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.

The Committee for the Protection of Journalists reported that Internet journalists comprised the worldwide plurality of imprisoned media workers for a second year in 2009. Such a statistic gives pause to those that question the political impact of individuals who use the Internet to share information, bloggers prominent among them. The governments of the world have responded to those who use this novel media to share political information and opinions with the high levels of repression. Do authoritarian regimes, those that are most likely to take repressive action against members of the press, see the bloggers' activities as a serious threat to their powere Are bloggers political activists, have they fomented social movements in some placese Or, are bloggers simply inviting higher levels of repression by substantially going beyond the norms of political speechc In short: what explains the higher level of repression against bloggersr In this paper I use the case of Egypt to argue that institutions for collecting information and constraining or co-opting journalists play an important role in the levels of repression authoritarian regimes employ. In particular, I focus on five years of President Mubarak's regime marked by high levels of political activism and a corresponding rise in the level of state repression. Newswire stories of instances in which Egyptian journalists experienced state repression to provide the evidence necessary to test the hypotheses that I derive from my argument. During the five years in question, 2004 through 2008, I find 74 cases of repression against journalists of all types in Egypt reported by the Associated Press (AP), Agence France Press (AFP) and United Press International (UPI). Fourteen of these are bloggers and 38 are newspaper reporters. Using this evidence, I demonstrate that the variations in the degree and type of repression experienced by print journalists and bloggers can be explained, in part, by corporatism in the print media sector and journalists' involvement with opposition movements. Moreover, it appears that the Mubarak regime is using the judicial system as a mechanism of punishment; adding to the growing body of literature detailing the judicialization of politics in Egypt. The judicial and other institutional changes that the authoritarian state in Egypt is pursuing to reduce the need for, and costs associated with, repression of those sharing information online demonstrate the continued resilience and flexibility of the Mubarak regime.

Since the dawn of industrialization, many authoritarian regimes have taken on massive public works projects which seem impressive or farfetched. Few onlookers are surprised when these projects are not completed or are completed at such a high cost that they appear to be an exercise in futility. Usually these failures are written off as dictatorial incompetence and overambition, but the initial motivations for beginning them are rarely addressed. This paper will call into question the 'failure' of these projects. More specifically, it will argue that, rather than being a symptom of precipitant development or front for embezzlement, many of these projects were designed to fail because the regime received the largest benefit by starting them--not by completing them. This paper will explore the motivations, intentions, symbolism and repercussions for mounting an edifice of invincibility in front of a structure designed to crumble. By addressing these questions, this paper will provide a bridge between realist perceptions of these authoritarian regimes' capabilities and a postmodernist analysis of the power dynamic underlying the decision to undertake the impossible. Empirically this research will focus on Egypt with a secondary comparative case study in Romania and will trace a similar trajectory of public hydroengineering projects in both countries. Both countries had previously completed successful hydroengineering projects before taking on the impossible (the Suez Canal and Aswan High Dam in Egypt and the Vidaru Dam and the Danube Iron Gates in Romania). In Egypt, subsequent overambition has manifested itself in Mubarak's costly Toshka Project to build a second Nile River Valley; in Romania, with Ceaucescu's recommencement of the Danube-Black Sea Canal. The construction of Toshka has already taken longer than either the Suez Canal in 1859 or the Aswan High Dam in 1960, and completion is not expected for another ten years (at which time Mubarak will be 92). Correspondingly, the Danube-Black Sea Canal has been the most expensive engineering project in the history of Romania, taking 17 years to build and costing approximately 2 billion USD. The canal is not expected to be profitable for another 600 years. Despite the improbability of these projects, this strategy allowed both Mubarak and Ceaucescu to co-opt domestic opposition by embarking on lengthy, labor-intensive projects that are geographically remote from international oversight on a daily basis. While these actions display a veneer of modernity and technological innovation to the international community, their primary motivations are domestic in nature.

In Egypt, public discourse under the regime of Hosni Mubarak is still dominated by government-owned or controlled media, like the newspaper giant Al-Ahram and the TV station Nile Television. Independent newspapers like Al-Masry Al-Youm have changed this equation, but the circulation figures still favor the government-owned and aligned media outlets. As one might expect in such an authoritarian regime, many groups and individuals have difficulty accessing the public sphere. This is particularly true as Mubarak's particular brand of authoritarianism has taken on an increasingly narrow bent. Since the growth of the Internet in the mid-90s, however, scholars have looked for signs that the digital world might provide a haven for the growth of alternative public spheres for such groups, conceptualized as "electronic public spheres." This paper will explain the impact of social media on authoritarianism in Egypt through a case study of the Muslim Brotherhood. The case study will seek to answer two questions: 1) Are social media creating electronic public spheres or counterpublics for these groupse; and 2) What is the actual political or social impact of these efforts in the context of authoritarianism? This paper argues that the Muslim Brotherhood has created a parallel media infrastructure in Egypt, and takes particular note of individual efforts to memorialize and agitate for imprisoned members of the group. Efforts like these succeed or fail through critical "nodes" of elite blogger-activists and their connections to the mainstream Egyptian media. In so doing they may be part of a larger network of activists, journalists, and international actors who seek to contest certain facets of contemporary Egyptian authoritarianism.