This chapter explores Tunisia's history as an authoritarian country that struggled with economic developing, ultimately resulting in a parasitic crony capitalist class closely allied with the regime. While the Arab Uprisings ushered in democracy, they failed to replace these crony networks as business engaged with parties in the new democracy. Unlike Egypt, Tunisia remained a democracy, but the presence of crony capitalists as party funders undermined reform efforts and the ultimate success of the democratic project.

Corruption in the Middle East and North Africa is both widely prevalent and a puzzle because it is so resistant to reform. This book will engage with democratic transitions in Egypt and Tunisia to better understand why these countries saw so little change in terms of cronyist relations between businesses and the state.

This chapter concludes with thoughts about how democratic activists might be able to remove crony capitalism from institutions. The chapter argues that transparency about the depth of corruption is a necessary first step, especially in terms of understanding who controls rents in the regime. Only when these networks of influence are mapped can democratic accountability start to lead to lasting change.

This chapter explains how Egypt became a state with a high level of crony capitalism, and also why the Arab Uprisings failed to change the status quo despite throwing out the prior regime. The rise of the Egyptian military, and in particular its economic holdings, consolidated business support behind a military coup that overthrew democracy and pushed Egypt back toward corrupt dictatorship. Business had relatively little choice, but nonetheless played an important role building a new authoritarian regime.

This chapter puts forward a theory to explain how businesses engage in politics following democratic transitions in countries with significant issues with corruption. The most important variable is the centralization of the networks of brokers who supply companies with needed government privileges. If these rent networks are narrow, then businesspeople must work through a single gatekeeper. If they are broad, then business can engage with multiple brokers and obtain rent more easily.

This chapter presents original survey evidence of corporate political action in Egypt and Tunisia. Employing multiple surveys between 2017 and 2020, the chapter shows that Egyptian business were more active politically and more willing to take strong measures such as telling their employees who to vote for. These differences in engagement are a reflection of the presence of the military in Egypt and its strong economic linkages with businesspeople.

This chapter expands on the previous chapter by presenting survey evidence from Morocco, Jordan, Venezuela, and the Ukraine using the same conjoint experiment of business political engagement. The chapter documents that Egypt's military has a higher level of penetration than even other Arab countries. In general, Arab countries seem to have more economically involved militaries than non-Arab countries. An additional pattern is that companies that have had to pay higher bribe costs in the past five years are more likely to engage in political action, suggesting that they are trying to protect their companies and their relationships with the government.