ABSTRACT

This comprehensive Handbook analyses the political parties and party systems across the Middle East and North Africa. Providing an in-depth, empirically grounded and novel study of political parties, the volume focuses on a region where they have been traditionally and often erroneously dismissed.

The book is divided into five sections, examining:

  • the trajectories of Islamist, Salafi, leftist, liberal, nationalist, and personalistic parties drawing from different countries;
  • the role political parties play in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries;
  • the centrality of political parties in democratic or democratising settings;
  • the relationship between parties and specific social constituencies, ranging from women to youth to tribes and sects; and
  • the policy positions of parties on a number of issues, including neo-liberal economics, identity, foreign policy and the role of violence.

This wide-ranging and systematic analysis is a key resource for students and scholars interested in party politics, democratization and authoritarianism, and the Middle East and North Africa.

Chapter 18 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9780429269219

chapter 1|13 pages

Political parties in MENA

An introduction

part I|81 pages

Party families

chapter 2|16 pages

The rise and fall of the Arab Left

chapter 4|13 pages

New kids on the block

Salafi parties

chapter 5|12 pages

Inheriting the past

Trajectories of single parties in Arab republics

chapter 7|13 pages

Personalism in MENA politics

The case of Tunisia

part II|65 pages

Political parties in authoritarian settings

chapter 9|11 pages

Political intermediation in the Arabian Peninsula

Partisan organisations, elections, and parliamentary representation in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Yemen

chapter 10|12 pages

Pawns in the army's hands

Political parties in military-dominated regimes

chapter 12|12 pages

Coping with occupation

Hamas and governing Gaza

part III|66 pages

Political parties in democratic settings

part IV|89 pages

Political parties and social constituencies

chapter 21|11 pages

Shi'a Islamist parties in Iraq

From opposition to governance

chapter 22|13 pages

Armenian political parties in Lebanon

Functions and survival strategies

chapter 23|12 pages

The workers and the Left are not one hand

Insights from Algeria

chapter 24|11 pages

Urban bias, rural embeddedness

Using the rural–urban divide to explain political party organisational and ideological development in the MENA

part V|50 pages

Political parties and policy positions

chapter 26|13 pages

“The Terminal”

Political parties and identity issues in the Arab world

chapter 27|12 pages

Islamist political parties, international relations, and foreign policy

Historical overview and theoretical insights

chapter 28|13 pages

Between the battlefield and the ballot box

Armed political parties in the Middle East