Mubarak's regime was able to pursue political liberalisation without undermining the status quo through the role played by the State Security Investigations apparatus (SSI) in backstage governance. This article discusses mechanisms through which the SSI exercised public authority through the use of soft and hard power. It argues that the focus of good governance approaches on the level of government institutions formally mandated with public authority together with the international precedence given to geostrategic security interests over development policy enabled the SSI to instrumentalise Western‐sponsored good governance programmes to advance its own mandate of safeguarding the power base of the regime.