Mohammed Sultan - محمد سلطان
The Selectorate theory discusses the three main factors affecting the process of voting for the leader and the impact of the government type on the entire process. The theory is built upon the assumption that the citizens are either just residents, selectors or winning coalition. It is as if is a circle within another circle. The real selectors are who take the initiative and go cast their votes because they are eligible and determined to participate in the process. As for the last type, the winning coalition are those could be called the essence of the leader’s success because those are the one who support the leader with the majority of votes.
Taking Egypt as an example, the selectors are everyone who is eligible to participate in voting regardless to their political or ideological preferences. The winning coalition is the set of people who will be positively affected or the beneficiaries of the leader in office. Accordingly, the theory states that the leader’s main objective is to maintain his power and remain in office either by private goods or public goods.
When the winning coalition is very small with a large selectors ,such as in dictatorships, the leader resort to providing private goods for the coalition as a sort of bribery or cooperation to preserve their support and loyalty. In fact, in this case it very easy for the leader to stay in power because it easier for him to replace the small winning coalition with another one from the large selectors which represents an existential threat to the winning the coalition. Historically speaking, Egypt under the rule of Muhammed Ali, according to Dr Khalid Fahmy, History professor at AUC, was the obvious manifestation of the small winning coalition where the Pashas, Vaziers and the elite either politically or financially were the ones having the best standard of living. I would argue that the same pattern has never changed, since the 25th of Jan revolution was meant to face the same dilemma where the national wealth was and still is manipulated and exploited be almost 30 major families in the entire country.
On the other hand, in democracies, where the winning coalition is large, the leader tend to consider the large population in his equation of remaining in power, which let him resort to the public goods that benefit the society as a whole not just a sect or particular followers and supporters. Applying that on the Egyptian context, I think it only happened in the first year after the revolution because there was no only one specific winning coalition, but rather a race between the governments along with the presidential candidates to satisfy the entire of the citizens.
The theory also states that in monarchies, where the selectors and the winning coalition is small it is very challenging for the leader to be toppled simply because the winning coalition and the selectors are almost the same, so replacing the leader will not negatively affect their interests. Also, any challenger would not convince the winning coalition to gain their support because they are already well taken care of and the incentive for defection is already being accumulated. Antithetically, in democracies where the winning coalition is large and the selectors are large, it represents an ongoing instability for the leader to remain in office because it very costly for the leader to provide private goods for each member in the winning coalition. Therefore, to gain the loyalty of the winning coalition is matter of good governance and democratization rather than bribery and corruption.
As for the Egyptian arena, over the past four years, Egypt has been characterized by large selectors and winning coalition, but I think it is more about the nature of the nature of the people to be revolutionary or not. I think it is directly related to the very assignment about the animal farm and how they were manipulated. The Egyptian ground is different because the winning coalition who is not a beneficiary of the private goods has been always marginalized by force to follow the main stream of the elite. It is like choose the stake or the carrot. Therefore, my analysis according to the theory is that in dictatorships even if the winning coalition and selectors are large, yet it is about how they are represented or freely allowed to participate. Another aspect that could be taken into consideration is the militarily participation- including the Judiciary, economic and political supports- in most of the Arab world and the third world countries. In a nutshell, it is those who do support the leader are the ones whose votes are respected and counted. Therefore, the core message is that the way out of the current dilemma is have selectors who are large, yet not tracing of the winning coalition’s footsteps.
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