Cronyism and Elite Capture in Egypt

Sarah Smierciak is currently based in Cairo where she writes freelance political economy analysis. She taught undergraduate courses on history and politics in the Middle East and North Africa at Oxford University. In 2016 she was awarded a Fulbright Grant to conduct research in Istanbul with Syrian and Iraqi communities. Sarah co-edited the Routledge Handbook on Contemporary Egypt (2021) and wrote Moon Egypt, a travel guide for the Moon series (2022).

• Introduction. 1. Providing Context. 2. Reconceptualizing “Business” and “State” in Business-State Relations. 3. Developing Egypt’s “SMEs:” The Social Fund for Development. 4. USAID’s “Private Sector” Projects: Planting the Seeds of Exclusion. 5. The Businessmen Cabinet’s “Public Private Partnerships” for Exclusive Development. 6. Reform Losers: The Cosmopolitan Capital Deficient. 7. Public Resources, Private Equity: Reaping the Fruits of Financial Liberalization. 8. The QIZ Agreement: Negotiating Networks of Privilege. 9. Expanding Privilege?: International Actors Complicating Domestic Agendas. 10: Reorganizing Networks of Privilege: Disruption, Reconfiguration and Persistence in the Face of Regime Change, 2011-2020. Conclusion. Acronyms. Bibliography. Appendix I: Network Chart.

"This book is both uniquely broad and deep in its approach to understanding Egypt’s development ‘failure’ which has occurred despite massive external support provided to the country. It presents a model by which similar developmental failures, whether in the MENA or elsewhere, can be analyzed and compared."Robert Springborg, Naval Postgraduate School, USA "Sarah’s work is an excellent contribution to the political economy of Egypt and the Middle East. It studies Egypt’s globalized trade and investment sectors. It reveals how foreign financial and developmental institutions were part of the networks of state-business relations, which has been hardly addressed before."Amr Adly, The American University in Cairo, Egypt"Interdisciplinary in methodology and theoretical orientation, Cronyism and Elite Capture in Egypt provides the most persuasive account of the networks, domestic and international, that shaped Egypt’s global market integration on neoliberal terms and reaped its benefits. Smierciak also reveals herself as a gifted narrator, and the result is an eminently readable story, absorbing and infuriating in equal parts, of crony capitalism in the late Mubarak era."Roberto Roccu, King’s College London, UK