The Study of Political Instability and Government Busting Coalitions in Post-Revolutionary Egypt Based on Game Theory

Abstract

The present paper aims to answer the question: Why instability erupted within the political scene of Egypt in context of so called Arab spring revolutions from January 2011 up the coup in June 2013. According to Charles Tilly’s social movement theory, the present study claims that those instabilities were results of weak and brittle coalitions which were formed between political groups in Egypt. The study hypothesis was analyzed through the game theory. Muslim brotherhood, Salafi forces, Liberal-Secular forces and Egyptian Army were identified as four main players within the political scene in Egypt according to Tilly’s theory. The relationships between those main political players were analyzed using the game theory concept based on two strategies of “making coalition” or “avoiding coalition”. From the total 17 resulting calculated scenarios (4 players each with two strategies), 12 acceptable scenarios were identified. The results showed that the political situation will tend to move towards stability if the military and secular forces form a coalition. This result can be linked to two after coup periods between 2013 and the present time. Also our findings based on game theory and Nash’s equilibrium theory suggests that Egypt needs a triangle of political forces to prevail the arena in order to achieve a stable situation. Since the weights of stability condition for three tier coalition of brotherhood-secular-army, or salafi-brotherhood-army or secular-brotherhood-Salafi are almost identical, it can be stated that political stability in Egypt is more depending on the number of forces which enter a coalition than the type of players which form the coalition.

Keywords

• political stability
• political coalition
• egypt
• game theory
• social movements