Cleft Capitalism

"Over the course of four decades, the Egyptian economy underwent consistent and comprehensive economic liberalization, privatization of state-owned enterprises, deregulation. Yet the Egyptian economy today still experiences low-growth, declining total investment rates, and high un- and under-employment. The private sector has never become globally competitive. There are few beneficiaries to the economic transformations begun under Sadat and continued by Mubarak, and most Egyptians, notably public-sector workers and the urban and rural middle classes, claim losses through these efforts. The 2011 uprising highlighted that these efforts at transformation failed not only economically, but politically as well. This book explores how and why 40 years of economic reform efforts largely failed. Amr Adly argues the fault lies in cleft capitalism: the perpetuation of initial size differences in enterprises, through limits on available land and capital (finance), that constrain any opportunities for growth and expansion"--

Amr Adly is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo and the author of State Reform and Development in the Middle East: The Cases of Turkey and Egypt (2012).