Part three of this book explores the long, tortuous and largely unsuccessful attempt to bring about a new social contract in Egypt, through a comparison with how the old, effendi social contract was established. This comparison is based on three questions that drive the discussion in the next three chapters. The first question, which looks into the changes within the effendi middle class that supported the old social contract over time, asks what happened to this group during the oil-boom era of the 1970s and early 1980s (Chapter Five). The second asks why a long-term plan designed to offer a new social contract largely remain just that – a planning initiative with little impact on the actual process of economic reform and structural adjustment in Egypt (Chapter Six). The third question examines why – despite constant public and political outcry over the crises that it entailed – the old social contract was so entrenched and central to the moral economy of the period (Chapter Seven). Overall, Part Three investigates why attempts at socio-economic reform, which were not dissimilar to the past calls for alleviating poverty, ignorance and disease under the liberal monarchy, became an elusive search for a new social contract under Sadat and Mubarak.

The period under discussion saw the return of the Muslim Brotherhood as a dominant social force in politics and in the Egyptian economy, where an Islamic economic sector became more distinct and Islamic service provision took over in places where the state retracted from offering education, health and welfare. Nevertheless, despite giving voice to a growing political opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood – as a broad social umbrella with various, sometimes conflicting, economic interests – did not come up with a clear alternative new social contract either. The Muslim Brotherhood was central to the opposition that would stall state-led socio-economic reform, voicing concern for the struggling effendi middle class and adding an important religious undertone to the moral economy that upheld a growing coalition of discontent against the regime. However, and in a somewhat contradictory fashion, it also promoted the neoliberalisation of Egypt through private economic entrepreneurship and service provisioning.