Informality Versus the State?: Islamists, Informal Cairo and Political Integration by Other Means

Abstract

The relationship between non-state actors and the broader political order is one of the fundamental problematics of the political informality literature. Our examination of informal Cairo, neighbourhoods established without planning permission, and the political trajectory of the once militant Gama'a Islamiyya (GI) since the 1980s, challenges the understanding of informal politics as taking place 'outside the state'. Salafi-jihadist agendas and informal Cairo have been seen as fundamentally oppositional to the state and political order, but at the same time have actually been quite closely linked to it. In some respects they are integrated into the political order established after 1952 and at the very least are diagnostic of its own informality.