System Justification in Authoritarian Regimes: Theory and Evidence from Egypt

System justification is a well-established socio-cognitive motivation that conditions individual beliefs and behaviors; however, research on its political effects has been limited to democratic contexts. In this paper, I theorize and explore system justification as an important component of political behavior in non-democratic contexts. The motivation and empirical foundation of the paper come from Egypt, a contemporary non-democratic regime that serves as an ideal case in which to test the effects of system justification. In a context of mounting economic and security crises, standard rationalist explanations fall short of explaining the persistent popularity of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, even when measured through approaches that account for various social desirability and reporting biases. In an original, nationally-representative survey of 2,000 Egyptian citizens, I included a battery measuring system justification, as well as personality traits, political opinions, and political behaviors. Analyses reveal that respondents’ level of system justification predicts their support for Sisi and his regime, as well as their levels of participation in both pro- and anti-regime elections and protest. An embedded experiment also reveals that different kinds of threats activate system justification, strengthening its effect even as innate psychological traits remain constant. This paper expands the scope of a small but growing literature on psychological motivations for political behavior in authoritarian contexts. It builds on important conceptual developments by scholars of system justification to argue that, for many, supporting a non-democratic leader may satisfy central cognitive needs.