Walking a Thin Line of Representation: Analyzing the Behavior of Egyptian MPs

This article is part of the Special Issue “Parliaments in the Middle East and North Africa: A Struggle for Relevance.” While legislators in democratic settings have the electorate as their main principal, mps in semi- and nondemocratic settings need to serve two principals to remain in office: the regime and the active segment of the electorate. This dichotymy sometimes requires particular skills in parliamentary behavior. For the case of Egypt, we investigate how mps strike a balance between regime support and representing their constituents up to an extent that does not endanger their chances for re-election. A content analysis of session scripts of the Egyptian parliament in 2016 was conducted to examine how mps walk this – traditionally understudied – thin line. Our findings indicate that representation gets reduced to “descriptive representation,” i.e. a representation that puts more emphasis on representing local constituents and demographic segments, like Copts and women, that mps are presumably elected to represent. We therefore show that mps fulfill the important tasks of citizens representation even in semi- and nondemocratic settings.