The protests and subsequent ousting of the then President of Egypt Hosni Mubarak are what has emerged to be called the Egyptian Revolution. Civil resistance, non-violent disobedience, and labor strikes characterized the revolution. People from different social and economic backgrounds took part in the demonstrations. It began by calling for people to turn up for peaceful demonstrations through social media networks.
This caught the regime unawares as it was something that had been attempted and failed before due to the small number of people who took part in the previous protests. The number of protesters soared to approximately one million, despite desperate efforts to call in the army, announce a curfew, to combat the demonstrations, it was too late, and finally, the deposed president had to resign.
The macrosociology approach insists on analysis of the population and systems from a larger perspective or rather it analyses large groupings of people like a city. A group of human population must have political autonomy and engage in several similar activities to be considered a society (Calhoun, 24). The Egyptian revolution involved people from a common background who were tired of the oppressive regime. The revolution was influenced by factors ranging from political, legal, social, and economic factors.
Political factors including brutality by security forces, state of emergency laws, and undemocratic elections sparked the anger of the protesters. Rumors had it that, President Mubarak had been grooming his son Gamal Mubarak to inherit the presidency (Tadros Para. 16). The same thing had happened in Syria in the year 2000 and the opposition feared it might happen again especially with the deteriorating health of President Mubarak.
An emergency law had been in force since the Six-Day War of 1967. It meant that security forces had extended powers, no constitutional rights to citizens, legalization of censorship, and the government could arrest and imprison individuals indefinitely. The police force committed torture and abuse of human rights in various ways. This was made evident by various confessions of victims. The regime utterly ignored continued claims by local and international human rights activists. Accusations of election rigging in five presidential elections in which Mubarak won with landslide victories had emerged and these political factors served to cause an uprising in the entire Egyptian population.
Economic and social factors also contributed to creating the revolution. Corruption among the leading elite of the government contributed to the slow economic growth in the country. It was a common perception of the whole population to think that the only people who could benefit from the nation’s wealth had to have a connection with the leading National Democratic Party. Like many African countries, high numbers of unemployment and reliance on subsidized goods are characterized by the Egyptian socioeconomic state.
The large numbers of unemployed youths were able to come out into the streets and take part in the protests. Technology contributed to fueling the revolution. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter made it possible for the protesters to communicate and gather large numbers of people. Although the internet was shut down during the revolution, it was too late because the information had already spread too far.
The Egyptian revolution is best described by the Conflict theory. In the context of Egypt, society features only worked for the good of a few numbers of individuals. The ruling regime acquired resources to its own through corruption and the use of excessive force by security forces. These factors in turn created a conflict that finally erupted in form of the revolution coupled with protests.
Works Cited
Calhoun, Craig. Dictionary of the Social Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Tadros, Sam. “The Story of the Egyptian Revolution.” American Thinker, 2011. Web.