Lse Middle East Centre Podcasts

This webinar will be the launch of Yezid Sayigh's latest report 'Praetorian Spearhead: The Role of the Military in the Evolution of Egypt’s State Capitalism 3.0' published under the LSE Middle East Centre Paper Series. In this report, Sayigh explores how military involvement in the Egyptian economy is giving rise to a new version of state capitalism. Driven by Arab socialism in the 1960s and reshaped by privatisation in the 1990s, under President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi the state has sought to bend the private sector to its capital investment strategy while continuing to profess commitment to free market economics. His administration seeks private sector investment, but exclusively on its own terms. This is demonstrated through the expansion and diversion of military economic activity in five sectors: real estate development, creation of industrial and transport hubs, rentier or extractive activities related to natural resources, relations with the private sector, and the effort to increase the state’s financia