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Electoral Institutions in Non-Democratic Regimes: the Impact of the 1990 Electoral Reform on Patterns of Party Development in Mubarak’S Egypt

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Electoral Institutions in Non-Democratic Regimes: the Impact of the 1990 Electoral Reform on Patterns of Party Development in Mubarak’S Egypt Electoral Institutions in Non-Democratic Regimes: The Impact of the 1990 Electoral Reform on Patterns of Party Development in Mubarak’s Egypt Submitted by Hendrik Jan Kratzschmar For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy London School of Economics and Political Science University of London 2005 UMI Number: U615867 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U615867 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 1° 9 5 £ Abstract This PhD researches the development of political parties in Egypt between 1981 and 2000 under the presidency of Husni Mubarak. The starting point of this investigation is the failure of Egypt’s parties to develop into politically-relevant organisations with strong constituency support in society. What we find instead are parties that - since the inception of multipartism in 1977 - remain characterised by their marginal role within the polity and politics of the state, that are little entrenched in society and that expose an underdeveloped and oftentimes fragmented internal structure. What is more, not only have these parties remained persistently weak, but since the early 1990s they experienced a further weakening of their position in the Egyptian polity. Essentially, this weakening was evident at both the electoral and parliamentary level. In both these domains of politics parties were far more vocal and visibly present during the 1980s than during the 1990s. During the latter decade, in fact, the country’s main parties had become entirely marginalized actors in the electoral and parliamentary arenas. This PhD argues that the marginalisation of Egypt’s parties was critically influenced by the 1990 reform of the parliamentary electoral law. This reform entailed a shift from a PR list- based regime to an absolute majority two-round system. Following the electoral connection literature, it is demonstrated that this particular inter-system change, rather than supporting the development of strong mass-based organisations, actually contributed to the further weakening of Egypt’s parties as collective actors in the electoral arena. This was the case because the new electoral law created an institutional environment that adversely affect the capacity of party headquarters to control the nomination and placement of candidates and the willingness of party candidates to pursue a party over a personal reputation-seeking strategy in the elections. Both these factors together, it is maintained, severely undermined the capacity of parties to enhance levels of internal unity and visible representation in the electoral arena, and as such contributed to their observed marginalisation in the Egyptian polity. 2 Table of Contents List of Tables................................................................................................................................5 List of Graphs...............................................................................................................................5 List of Illustrations ........................................................................................................................5 List of Acronyms .......................................................................................................................... 6 Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................8 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 10 PART I: BACKGROUND, THEORY AND METHODOLOGY.....................................................21 Chapter Two. Patterns of Party Development under the Mubarak Presidency ................................... 21 2.1 Multiparty Politics since 1977 .................................................................................................23 2.2 The Weaknesses of Egypt’s Parties..........................................................................................38 » 2.3 The Marginalisation Hypothesis .............................................................................................. 42 Chapter Three. The Determinants of Party Development under the Mubarak Presidency ...................50 3.1 The External Sources of Party Weakness ................................................................................. 50 3.2 The Internal Sources of Party Weakness .................................................................................. 62 3.3 Explaining the Electoral Marginalisation of Egypt’s Parties since 1990 ...................................... 68 Chapter Four. Electoral Institutions, Internal Unity and Visible Representation ................................80 4.1 The Electoral Connection Literature ........................................................................................81 Electoral Strategies, Unstructured Electorates & Party Development ...........................................85 4.2 The Candidate Recruitment Process .........................................................................................87 Nomination Control ................................................................................................................. 87 Placement Control ................................................................................................................... 92 Competitive Constellations ....................................................................................................... 94 4.3 The Election Campaign ..........................................................................................................98 Forms of District-level Electoral Cooperation ............................................................................98 Campaigning Rhetoric & Materials .........................................................................................102 Party Labels ...........................................................................................................................104 4.4 Other Institutional Explanations ...................................................................................106 Chapter Five. Research Method, Conditions and Data ...................................................................113 5.1 Research Design and Conditions ............................................................................................113 5.2 Research Method and Data ....................................................................................................120 PART II: FINDINGS & ANALYSIS...........................................................................................128 Chapter Six. Recruitment Patterns .................................................. 128 6.1 Nomination Control .............................................................................................................. 129 Effective Recruitment Control in 1984 & 1987.......................................................................... 130 De-Selection Control in 1984 & 1987 ...................................................................................... 134 Effective Recruitment Control in 1990,1995 & 2000................................................................. 136 De-Selection Control in 1990,1995 & 20000 ........................................................................... 139 6.2 Placement Control ................................................................................................................147 Candidate Placement Strategies in 1984 & 1987 .......................................................................149 Candidate Placement Strategies in 1990,1995 & 2000 ..............................................................154 6.3 Concluding Remarks ............................................................................................................ 157 Chapter Seven. Competitive Constellations ..................................................................................161 7.1 The District - and National Level Constellations of the 1980s ..................................................162 7.2 The District - and National Level Constellations of the 1990s ..................................................167 7.3 Concluding Remarks ............................................................................................................ 170 3 Chapter Eight. Forms of Electoral Cooperation............................................................................ 173 8.1 Intra-Party Cooperation of the 1980s ..................................................................................... 174 Individual Campaigning in 1984 & 1987 ..................................................................................177 Collective Campaigning in 1984 & 1987. ..................................................................................179 8.2 The Emergence of Cross-Party Alliances in the 1990s .............................................................184
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