Egypt: Lumbering State, Restless Society

Amr Adly and Nathan Brown present their book (co-authored with Shimaa Hatab) on Egyptian politics, society, and economy. The book draws on the authors' own research but situates it within multidisciplinary scholarship on Egypt in both English and Arabic and works to integrate the Egyptian experience into broader comparative discussions about state formation, regime type, social movements, and political economy in the Global South.
Nathan Brown received his B.A. in political science from the University of Chicago and his M.A. and Ph.D. in politics and Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. He teaches courses on Middle Eastern politics as well as more general courses on comparative politics and international relations. He received the Oscar and Shoshana Trachtenberg Award for Scholarship from George Washington University in 2015 and the Harry Harding teaching award from the Elliott School of International Affairs in 2014. His dissertation received the Malcolm Kerr award from the Middle East Studies Association in 1987. In 2013-2015, Dr. Brown was president of the Middle East Studies Association, the academic association for scholars studying the region. In 2013, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow; four years earlier, he was named a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. For the 2009-2010 academic year, he was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His previous research was funded by the United States Institute of Peace and two Fulbright fellowships. In addition to his academic work, Brown serves on the board of trustees at the American University in Cairo. He is also nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has previously served as an advisor for the committee drafting the Palestinian constitution, USAID, the United Nations Development Program, and several NGOs. Education.
Amr Adly is assistant professor in the department of political science at The American University in Cairo (AUC). He worked as a researcher at the Middle East directions program at the European University Institute. He worked as a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center, where his research centered on political economy, development studies, and economic sociology of the Middle East, with a focus on Egypt. Adly has taught political economy at AUC and Stanford University. He has also worked as a project manager at the center of democracy, development, and the rule of law at Stanford University, where he was a postdoctoral fellow. Adly is the author of cleft capitalism: the social origins of failed market-making in Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2020) and state reform and development in the Middle East: the cases of Turkey and Egypt (Routledge, 2012). He has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, including Geoforum, Business and Politics, the journal of Turkish Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies. Adly is also a frequent contributor to print and online news sources, including Bloomberg, Jadaliyya, and Al-Shorouk.
This event was moderated by MEI Faculty Director Tarek Masoud.
Recorded on March 31, 2022
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