"This book offers a comparative, theory-grounded study of Maghrebi political parties since the Arab uprisings, specifically focused on Tunisia and Morocco in the first decade after the 2011 watershed elections. Based on primary sources, including in-depth interviews and updated party statutes and bylaws, the Author introduces four case studies of key Islamist and anti-Islamist parties, exploring their organisational standing, internal working, and legitimating assets. A topic long neglected, the reader will gain insight into the 'hybrid' nature of political parties in the Maghreb, oscillating between juxtaposed traditional and modern discourses and ambivalent sources of political authority. As such, it is hybridisation that shapes parties' organisational choices and development and accounts for party differences. In the wake of political liberalisation, the Author argues that political parties have become increasingly distant from society, distrusted by large proportions of the citizenry. Ultimately, the Tunisian and Moroccan cases invite reflection on similar phenomena taking place within the Middle East and North Africa region, and even outside of it. Bridging disparate disciplines, including comparative politics, area studies, and contemporary Middle Eastern history, the book will be of interest to a broad range of graduate-level students and academics"--

The Arab uprisings of 2011 have sparked much scholarly discussion with regards to democratisation, the resilience of authoritarian rule, mobilisation patterns, and the relationship between secularism and Islam, all under the assumption that politics has changed for good in North Africa and the Middle East. While acknowledging the post-2011 transformations taking place in the region, this book brings to the forefront an understudied, yet crucial, aspect related to the uprisings, namely the interplay between continuity and change. Challenging simplified representations built around the positions that either ‘all has changed’ or ‘nothing has changed’, the in-depth case studies in this volume demonstrate how elements both of continuity, and rupture with the past, are present in the post-uprising landscapes of Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt. Public policy, contentious politics, the process of institution making and re-making, and the relations of power connecting national and international economies are at the core of the comparative investigations included in the book. The volume makes an important contribution to the study of North African politics, and to the study of political change and stability, by contrasting the different trajectories of the uprisings, and by offering theoretical reflections on their meaning, consequences and scope. This book was originally published as a special issue of the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies.

This book offers a comparative, theory-grounded study of Maghrebi political parties since the Arab uprisings, specifically focused on Tunisia and Morocco in the first decade after the 2011 watershed elections. Based on primary sources, including in-depth interviews and updated party statutes and bylaws, the author introduces four case studies of key Islamist and anti-Islamist parties, exploring their organisational standing, internal working, and legitimating assets. By dwelling into a topic long neglected, the author provides insight into the "hybrid" nature of political parties in the Maghreb, oscillating between juxtaposed traditional and modern discourses and ambivalent sources of political authority. As such, it is hybridisation that shapes parties’ organisational choices and development and accounts for differences within parties. In the wake of political liberalisation, the author argues that political parties have become increasingly distant from society, distrusted by a large part of the citizenry. Ultimately, the Tunisian and Moroccan cases invite reflection on similar phenomena taking place within the Middle East and North Africa region, and even outside of it. Bridging disparate disciplines, including comparative politics, area studies, and contemporary Middle Eastern history, the book will be of interest to a broad range of graduate-level students and academics.

This book offers a much-needed corrective to dominant approaches to understanding political causality during episodes of intense social mobilisation in North Africa. Drawing on analyses of routine governance and of 'revolutionary' mobilisation in four countries of the Maghreb - Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya - before, during and after the 2011 uprisings, Volpi explains the different trajectories of these uprisings by showing how specific acts of protest created new arenas of contention that provided actors with new rationales, practices and, ultimately, identities. The book illustrates how the dynamics of revolutionary episodes are characterised by the social and political de-institutionalisation of routine mechanisms of (authoritarian) governance. It also details how post-uprising re-institutionalisation and/or conflict are shaped by reconstructed understandings of the uprisings by actors, who are themselves partially the products of these episodes of phenomena.

This book offers a much-needed corrective to dominant approaches to understanding political causality during episodes of intense social mobilisation in North Africa. Drawing on analyses of routine governance and of 'revolutionary' mobilisation in four countries of the Maghreb - Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya - before, during and after the 2011 uprisings, Volpi explains the different trajectories of these uprisings by showing how specific acts of protest created new arenas of contention that provided actors with new rationales, practices and, ultimately, identities. The book illustrates how the dynamics of revolutionary episodes are characterised by the social and political de-institutionalisation of routine mechanisms of (authoritarian) governance. It also details how post-uprising re-institutionalisation and/or conflict are shaped by reconstructed understandings of the uprisings by actors, who are themselves partially the products of these episodes of phenomena.

The overthrow of the regime of President Ben Ali in Tunisia on 14 January 2011 took the world by surprise. The popular revolt in this small Arab country and the effect it had on the wider Arab world prompted questions as to why there had been so little awareness of it up until that point. It also revealed a more general lack of knowledge about the surrounding western part of the Arab world, or the Maghreb, which had long attracted a tiny fraction of the outside interest shown in the eastern Arab world of Egypt, the Levant and the Gulf. This book examines the politics of the three states of the central Maghreb--Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco--since their achievement of independence from European colonial rule in the 1950s and 1960s. It explains the political dynamics of the region by looking at the roles played by the military, political parties and Islamist movements and addresses factors such as Berber identity and economics, as well as how the states of the region interact with each other and with the wider world. -- Provided by publisher.

"This book examines the processes of transition from authoritarian rule in Tunisia and Egypt between 2011 and 2014, arguing that differences between the two countries can be explained by the conduct of their respective political parties. Drawing on a new conceptualization of political parties' agency that considers their unique nature as intermediate and intermediary institutions, the book allows for the identification of those factors driving political parties' choices in processes of transition. Moreover, thanks to the employment of quantitative text analysis on the electoral manifestos of the parties involved, this work presents new data for the study of party systems in Tunisia and Egypt. Presenting a new toolkit for analysis, Tunisia and Egypt after the Arab Spring ultimately reveals how differing legacies of authoritarian repression across the two countries can help explain why the Tunisian transition culminated with the 2014 democratic constitution, and the Egyptian transition with the 2013 military coup. Conceptually, the book will appeal to those working in comparative politics and those interested in processes of democratization and authoritarian resilience. Nonetheless, the focus on Tunisia and Egypt makes the book suitable reading for anyone interested in Arab politics and the MENA region generally"--