Research about autocratic regimes in the Middle East focused predominately on regime stability throughout the 2000s. Accordingly, co-optation via formal institutions like legislatures was conceived as a mechanism of the autocratic elite to maintain power. Parliament functioned, hence, as an instrument to create a pluralistic, democratic façade of the regime and a possible forum revealing additional information about political preferences thereby improving and facilitating decision-making of the autocratic elite. This paper puts forward an ambivalent role of the parliament that can also contribute to the destabilization of the regime depending on contextual factors. For the case of Egypt, I analyze parliamentary debates that took place in the legislative period before the revolution when public protests against the socio-economic crises were on the rise and private business elites became the dominant force among the ruling elite. In addition, the relatively high degree of oppositional members of parliament (25%) led to numerous conflicts within the People’s Assembly. On the one hand, by insisting on formal rights of the parliament, the opposition incited the ruling party to reinterpret formal rights in a non-democratic way in order to limit the oppositional criticism. In so doing the regime revealed its autocratic nature and the democratic façade dissolved. On the other hand, the opposition channeled the public protests into the parliament and revealed a tremendous dissent between the neoliberal wing of the ruling elite and wide parts of society. In combination with a low degree of responsiveness of the ruling party, co-optation fueled the delegitimization of the regime and potentially reinforced the destabilization of former president Husni Mubarak’s rule.
