ABSTRACT
The chapter deals with the salience of identity issues in the politicking of political parties in the Middle East and North Africa. Through the examples of Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq and Kuwait, the chapter shows that the popularity of identity politics has to do with the way political competition is structured in electoral autocracies. With the exception of post-2011 Tunisia, every time the door seemed to open for political liberalization, any attempt made by Arab political parties to advance an issue-based political agenda has been followed by co-optation, repression or simply electoral irrelevance. In this sense, political parties cannot perform their basic functions because of identity issues, but at the same they cannot survive without recurring to them. Hence, identity politics sustains the paradox that while parties are necessary to democratisation, they also appear to be crucial to the establishment, consolidation and resilience of authoritarianism. For this reason, as long as the regimes of the area do not truly liberalise, identity-based party politics is destined to remain relevant.
