Suchergebnisse

What happens to an Islamist party after moderating its behaviour and ideology? Existing work on Islamist parties has elaborated the varied causes of moderation. Yet, the mixed findings do not capture the full range of Islamist dynamics. This article draws on a multiyear, interview-based study of the Tunisian Islamist party Ennahda to interrogate the process of intraparty change after moderation. Islamist parties face a two-level problem with external and internal trade-offs. I argue that the intraparty characteristics that enable moderation may also contribute to undermining a party's institutional structure and identity as it responds to an uncertain political context. These findings bring processual evidence from Islamist parties into broader explanations of party change and highlight the ongoing effects of moderation, not just its causes.

Abstract
Tunisia's Islamist movement Ennahda has announced a separation of political and religious work, apparently reinforcing a "post-Islamist" argument that Islamic parties have left behind religious mobilization. However, the boundary between religious and political fields is highly porous. We ask why the distinction between religious and political activism remains a point of ambiguity within Islamism. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 48 men and women who participated in the movement in the 1970s and 1980s in Tunis and Sousse, we develop a microlevel explanation of Islamist mobilization. We argue that religious and social Islamist activism is replete with political intent, which worked through three mechanisms: a counter-hegemonic ideology, an activist engagement in social transformation, and a formal organization. These findings add empirical insights to the case of Ennahda, provide leverage in explaining the politicization of Salafist movements, and underscore the legacy of asymmetric party capacities in shaping outcomes in a democratic transition.

Civil resistance, especially in the form of massive peaceful demonstrations, was at the heart of the Arab Spring-the chain of events in the Middle East and North Africa that erupted in December 2010. It won some notable victories: popular movements helped to bring about the fall of authoritarian governments in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Yet these apparent triumphs of non-violent action were followed by disasters-wars in Syria, anarchy in Libya and Yemen, reversion to authoritarian rule in Egypt, and counter-revolution backed by external intervention in Bahrain. Looming over these events was the enduring divide between the Sunni and Shi'a branches of Islam. Why did so much go wrong? Was the problem the methods, leadership and aims of the popular movements, or the conditions of their societies? In this book, experts on these countries, and on the techniques of civil resistance, set the events in their historical, social and political contexts. They describe how governments and outside powers-including the US and EU-responded, how Arab monarchies in Jordan and Morocco undertook to introduce reforms to avert revolution, and why the Arab Spring failed to spark a Palestinian one.0

Introduction / Shabnam J. Holliday and Philip Leech --. - Divided we stand? : the heterogeneous political identities of Iran's 2009-2010 uprisings / Shabnam J. Holliday and Paola Rivetti --. - The spring in Sulaimani : Kurdish protest and political identities / Nicole F. Watts --. - Underlying fragility : the absence of hegemony and popular demonstrations in the West Bank, 2011-12 / Philip Leech --. - Israeli grassroots activism : recent waves of protests, and heterogeneous political identities / Giulia Daniele --. - From Ba'thist nationalism to new Syrian identities : how the emerging Syrian civil society defines itself / Lorenzo Trombetta --. - Political identities and the uprising in Yemen / Fernando Carvajal --. - In want of the people : Tahrir as a revolutionary reconstitution of the Egyptian national-popular subject / Brecht De Smet --. - The Tunisian uprising, Ennahdha, and the revival of an Arab-Islamic identity / Rory McCarthy --. - Conclusion / Shabnam J. Holliday and Philip Leech