Leadership and collective action in the Egyptian trade unions

Abstract

This article explores leadership and collective action in the Egyptian workers’ movement since the 1940s, with a focus on the competition between different models of leadership. It argues that leadership is a dialogical process, and distinguishes between two models of leadership — bureaucratic and democratic — which sit at opposite ends of a spectrum of reciprocity between ‘leaders’ and ‘led’. Although such developments are as yet embryonic, the emergence of a democratic model of union leadership, rooted in the particular forms of collective action adopted by Egyptian workers during the post-2006 strike wave, presents the most significant challenge to the dominance of the bureaucratic model since the creation of the current union federation in the 1950s.