Citizenship Imaginaries and Electoral Mobilization in the Egyptian Uprising

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. 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.