weber 1984). In “modern”
constitutional democracies, the most relevant of these is the form of political legitimacy that is based on legality, which means that a government’s actions should always be made according to just laws. In times of revolution, the authority and legitimacy of the government is called into question. The existing regime will always try retain and uphold the “old” form of legitimacy, whether based in tradition, charisma, or the law, but the revolution—or so it hopes—always brings with it a new form legitimacy, based on the revolution’s ideals (Applewhite 1978;
Edelstein 2002; Greene 1974; Holbig and Gilley 2010). This is described as revolutionary legitimacy.
In order to understand how the protests in Tahrir Square came to assert a new form of legitimacy that challenged that of the existing regime, it is necessary to grasp the extent to which the legitimacy of the Mubarak regime was already in crisis. When exactly the Mubarak regime lost its legitimacy and/or what kind of legitimacy it had by January 2011 has been much debated among academics and scholars in Egypt and beyond (Cole 2011b; Heikal 2002; Younis 2012).
But most commentators agree that compared to those he succeeded, Mubarak’s legitimacy was always in question. Nasser’s legitimacy was rooted in revolution—a revolution that ended colonial rule, established a welfare state, ended the monarchy, and formed a republic. Sadat’s legitimacy was based in war—the liberation of the Sinai from Israel and then the establishment of the post-war peace. Mubarak’s rule, on the other hand, with its inauspicious start following the assassination of Sadat, lacked any solid basis of legitimacy. Though constantly seeking to
maintain the appearance of a legalistic state, Mubarak’s regime quickly revealed itself to be one
buttressed by the massive build-up of state security apparatus, the continuation of emergency law, the escalation of police brutality, and rigged elections. There is a consensus at least that the regime had become increasingly authoritarian by 2011, and that although there were “elections,”
there was no democracy in Egypt (Blaydes 2006, 2010; Brownlee 2002; El-Ghobashy 2006). In a famous lecture delivered at the American University in Cairo in 2002, prominent writer
Mohamed Hassanin Heikal, emphasized “it is not enough that you are in power to be a legitimate leader” (Heikal 2002).140 Indeed, several critics suggested that the regime had become so
powerful that it had essentially swallowed the state, or as political economist Samer Soliman put it, Egypt had become that paradox of a “strong regime and weak state” (2011). The rise of the police state under Mubarak actually constituted a hollowing out of the state, in terms of a state apparatus with any level of autonomy from the ruler, and this only intensified the legitimacy crisis of the regime. Sherif Younis (2012: 97), an Egyptian historian and critic, explains:
The already repressive state of July [in reference to Nasser’s state] is transformed into a crude free market state. This means combination of both neo-liberal and repressive state at once. The regime simply became lacking any legitimacy. Why is that? The regime is made of mere
networks of corrupt gang, or cronies, their main job becomes loyal to this regime. Despite this loyalty, the regime, also can get rid of any of these elements or eliminate them at any time, since there is no real
constitutionally controlling rules. The state in its core is nothing but police machine that protects corruption. When the regime simply thinks that they can do it all with police machine, then it lacks any legitimacy.
The last parliamentary elections under Mubarak, only a few months before the revolution, and widely understood to have fraudulent, were arguably the “last straw” in the regime’s
legitimacy.141 But while Mubarak’s legitimacy was already in crisis, it was by no means clear at the start of 2011 who or what could step in to assert a new form of legitimacy that would be
140 The full Arabic text of the lecture is published in this link: http://www.mafhoum.com/press4/
118P56.htm (last accessed June 9, 2014)
141 Some scholars argue that we need to think more seriously about cases of stolen elections, and consider them as part of the revolutionary process, namely, as triggers; see Thompson and Kuntz (2005).
accepted by the Egyptian people. The question is thus: how and why did the protests and sit-in staged in Tahrir become the center of revolutionary politics and, ultimately, the embodiment of revolutionary legitimacy?
The answer, I suggest, is partly thanks to the regime itself. During the 18 days of the revolution, the Mubarak regime used multiple strategies, all aimed at Tahrir; these varied from using force, to trying to isolate and demonize the protests, to negotiation. The use of force has been well documented and culminated in the now infamous Battle of the Camel Battle on
February 2, 2011, which left 11 people dead and over 600 injured.142 Such violence on the part of the state and pro-Mubarak supporters had the opposite effect of what was intended, leading some to identify the Battle of the Camel as the moment the tide of opinion shifted against Mubarak and in favor of the protestors.143
The second strategy involved using official media and state propaganda to isolate the protests, and construct those in Tahrir as enemies of the state, un-representative of what was felt by the rest of the nation. Despite the fact that protests took place in many locations in Egypt (something I explore further in the following chapter), the regime continually tried to portray the uprising as taking place only in Tahrir, in order to justify the idea of speedy repression targeting the single place that was supposedly witnessing trouble. On February 2, 2011, the new prime minister hired by Mubarak at the time ordered that government work go back to normal, after only a few days being closed. Some of my informants told me this was part of the plan to isolate
142 See also a report of the fact-finding mission mandated by the Egyptian government after the revolution, in which the report that at least 846 were killed during the revolution and the injured were about 6467.
This includes the dead and the injured in the revolution in general including the camel battle.
The report (in Arabic) is available in this link: http://www.ffnc-eg.org/assets/ffnc-eg_final.pdf (last accessed June 9, 2014)
143 See, for example about how crucial this battle in turning the public against Mubarak at the time:
http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/33470.aspx (last accessed June 1, 2014) and
http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/02/03/the-battle-of-the-camel-the-final-straw-for-mubaraks-regime/ (last accessed June 1, 2014).