Political Participation at the Edge: Human Rights Mobilisation, Lived Experience, and Authoritarian Power

Political sociology has increasingly turned its attention to democratic backsliding, authoritarian drift, and the social consequences of shrinking political space. Much of this debate, however, remains centred on democracies under pressure, focusing on populism, nationalism, and institutional erosion within formally democratic systems. This paper shifts the analytical lens to authoritarian contexts where political exclusion is not emerging but entrenched, and where political participation and engagement must be understood beyond the boundaries of formal institutions. Drawing on a comparative study of human rights activism in Iran and Egypt between 2000 and 2020, the paper examines how political participation is reconfigured under conditions of sustained repression. It argues that, in the absence of meaningful institutional access, participation does not disappear but takes alternative forms rooted in mobilisation, resistance, and everyday practices of resilience. Human rights activism—often treated as symbolic, reactive, or marginal—is instead shown to constitute a central mode of political participation in authoritarian settings. Empirically, the paper builds on qualitative research conducted as part of a doctoral project, including interviews with human rights defenders and activists, alongside analysis of advocacy documents, reports, and mobilisation strategies. Rather than offering a comprehensive history of movements, the analysis focuses on how actors understand and enact participation when formal politics are closed. It explores practices such as documenting violations despite the absence of legal remedies, engaging in legal mobilisation under conditions of judicial capture, contesting state narratives through symbolic and normative claims, and sustaining collective action through informal, network-based, and transnational channels, including exile and diaspora spaces. Particular attention is paid to the lived experiences of authoritarianism and the everyday negotiations of risk, visibility, and survival that shape political engagement under repression. Theoretically, the paper contributes to political sociology by challenging institution-centred definitions of political participation. It questions the implicit assumption that participation presupposes access to elections, parties, or policy-making arenas, and instead proposes an action-based understanding of participation grounded in political agency, intent, and sustained engagement. By bridging macro-level structures of authoritarian rule, meso-level movement dynamics, and micro-level lived experiences of repression and resistance, the paper responds directly to calls for sociological analyses that connect power, identity, and everyday political practice. Positioning authoritarian contexts as critical sites for theory-building rather than exceptional cases, the paper argues that human rights mobilisation at the margins of formal politics offers key insights into how participation, legitimacy, and authority are contested in the contemporary world. In doing so, it speaks to broader debates on resilience and resistance under authoritarianism and highlights the importance of transnational actors and practices in sustaining political engagement where democratic institutions are absent or hollowed out. By foregrounding mobilisation without access as a core form of participation, the paper seeks to contribute to political sociology at the edge—where the limits of existing concepts are exposed, and where new understandings of participation, resistance, and lived political experience become necessary.