The Study Of The Interaction Mode Between Contemporary Egyptian Government And Non-governmental Organizations

Egyptian NGOs are influenced by both the international NGO movement and the Egyptian social movement.It originated in the early 19 th century during the Muhammad Ali reform period,developed during the Nasser and Sadat administrations,flourished during the Mubarak presidency,and transformed into the Mursi and Sisi periods.Since the outbreak of the “Arab Spring”,Egypt has boasted 26,000 NGOs.And the interaction with the Egyptian government has become increasingly frequent,showing the characteristics of diversified tasks,geographical dispersion,and social networking.Since its inception,Egyptian NGOs have had varying degrees of influence on social economy,cultures,education,family relations,public health,climate and environment,religious integration,and protection of minority interests,which has promoted political democratization and social pluralism in Egypt as well.According to the thesis research design,this paper classifies the Egyptian NGOs from the two dimensions of “source”(origins or source of funds)and “function”.From “source”,it can be divided into overseas NGOs and local NGOs.The overseas NGOs can be divided into two subcategories of international NGOs and foreign NGOs.According to the function,this paper divides Egyptian NGOs into religious NGOs,advocacy organizations and social development organizations.Islamic NGOs and Coptic NGOs are a secondary classification of religious NGOs.Taking the above two dimensions as the horizontal and vertical coordinates,this paper conducts a classification study of Egyptian NGOs to examine the differences in the interaction patterns between different types of NGOs and the Egyptian government.Compared with other Middle Eastern and North African countries,Egyptian NGOs enjoy a relatively loose social environment,but its authoritarian regime has also formed a government management model and interactive form with Egyptian characteristics.On the one hand,the government adopts policies of encouragement and support,giving grants and personnel support within the scope of the law to complement the inadequacy of governmental function,and exert the effectiveness of grassroots organizations to prevent the vacuum of social governance.On the other hand,the government is vigilant against the NGOs that are related to political and social stability and even takes restrictions and controls measures to master the initiative of management and judicial interpretation.The Egyptian Government's management of NGOs can be divided into legal and administrative means.The former includes Law No.32 promulgated in 1964,Law No.84 promulgated in 2002 and Law No.70 promulgated in 2017;the latter is reflected in the relevant administrative agencies related to the management of NGOs,such as personnel,funds or in engaging in coordination activities of NGOs and other aspects.Egyptian NGOs participate in national governance in two aspects: social management and government decision-making.The former includes giving play to the function of government,improving the level of social public services,stimulating social economic vitality,relieving employment pressure,protecting minority rights and interests,and maintaining ethnic harmony.The latter refers to the fact that non-governmental organizations supervise the government on the one hand and promote the process of political democratization in Egypt.On the other hand,they do not hesitate to compete with the government on certain sensitive issues,and even form a confrontational situation.As the most populous country in the Middle East and the Arab world,the important task for political development in Egypt is how to guide the healthy development of nongovernmental organizations.Based on the different categories of Egyptian NGOs,this paper divides the interaction model between the Egyptian government and NGOs into three categories: “dominant-coordination type”,“cooperation-confrontation type” and “fierce confrontation type”,and take the Egyptian Red Crescent,the American Association of Copts,and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights as case studies to conduct a detailed analysis.The study found that there is a complex interaction model between the Egyptian government and non-governmental organizations.The two sides are interdependent and mutually constrained,and thus become the important variables that affect the triangular interaction of Egypt's “government-society-NGOs”.