Unexpected Brokers of Mobilization: Contingency and Networks in the 2011 Egyptian Uprising

“Clarke emphasizes the role of networks in the Egyptian uprising of January 2011 as well.(29) More generally, sociological research has established that networks can change individuals’ perceptions, including their emotions, as well as individual judgments of fairness and moral values.”

“The relevance of bloc recruitment and mobilization by Islamist leaders showed its limitations during the Arab uprisings as some of the main Islamist networks which had traditionally orchestrated contentious politics were repeatedly bypassed by protest movements (Clarke, 2014).”

“In some of these countries, like Bahrain, protests were successfully suppressed by the regime, while other cases, Syria comes to mind, have developed into protracted armed conflicts. semi-structured interviews (cf. Bronéus 2011) with members of what Kilian Clarke (2014) called the Cairo-based political opposition – a…”

“The second is the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR), a labour rights research and advocacy NGO that was established before the 2011 revolution (for an overview of this NGO’s role in the revolution see Clarke, 2014).”

“In some non-democracies, civil society has also played a key role in facilitating a transition to democracy (Arato, 1981; Clarke, 2014; Howard, 2002).”

“Finally, previous work on coalition-building in mass mobilization has pointed to the importance of peripheral actors within social movements who become brokers (Clarke, 2014; Diani, 2003; Robin and D’Cruz, 2019).”

“However, the coordinating capacity of such groups was low (see Clarke 2014).”

“There were certainly attempts to connect them (Clarke, 2014), but for a variety of reasons none of these got institutionalized.”

“The Egyptian uprisings in 2011 (e.g. Clarke, 2014) are some textbook examples.”

“…Turkey, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Chile, Tunisia, Hong Kong, and China (see Barrie and Ketchley 2018; Beissinger 2002; Bishara 2015; Bishara 2018, 2021; Clarke 2014, 2020; Clarke and Kocak 2020; Donoso and Von Bülow 2017; Fu 2018; Garrett 2014; Greene and Robertson 2014; Henry and Plantan 2022;…”

“Third, it affirms literature which shows social movement resources – such as organizations, networks, and skills of participants – explain the choice of nonviolent resistance (Thurber, 2019; Dahlum, 2019; Clarke, 2014; McAdam, Tarrow & Tilly, 2001).”

“72 Killian Clarke (2014) Unexpected Brokers of Mobilization: Contingency and Networks in the 2011 Egyptian Uprising, Comparative Politics, 46 (4), pp. 379–397. 73 Baczko, Dorronsoro & Quesnay, Mobilisations As a Result of Deliberation, pp. 6, 13. 74 E. Burke III (2014) The Ethnographic State (Oakland: University of Ca…”

“4 And, when dissi-dents at the edges of different networks coordinate collectively, they can activate large swaths of society (Clarke 2014).”

“Previous work on contentious politics in authoritarian regimes has focused on the repression-concession nexus (Davenport, 2007, 2014; Lichbach and Gurr, 1981) or the repres-sion-dissent nexus within social movement studies (Rasler, 1996; Yuen and Cheng, 2017).”

“Such micro-processes of alliance-forging by movement ‘cadres’ have been investigated in-depth for other coalitions (see Browers, 2009; Clarke, 2011, 2014), but fall outside the scope of this paper.”

“…interpret the Egyptian uprising as an ‘embryonic alliance between the discontented and the dispossessed’ (Roccu 2013: 437), a broad popular movement (Marfleet 2016) or the product of a rapid reconfiguration of autonomous social networks under the leadership of ‘unexpected brokers’ (Clarke 2014).”

“Also, they focused on Islamic and labor movements without addressing minority groups such as LGBT activism (Beinin and Vairel, 2011; Clarke, 2014; Schwedler, 2006; Wiktorowicz, 2003).”

“…findings of this study suggest that the forums can provide the young participants with a toolkit of grassroots activism that, literature on the rapid and unexpected socio-political mobilization suggests (see, e.g., Clarke, 2014; Tarrow, 1991), can quickly turn from ‘compliant’ to ‘non-compliant’.”

“The revolutionary coalition that had toppled Mubarak comprised a wide range of parties and movements, including not only the Muslim Brotherhood, but also various groups with secularist ideologies ranging from liberalism to leftism, Arab nationalism, and Nasserism (Clarke, 2014).”

“Hassanpour (2014) shows that protest increased in the period when the internet was switched off, 28 January 2011, while Clarke (2014) argues that social media helped during the first day but had a negligible impact thereafter.”

“one of the main features of this coalition (Clarke, 2014; Shorbagy, 2007).”

“…technologies (Clarke and Kocak 2018; Howard and Hussain 2013), long-term demographic and economic pressures (Cammett and Salti 2018), the damaging effects of neoliberal capitalism (Bayat 2017), and the mobilizing capacity of civil society organizations and parties (Clarke 2014; Yousfi 2017).”

“For example, Clarke (2014) shows how a rapid series of contingent choices by key brokers reconfigured Egyptian social networks, leading to the highly unexpected 2011 Revolution.”

“protests against police violence and anti-Mubarak sentiments (Clarke, 2014).”

“Christians were active participants in Egypt ’ s 2011 revolution, which overthrew the decades-old military autoc-racy headed by Hosni Mubarak (Abdelrahman 2014; Clarke 2014; El-Ghobashy 2011).”

“But workers would also launch a wave of wildcat strikes that not only reflected contemporary Egypt’s militant, informally organized workers, but also its network of NGO/labor activists mobilizing in local and national campaigns (Bishara, 2018; Clarke, 2014).”

“The front members said the split was also because of the corrupt leadership of Ahmed Maher and his close circle; there was no transparency with regard to how funds were used for the benefit of movement goals (Clarke, 2014).”

“…Vincent Durac vincent.durac@ucd.ie © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group dichotomy between success and failure and, as Clarke (2014) points out, tended to characterize the social structures, within which those involved in coalition-making operate, as rigid or static.”

“Even those Islamist networks that had previously been seen as the main orchestrators of contentious politics in the Arab world showed their limitations during the Arab uprisings, as anti-regime mobilization repeatedly bypassed them (Clarke 2014).”

“…the Egyptian Revolution was significantly influenced by the offline networks of political opposition, labor movements, and Islamic organizations (Clarke 2014), Similarly, the 2020‑21 student protest in Thailand was based on youth networks in various univer‑ sities across the country that had…”