Businessmen in the Opposition

Abstract

This chapter aims to answer the question of how the Egyptian authoritarian regime dealt with businessmen in opposition parties and opposition movements who refuse to be co-opted. To answer this question, this chapter builds on the work of Ellen Lust-Okar,1 which finds that Egypt’s authoritarian regime maintained its survival by creating a divided political environment between the legal and illegal opposition. However, my findings are distinct from Lust-Okar’s, since I argue that in Egypt, the regime renewed its authoritarianism by creating a divided political environment among parties and movements in the opposition on other levels. On one level, the regime co-opted some businessmen in legalized opposition parties and used them to create a divided political environment inside those opposition parties that refused to be co-opted by the regime’s clientelistic chain. On another level, the regime created a divided political environment among parties and movements in the illegal opposition.