Abstract

The military coup was staged in the summer of 2013. In the intervening period, Egypt’s ruling generals have succeeded in handcuffing the public space and bringing back fear as an everyday feature of life in a country that is still in dire straits. By various repressive measures, civilians have learned to fear the consequences of free expression and peaceful opposition. To this end as well, Egypt’s ruling generals have also adapted legal and legislative tools to persecute political enemies and eradicate the existence of autonomous civil society organizations. However, far less attention has been paid to the details surrounding the legal and legislative tools utilized by Egypt’s generals, and even less to the concerning implications these tools carry regarding notions of justice and the populace’s faith in the neutrality of public institutions. A thorough explanation and analysis are necessary to understand fully the functioning of the new authoritarianism. It is also of paramount importance to highlight the fact it is impossible to search for ways to restore a democratic transition in Egypt without a structured thinking about how to dismantle the legal and legislative framework of the new authoritarianism.