Legacies of Repression in Egypt and Tunisia
Authoritarianism, Political Mobilization, and Founding Elections

An examination of how legacies of authoritarian rule shaped the outcome of Egypt's 2011 founding elections.

Alanna C. Torres-Van Antwerp (Author)

9781009100519, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 March 2022

255 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.4 cm, 0.63 kg

When an authoritarian regime collapses, what determines whether an opposition group will form a political party, be successful in mobilizing voters, and survive or dissolve as a group in subsequent years? Based on unique field research, Alanna C. Torres-Van Antwerp examines the origins of the dramatic political arc of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood - from winning a plurality of parliamentary seats and the presidency in the first free elections in eighty years to being ousted from office eighteen months later through a popular coup - and finds common causal factors that structured the fates of other formerly repressed opposition groups in five comparative cases. She demonstrates how the processes of party formation, electoral mobilization, and party dissolution after the ousting of an authoritarian regime were shaped by the way that regime structured the resources, incentives, and constraints available to opposition groups in the previous era.

1. Authoritarian politics and founding elections
Part I. Members of the Club or the Only Game in Town?: 2. Divided opposition in Egypt (1981-2011)
3. Authoritarian political opportunity structures in comparative perspective
Part II. Phoenix from the Ashes: Party Formation and Electoral Mobilization after Authoritarian Collapse: 4. Linking the authoritarian landscape to party formation and political mobilization in Egypt's founding elections (2011)
5. Party formation and political mobilization in comparative perspective
Part III. Epilogue: 6. When the dust settles – Authoritarian legacies beyond founding elections
7. Authoritarian legacies and the prospects for democratic consolidation.

Subject Areas: Constitution: government & the state [JPHC]