On the National Democratic Party

Tahrir Square on January 29 2011, with the NDP building burning in the background

In mid-January, I found myself at a seminar in Rome presenting a paper on Egypt's National Democratic Party. Others spoke about the economic situation, the Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian foreign policy. We all shared a gloomy view of situation in Egypt at the twilight of the Mubarak era and predicted trouble in the year ahead as Gamal Mubarak would make his bid to succeed his father. A couple of days later, I went to Tunisia to cover the revolution there, and then cut that trip short to make it back to Cairo by January 28, the day protestors defeated the police and security services across the country.

My paper on the NDP saw the party as the battleground of elite politics over the last decade, a place where different elements of the regime fought out their parcel of privilege and influence. The prize, of course was first and foremost a claim to the succession of Hosni Mubarak, but also for the less ambitious a place in the post-Mubarak order. In the end the NDP, alongside the security services, were the chief targets of demonstrators (the party's offices were looted and burnt in many places, much like police stations.) The paper was updated after the revolution, but still largely consists of a narrative of the NDP as a battleground of the regime between 2000 and 2010.

You get the various essays, titled Egypt: A Neo-Authoritarian State Steering The Winds Of Change, here (PDF 2.5MB) or just read the intro here.