Political Islam and democracy :|how Islamist political parties survive in hostile settings

Abstract

In Muslim majority countries, political parties with Islamic backgrounds often come to power after democratic openings (e.g., first democratic elections). Only some of these parties, however, manage to survive after coming to power, while others are closed down and repressed by the establishment that consists of unelected officials (e.g., the military, constitutional court, and some parts of the bureaucracy). Although it is natural for the status-quo forces to suppress these political parties which are perceived as a threat to the secular political order, the fact that Tunisia’s Ennahda and Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (JDP) survived constitutes a significant puzzle for the researchers. So, why do some parties survive whereas others are repressed? Do all surviving parties survive under the same conditions? To answer these research questions, this thesis utilizes comparative method (i.e., most different and most similar systems design), and investigates six different political parties which won democratic elections, namely, the Welfare Party, Justice and Development Party (Turkey), Ennahda (Tunisia), Freedom and Justice Party (Egypt), National Salvation Front (Algeria) and Justice and Development Party (Morocco). By following the historical institutionalist literature, this work argues that although structural factors play a significant role, an election victory by the above-mentioned parties constitutes a critical juncture where several outcomes that depend on actors’ choices are possible and macro-level factors do not restrict different choices in a deterministic manner. As a result of the interplay of macro-level factors and actors’ choices, three pathways came forward: reinforced survival, repression, and precarious existence.