E-Books →Shouting in a Cage Political Life After Authoritarian Co–optation in North Africa

Shouting in a Cage offers new ways to understand co-optation's power and its limits by examining two co-opted parties, the Wafd Party in Egypt and the Istiqlal Party in Morocco. Sofia Fenner argues that co-optation is less a corrupt bargain than a discursive contest―a clash of competing interpretations. Co-opted parties conjure up imagined futures in which their short-term choices will lead to the realization of their long-term democratic goals. Meanwhile, other actors point to the disconnect between these parties' antiauthoritarian aspirations and their participation in authoritarian systems. Fenner demonstrates that co-opted parties come to look hypocritical precisely because they refuse to give up their oppositional commitments. Their credibility sapped, they become unappealing allies and, eventually, political afterthoughts. However, such parties retain a surprising capacity for opposition, rooted in the literal and metaphorical idea of "party as family." Based on extensive archival research and ethnographic fieldwork in North Africa,
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