Institutional Design in Post-Mubarak Egypt: Consociationalism and the Protection of Coptic Christian Interests

Sammanfattning: The focus of this project will be on democratic institutional design in Egypt following the 2011 revolution. Although important, little attention will necessarily be given to examining the challenges and prospects for democracy in post-Mubarak Egypt more broadly. The paper will proceed under the assumption that a stable, functioning democracy is a reasonable, and further, attainable system of political organization for Egyptians. What is attempted here is a thorough evaluation of consociationalism as a particular form of institutional design. More specifically, this project seeks to address (1) the problem of political stability, and (2) the protection of minority Coptic Christian interests in post-Mubarak Egypt. I attempt to illustrate why democratic power-sharing, in the form of consociationalism can potentially benefit Egyptian society by avoiding the negative, destabilizing, or marginalizing consequences often prevalent in a religiously divided social fabric. This will be carried out through a theoretically-founded comparative perspective. I intend to justify the claims suggested in consociational theory by analyzing democratic institutional design as it has failed and succeeded in plural societies elsewhere. As such, this will serve as a conceptually derived, yet empirically tested model for Egypt’s transition.