All in all, then, despite the government’s narrowing of the legal space for autonomous political organizations, a number of them remained intact throughout the socialist period. The government had the power as Michael Mann would put it, the despotic power—to close down the legal space for autonomous political groups, but it did not have enough power—what Mann calls infrastructural power—to close down all the illegal spaces. Although the illegal spaces lay outside the parameters set by government, they were not totally beyond the government’s control and manipulation, so the groups could not really function freely there. As we shall see, changes in the government and sociopolitical and economic developments would shape the way in which these informal groups functioned in illegal spaces.