Pre- and Post- Revolution Egypt

Pre-revolution Egypt was an exception to Duverger’s law, but currently Egypt upholds it.  Duverger’s law is that if a country has single-member-district-plurality (SMDP) then they will have two effective parties, as opposed proportional representation (PR) which will have multiple parties.

            Egypt’s legislature is utterly confusing. As of 2010, the lower chamber, called the People’s Assembly, was made of 46 multi-member districts, voted through proportional representation and 83 two-member districts, voted by a majority system. They also appoint people to ten other seats (Datebase). 

Party Names	% of seats	p²
National Democratic Party	81%	.66
Independents	10.2%	.01
New Wafd Party	1.1%	.0001
Progressive Nationalist Union Party	0.9%	.00008
Tomorrow Party	0.2%	.000004
Social Justice Party	0.2%	.000004
Democratic Generation Party	0.2%	.000004
Democratic Peace Party	0.2%	.000004

(Electionworld).

You can find the effective number of parties with this formula:

N_eff = 1 / Σ(proportions)²

The total number of efficient parties in 2010 would be 1.49. This would almost be consistent with a SMDP, however, Egypt is both SMDP and PR. This proves that Duverger’s Law does not fully apply in Egypt. It is obvious that the National Democratic Party has the majority of seats. Remember that this data is from 2010, before the uprising. The National Democratic Party was Mubarak’s party. There is a good chance that these elections did not have true contestation. Egypt has since restructured their legislature and the National Democratic Party has been dissolved.

Election overview: The electoral rules in Egypt are a bit complicated. The two-thirds under the PR system were based off a closed party/coalition list. The lists had to have at least one woman listed on it. The threshold was .5% of the votes. The candidates in the other third, with the majority system, have to get over 50% of the votes. One member of each two person constituency must be either a worker or a farmer. If they are not farmers or workers then the one with the highest number of votes is elected and a runoff is held the next week between the farmer/workers with the highest number of votes. And if there are still positions to fill then they are appointed (Datebase). As you can see this is quite confusing and complex.  

District magnitude: The portion of the People’s Assembly that is PR has about 7.2 seats per district (332/46) and with SMDP they have 2 seats per district (166/83).

Formula: With SMDP it is first-past-the-post.  PR has a formula unique to Egypt that takes into consideration gender and farmer/worker backgrounds.

Since 2010 their system has been altered slightly. They still have a hybrid of systems with two-thirds being under PR and one-third being SMDP- which still must be half workers/farmers. They are abolishing the rule about having at least one woman on the party list though. The actual data for their current legislature is uncertain. Somehow they are unsure of how many seats some parties hold, but the proportions are close enough that it will work.

Party	# of seats	p²
Democratic Alliance for Egypt (Muslim Brotherhood)	235	.21
Islamist Bloc	121 or 123	.05
New Wafd Party	41	.0065
Egyptian Bloc	35 or 34	.0047
Al-Wasat Party	10	.0003
The revolution Continues Alliance	9	.0003
Reform and Development Party	9	.0003
independents	21	.001

(Electionworld)

In 2011 the total effective number of parties is 3.66. This number is more in line with the proportional representation and since two-thirds of their legislature is PR, this number is appropriate. Since the fall of Mubarak and the restructuring of Egypt’s legislature, they now hold Duverger’s law to be true.

Datebase, Parline. Inter-parliamentary Union. n.d. http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/2097_B.htm.

Electionworld. Wikipedia. n.d. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Egypt.