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The Single Party as a Subordinate Movement: The Case of Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Iliya Harik
Iliya Harik
Affiliation:
Indiana University
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Extract

The single-party system of Nasser's Egypt belongs to a political genre widespread in Africa. It is a collaboration movement in which a nationally dominant leader enters into an “alliance” with regionally and locally influential persons; the party organization serves as a kind of “formal contract” between them. As a rule, the alliance is tacit in nature, based on each side's reading of political realities, and therefore tending both to be ad hoc and to involve a limited degree of direct interaction. The collaboration movement may be described as a transcendental organization with which individuals willing to deal with and support the regime may affiliate without necessarily making a total commitment to the movement.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , October 1973 , pp. 80 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1973

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References

1 See, for instance, Zolberg, Aristide R., Creating Political Order: The Party-States of West Africa (Chicago 1966)Google Scholar; and Bienen, Henry, Tanzania: Party Transformation and Economic Development (Princeton 1967)Google Scholar.

2 Zolberg (fn. 1); also Bretton, Henry L., The Rise and Fall of Kwame Nkrumah: A Study of Personal Rule in Africa (New York 1967)Google Scholar; Bienen, ibid., and “One-Party Systems in Africa,” in Huntington, Samuel P. and Moore, Clement H., eds., Authoritarian Politics in Modern Society: The Dynamics of Established One-Party Systems (New York 1970)Google Scholar.

3 See, for instance, the description of control mechanisms in the machine politics of Chicago in Banfield, Edward, Political Influence (Glencoe, Ill. 1961)Google Scholar.

4 These measures are well described in the literature. See Jean, and Lacouture, Simonne, Egypt in Transition (New York 1958)Google Scholar; Vatikiotis, P. J., The Modern History of Egypt (New York 1969)Google Scholar, and The Egyptian Army in Politics: Pattern for New Nations? (Bloomington, Ind. 1961)Google Scholar; also Hopkins, Harry, Egypt, the Crucible: The Unfinished Revolution in the Arab World (Boston 1972)Google Scholar.

5 See Sadat's booklet, al Ittihad al Qawmy (Cairo, n.d.).

6 See, for instance, Binder, Leonard, “Political Recruitment and Participation in Egypt,” in LaPalombara, Joseph and Weiner, Myron, eds., Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton 1966), 230Google Scholar; also Horton, Alan, The Charter for National Action of the UAR—A Resume of the Complete Document, IX, No. 5 (American Universities Field Staff, Northeast Africa Series, 1962)Google Scholar.

7 Regarding relations between party and bureaucracy, see Harik, , “Mobilization Policy and Political Change in Rural Egypt,” in Antoun, Richard and Harik, Iliya, eds., Rural Politics and Social Change in the Middle East (Bloomington, Ind. 1972), 287–314Google Scholar.

8 This was true also under Sabri. The first Party Congress met in July 1968, after Sabri's term came to an end, and under special circumstances.

9 For the auxiliary role of the ASU, see Harik (fn. 7).

10 Especially in the weekly, Rose el Yusuf; the monthly, al Tali'ah; and the daily, al Gumhuriyah.

11 Sabri was not a member of the Revolutionary Command Council; he met Nasser after the coup in 1952. He served as prime minister in 1964–65, while Zakariya Muhiyddin was responsible for the ASU; the two men exchanged jobs in 1965.

12 See such views in the leftist al Tali'ah, and compare them with Sabri's views in Sanawat al Tahawwul al hhtirakj (Cairo 1967), 161Google Scholar; also see Sabri's articles in al Gumhuriyah, January 1-May 30, 1967.

13 Ibid., 161. (Author's translation)

14 For a brief but comprehensive account of the Youth Organization, see al Shabab al 'Arabi, May 8, 1967.

15 See statement reported in al Ahram, December 12, 1965. (Author's translation)

16 The author conducted such a survey in a community in the Nile Delta in 1967.

17 The present relations between Tunisia's single party and President Bourguiba are of particular interest in this regard.