Authoritarian regimes that hold regular elections use a variety of strategies for ensuring the failure of opposition challengers. As previous works on electoral authoritarianism have noted, this "menu of manipulation" often includes curbing the freedom of speech; stuffing ballot boxes; excluding opposition leaders and/or parties from elections; and intimidating voters through violence (Schedler 2002). Under President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt has used all of these strategies against opposition parties. Yet the literature on Egyptian politics and electoral authoritarianism has overlooked another manipulative strategy of the regime: the regime's establishment of parties to displace key challengers from the political scene. I call these parties "fake" opposition parties because, although they are real political parties that nominally oppose the regime, they are founded by the regime and do not challenge the ruling party in any meaningful way. This paper seeks to explain the conditions under which the regime establishes "fake" opposition parties. Empirically, it examines the regime's recent intervention in the Ghad party and establishment of a "fake" party with the same name as a case study. Indeed, following the September 2005 elections, the regime imprisoned Ghad leader and former presidential candidate Ayman Nour; induced a faction from within the Ghad party to break away and form its own party; and licensed the new party under the "Ghad" name, thereby displacing the actual Ghad party and its legitimate leadership from electoral politics. By comparing the formation of the "fake" Ghad party to strategies that the regime has used against other opposition parties, this paper explains the conditions under which the regime establishes "fake" opposition parties. It argues that these "fake" parties are formed when the regime is confronted with parties that emerge from within Egypt's elite networks - the very networks from which the regime's members are drawn - and refuse co-optation. This paper further observes that the manipulative strategy of establishing "fake" opposition parties is deeply rooted in Egyptian political history, and argues that the Ittihad Party - a "fake" opposition party founded by King Fuad I in 1930 - was founded for similar reasons. Specifically, the monarchy founded the Ittihad party to displace the Wafd party, which drew support from networks that were vital to the regime and resisted co-optation.