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A Multidimensional View of Legal Cynicism: Perceptions of the Police Among Anti-harassment Teams in Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Magda Boutros
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Abstract

In Egypt in 2012, several anti-harassment groups were established to respond to an increase in sexual violence in public spaces and to the failure of the state to tackle the issue. Anti-harassment groups organized patrol-type intervention teams that operated during demonstrations or public celebrations to stop sexual assaults. This article examines how activists perceived the police in five anti-harassment groups between 2012 and 2014, and the role these perceptions played in groups' decisions about cooperating with the police, and on-the-ground strategies of action. I argue for a multidimensional view of legal cynicism that conceptualizes legal cynicism as composed of three dimensions: legitimacy (a sense that law enforcement agencies are not entitled to be deferred to and obeyed), protection (a perception that the law fails to protect rights and provide public safety), and threat (a perception that the law represents a threat). This approach helps uncover the various meanings that legal cynicism takes for different actors in different contexts, and how actors justify their strategies of action based on their specific perceptions of the police's legitimacy, protective role, and threat.

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Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , June 2018 , pp. 368 - 400
Copyright
© 2018 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

I wish to thank John Hagan, Charles Camic, Laura Beth Nielsen, Susan Sterett, and three anonymous reviewers, for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Special thanks to my graduate student peers at Northwestern University for their invaluable help and support. I would also like to express my deepest gratitude and respect to the men and women I interviewed, for taking the time to talk to me, and most of all for the important work they are doing. This research was made possible thanks to the support of the Buffett Center for International Studies at Northwestern University.

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