Economic crisis and the politics of reform in Egypt / Ray Bush.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Introduction and Argument -- 2. The Origins of Egypt's Economic Crisis. Nasser's Break with the Ancien Regime. Sadat and Infitah. The International Context. Mubarak and the Economic Crisis of the 1980s. Egypt's Recurrent Economic Crisis -- 3. Economic Reforms and Egyptian Agriculture. Egypt's Economic Reform and Structural Adjustment Programme, 1986-1998. Characterising the Agricultural Crisis. Aims and Objectives of Economic Reform. Economic Reforms - An Early Success? Economic Reforms - Still Not Successful Enough -- 4. Agricultural Modernisation and the Egyptian Countryside: A Critique of Structural Adjustment. Comparative Advantage and Tyranny of the Market. The State and Agricultural Modernisation. Government Neglect of Agriculture. Understanding the Countryside. Peasants, Politics, and the State. The Critique: Bringing the Fellahin Back In -- 5. Views from the Village. Kafr Tasfa and Kafr Saad. Crisis in the Villages. The Agrarian Reform Law.

Village and Environmental Transformations. Women and Coping with Economic Reform. Uniform Strategy Versus Socially Differentiated Villages -- 6. Egypt at a Turning Point. Investing in Another Pyramid: The Politics of Tushka. Rural Protest: The Politics of Law 96 of 1992. Agricultural Modernisation: An Alternative. Egyptian Agriculture at a Turning Point.

"Economic Crisis and the Politics of Reform in Egypt examines the character of Egypt's economic crisis and the reforms promoted to ameliorate it since the mid-1980s, focusing in particular on the period since 1991. Bush attacks the standard view of the causes of the country's economic problems. He argues that it is based on a misunderstanding of the social organization and economic dynamics of rural Egypt and on a crude conception of the market as an instrument of economic progress.

To support his alternative perspective, Bush draws on original research material based on interviews with international agency staff and surveys undertaken in four Egyptian villages. This alternative perspective stresses the importance of the household, rather than the farm, as the unit of social and economic organization, the different and varied strategies that households pursue, the central role of women, local responses to environmental problems, and the significance of class and gender inequality in the countryside.

These are all areas the international agencies and the government of Egypt have ignored in their push for economic reform."--BOOK JACKET.