Raging Against the Machine: Political Opposition under Authoritarianism in Egypt

1. Regime and Opposition: Two Schizophrenic Personalities

1 1 Regime and Opposition Two Schizophrenic Personalities Political opposition in an authoritarian regime has a positive reputation among Western media and policymakers: he who opposes the dictator—if not an Islamist—is, at least implicitly, considered a democratic force. This perception includes the notion that the opposition challenges government in its very core, that is, its claim to execute decision making in the polity. Opposition here is “office-seeking” and becomes a force that contains the potential—or, at least, the claim—to replace the authoritarian government (and in this process establish, it is hoped, democratic procedures). In this view, political opposition is one part of a binary referential system. In the words of Niklas Luhmann, “the term opposition entails its meaning only as a momentum of a differentiation between government and opposition. It does not denote an autonomous phenomenon” (Luhmann 1989, 13). It is this institutionalized opposition—an opposition with a capital “O”—that came to the focus in political science studies. This reaches beyond an everyday meaning of political opposition as a counterposition that a son poses to the words of a father or a defender toward a striker in a football match; moreover, back in the societal and political arena, what James C. Scott described as the “hidden transcripts” of social resistance (Scott 1990)—rumors, gossip, jokes, songs, social rituals, and codes—do not fit into this political science category. Rather, they are part of a potentially ample menu of political action through which an opposition agitates against a government. The view on political opposition primarily as an institution to control political power and provide an institutionalized alternative to the 2  Raging Against the Machine government in place is rooted in classical theories of democracy (see Potter 1966; Ionescu and Madariaga 1971).1 Opposition in a democracy has three main functions: the control of the incumbents’ power and its execution; the representation of the interests and preferences of political minorities and social actors that are not represented in government; and the identification of an institutionalized alternative in a competitive political system. In turn, “where there is no possibility of alternation in power between governing elements and oppositional elements through a peaceful process of fair and free elections, there is no constitutional opposition, and therefore no genuine democracy” (Lawson 1993, 194). It goes without further reference to democratic theory that the existence of political opposition is a necessary, yet not sufficient, precondition for democracy. Because of an opposition’s inherent democratic substance, contentious activism of an opposition has been viewed primarily as a zero-sum game about political power and the struggle for office, but not as an enterprise to realize relative gains.2 This renders the study of opposition in authoritarian regimes difficult. Barbara McLennan stated in an early critical assessment that Robert Dahl, and the associated academic tradition, “has avoided the difficulty of comparing competitive systems to noncompetitive ones, where repression is either very real or threatened.” McLennan goes on to argue that Robert Dahl’s “approach, so dependent on the descriptive analysis of particular Western states, offers no clue as to how to proceed 1. Opposition studies had their heydays in the second half of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s. Robert Dahl developed the early research agenda as the most important single aspect of his larger contribution to theories of democracy (see Dahl 1966, 1971, 1973, and 1975). Other important works of this early period include Kirchheimer (1966); Sartori (1966); Barker (1971). The special importance that political opposition has received in political science studies of this period is reflected in the foundation, by Ghita Ionescu, of the journal Government and Opposition, which has quickly developed into one of the leading academic sources in comparative politics. 2. Otto Kirchheimer’s classic definition of office-seeking competition says that it is present “if political jobs are filled by selection from candidates whose number is in excess of the places to be filled” (Kirchheimer 1966, 237). Regime and Opposition  3 to broaden the realm of comparison” (McLennan 1973, 383).3 In authoritarian regimes, incumbents do not allow opposition, protest movements, or societal contenders to control their exercise of power and participate in the competition about political office. Democratic alternance is not at stake in the polity, and the regimes restrict the equitable representation of society. On the other hand, noncompetitive political regimes are unable (or perhaps unwilling) to prevent the emergence...