Transformations of Political Parties and Attitudes toward Power and Party Politics in Egypt under Al Sisi

One of the most historical consequences of the 2011 Uprisings in the Arab world is with no doubts the regional richness in the institutionalisation of political parties emerged in the aftermath of regimes’ collapse. In the specific case of Egypt, in 2012 the country underwent an extraordinary institutionalisation of almost 50 new political parties that along the spectrum of party-politics ranged from the far-left to the most conservative wing. While some of them already existed as 'social movements', others structurally emerged out of the 2012 country's political vacuum. This impacted the scholarship’s debate about Egypt's challenge (and prospect) to move towards a more inclusive and democratic oriented political system. This discourse was expanded to other countries in the region, and Tunisia (often celebrated in the West as a 'success') deserves a mention in comparative terms. However, in the post-2013 coup setting Egypt underwent consistent transformations evolved around practices of political and social suppression that on the one hand marginalised former parties. On the other, created new parties under the regime's umbrella. After 2014-2015 attitude towards party-politics in Egypt became subject to re-adaptations and re-interpretations, in which the parliament lost most of power. Methodologically based on the combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis and theoretically rooted into the literature of party-politics and non-democratic regime types literature, the aim of this paper is to discuss the evolution in the functions of parties and opposition either from a political or societal perspective in Egypt. To this end, the work specifically looks at the the 2015 parliamentary elections in Egypt as they matched with major changes in the domestic political and social arena which transformed the understanding of parliamentary functions. The findings of this work could be relevant to the understanding of the transformations of Middle East Politics and social contracts.