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The selective delegation of policymaking to judicial institutions points a broader concern of authoritarian leaders - the maintenance of political legitimacy in lieu of credible mechanisms of public accountability. In many cases, authoritarian regimes switch to the rule of law as a legitimizing narrative only after the failure of their initial policy objectives or after popular support for the regime has faded. Egypt's second President, Gamāl 'Abd an-Nāsir (1954-1970), pinned his legitimacy on the revolutionary principles of national independence, the redistribution of wealth, economic development, and Arab nationalism. Judicial institutions were tolerated only to the extent that they facilitated the regime's achievement of these substantive goals. In contrast, the third President of Egypt, Muhammad Anwar as-Sādāt (1970-1981) explicitly pinned his regime's legitimacy to siyādat al-qānūn (rule of law) and used rule-of-law rhetoric at various times throughout his eleven years of presidency (Moustafa 2008: 146; Brown 1997: 122), to distance his regime from the substantive failure of the Gamāl 'Abd an-Nāsir regime and authoritarian state in crisis, and to build a new legitimate narrative, distinct from the populist foundations of the state (Lombardi 2008: 234-273, Moustafa 2007: 6, 39).
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