Officials hid their capitulation to public opinion behind imperial mercy rhetoric.

Evidence

Yet even as officials privately acknowledged the role of public opinion in shaping their decision to release Amir Khan, they masked the impact of liberal critique by publicly couching the release in the language of the imperial mercy of the new empress. — Julia Stephens, The Phantom Wahhabi, 172

Categorization

• CANDY: A tidy, tweetable example of governments conceding under pressure while framing it as magnanimity.