Haenni, Patrick. “The Reasons for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Failure in Power”. In Egypt’s Revolutions, edited by Bernard Rougier and Stéphane Lacroix, 19–39. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Haenni, Patrick. “The Reasons for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Failure in Power”. In Egypt’s Revolutions, edited by Bernard Rougier and Stéphane Lacroix, 19–39. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

• During its brief time in power in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood attacked the vested interests of the state bureaucracy and alienated other political parties. In the face of continued public protest and trade union opposition, the Brotherhood adopted a law-and-order line that turned the crowds in the streets against it (19-20).
• Although the US initially supported the Brotherhood as a popular and stable government in Egypt, it was unwilling to challenge the Egyptian military once it became clear that the army had decided to reclaim control (20).
• During its long period in opposition to the Mubarak government, the Brotherhood had maintained alliances with other opposition groups. Earlier in 2011, the Brotherhood had sponsored public forums with other opposition groups to discuss democratic change in Egypt. Their temporary support for Mohamed el-Baradei's presidential bid also demonstrates a willingness to work with the broader opposition (20).
• The Brotherhood attempted to prolong consensus among the opposition during the 2011 revolution and avoid the impression that it would enforce its Islamist agenda. To this end, it created an opposition coalition, called the Democratic Alliance, composed of Wafd, al-Ghad, several Nasserist parties, and a number of former regime allies, in addition to the Brotherhood (20). 
• The Democratic Alliance began to fracture and shrink in the month following the revolution, as the Constitutional Reform Commission released their draft constitution on 19 March 2011. It made no major alterations to the existing constitution -- contrary to the wishes of the non-Islamist members of the Alliance -- and did not accede to the popular demand that a constituent assembly be called before elections were held. Within the Alliance, only the Brotherhood supported the Commission's work (21).
• Campaigns by the Brotherhood during the referendum focused on defending Article 2 of the constitution, which proclaimed that all law stemmed from sharia. This turned the conversation away from other elements of the constitution, like the lack of democratic reforms, and towards Islamic identity in Egypt (21).
• Islamists organized a protest against secularism on 29 July, to which the Brotherhood gave tacit support. The protest itself was overrun by extreme Salafists who praised Osama bin-Laden and vowed the destruction of the Democratic Alliance; in the aftermath of these protests, the al-Tagammu Communist Party left the Alliance. On 15 August 2011,  all parties opposed to Islamism organized themselves into the Egyptian Bloc (21-22).
• The Brotherhood defended the constitution and the popular referendum supporting it not on their own merits, as a method of ending military involvement in politics and returning order to Egypt. The Brotherhood's unwillingness to endorse continued revolution was a combination of fear and respect of the military and the desire of its conservative constituents for a return to business as usual (21).
• Parliamentary elections in Fall 2011 further damaged the Democratic Alliance, as both Wafd and Nour, a Salafi party, left the Alliance after failing to come to agreement with the Brotherhood on joint electoral lists (22).
• Tensions between the Brotherhood and all other political parties were exacerbated by President Morsi's decree on 21 November 2012 that the presidency and legislature were immune from prosecution. Fearing the restoration of autocracy, this decision sparked month-long protests (23).
• The Brotherhood responded to these protests by portraying itself as a law-and-order party opposed to the chaos and disorder created by opposition protests. This strategy also received the support of most Salafi parties, despite their fears that the Brotherhood would dominate government. The Brotherhood established a conservative Islamist coalition between themselves, the Salafi parties, and the centrist al-Wasat party (23).
• Nour has a very mixed relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood. While they both agree on the necessity of an Islamic state, Nour sees the Brotherhood as overly ambitious and not Islamic enough. This had led to a number of tactical splits between Nour's Salafi base and the Brotherhood, as Nour supported Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh in the 2012 presidential election, and backed both the 2013 anti-Brotherhood protests and the subsequent military coup (22-23).
• The Brotherhood viewing the alliance of regime-affiliated businessmen and organized labor as the basis of opposition to the Brotherhood, and tried to address this challenge by breaking the power of trade unions (24).
•  The Morsi government's behavior towards Egyptian labor unions was marked by arrests, a lack of legal progress, and suspicion of their activities. The Brotherhood's own liberal economic policies, combined with pressure from the IMF, motivated continued crackdowns on organized labor (26).
• During its time in parliament, the Brotherhood voted against the empowerment of trade unions and tried to use its influence to derail strikes and split workers' movements. The general stance of the Brotherhood was that strikes were organized by, "spoiled workers incapable of being patient and recognizing that their situation had improved since the revolution" (24).
• In November 2012, President Morsi took steps against public protests, empowering a special court to punish those who insulted the government, impeded transportation through protests, or destroyed property. He also declared exceptional powers to end opposition to government function (24-25).
• The Brotherhood attempted to establish control over trade unions by declaring, in January 2013, that all members of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation over the age of 60 would be retired and replaced with their junior members; if no junior had been selected in the 2006 elections, then Manpower Minister Khaled al-Azhari would appoint their replacement. This ended with 150 of the 500 Federation executive board seats being filled with Brotherhood supporters (25).
• The new constitution enforced control over the Federation by declaring the all unions had to join the Federation, essentially making the hundreds of independent trade unions formed in 2011 and 2012 illegal (25).
• Egypt had been on an ILO blacklist for failing to meet international labor standards for years, and, after a brief period, was placed back on this list in June 2013 due to continued harassment and beatings of trade unionists and the maintenance of the 1976 law prohibiting independent unions (25-26).
• The Brotherhood sought to restore relations with the Egyptian business community, in particular reaching out to business interests close to the Mubarak government to reassure them either personally or collectively of the Morsi government's friendly attitude towards business (26).
• Outreach to the Egyptian business community was orchestrated by Hassan Malek, who founded the Egyptian Business Development Association and the Contact Group. This group brought together Islamist businessmen, like Khairat al-Shater and Osama Farid, with Mubarak-linked businessmen, like Mohammed Farid Khamis, Safwat Thabet, and Mansour Amer. It also facilitated the negotiated return of many exiled businessmen (26-27).
• The Brotherhood justified its actions by arguing that the return of Murbarak-aligned businessmen would facilitate economic recovery. These rehabilitated Mubarak allies combined with young business-minded Islamists within the Brotherhood to form a powerful liberal and pro-business lobbying group within the Morsi government (27-28).
• The Brotherhood's stance of reconciliation and rehabilitation of many pro-Mubarak businessmen was lamented by other members of the governing coalition, especially Nour (27).
• The Brotherhood assumed that its friendly and merciful treatment of Mubarak-aligned businessmen would result in a lasting alliance between the business community and the Brotherhood. To the businessmen, this was always a marriage of convenience and they did not feel qualms about jumping ship in 2013 (27).
• The Brotherhood saw the main threat to its goals stemming from a deep state within the Egyptian bureaucracy and tried to destroy this threat by purging state institutions and filling departments with its own members. This approach realized the fears of the liberals and the Salafis that the Brotherhood was aiming to exercise complete control over the state, and they did not join the Brotherhood in its fight against the deep state (28-29). The Brotherhood saw any resistance to its takeover of bureaucracies as tantamount to pro-Mubarak counterrevolution and attacked with greater force, further alienating departments that were often simply conservative and opposed to Islamism (33).
• The success of the Brotherhood's strategy of filling government departments with its own staff varied in different areas. Weak state bodies, like the national media, or those with Islamist sympathies, like the Ministry of Religious Endowments, were quickly taken over by the Brotherhood (29).
• The Morsi government used strategies of control over the media similar to those employed by the Mubarak government, especially dropping salaries to nearly nothing and distributing bonuses to compliant workers, while denying these bonuses to opposition state-employed journalists. It also forcibly retired many older workers and replaced them with Brotherhood supporters (29).
• In the Ministry of Religious Endowments, it excluded Sufis from positions of power -- claiming that they were natural allies of Hosni Mubarak -- and placed prominent Brothers and Salafis in positions of power. Critics of the Brotherhood were dismissed from the Ministry and replaced with loyal Brothers (29-30).
• The Brotherhood's purge of the state bureaucracy did not touch the security services, with members of the Mubarak government remaining in control of the Ministry of Interior, including men who had been prominent in repressing the 2011 revolution (30).
• The amicable relationship maintained between Mubarak-affiliated figures in the security forces and the Brotherhood can be explained through the Brotherhood's desire to use the same extensive security apparatus created by Hosni Mubarak for its own aims (30-31).
• The Brotherhood maintained particularly careful relations with the army, declaring its respect for the Camp David Accords and trying to avoid conflict with the military, whom it saw as a major political force that shared its dedication to societal order (31).
• Although the army originally sided with liberals against the Islamists during the 2011 disputes over the new constitution, the younger generation of military leaders gathered around Abdel Fatah el-Sisi recognized the Brotherhood as a force dedicated to social stability. The alliance between the Brotherhood and the army was based on mutual concern about stability and order, the army's promise to stay out of civilian politics, and the Brotherhood's respect for military privileges in the 2012 Constitution, including the right to manage its own budget outside of parliamentary supervision, and the ability to try civilians in its military court system (31-32).
• The army was also the primary strategic partner of the USA and the West, and Western support for the Morsi government was conditional on its respect for rudimentary democracy, international commitments, a liberal market economy, and good relations with the military (32).
• Tensions did exist between the army and the Brotherhood. Firstly, the army saw President Morsi's plan to open the Suez Canal to international investment as compromising Egyptian sovereignty, as well as his conciliatory position on the border dispute with Sudan. The military's decision to destroy tunnels into Gaza also inflamed tensions, as they blamed the Brotherhood of supporting Hamas despite its attacks on Egyptian soldiers (32).
• The judiciary formed one of the cores of opposition to the Brotherhood, with most judges refusing to oversee referendums organized by the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood interpreted this resistance of evidence of counterrevolution, while the judiciary saw the Brotherhood as ignoring its decisions and stepping on judicial independence and decided to fight back (33-34).
• By the time that it reached a position of power, the goal of the Brotherhood had shifted from broad political and institutional change -- still sought by most other participants in the 2011 Revolution -- to societal stability and economic growth (34).
• The Brotherhood split with other members of the Democratic Alliance over the issue of continuing the revolution and the resultant disruption of everyday life. It ended up siding with a group of other conservative political forces, including the military, the security services, the business community, and other pro-business Islamist and Salafist groups (35).
• The author argues that the essential mistake of the Brotherhood was a belief that stability could be restored through economic growth without accompanying political concord. It focused solely on getting the economy running again and assumed that doing this would allow it to maintain its hold on power despite increased criticism of authoritarianism and opposition from almost all other political parties, with even the Salafis abandoning the Brotherhood in 2013 (35-36).