Governments can mask control by appearing to delegate official publishing to editors

Evidence

In December 1865 it was decided to produce the gazette again, but in a new form, with a new and more careful purpose. ‘Rather than announce its affairs to the world through its own officials,’ an internal order stated, ‘the government has decided to give the right of producing the gazette to an editor, who will publish without the government’s intervention.’ This decision marked an alteration in technique, not a relinquishing of control. Two government servants, Ahmad Rasikh Efendi of the Office of Foreign Affairs and Mustafa Rasmi Efendi from the retinue of the Khedive, were appointed to the new Office of the Gazette, and instructions were issued to the Minister of Finance that ‘they are to continue to be considered government servants and be given the salary and benefits of government employees, and are to receive pay from no other source.’ — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 308

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the chapter’s broader thesis about the ‘method of politics’ and the production of public knowledge as a technique of power — Michel Foucault’s governmentality. — connects to: Bribery rather than repression was the chief tool for controlling media and legislators — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 63