The Military, the State, and the Brotherhood: Cleavage Politics and Urban Development in Egypt

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring in Egypt, Islamist political parties, such as the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party, mobilized much of their support in the rural periphery. Simultaneously, the Egyptian military stands out against other armed forces in the MENA-region because of its historically dominant role in the country's basic infrastructure. With Egypt’s military-assisted urban development mostly concentrated around the capital, two research questions emerge: What role does infrastructural development play in shaping contemporary Egypt’s societal divisions? And how are Egypt’s civil-military relations (CMR) embedded in existing cleavage structures? It will be argued that because Egypt’s army is strongly involved in infrastructural development and has had a prominent role in nation building since colonial independence, Egypt’s civil-military relations not only cut across several societal divisions, but also incisively shaped Egypt’s cleavage structures along with industrialization and colonialism. Generally, the MENA-region has been neglected in previous literature on societal cleavages. Likewise, there are very few studies that contextualize CMR in the development of cleavages. By adapting existing concepts of cleavages to be applied in Egypt, this paper will map Egypt’s societal divisions while investigating how Egypt’s domestic civil-military relations impact urban development. This qualitative case study can therefore also shed light on how urban development in the MENA-region is connected to the emergence of societal cleavages while demonstrating how cleavage concepts could be applied beyond the Western hemisphere.