IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/qkme8.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Citizenship Imaginaries and Electoral Mobilization in the Egyptian Uprising

Author

Listed:
  • Sobhy, Hania

Abstract

Can campaign messaging propel candidates to the forefront of a historic election, despite poor political resources? In the first round of the 2012 Egyptian presidential elections, the two main pro-Revolution candidates, Sabahi and Futuh, jointly secured more votes than the ‘old regime’ and Muslim Brotherhood candidates possessing far superior resources, with Sabahi very close to entering the runoffs. Based on one-of-a-kind research with the two campaigns, this research note analyses the strategies of campaigners on the ground in translating the central tropes of the Revolution: freedom and social justice. It shows how campaigner perceptions of voter preferences shaped their messaging on issues of critical importance to democratization and to elections in global South contexts: clientelism, socioeconomic rights, public safety and political rights. To theorize the differentiated framings deployed by social movements, it develops the notion of “citizenship imaginaries,” as a device for conceptualizing the differentiated lived experiences, narratives and emotions through which subjects orient themselves vis-à-vis the state as central to. It illustrates how progressive pro-democracy campaigners on the ground in Egypt spoke to dominant citizenship imaginaries by understating freedom, emphasizing security, improvising translations of social justice and evading revisionist readings of Islamism and state-socialism/ Nasserism.

Suggested Citation

  • Sobhy, Hania, 2024. "Citizenship Imaginaries and Electoral Mobilization in the Egyptian Uprising," SocArXiv qkme8, Center for Open Science.
  • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:qkme8
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/qkme8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/662ba708d896072bda1b1433/
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/qkme8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:qkme8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.