The Muslim Brotherhood and the Perception of Democracy

The objective of this study is to assess the Muslim Brotherhood's prospects to facilitate a democratic transition within Egypt. Numerous studies have examined the Muslim Brotherhood's political ideology to objectively assess its consistency with democracy. However, to date there has been no comparative subjective study conducted to assess the Muslim Brotherhood's capacity to facilitate democracy within Egypt. This thesis will attempt to fill that gap by subjectively measuring the Muslim Brotherhood's democratic intentions as perceived by other important actors within the Egyptian polity since the 2012 Egyptian Presidential Election. The perceptions of the Muslim Brotherhood's democratic capacity and intent are critically important to assessing the likelihood of Egypt's transition to democracy. To that end, the major research question of this thesis paper is the following: "what is the current perception of the Muslim Brotherhood's commitment to democratic compromise within the Egyptian polity?"