L. M. ISAEV

A. V. KOROTAEV

Doctor of Historical Sciences

HSE, IAfr RAS

Keywords: Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Morsi, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, army, referendum, constitution, provinces of Egypt, political processes

From January 14 to 15, 2014, Egypt held a referendum on a new constitution drafted by the Constitutional Assembly under the chairmanship of Amr Moussa. The majority of Egyptians who took part in the referendum (98.13%) voted in favor of the adoption of the new basic law, while only 1.87% of the votes were cast against ¹. It is known that the main opponent of the adoption of the new constitution was the banned Muslim Brotherhood movement, whose de facto leader, Mohammed Morsi, was removed from power in a military coup on July 3, 2013, and the constitution adopted during his rule was suspended in December 2012. The Association called on its supporters to boycott the 2014 referendum.

The confrontation between Islamists and secularists, represented primarily by the military, in Egypt has a long history. Even after the Free Officers ' Revolution of 1952, the Muslim Brotherhood, which opposed the royal regime of Farouk I, after a brief period of cooperation with the military, had no place in the new republican regime, which continued until the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser ^{in 1970.2}

The situation changed somewhat after Anwar Sadat came to power, when the authorities began to turn a blind eye to the appearance of representatives of the Brotherhood in the country's parliament, primarily due to independent candidates and de facto alliances with other parties, as was the case in the 1979 elections, when some members of the Muslim Brotherhood association marched according to the lists of the Socialist Party of Labor ³. A similar situation persisted under Hosni Mubarak until the 2010 parliamentary elections, which were totally rigged.⁴

After the departure of H. Mubarak, the situation changed dramatically: The Muslim Brotherhood gained legal status and immediately demonstrated the full power of its political potential. The outcome of the first referendum on the interim constitutional declaration was decided in favor of the Islamists: 77.27% of the votes "for", 22.73% - "against"⁵. At the same time, opponents of the adoption of the constitutional declaration, represented mainly by secular parties and movements, failed to gain more than 40% of the vote in any province.

The next elections to the Egyptian People's Assembly in December 2011-January 2012 also confirmed the mobilization power of Islamists, primarily due to high support in small towns and villages, as well as poor areas of Cairo and Alexandria. According to the results of voting, out of 508 seats in the People's Assembly, 235 were won by the Freedom and Justice Party formed by the Brothers, 123 by Al - Nur, 38 by the New Wafd and 35 by the Egyptian Bloc ⁶.

However, the situation changed significantly after the military re-entered the electoral process. Already in the second round of the 2012 presidential election, Morsi's victory over General Al-Shafiq was minimal: 51.73% against 48.27%^.7 If the March 2011 referendum did not have a single region where opponents of the adoption of the interim constitutional declaration could have obtained a majority of votes, then the situation began to change later. In the presidential elections, outline-

this is a curious trend. After the first round of elections, Morsi won a majority in 13 districts of the country (primarily in the Nile Valley, North Sinai and western provinces). In turn, A. Shafiq was the leader in 5 districts located in the Nile Delta (Dakahliya, Sharqiyya, Gharbiyya, Kalyubiyya and Manufiyya), as well as in Luxor.

In the second round, the regions that were sympathetic to former Arab League Secretary General Amr Musa (South Sinai) and former Muslim Brotherhood member Abdel Futuh (Matrouh and Damietta) went over to the side of A. Shafiq and M. Morsi, respectively. This is quite understandable: A. Futuh was a member of the leadership of the Brotherhood between 1987 and 2009, and Musa's program was more in line with what Shafiq proposed than Morsi. And the five districts that supported Nasserist Hamdeen Sabahi in the first round were divided: the central districts of Cairo and Port Said, as well as the tourist district of Red Sea, mostly supported Shafiq, while Alexandria and Kafr al-Sheikh voted for Morsi.⁸

The constitution of 2012, which Morsi put to a general referendum, also passed with a" creak". According to official data, 63.8% of voters supported the draft new constitution, while 36.2% voted against it. The turnout was 32.9%, which really hides the political amorphousness of Egyptian society, a significant part of which is made up of illiterate poor people, the intimidation of minorities,and the weakness of political forces in mobilizing the electorate. ⁹

How can we explain the victory of the "Brothers"?

First of all, the opposition forces took an extremely inconsistent approach to the referendum. Not being able to agree on a single strategy for electoral behavior, they simply confused their electorate. Their attitude to the upcoming referendum was divided: some argued that the vote should be boycotted, others argued for a protest vote, and still others even made a statement that, having received a democratically elected president, even if an Islamist, it would be more correct, at least, not to interfere with his implementation of the planned reforms.

Secondly, the opposition has completely "abandoned" working with voters in the regions. If you look at the results of the provincial referendum, you can find only three districts (Cairo, Gharbiyah and Manufiyah), where the majority voted "against". Three more voted "on the edge": Port Said, Alexandria and Dakahliya. And all of them are located in close proximity to the administrative center of ^the country10.

Nevertheless, we can say with complete confidence that the majority of Egyptians were tired of the uncertainty and instability of the "time of troubles" and hoped that the new constitution would be the starting point for normalizing the internal political situation and starting socio-economic changes. This is perhaps one of the main reasons why the population did not take into account the controversial provisions of the Basic Law, even though it largely met only the interests of the Muslim Brotherhood in power.¹¹

However, after the events of 2013.12 and the de facto transfer of power to the army leadership led by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the initiative completely passed into the hands of the military, who clearly learned from past election campaigns and approached the 2014 constitutional referendum more prepared. Here, too, the Muslim Brotherhood was forced to appeal to its voters to boycott the referendum scheduled for mid-January 2014.

In this regard, it can be assumed that there is a correlation between the number of people who did not participate in the 2014 referendum and the number of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in the respective province. However, the situation is complicated by the fact that the number of people who did not participate in the referendum in a particular province depended not only on the number of its residents who supported the "Brothers", but also on the level of passivity of the population in a particular province.

Below, we will try to divide these two population categories using mathematical methods in order to identify the real level of support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egyptian regions.

To begin with, we will try to determine whether it is even possible to assess the support of the "Brothers" by the percentage of those who did not take part in the 2014 referendum in the corresponding province. To do this, we operationalize our hypothesis as follows: the lower the share of people who participated in the 2014 referendum in a given province, the higher the share of those who voted for Mohammed Morsi in the second round of the 2012 presidential election. Statistical testing of this hypothesis gives the following results (see Figure 1).

As we can see, there is a very strong and highly significant statistically negative relationship (r^R2= 0.59; b << 0.0001) between the share of those who voted for M. Morsi in 2012 and the share of those who took part in the 2014 referendum. This confirms the hypothesis that the higher the percentage of Muslim Brotherhood support in a given province is, the greater the percentage of its residents who did not participate in the 2014 referendum.

Now let's check whether there is a correlation between the share of people who took part in the 2014 referendum and the percentage of people who voted in favor of accepting it.

Figure 1. Correlation between the share of citizens who participated in the 2014 referendum and the percentage who voted for Morsi in the second round of the 2012 presidential election.

The 2012 Constitution was openly pushed through by the Muslim Brotherhood, so the percentage who supported this constitution cannot but reflect the level of support for this movement in a particular province, which means that it should negatively correlate with the percentage who took part in the 2014" anti-Afghan " referendum. Statistical testing of this hypothesis gives the following results (see Figure 2).

There is an even stronger negative correlation (r = - 0.82; ^R2 = 0.671) than in the case of those who voted for M. Morsi in 2012. In other words, the less time elapsed between votes, the stronger the correlation turned out to be - quite predictably, data from a year and a half ago turned out to be a less accurate indicator of the level of modern support for the Muslim Brotherhood than data from a year ago.

However, here you should immediately make one important reservation. The Muslim Brotherhood tends to have high support in the more backward regions of the country, where there is a lower level of political activity among the population. In this regard, it would be incorrect to consider all those who did not take part in the 2014 constitutional referendum as unequivocal supporters of the "Brothers". To do this, we will test the hypothesis that in those provinces where there is the lowest percentage of those who took part in the 2014 referendum, a smaller percentage also took part in the 2012 referendum.

The fact is that if a province has a very high percentage of those who did not participate in a referendum in support of the constitution prepared by the Muslim Brotherhood, or in a referendum in support of the constitution prepared by their opponents, this clearly indicates the political passivity of the inhabitants of this province, and not a high level of support for the "Brothers".

Accordingly, if the hypothesis that the low percentage of participation in the 2014 referendum correlates not only with the level of support for the Muslim Brotherhood, but also with the level of political passivity of the residents of the relevant province is correct, then

Figure 2. Correlation between the share of citizens who took part in the 2014 referendum and the percentage of votes cast in support of the constitution in the 2012 referendum.

expect a statistically significant correlation between the percentage of those who did not participate in the 2012 referendum in support of the constitution pushed by the Muslim Brotherhood and the percentage who did not participate in the 2014 referendum, which the Brotherhood called for a boycott. Statistical testing of this hypothesis gives the following results (see Figure 3).

As we can see, there is a rather weak but marginally statistically significant correlation between the variables under consideration in the predicted direction (r⁼b = 0.078 (2-way significance test); b = 0.039 (1-way significance test)). Two important conclusions should be drawn from this.

First, the correlation in this case is incomparable-

Table 1

Multiple regression

Dependent variable: percentage of votes cast for Morsi in the second round of the 2012 presidential election, %

Figure 3. Correlation between the percentage of citizens who abstained from participating in the 2014 referendum and the percentage of citizens who abstained from participating in the 2012 referendum.

much weaker than in the previous two cases. Consequently, it is impossible to explain the particularly low percentage of voter participation in the last referendum in the respective provinces solely by the political passivity of their inhabitants. A comparison of correlations shows that the refusal to participate in the 2014 referendum was largely due to the support of the Muslim Brotherhood.

On the other hand, the latter correlation is very weak, but still statistically significant. This suggests that the particularly low level of participation in the last referendum in some Egyptian provinces still concealed not only the support of the Muslim Brotherhood, but also to some extent the political passivity of the residents of the respective provinces. Thus, the factor of political passivity in the least developed regions of the country still played a role.

This implies the need to separate the factor of political passivity of citizens from the share of those who support the Muslim Brotherhood. To do this, we will perform a multiple regression analysis of the indicators we are interested in (see Table 1).

As a dependent variable, we selected the share of votes cast for Morsi in the second round of the 2012 presidential election, which can be interpreted as an indicator of the (albeit imperfect) level of support for the Muslim Brotherhood in the respective provinces*.

As regressors, we took the proportion of citizens who abstained from participating in the 2012 constitutional referendum (which, as we could see above, was primarily an indicator of political passivity), and the refusal to participate in the 2014 constitutional referendum (which, as we could see above, was primarily an indicator of political passivity). total, the " Arb " support indicator-

* It is worth mentioning here that, of course, among those who voted for M. Morsi, there was a proportion of citizens who did not support the Muslim Brotherhood, but also did not want to return to the military rule regime, with which M. Morsi's rival, General A. Shafiq, was associated. However, there were noticeably fewer of them than consistent supporters of Islamists.

Table 2

Level of support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt's provinces

tev"). Thus, the introduction of these two variables allows us to significantly separate Islamist supporters from politically passive citizens.

As a result of constructing a multiple regression, both regressors were significant (b ₂₀₁₂ ⁼ 0.018 and b ₂₀₁₄ ⁼ 0.024). On the other hand, the regression analysis allows us to construct the following equation (1), which characterizes the level of support for the Muslim Brotherhood:

P _MV = 52% + 0.27 * A 2012-0.62* _A 2014 (1)

Note: RM - the level of support for the Muslim Brotherhood in the provinces of Egypt,%;

2012_A - percentage of citizens who abstained from participating in the 2012 constitutional referendum., %;

2014a - percentage₂₀₁₄ constitutional referendum, %.

Calculations using this formula allow us to estimate the proportion of eligible Egyptians who actively support the Muslim Brotherhood in the provinces of Egypt (see Table 2).

From the table. 2 It can be seen that the largest percentage of Muslim Brotherhood supporters (more than 30%) is observed in such provinces as Matruh (35.3%), Fayoum (32.4%), Bani Suef (32.2%), Suez (31.7%) and Minya (31.3%). At the same time, this indicator shows the proportion of the adult population (having the right to vote) supporting the "Brothers" in the Egyptian regions. Thus, the above calculations show that the Muslim Brotherhood has particularly high support in the provinces located to the west of Cairo and in the very north of Middle Egypt (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. ARE provinces with the largest share of citizens actively supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.

Note: 1-Alexandria; 2-Aswan; 3-Assiut; 4-Beheirah; 5-Bani Suef; 6-Cairo; 7-Dakahliya; 8-Damietta; 9-Fayum; 10-Gharbiyah; 11-Giza; 12-Ismailia; 13-Kafr al-Sheikh; 14 - Matruh; 15-Minya; 16-Manufiyah; 17-New Valley; 18-North Sinai; 19-Port Said; 20-Kalyubiyah; 21-Kena; 22-Red Sea; 23-Sharqiyah; 24-Sohag; 25-South Sinai; 26-Suez; 27-Luxor.

Table 3

Level of military support in Egypt's provinces

Table 4

"Muslim Brotherhood Position Strength Index" (number of active supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood per 100 active supporters of the ruling regime)

True, there are also such politically active provinces as Ismailia and Suez, where there are quite a lot of supporters of the "Brothers", but, as will be shown below, there are even more supporters of the military there. This region, located along the Suez Canal, has always been considered a zone prone to destabilization processes. For example, one of the harbingers of the Free Officers ' Revolution of 1952 was the revolt of Egyptian policemen in Ismailia. Mass protests in these regions also played an equally important role in the Egyptian revolution of 2011, and, of course, the most significant after Cairo and Alexandria were clashes in these two provinces between supporters and opponents.

Figure 5. The level of support for the main political forces in the provinces of Egypt.

Note: 1-Alexandria; 2-Aswan; 3-Assiut; 4-Beheirah; 5-Bani Suef; 6-Cairo; 7-Dakahliya; 8-Dami etta; 9-Fayum; 10-Gharbiyah; 11-Giza; 12-Ismailia; 13-Kafr al-Sheikh; 14-Matruh; 15-Minya; 16-Manufiyah; 17-New Valley; 18-North Sinai; 19-Port Said; 20-Kalyubiyah; 21-Kena; 22-Red Sea; 23-Sharqiyah; 24-Sohag; 25-South Sinai; 26-Suez; 27-Luxor.

President Morsi in the summer of 2013, which is largely due to the high level of the politically active population, which supports both the "Brothers" and the military.

The following is an indicator that characterizes the ratio of citizens who support the Muslim Brotherhood to those who support the military. We estimate the share of the latter by province based on the results of the 2014 referendum by multiplying the percentage of votes cast in support of the constitution by the percentage of citizens who took part in the vote. Thus, the percentage of supporting military personnel in the Egyptian provinces can be estimated as follows (see Table 3).

Now we will calculate the ratio of citizens who support the Muslim Brotherhood to those who support the military, which we will conditionally call the " index of strength of the Muslim Brotherhood's positions "(I _MB according to formula (2):

I_MB = P_MB/P_M* 100 (2)

Note: P _MB is the percentage of the population supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in a given province of Egypt; P _M is the percentage of the population supporting the military in the same province.

The "strength index of the Muslim Brotherhood positions "calculated by us allows us to estimate how many supporters of the Brotherhood account for every 100 supporters of the military in the provinces of Egypt (see Table 4).

It is easy to see that the number of active supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood exceeds the number of active supporters of the ruling regime in seven provinces of Egypt: Matruh (187), Fayum (142), Minya (126), Assiut (120), Sohag (114), Qena (105) and Bani Suef (103). Thus, in terms of support, the Muslim Brotherhood has an advantage over the military in Middle Egypt and in the north-west of the country (see Figure 5).

* * *

The quantitative analysis provides the following picture of the" political geography " of modern Egypt.

The largest percentage of the population supports the Muslim Brotherhood in the northern part of Middle Egypt (the provinces of Minya, Bani Suef and Fayum), in the northeast of the country (Matruh, Giza and Alexandria) and in the two provinces of the Suez Canal zone-Suez and Ismailia. However, in Suez, and especially in Ismailia and Alexandria, an even larger percentage of the population supports the military. In the southern part of Middle Egypt (Assiut, Sohag and Qena provinces)

The Muslim Brotherhood is actively supported by only a fairly small (about a quarter) part of the population. But the military is supported by an even smaller proportion of the population, and as a result, the Muslim Brotherhood has a significant advantage here. Their positions are particularly strong in the northern part of Middle Egypt and in the north-east of the country, where a high percentage of the population actively supporting the Muslim Brotherhood is combined with a low percentage of the population actively supporting the ruling regime.

The military's position is particularly strong in the Delta, Port Said, and the most important resort area, South Sinai, where a high percentage of the population actively supporting the ruling regime is combined with a low percentage of citizens supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. They are quite strong in another resort area - on the Red Sea, as well as in Cairo.

Finally, Upper Egypt is characterized, first of all, by an extremely high level of political passivity - here the level of active support for both the military and the Muslim Brotherhood is very low.

Finally, there is a summary table of the level of support for the main political forces by province (see appendix).

Application

Summary table of the level of support for major political forces by province in Egypt

¹ Official vote result: 98,1% approves Egypt's post-June 30 Constitution - http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/l/64/91874/ Egypt/Politics-/UPDATE-approves-postjune-constitution.aspx

^{Al-Habishi A.} 2 Why do the Muslim Brotherhood hate Gamal Abdel Nasser? - http://www.middleeasttransparent.com/article.php3? id_article=3389; Isaev L. M. Islamists and the political process in Egypt after the "Arab Spring" / / Arab crisis and its international consequences / Ed. by A.V. Savateev, L. M. Isaev, M., Lenand, 2014. (Issaev L.M. 2014. Islamisty i politicheskiy protsess v Egipte posle "arabskoyi vesny" // Arabskiy krizis i ego mezhdunarodnye posledstviya / Eds. A.V.Savateev, L.M.Issaev. M.) (in Russian)

^{3. Vidyasova M. F.} 3 Egyptian model: democratization on the background of the state of emergency / / Modern Africa: metamorphoses of political power / Ed. by A. M. Vasiliev. M., Vostochnaya literatura, 2009. (Vidyasova M. F. 2009. Egipetskaya model: demokratizatsiya na fone cherezvychainogo polozheniya // Sovremennaya Afrika: metamorfozy politicheskoy vlasti / Ed. A.M.Vasiliev. M.) (in Russian); Nohlen D., Krennerich M., Thibaut B. Elections in Africa: A Data Handbook. Oxford, 1999.

^{Isaev L. M., Shishkina A. R.} 4 Egyptian turmoil of the XXI century. Moscow, Librocom, 2012. (Issaev L. M., Shishkina A. R. 2012. Egipetskaya smuta XXI veka. M.) (in Russian)

⁵ Istifta'. Миср - http://referendum2011.elections.eg

⁶ Intihabats. Misr - https://www.elections.eg

⁷ Ibid.

^{Isaev L. M.} 8 Decree. Op.

^{Vasiliev A.M., Vinitsky D. I.} 9 Egyptian Constitution: Islamic "yes" to secular "no" // Asia and Africa today, 2013, N 3. (Vasiliev A.M., Vinitsky D. I. 2013. Egipetskaya konstitutsiya: islamskoe " da "svetskomu" net " / / Aziya i Afrika segodnya. N 3) (in Russian)

^{Isaev L. M.} 10 "Arab Spring" and the Islamic State // Inviolable reserve, 2013. N 5. (Issaev L. M. 2013. "Arabskaya vesna" i islamskoye gosudarstvo / / Neprikosnovennyi zapas. N 5) (in Russian)

^{Vasiliev A.M., Vinitsky D. I.} 11 Decree. op.

^{Isaev L. M., Korotayev A.V.} 12 Egipetsky perevorot 2013 goda: opyt ekonometricheskogo analiza [The Egyptian coup of 2013: the experience of econometric analysis]. Aziya i Afrika segodnya, 2014, No. 2. (Issaev L. M., Korotayev A.V. 2014.Egipetsky perevorot 2013 goda: opyt ekonometricheskogo analiza // Aziya i Afrika segodnya. N 2) (in Russian)

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