Postcolonial Governance in Egypt

The book chapter discusses the various leaders in postcolonial Egypt to understand their contributions to developing postcolonial Egypt. After the veiled independence, the first set of leaders in Egypt were surrogates of the imperial lords who had absolute power even when self-rule was granted. The true nationalists applied force to wrestle control from Britain and their surrogates. This started the institutionalization of force as a means for social change in Egypt. Almost all the rulers from 1952 to 2022 were either military or military personnel turned civilian. The ideological direction for Egypt was set after the 1952 coup that included Arabism, Africanism, and Islamism but excluded turning Egypt into an Islamic state. Some rulers attempted to circumvent this and turn Egypt into an Islamic state despite the nation's wish not to. They failed through the constant intervention of military personnel in governance. Egypt also suffered from a complete disconnect between the activities and successes of the ancient era and those of the colonial and postcolonial periods. The colonial lords truncated the progress made in the bygone era because it did not align with the motives for the occupation of Egypt. The postcolonial leaders had no link with the colonial because it was anti-Egyptian progress. Like all other African countries, all the criteria used in gauging the quality of governance and development showed that the performance of the postcolonial leaders was poor and left Egypt underdeveloped.