Implementation gaps in Egyptian law stemmed from local resistance, not just institutional design

Evidence

This book seeks to understand the nature of the discrepancy between the plan and its execution, between the law and its implementation that Mitchell takes to be due only to the very nature of modern institutions of power and their representations. By looking at the specific Egyptian context where these modern devices were applied and basing itself on an imposing and impressive institution of power, this book offers alternative explanations of the nature of this gap that separated model from reality. Specifically, it is concerned with the question of whether discrepancies arose as a result of misreadings of the law by government officials, scribes or bureaucrats, whether they were caused by internal contradictions in the letter of the law itself that could only (or more easily) be detected on implementation, or whether they were the result of resistance by those on whom the law was applied. This book, then, tries to complement the imposing picture that Mitchell offers of nineteenth-century Egyptian society as it comes across in the official blueprints which he studied with the every-day accounts of how these laws and blueprints were in fact implemented, negotiated and resisted. The army that is studied below, besides representing in as pristine a form as could be expected an ideal model for society to follow, was also an army whose soldiers, NCOs, army scribes, and occasionally its officers themselves came to subvert and challenge this oppressive order. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 115

Categorization

• XREF: This is the book’s framing against Timothy Mitchell’s ‘Colonising Egypt’; establishes the analytical disagreement this military history is built on. — connects to: Law-on-paper routinely diverges from law-as-implemented in Egypt’s military bureaucracy — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1699; Egyptian legal reform along European lines was a tool for resisting European penetration — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 1020; Law-implementation gaps arise from misreading, internal contradiction, or resistance — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 115 (+3 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Law-on-paper routinely diverges from law-as-implemented in Egypt’s military bureaucracy — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1699; Egyptian legal reform along European lines was a tool for resisting European penetration — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 1020; Law-implementation gaps arise from misreading, internal contradiction, or resistance — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 115 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Egyptian legal reform along European lines was a tool for resisting European penetration #complicates (0.72) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1020