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Seizing the Moment of Opportunity? Emerging Movements of Coptic Activists in Egypt

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Seizing the Moment of Opportunity? Emerging Movements of Coptic Activists in Egypt Seizing the moment of opportunity? Emerging movements of Coptic activists in Egypt Lars Gunnar Christiansen Master thesis Spring 2013 Department of Comparative Politics University of Bergen ii Abstract This thesis aims to explain the development of a Coptic secular movement in Egypt. By using social movement literature I produce a conceptual framework that emphasizes the three variables of opportunity structures, mobilizing structures and framing. I review the literature about the Coptic community and contentious politics in Egypt to supply my variables with context- sensitive indicators. The case of the Coptic community is situated as a case in a universe of similar communal groups in the Middle East, where the Coptic case is typical in terms of its size in relation to the majority, and the level of collective action. The Coptic secular movement is a recent phenomenon, and is thereby understudied. To my knowledge, this is the first contribution that analyzes Coptic collective action after 2011 with concepts from social movement theory. To sufficiently account for the Coptic secular movement I analyze how it has developed in recent history, revealing that the Copts have gone from relative isolation to be visible collective actors in the post-2011 context. The thesis relies on data from peer-reviewed journals, dissertations, and other academic publications that discusses the recent history of Egypt and the Coptic community. It also benefits from interviews with Egyptian Coptic activists, politicians, and scholars to shed light on the more recent developments. The analysis of historical and current Coptic collective action reveals a complex pattern of empirical relationships. The dominant role of the Church in political, social, and spiritual spheres of life is found to inhibit Coptic collective action. This role has historically been enforced by a patron-client relationship between the Church leadership and Egyptian regime. This elite alignment discouraged collective action directed both against the Church and the regime. The inclusion of the Coptic upper class in the patron-client network of the Egyptian regime also prohibited resources to flow downwards to potential grass root mobilizers. With the gradual decline of the church-regime alliance and the persistence of Coptic grievances, collective action became a viable option in the 2000s. With the complete reshuffle of Egyptian politics in 2011, the secular Coptic movement eventually found its place in the national opposition against the Muslim Brotherhood and Mohamed Morsi. iii Acknowledgements The idea for this thesis came from the late Dr. Samer Soliman at the American University in Cairo. I thank you for the inspiration. I would like to thank my supervisors, Jonas Linde at the Department of Comparative Politics, and Nefissa Naguib at Chr. Michelsen Institute, for providing helpful advice on this long journey. During the writing of this thesis I was lucky to work in an environment of experienced researchers on Chr. Michelsen Institute. I’m very grateful for the feedback from the Religion and Politics of Faith, and Democracy and Governance research clusters. Additionally I got invaluable advice from Frode Løvlie and Kjetil Selvik along the way. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Citizens, Opinion and Representation Research Group at the Department of Comparative politics, to Johanna Söderström for initial comments, Gyda Marås Sindre for advice on social movements, Diane Singerman for literature advice on the Coptic community, and Carolyn Ramzy for helping out with contacts in Cairo. Antony Wahba put in a lot of hard work with translation and practicalities in Cairo. Thank you for all your efforts, and for the kindness of your family. In Cairo, I also came across some unexpected help; thank you Gaeton du Roy for introducing me to Moqattam, and for much helpful advice about the Coptic community. I am also very grateful to Sebastian Elsässer for sending me his doctoral thesis. Thanks to the students at CMI, Maria, Thor Olav, and Fetimeh for moral support down in the caves, as well as feedback along the way. Thanks to Inger, who showed me what was up and down when the world was on its head. Lars Gunnar Christiansen, June 2013 iv Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................................................iii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents ....................................................................................................................................................v Figures ................................................................................................................................................................... vi Tables..................................................................................................................................................................... vi 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Contentious collective action and theoretical contribution ....................................................................... 3 1.2 Scope of the study ..................................................................................................................................... 3 1.3 The dependent variable: A brief account of secular movement development ........................................... 4 1.4 Method and Data ...................................................................................................................................... 6 1.5 Outline of thesis ........................................................................................................................................ 7 2. THE COPTIC CASE: BACKGROUND............................................................................................. 8 3. SOCIAL MOVEMENT THEORY ................................................................................................... 13 3.1 Defining social movement ....................................................................................................................... 14 3.2 Disciplinary developments of social movement theory ........................................................................... 14 3.3 Ethnic and religious social movements .................................................................................................... 17 3.4 Social Movements in the Middle East ...................................................................................................... 18 3.5 Conceptual framework: political process theory ...................................................................................... 20 4. METHOD .......................................................................................................................................... 31 4.1 Implications of research question ............................................................................................................ 31 4.2 The case study and internal validity ......................................................................................................... 31 4.3 The most similar systems design.............................................................................................................. 33 4.4 History matters ........................................................................................................................................ 34 4.5 The case of Coptic contentious collective action and its relatedness to similar cases .............................. 36 4.6 Data sources – validity and reliability ...................................................................................................... 40 4.7 Strategy of analysis .................................................................................................................................. 42 4.8 Method summary .................................................................................................................................... 43 5. CHANGES IN POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURE ..................................................... 43 5.1 Opportunity structures 1981-2001 ........................................................................................................... 43 5.2 Political opportunity in the 2000s ............................................................................................................ 52 5.3 Political opportunity 2011-2013............................................................................................................... 55 5.4 Indicators ................................................................................................................................................ 60 6. MOBILIZING STRUCTURES........................................................................................................ 63 6.1 Mobilizing structures 1982-2001 .............................................................................................................. 63 6.2 Mobilizing structures 2001-2011 .............................................................................................................. 66 6.3 Mobilizing structures 2011-2013 .............................................................................................................
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