Editorial Type:
Article Category: Research Article
| Online Publication Date: 24 Jan 2012
Saying "Enough": Authoritarianism and Egypt's Kefaya Movement
Saying "Enough": Authoritarianism and Egypt's Kefaya Movement
Page Range: 397 – 416
How do reform-oriented social movements in authoritarian states get off the ground? I argue that authoritarian regimes can actually facilitate social movement mobilization by making it easier for movement leaders to form opposition coalitions. When authoritarian states experience a political opening, certain structural aspects of these regimes will ease the process of coalition formation. I describe three ways in which these states facilitate mobilization: (1) they offer a straightforward set of least-common-denominator goals; (2) they establish incentives for existing organizations to get involved; and (3) they enhance the role of protest events in building cohesion. To make my case, I analyze the Egyptian Kefaya movement, a social movement whose diverse members had never meaningfully worked together before and whose nine months of sustained street protests defied expectations that it would collapse under regime repression.
Abdallah, Ahmed. 1985. The Student Movement and National Politics in Egypt. London: Al Saqi Books.
Adler, Glenn, and Eddie Webster. 1995. "Challenging Transition Theory: The Labor Movement, Radical Reform, and the Transition to Democracy in South Africa." Politics and Society 23: 75-106.
Almeida, Paul D. 2003. "Opportunity Organizations and Threat-Induced Contention: Protest Waves in Authoritarian Settings." American Journal of Sociology 109(2): 345-400.
Almeida, Paul D. 2005. "Multi-Sectoral Coalitions and Popular Movement Participation." Pp. 63-99 in Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, volume 26, edited by Patrick G. Coy. New York: Elsevier Science.
Almeida, Paul D. 2008. Waves of Protest: Popular Struggle in El Salvador, 1925-2005. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Ansell, Christopher K. 2001. Schism and Solidarity in Social Movements. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Armstrong, Elizabeth A. 2002. Forging Gay Identities: Organizing Sexuality in San Francisco, 1950-1994. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Arnold, Gretchen. 1994. "Dilemmas of Feminist Coalitions: Collective Identity and Strategic Effectiveness in the Battered Women's Movement." Pp, 279-90 in Feminist Organizations: Harvest of the New Women's Movement, edited by Myra Marx Ferree and Patricia Y. Martin. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Bayat, Asef. 2007. Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Beattie, Kirk J. 2000. Egypt During the Sadat Years. New York: Palgrave.
Beissinger, Mark R. 2011. "Mechanisms of Maidan: The Structure of Contingency on the Making of the Orange Revolution." Mobilization 16(1): 25-43.
Bermeo, Nancy. 1997. "Myths of Moderation: Confrontation and Conflict during Democratic Transitions." Comparative Politics 29: 305-22.
Bieber, Florian. 2003. "The Serbian Opposition and Civil Society: Roots of the Delayed Transition in Serbia." International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 17(1): 73-90.
Boudreau, Vincent. 2004. Resisting Dictatorship: Repression and Protest in Southeast Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bradley, John R. 2008. Inside Egypt: The Land of the Pharaohs on the Brink of Revolution. New York: Palgrave.
Bratton, Michael, and Nicolas van de Walle. 1992. "Popular Protest and Political Reform in Africa." Comparative Politics 24: 419-42.
Bratton, Michael, and Nicolas van de Walle. 1997. Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brownlee, Jason. 2007. Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chowdhury, Reshmi. 2006. "‘Outsiders’ and Identity Reconstruction in the Sex Workers' Movement in Bangladesh." Sociological Spectrum 26(3): 335-57.
Collier, Ruth Berins, and James Mahoney. 1997. "Adding Collective Actors to Collective Outcomes: Labor and Recent Democratization in South America and South Europe." Comparative Politics 29: 285-303.
Croteau, David, and Lyndsi Hicks. 2003. "Coalition Framing and the Challenge of a Consonant Frame Pyramid: The Case of a Collaborative Response to Homelessness." Social Problems 50(2): 251-72.
Dalton, Russell J. 1994. The Green Rainbow: Environmental Groups in Western Europe. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Davenport, Christian, Hank Johnston, and Carol McClurg Mueller (eds). 2005. Repression and Mobilization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
DeFronzo, James. 1991. Revolutions and Revolutionary Movements. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Della Porta, Donatella. 1995. Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State: A Comparative Analysis of Italy and Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Earl, Jennifer. 2003. "Tanks, Tear Gas, and Taxes: Toward a Theory of Movement Repression." Sociological Theory 21: 44-68.
Earl, Jennifer. 2004. "Controlling Protest: New Directions for Research on the Social Control of Protest." Pp. 55-83 in Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change: Authority in Contention, edited by Daniel M. Cress and Daniel J. Myers. New York: Elsevier Science.
Einwohner, Rachel L. 2003. "Opportunity, Honor, and Action in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943." The American Journal of Sociology 109(3): 650-75.
El-Ghobashy, Mona. 2005. "The Metamorphosis of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers." International Journal of Middle East Studies 37: 373-95.
Erlich, Haggai. 1989. Students and University in 20th Century Egyptian Politics. London: Frank Cass.
Ferree, Myra Marx, and Silke Roth. 1998. "Gender, Class, and the Interaction between Social Movements: A Strike in West Berlin Day Care Workers." Gender and Society 12: 626-48.
Foran, John. 2005. Taking Power: On the Origins of Third World Revolutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Francisco, Ronald. 1996. "Coercion and Protest: An Empirical Test in Two Democratic States." American Journal of Political Science 40(4): 1179-1204.
Francisco, Ronald. 2005. "The Dictator's Dilemma." Pp. 58-81 in Repression and Mobilization, edited by Christian Davenport, Hank Johnston, and Carol McClurg Mueller. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Gamson, William. 1992. "Social Psychology of Collective Action." Pp. 53-76 in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, edited by Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Garretón, Manuel Antonio. 1989. The Chilean Political Process. Winchester, MA: Unwin Hyman.
Gerhards, Jurgen, and Dieter Rucht. 1992. "Mesomobilization: Organizing and Framing in Two Protest Campaigns in West Germany." American Journal of Sociology 98(3): 555-95.
Giugni, Marco G., Doug McAdam, and Charles Tilly. 1998. From Contention to Democracy. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
Goldstone, Jack A. 1998. "Social Movements or Revolutions? On the Evolution and Outcomes of Collective Action." Pp. 125-145 in From Contention to Democracy, edited by Marco G. Giugni, Doug McAdam, and Charles Tilly. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
Goldstone, Jack A., Ted Robert Gurr, and Farrokh Moshiri. 1991. Revolutions of the Late Twentieth Century. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Goodwin, Jeff. 2001. No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945-1991. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Goodwin, Jeff. 2003. "The Renewal of Socialism and the Decline of Revolution." Pp. 59-72 in The Future of Revolutions: Rethinking Radical Change in the Age of Globalization, edited by John Foran. London: Zed Books.
Goodwin, Jeff, and James M. Jasper. 2003. "Caught in a Winding, Snarling Vine: The Structural Bias of Political Process Theory." Pp. 3-30 in Rethinking Social Movements: Structure, Meaning, and Emotion, edited by Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Goodwin, Jeff, and Theda Skocpol. 1989. "Explaining Revolutions in the Contemporary Third World." Politics and Society 17(4): 489-509.
Gould, Roger. 1995. Insurgent Identities: Class, Community, and Protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Hafez, Mohammad M. 2003. Why Muslims Rebel: Repression and Resistance in the Islamic World. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Hathaway, Will, and David S. Meyer. 1997. "Competition and Cooperation in Movement Coalitions: Lobbying for Peace in the 1980s." Pp. 61-79 in Coalitions and Political Movements: The Lessons of the Nuclear Freeze, edited by Thomas Rochon and David S. Meyer. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Hojnacki, Marie. 1997. "Interest Groups' Decisions to Join Alliances or Work Alone." American Journal of Political Science 41(1): 61-87.
Jasper, James M. 1997. The Art of Moral Protest: Culture Biography and Creativity in Social Movements. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Jasper, James M., and Francesca Polletta. 2001. "Collective Identity and Social Movements." Annual Review of Sociology 27(1): 283-305.
Katz, Mark N. 1997. Revolutions and Revolutionary Waves. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Katz, Mark N. 1999. Reflections on Revolutions. London: Macmillan.
Kepel, Gilles. 1993. Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and Pharaoh. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Klandermans, Bert. 1990. "Linking the ‘Old' and ‘New’: Movement Networks in the Netherlands." Pp. 122-136 in Challenging the Political Order, edited by Russell J. Dalton and Manfred Kuechler. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Klandermans, Bert. 1992. "The Social Construction of Protest and Multiorganizational Fields." Pp. 77-103 in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, edited by Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Klandermans, Bert, and Marga de Weerd. 2000. "Group Identification and Political Protest." Pp. 68-90 in Self, Identity, and Social Movements, edited by Sheldon Stryker, Timothy J. Owens, and Robert W. White. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Kleidman, Robert. 1993. Organizing for Peace: Neutrality, the Test Ban, and the Freeze. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Kleidman, Robert, and Thomas Rochon. 1997. "Dilemmas of Organization in Peace Campaigns." Pp. 47-60 in Coalitions and Political Movements: The Lessons of the Nuclear Freeze, edited by Thomas Rochon and David S. Meyer. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Kurzman, Charles. 1996. "Structural Opportunity and Perceived Opportunity in Social Movement Theory: The Iranian Revolution of 1979." American Sociological Review 61: 153-170.
Kurzman, Charles. 2004. The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Levi, Margaret, and Gillian H. Murphy. 2006. "Coalitions of Contention: The Case of the WTO Protests in Seattle." Political Studies 54(4): 651-70.
Loveman, Mara. 1998. "High-Risk Collective Action: Defending Human Rights in Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina." American Journal of Sociology 104(2): 477-525.
Mansbridge, Jane. 2001. "The Making of Oppositional Consciousness." Pp. 1-19 in Oppositional Consciousness: The Subjective Roots of Social Process, edited by Jane Mansbridge and Aldon D. Morris. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Markoff, John. 1996. Waves of Democracy: Social Movements and Political Change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
McAdam, Doug. 1988. Freedom Summer. New York: Oxford University Press.
McAdam, Doug. 1996. "Political Opportunities: Conceptual Origins, Current Problems, Future Directions." Pp. 23-40 in Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings, edited by Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. 2001. The Dynamics of Contention. New York: Cambridge University Press.
McCammon, Holly J., and Karen E. Campbell. 2002. "Allies on the Road to Victory: Coalition Formation between the Suffragists and the Women's Christian Temperance Union." Mobilization 7(3): 231-51.
Melucci, Alberto. 1989. Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Meyer, David S. 2001. "Social Movements and Public Policy: Eggs, Chicken, and Theory." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, CA.
Meyer, David S., and Catherine Corrigall-Brown. 2005. "Coalitions and Political Contexts: US Movements against the Wars in Iraq." Mobilization 10(3): 327-46.
Murphy, Gillian. 2005. "Coalitions and the Development of the Global Environmental Movement: A Double-Edged Sword." Mobilization 10(2): 235-50.
Obach, Brian K. 2004. Labor and the Environmental Movement: A Quest for Common Ground. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Olzak, Susan, and Emily Ryo. 2007. "Organizational Diversity, Vitality, and Outcomes in the Civil Rights Movement." Social Forces 85(4): 1561-92.
Osa, Maryjane. 2003. Solidarity and Contention: Networks of Polish Opposition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Osa, Maryjane, and Cristina Corduneanu-Huci. 2005. "Linking Economic and Political Opportunities in Nondemocracies." Pp. 171-201 in Economic and Political Contention in Comparative Perspective, edited by Maria Kousis and Charles Tilly. London: Paradigm Publishers.
Osa, Maryjane, and Kurt Schock. 2007. "A Long Hard Slog: Political Opportunities, Social Networks, and the Mobilization of Dissent in Nondemocracies." Pp. 123-153 in Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, volume 27, edited by Patrick G. Coy. New York: Elsevier Science.
Oxhorn, Philip. 1995. Organizing Civil Society: The Popular Sectors and the Struggle for Democracy in Chile. University Park, PA: Penn State Press.
Parsa, Misagh. 2000. States, Ideologies, and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of Iran, Nicaragua, and the Philippines. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rose, Fred. 2000. Coalitions Across the Class Divide: Lessons from the Labor, Peace, and Environmental Movements. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Schock, Kurt. 2005. Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movements in Nondemocracies. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Shadid, Anthony. 2007. "Egypt Shuts Door on Dissent as US Officials Back Away." Washington Post, May 19.
Skocpol, Theda. 1979. States and Social Revolutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Skocpol, Theda. 1982. "Rentier State and Shi'a Islam in the Iranian Revolution." Theory and Society 11: 265-83.
Snow, David, and Robert Benford. 1988. "Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization." International Social Movement Research 1: 197-217.
Snow, David, E. Burke Rochford, Steven Worden, and Robert Benford. 1986. "Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation." American Sociological Review 51: 464-81.
Springborg, Robert. 1989. Mubarak's Egypt: Fragmentation of the Political Order. London: Westview Press.
Staggenborg, Suzanne. 1986. "Coalition Work in the Pro-Choice Movement: Organizational and Environmental Opportunities and Obstacles." Social Problems 33: 374-90.
Tarrow, Sidney. 1983. Struggle, Politics and Reform: Collective Action, Social Movements and Cycles of Protest. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Tarrow, Sidney. 1989. Democracy and Disorder: Protest and Politics in Italy, 1965-1975. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tarrow, Sidney. 1995. "Mass Mobilization and Elite Exchange: Democratization Episodes in Italy and Spain." Democratization 2: 221-45.
Taylor, Verta, and Nancy E. Whittier. 1992. "Collective Identity in Social Movement Communities: Lesbian Feminist Mobilization." Pp. 169-194 in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, edited by Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Tilly, Charles. 1993. European Revolutions, 1492-1992. Oxford: Blackwell.
Tilly, Charles. 1995. Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Tilly, Charles. 2006. Regimes and Repertoires. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Van Dyke, Nella. 2003. "Crossing Movement Boundaries: Factors that Facilitate Coalition Protest by American College Students." Social Problems 50(2): 1930-90.
Van Dyke, Nella, and Holly J. McCammon (eds). 2010. Strategic Alliances: Coalition Building and Social Movements. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Wickham, Carrie Rosefsky. 2002. Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism, and Political Change in Egypt. New York: Columbia University Press.
Wieloch, Neil. 2002. "Collective Mobilization and Identity from the Underground: The Deployment of ‘Oppositional Capital’ in the Harm Reduction Movement." The Sociological Quarterly 43(1): 45-72.
Wiktorowicz, Quintan. 2001. The Management of Islamic Activism: The Salafis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and State Power in Jordan. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Wiktorowicz, Quintan (ed). 2004. Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Wood, Elisabeth Jean. 2000. Forging Democracy from Below: Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Zald, Mayer N., and John D. McCarthy. 1980. "Social Movement Industries: Competition and Cooperation among Movement Organizations." Pp. 1-20 in Research in Social Movements, Conflict, and Change, volume 3, edited by Louis Kriesberg. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Zald, Mayer N., and John D. McCarthy. 1987. Social Movements in an Organizational Society. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.