Politics: The Concept of Domesticated Opposition

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Conceptualization of “domesticated opposition”
The concept of “domesticated opposition” is used by scholars to describe opposition parties that are loyal rather than competitors and that have complied with the government’s game of restricted pluralism.
Also dubbed as “toothless”, domesticated opposition hardly challenge the regime’s semi-authoritarianism and are not part of the decision making process. They have come to depend on the regime’s consent to secure their minimal political gains and to protect the narrow political space in which they are operating (Shehata, 2009). In other words, rather than opposing the regime’s policies, they made a policy of pleasing the government into accepting their existence.
Will use the same general concept in referring to the secular legal opposition in Egypt during Mubarak’s era.
Operationalization of “domesticated opposition”:
Will measure it by how much the legal secular opposition in Egypt during Mubarak’s era was: weak, loyal, coopted, coerced and permit/agree to state clientalism.
Conceptualization of Autocracy:
According to Palgrave MacMillan dictionary of political thought, Autocracy literally means “self-rule”. “It is the rule by an agent who holds all power himself, and who exercises that power in an arbitrary manner.”
The presence of constitution and laws which limit his power can be revoked or disregard by him at will as there is no independent mechanism for enforcing them.
The principal feature is that the ruler may affect each of his subjects at any time in any way that he pleases, and in a manner that admits of no redress. “Autocracy should therefore be seen as the perversion of absolutism, in which power is not only absolute but also arbitrary,” according to MacMillan dic...

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...he boundaries of judicial legality are vague. Opposition movements may well be illegal in that they are not granted formal judicial authorization strategy of containment but are informally tolerated and recognized such as the Muslim Brotherhood. On the other hand, opposition groups might be legally recognized but face other forms of statist containment, ranging from the limited “freezing” of the respective group to more coercive mechanisms, such as the incarceration of its leaders and confiscation of material and financial assets.
Political parties have also become a target of the inconsistent application of the law; the socialist-turned-Islamist Socialist Labor Party (SLP) and the Liberal Party (LP) have received “freeze” orders; but the parties were never practically dissolved and their representatives found ways to participate actively in public life.

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