coherent than many of those who use the term imply. And while it is influential, there is much in the state that eludes its tight grip.

Balkanization within the state apparatus

Shobaki was not the only person to come under fire for having emerged as a ministerial candidate from outside the ranks of the institutions he was supposed to oversee. A new minister had the justice portfolio pried out of his grip (and given a new portfolio for transitional justice and reconciliation) because, although he was a judge, he was from the administrative courts rather than the regular judiciary, some of whose members complained for that reason. Kamal Abu Eita similarly drew fire when appointed minister of manpower. Abu Eita would seem to have all the qualifications -- he isphenomena, it pays to look backward at the way that authoritarianism matured in Egypt under Presidents Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak. In the 1970s, Sadat inherited a system that was tightly controlled by the security apparatus, military officers peppered official positions, only one political party was permitted (and owned all press), and restrictions on political organization and speech led little room for dissent. But the system seemed to be on the verge of losing its grip; worse, some of those parts of the state apparatus provided a platform for Sadat's rivals. Over the course of the 1970s, the sole political party was disestablished; a nominally multiparty system was allowed to form (with what eventually became the National Democratic Party dominating the political system and ownership of the press