How do limited political openings restructure public political space, even when transition processes seem to have stalled? As argued in Chapter 2, regimes use highly controlled political openings to undermine the power of political challengers by steering them toward particular modes and channels of contestation. This form of political coercion may be accomplished through a variety of mechanisms, most obviously through such state-regulated apparatuses as legal channels of political participation and the judicial system. For example, state actors may prohibit certain targeted groups from adopting legal institutional forms (e.g., Islamist groups in Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey, which are not permitted to form political parties) or render certain modes of political contestation illegal (e.g., publicly questioning state policy in Syria or Saddam's Iraq, or criticizing “friendly” governments in Jordan). Regimes may erect administrative obstacles such as elaborate processes to obtain required permits, or they may fail to process such permits in a timely manner. Political elite may even deem certain ideas subversive and seek to quash those debates entirely. The governments of Egypt and Syria, for example, have at times rendered political opposition organized on the basis of Islamic principles outside the boundaries of acceptable issues for public political debate (Moaddell 2002). Likewise, Leftist narratives historically have been repressed through a variety of mechanisms in countries as diverse as Jordan, Iran, Mexico, Northern Ireland, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Yemen.