Political Advertising in Egypt: Engineering of Consent and Coercion

Introduction

Academic studies on political advertising mainly focus on countries with a democratic regime. The emergence of such a tendency among researchers can be linked to an assumption that only democratic regimes provide a fertile ground for the professional development of political advertising since democracy is based on free competition which is the equivalence of the commercial market. The role of political advertising in authoritarian regimes, on the other hand, is considered within the perspective of propaganda and examined mostly by researchers in the field of political communication. The apathy of researchers can be tied to the fact that the leaders or parties in authoritarian regimes do not feel a strong necessity to convince people and change their preferences. Thus, they do not have much interest in applying marketing and advertising techniques in their political campaigns. Sure, this is a questionable argument but there is a more important point that should be noticed. Traditional authoritarianism has been replaced by a new type of authoritarianism since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviets. This new system, named competitive authoritarianism or electoral authoritarianism, is a hybrid regime between democracy and authoritarianism. Formal democratic institutions exist and are considered the single legitimate means of gaining power. However, the incumbents appeal to undemocratic measures like abusing the state resources to get an advantage vis-a-vis their opponents (Levitsky & Way, 2010, p. 5).

The enormous transformation in communication technology, especially the development of digital media medium, increased the awareness of citizens toward democratic principles, so the weight of democracy has increased in this mixture. While continuing to use coercive means, authoritarian leaders and parties now have to respect the competitive nature of the system and be more willing to win voters’ consent. As a natural outcome of this transformation, professional and scientific marketing and advertising techniques have gained importance in the political field.

Egypt is an important case exemplifying the situation depicted. The country is governed by a semi-presidential system established following the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak in the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. The power period of Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi, the current president of the country, can be described as competitive authoritarianism. Compatible with the regime type, the number of studies on political advertising in Egypt is quite limited. Of course, the fact that the characteristics of the country’s past regimes are closer to authoritarianism also plays a role in this. When looked at the literature, it is seen that the researchers are interested most in the role of media in political process. They tried to shed light on the ambitions of the incumbents of controlling the press and lack the key elements of a democratic regulatory system to ensure and protect the independence, transparency, and accountability of the media (Elmeshad, 2021; Rozgonyi, 2014; Mendel, 2011; Sakr, 2012; Khodair, AboElsoud, & Khalifa, 2019). As a study conducted on political advertising specifically, it is possible to mention only the study by Gaweesh (2015, p. 17) in which television advertisements broadcasted during the parliamentary elections in 2012 were examined. Gaweesh’s findings reveal that the political campaigns of Egyptian politicians’ appeal to emotions as much as, sometimes even more than rationality. Most preferred emotional appeals are nationalism, identity, religion, nostalgia, enthusiasm, and revolution. These findings will be compared with the findings of this study.

In this study, the political advertisements used by Sisi and Nation’s Future Party (NFP), also known as Mustaqbal Watan Party, will be analyzed. The methodology of research is determined as the sociological analysis based on the “uses and gratifications” theory formulated by Berger (1991). Besides, in order to understand the essence of the relationship between competitive authoritarianism and political advertising, works of intellectuals belonging to critical theory current one of whom the main concern is authoritarian regimes, are utilized in the analyzing phase. The goal of the study is to explore how advertisements try to gain the gratification of electorates by benefiting from sociological and cultural issues.