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The perils of power: before and after the 2013 military coup in Egypt

In the last decade, Egypt has seen considerable political change. The ancien régime, a succession of generals which reigned since the 1952 Free Officers’ coup against the monarchy, seemingly collapsed when faced with massive anti-regime demonstrations in early 2011. The armed forces, under the aegis of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), then assumed what was to be an interim reign until democratic elections could be held. After the country’s first free elections, a Muslim Brotherhood affiliated political party, the Freedom and Justice Party won a plurality in the House of Representatives (the country’s unicameral parliament), while one of its senior members became president of Egypt. The new government’s relations with the public and state institutions soon soured and, in July 2013, a military coup, backed by millions of street demonstrators, brought down President Muhammad Morsi. While there are numerous studies examining the failed Egyptian transition, little attention, however, has been paid to the post-coup politics in Egypt. To be fair, there are some research articles on the subject, but very few monographs have been published that cover Egypt after the July 2013 coup. Although it was likely that the military would again play a role in Egyptian politics after the 2011 revolution, a coup, or rather a successful coup, was never an assured outcome. In his book, David Ottaway, a veteran journalist of theMiddle East, accomplishes a tour de force by both synthesizing all available media reports on the Egyptian ‘deep state’s’ efforts to regain and maintain political power, and investigating the matter himself in Egypt. Ottaway suggests that several clues point to a conspiracy of old-regime loyalists, led by the interior ministry and the armed forces, which was essential in paving the way towards the coup by undermining the Muslim Brotherhood-led government. Neil Ketchley, on the other hand, adopts a more ethnographic approach, but his conclusions are very similar to Ottaway’s. Interview after interview, Ketchley uncovers an overarching story in which security forces andmilitary personnel collaborated in facilitating and expanding anti-Morsi sentiments and, eventually, overthrew Egypt’s first democratically elected president. The late Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni, for his part,