This article offers a new perspective on the extensive discussion of the role of new media in facilitating the 2011 Egyptian uprising by placing it within the historical context of how the state responded to new media in the previous decades. This article uses an archaeological analysis of state media to reveal how the state coped with the news media (newspapers, radio, television, satellite television) in the past to infer the present relationship between the state and the new media (the internet and social media). We discerned a recurring cyclical pattern characterized by a dynamic of openness–adaptation–narrowing, which sheds light on the media’s ability to challenge state authority and on the state’s ability to contain and limit new media. We suggest that the role of the internet and social media in the Egyptian “Arab Spring” should be viewed as being on this continuum, as an extension of processes of state–media relations that had developed in the preceding decades.
Drawing from scholarship on authoritarian adaptation and on insight from legitimacy theory, we seek to examine to what degree the renewal of authoritarianism under ‘Abd al‐Fattah al‐Sisi in post‐revolutionary Egypt can be understood as the establishment of a new political order with its own patterns of legitimation. The main focus of the discussion is al‐Sisi's adaptation of legitimization strategies designed to justify his rule and ensure stability under severe repression and economic reforms. We discuss al‐Sisi claims of personal legitimacy as a substitute for institutional legitimacy, his missionary role as a substitute for ideology, and his reshaped eudaemonic legitimacy. All these strategies of legitimation are formulated while rejecting the 2011 revolutionary legitimation and its promises for democracy. Such analysis, which goes beyond coercion or institutional explanations for authoritarian adaptation, scrutinizes the conceptual reconstruction of authoritarianism as a tool to ensure the consent of the citizens and their legitimacy to the renewal of authoritarianism.
This paper examines the political activity of the Coptic diaspora in the United States in support of the Coptic minority in Egypt. Analysing its strategy reveals that for years it has focused on lobbying the United States and international bodies, in order to raise international awareness of the Coptic minority status. By using this strategy, it has framed the struggle for Copts' rights in a manner that contradicts the Egyptian unity narrative, and the strategic choices of those they are struggling for. This paper shows that understanding the limitations of this strategy alongside a change in the structure of opportunities in Egypt has led to a change in the pattern of activity of the diaspora activists. Alongside lobbying for international involvement, they have developed additional strategies, including strengthening their influence in the homeland and even direct action vis-à-vis the Egyptian authorities. This paper, which emphasises the pattern of action of diaspora activists that represent minorities, directs attention to the structure of opportunities in the homeland, the variety of relationships between the diaspora and the homeland, and their effect on the ability of the diaspora activists to become a significant force in shaping the life of the minority.
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