In the second volume of the Singapore Middle East Papers, MEI Visiting Research Professor Robert R. Bianchi examines Egypt’s parliamentary elections of 2011 and 2012 that saw victories for the Muslim Brotherhood as well as the rise of the Islamist Nur Party. Through his painstaking statistical analysis, in which he looked at voting patterns as well as partisan alliances and counter alliances, Professor Bianchi finds that electoral competition exposed Egypt’s worst cleavages of class, religion, and region. At the same time, he counters, “the elections revealed some striking and encouraging resources among Egypt’s new political elite, particularly a talent for compromise and an appetite for cooperation.”
