When the Egyptian revolution of 2011 is remembered in much of the Western media and commentary, it is usually told as a story of young, urban, tech-savvy protesters demanding political freedom in Tahrir Square. In this version of events, Egypt’s brief democratic opening rises and falls through struggles between elites: the Egyptian armed forces, the Muslim Brotherhood, liberal middle-classes and international actors.

One group is largely missing from this story: the working class.

This absence is not just a problem of journalism. It also reflects how democratic transitions are often studied. Much of the scholarship either explains democracy as the product of economic development or focuses on elite bargaining and regime negotiations. In both cases, organised labour tends to disappear from view, treated either as a passive social group or as background noise to elite politics.

My research on Egypt’s failed democratic transition suggests that this is a serious mistake.

Modernisation, elites and what gets left out

Broadly speaking, theories of democratisation tend to fall into two camps. One is associated with modernisation theory, which links democracy to levels of income, education and institutional development. From this perspective, countries that have not yet reached a certain level of socio-economic development are considered poorly equipped for democratic governance. Although this approach has evolved over time, its core assumption, that structural conditions largely determine political outcomes, remains influential.

It is worth remembering that some of the most influential modernisation theorists were closely connected to the US political establishment during the Cold War, and that their work often functioned as an ideological counterweight to socialist and post-colonial approaches to development. Walt Rostow, for example, was not only a leading theorist of modernisation but also directly involved in policymaking under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. This legacy continues to shape how democratic failure in the Global South is often interpreted, as a problem of societies being “not ready” for democracy.

The second camp adopts a more actor-centred approach, focusing on political agency rather than structural prerequisites. Scholars working in this tradition examine elite splits and regime-opposition negotiations. In the Egyptian case, this has produced accounts centred on interactions between the military, the Muslim Brotherhood, liberal middle-classes and international actors.

Despite their differences, both approaches share an important blind spot: the systematic marginalisation of the working class and organised labour. Modernisation theory tends to treat workers as objects of development, while elite-centred accounts prioritise negotiations among powerful actors and downplay mass organisations rooted in society. As a result, labour movements rarely appear as central political actors, if they appear at all. Even influential works on democratisation largely ignore unions and the working class when explaining why transitions succeed or fail.

Labour and the Egyptian revolution

This omission is particularly striking in the case of Egypt.

Although it is not widely acknowledged, the Egyptian working class was a key actor in the country’s democratic uprising, not only in 2011, but also in the years leading up to it. Major strikes in El-Mahalla al-Kubra in 2006 and 2008 involved tens of thousands of workers across multiple industries. The 2006 strike at the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company alone saw the participation of more than 20,000 workers.

The 2008 strikes had political consequences well beyond the workplace. They contributed to the creation of the April 6 Youth Movement, which began as a Facebook page supporting the strikers and later became a prominent actor in the 2011 protests. In February 2011 itself, another wave of strikes played a crucial role in accelerating Hosni Mubarak’s downfall, alongside the demonstrations in Tahrir Square.

Yet these dynamics are often overshadowed by narratives that portray the Egyptian revolution as a middle-class uprising driven by social media and liberal aspirations. In such accounts, workers and unions appear at best as marginal participants, and at worst as irrelevant.

Egypt in comparative perspective

Egypt is not an isolated case. Over the past fifteen years, democratic uprisings have emerged in regions as diverse as Latin America, the Middle East and the post-Soviet world. In several of these cases (most notably Tunisia, Belarus and Iran), organised labour has played an important role. Yet systematic studies of labour’s role in contemporary democratic struggles remain surprisingly rare.

This contrasts with the literature on earlier waves of democratisation. The role of labour movements in transitions during the so-called Third Wave, from the mid-1970s through the 1990s, is well documented. In countries such as Brazil, South Africa, Poland and South Korea, unions were central not only to struggles against authoritarian rule but also to the consolidation of the democracies that followed. In Brazil and Poland, union leaders even went on to become presidents.

These cases also highlight an important lesson: labour movements have a much better chance of counting politically if they develop organisations with the resources, cohesion and strategic capacity to exert lasting influence. Without such organisational strength, labour’s political power tends to dissipate.

EFITU and the limits of labour power in Egypt

In Egypt, the labour movement did not succeed in building this kind of organisational capacity.

The formation of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU) in February 2011 was the most serious attempt to do so. EFITU sought to break the monopoly of the pro-regime Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), which had been created under Gamal Abdel Nasser to subordinate organised labour to the state. The unionists who founded EFITU, mostly from the public sector, shared the belief that labour needed organisational independence if it was to play a decisive role in the revolutionary process.

This was an important turning point. For the first time, there was an attempt to transform years of worker mobilisation into an organised political force capable of shaping events in a democratic direction.

Precisely for that reason, EFITU quickly became a target. Both the military and the Muslim Brotherhood viewed it as a threat to the existing balance of power. Efforts to weaken the federation ranged from repression to co-optation. During Mohamed Morsi’s presidency, the Muslim Brotherhood sought to exclude EFITU from economic negotiations while attempting to bring its leadership under its influence.

After the military coup of July 2013, repression intensified dramatically. Under Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the armed forces launched a broad campaign not only against the Muslim Brotherhood but also against leftist activists and independent unionists. Co-optation of union leaders became a key strategy for weakening EFITU. A federation that had gained momentum after Mubarak’s fall now faced overwhelming pressure from the new military government.

Why EFITU failed, and why it matters

It is difficult to identify a single reason for EFITU’s failure to become a powerful political actor, but several factors stand out. Most of the unions involved were public-sector unions, meaning that large segments of the industrial working class (particularly in the textile sector) were not fully incorporated. At the same time, EFITU never developed a political project that extended beyond immediate labour demands. It did not attempt to build an independent political organisation capable of contesting power.

As a result, workers’ influence over the revolutionary process remained limited. Labour mattered, but not enough to decisively shape the outcome.

Lessons for future democratic struggles

The outcome of Egypt’s democratic revolution offers important lessons, both for scholars and for social movements. Egypt’s failure was not simply the result of elite betrayal or international interference. It emerged from interactions among multiple actors, including organised labour.

A central lesson is that labour movements will be in a better position to shape political outcomes decisively if they build independent organisations with real strategic capacity. The absence of such organisational strength in Egypt was a key reason why the post-Mubarak order did not evolve in a more democratic direction.

For scholars, this means taking labour seriously, not as a background social force, but as a political actor. Focusing exclusively on elite bargaining or middle-class mobilisation is not enough to understand how democratic revolutions succeed or fail. For unions and activists, understanding why strong, independent organisations emerge (or fail to emerge) can help inform more coherent strategies in future struggles for democracy.

Gabriel Huland is a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies at the University of Bath

This article is based on Huland, Gabriel. 2025. “Egypt’s Failed Democratic Transition: Why the Labour Movement Matters.” Global Labour Journal 16(3). doi:10.15173/glj.v16i3.6842.

Image: April 2008 uprisings in Mahalla, Egypt, by James K. Buck. Wikimedia Commons