‘Bread! Freedom! Social justice!’ was the cry of enraged Egyptians as they protested at Tahrir Square in Cairo and in other cities, beginning on 25 January 2011. President Hosni Mubarak was toppled only eighteen days later, on 11 February 2011. In phase 1, the revolution erupted and Mubarak fell. Phase 2 represented a transition towards a second revolution as the country went through populist ownership and military management; tried to transition to democracy through parliamentary elections; experienced its first democratically elected President; and finally, in 2013, underwent a summer of upheaval engulfing the whole social fabric through a counter-revolution. But was the Arab Spring realised?

Phase 1: Revolution erupts and Mubarak falls

Why did the revolution erupt and why did Mubarak fall? Mubarak's old methods of co-optation, repression, and promises of political liberalisation, that had served him so well for almost thirty years, though showing some serious cracks of late, were no longer effective in saving his rule. Emboldened by the success of the Tunisian revolution against Ben Ali, the determined masses lost their fear of the regime and demonstrated, demanding the ousting of Mubarak too.

The underlying reason for the revolution was a hierarchical dissonance in values between the priorities of the ruler and those of the majority of Egyptians; this persisted, was not bridged, and ultimately undermined Mubarak's regime. The revolutionary groups of the ruled considered economic improvement to be their highest-priority value, as illustrated by the respondents to a Pew Research Center Poll in 2011, conducted on the eve of the revolution, in which 82 per cent considered this value to be ‘very important’, surpassing that of the lawand- order priority of the Egyptian President, which scored 63 per cent (Pew Research Center 2012). It is therefore no wonder that the first cry of the protesters was for ‘bread’, while Mubarak continued to emphasise his usual appeals to stability with security as his highest-priority value, and relegated the divisive neoliberal economic measures to second priority. This dissonance became intolerable, since, unlike the rulers of Morocco (Chapter 4) and Jordan (Chapter 5), who successfully reformed their monarchies, Mubarak did not resort to the palliative of religion, which could perhaps have saved his rule.