Publication

This paper argues that the regime of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is stuck between a rock and a hard place. In the first case, the country’s current economic crisis is depriving the government of the financial and economic resources it needs to sustain a solid social base among its public sector employees, and thereby hinders its consolidation of authoritarian rule. On the other hand, the regime’s reliance on this group gives it little latitude to pursue economic reforms. Given this predicament, the text’s author concludes that the regime may survive, but at the high price of continued repression and an inability to alleviate worsening socio-economic conditions.