An unwilling client: how Hosni Mubarak's Egypt defied the Bush administration's ‘freedom agenda’

Stealing an Election: Violence or Fraud?

“…The threat of a US sanction declined in the latter phases of the 2005 elections due to the Muslim Brotherhood's electoral success in the first phase and the US's fear of a Brotherhood victory. The Egyptian government is believed to have intentionally allowed only the Muslim Brotherhood to compete more openly in the 2005 elections, and not the secular opposition, in order to scare the US into reducing pressure on it to democratize (Gause III 2006, 64;Youmans 2016Youmans , 1225. The US considered rescinding aid to Egypt after the 2005 elections, and passed a House resolution explicitly condemning the violence, but ultimately, did not.…”

“…The US considered rescinding aid to Egypt after the 2005 elections, and passed a House resolution explicitly condemning the violence, but ultimately, did not. The US subsequently decreased its pressure on Egypt, reportedly out of fear that competitive elections would empower Islamists (Youmans 2016).…”

“…The judges supervised the elections as a result of a Supreme Court ruling invalidating Article 24 of Law 73 (1956). While the government had discretion in how it implemented this decision, the government reportedly allowed judges to supervise the elections due to pressure from the judges (Said 2008), a desire to uphold Egypt’s rule of law to attract foreign investment (Moustafa 2008), and pressure from the US for democratic reform following 9/11 (Youmans 2016; Sharp 2006). After 2005, when US pressure for reform had shrunk, the government revised the constitution and eliminated the judges’ supervisory role.…”

“…The US only acted as a sanctioner around the 2005 elections – one of the two elections supervised by the judges. After 9/11, the US government pressured Egypt to hold clean elections due to its belief that democracy was an important defense against terrorism (Youmans 2016). The US did not threaten to sanction individual candidates, but rather the Egyptian government.…”

Sovereignty alignment process: strategies of regime survival in Egypt, Libya and Syria

“…This simple equation has long proved effective for their authoritarian durability as it has given them the 'license to purify their domain of opposition, silence alternative voices, and eliminate dissent' (Inayatullah 1996, 50) in the name of stabilising internal order and preventing 'chaos' . Again, this is another tactic of framing by re-prioritisation as the leaders counterposed territorialised integrity, stability and 'security' to 'democracy' (Youmans 2016) as they synonymised the demands of the protestors for the latter option with 'chaos' and 'sabotage' . Gaddafi (21 August 2011) identified democracy as a threat to his powers of domestic territoriality when he said '[The protestors] blew out electricity … burn out houses ….…”