Rethinking resistance under authoritarianism: civil society and non-contentious forms of contestation in post-uprisings Egypt

ABSTRACT

In 2018 President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi secured a second presidential term in a constrained political environment exacerbated by his control over the media, prosecution of journalists and activists, and his crackdown on civil society. As a result of such resilient authoritarianism, the optimism that once defined the Egyptian uprisings has turned into cynicism. This article contributes to the literature surrounding civil society and resistance in authoritarian contexts by offering an examination of the interplay between authoritarian tendencies and their resistance in post-uprisings Egypt. I argue that we should view al-Sisi’s regime as representing an authoritarian system that is not absolute, despite its soft and hard repressive methods, but one that still offers limited space for civil society organizations (CSOs) to function. This limited space importantly comprises covert resistance methods which can offer Egyptian CSOs opportunities to resist the state’s legal and extra-legal restrictions. The resistance methods considered in this article need to be understood in Gramscian terms as they encompass the limited means available by which CSOs can negotiate the terrain of hegemonic contestation under the existing authoritarian context. Given al-Sisi’s re-election and the sustained crackdown on Egyptian civil society, the need to analyse such forms of resistance is pertinent.

KEYWORDS:

• Authoritarianism
• civil society
• Egypt
• Gramsci
• resistance

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their extremely helpful and constructive feedback. I would also like to thank Ian Bruff, Linda Herrera, Hayley James, Charlotte Branchu and Katie Urnevitch for their feedback on earlier drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Gramsci’s conception of the integral state comprises both political society and civil society, where the former is associated with ruling through force and the latter with ruling through consent, or ‘State = dictatorship + hegemony’ (Gramsci, 1971, p. 239).

2. Details of my fieldwork including the ethical and political considerations arising during the process are found in Mirshak (2018).

3. See Tansel (2017) for a discussion on how authoritarian states utilize a spectrum of ‘disciplinary strategies’ to repress oppositional forces.

4. I use ‘security apparatus’ to denote the interferences conducted by the Ministry of Interior and the State Security Investigations Services, later renamed Homeland Security after 2011. Many interviewees simply referred to such entities as al-amn or security.

5. Mobadarat translates to ‘initiatives’ in Arabic (singular: mobadra).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nadim Mirshak

Nadim Mirshak is Lecturer in Sociology at The University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political sociology of education, social movements and critical pedagogy, and state-civil society relations under authoritarian contexts.