One of the best informed studies of Nasser's Egypt was made by Anthony Nutting, a British minister who came to know Nasser personally. Nutting, after initially hoping that Nasser would use his power to lead Egypt along a more democratic path, grew disillusioned with what the regime had done. Nutting's regret was that the gains made by Nasser on the industrial and social front were not repeated in the political field. Egypt under Nasser became a military dictatorship organized around a bloated and corrupt bureaucracy.
Nutting adds, however, that the responsibility for the way conditions had developed in Egypt went beyond Nasser. Stressing the importance of considering basic Egyptian attitudes, Nutting suggests that veneration of the strong leader was an ingrained practice among the people. The Egyptian populace had, as was their tradition with leaders from time immemorial, deified Nasser. If, therefore, he responded more as a Pharaoh of old than as a constitutional ruler of the twentieth century, they were as much to blame as he was.
This is a view supported by Said Aburish, who regards Nasser as an 'odd type of dictator', explaining that Nasser 'manifested a need to be loved, or followed because he was loved, which most dictators do not have. His dictatorial ways were a mixture of populism and a need to be accepted as a man of principle'. Like Nutting, Aburish refers to the way in which the political tradition among Egyptian people made them complicit in the imposition of dictatorship over them. 'The problem was not in the spread of oppression and privileged exceptions, but in the fact that the Egyptians became used to them to the point that they considered them as normal.'
World History
