Some thoughts on the Egyptian coup

I start from the premise that it is never a good thing for a democratically elected government be overthrown in a military coup.

However which of these two events was today's coup more like

1. A lightening bolt hits your house. 
2. A couple decides to divorce after a bad three year marriage.  

In the former case the badness is contained in the event itself.  In the latter case the badness is not contained in the event itself.  The decision to divorce is a reaction to a bad situation.  I would argue that today's coup was a reaction to a bad situation.

Websters defines a constitution as either

1. an established law or custom: ordinance
2. the mode in which  a state or society is organized; especially:  the manner in which sovereign power is distributed
3. the basic principles and laws of a nation, state, or social group that determine the powers and duties and the government and guarantee certain rights to the people in it
4. a written instrument embodying the rules of a political or social organization

However my friend Leonard Wantchekon would argue that a constitution is not just a set of rules by which  country is to be governed.  Rather it is a set of rules for power sharing by which parties agree to band together to form a coalition.  The rules contained within the constitution must be attractive enough to get all parties to agree to enter into the coalition.  Some of the rather strange aspects of the the original Constitution of the United States (the Senate, the 2/3 person rule) were concessions to woo small states and slave holding southern states into the coalition.  The US Civil War occurred when one party to the coalition (the Southern states) decided they no longer wanted to abide by the rules of the constitution and struck out on their own.  Lincoln later used the opportunity of the war to redefine the rules of the constitution.

Using this definition of constitution is is easy to see what went wrong with the drafting of the Egyptian Constitution.  The document was written by a drafting committee made up predominantly of Muslim Brotherhood.  When the constitution was put to a popular vote it received 63% of the vote but only 30% of the eligible population voted - meaning that only 19% of the eligible population voted in favor of the document.  So large portions of the population did not in fact agree to the rules of the game.  Even so last November President Morsi changed some of the rules of the game by announcing that his decrees were above judicial review.

So is this more like the lightening bolt or the divorce?

Having said that I wonder if not for the bad state of the economy would Morsi still be in power.  I tend to think yes.  It was a combination of lack of legitimacy and deteriorating economic performance with no apparent plan for how to improve the situation - which pushed him out.