middle east law and governance 12 (2020) 3-13
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Introduction to the Special Issue on “Islamist Politics After the Arab Uprisings”
Marc Lynch The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA [email protected]
Jillian Schwedler Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, New York, NY, USA [email protected]
This special issue on “Islamist Politics After the Arab Uprisings” has its origins in a Project on Middle East Political Science (pomeps) workshop held at The George Washington University in January 2017. The charge to participants was to think critically about what we knew about how Islamist politics adapted in the face of the opportunities and challenges posed by the 2011 Arab uprisings and their aftermath. Had the Arab uprisings really changed Islamist move- ments or their members in fundamental ways? How did the degree and nature of change vary across the diverse new political contexts? In contrast to the large literature focused on how Islamists responded to the immediate opportu- nities offered by the 2011 wave of protests, we pushed the authors to focus on the period from 2013 onward, when autocratic reversals and civil wars largely superseded the political opportunities that emerged in 2011. Our notion of change was intentionally broad. Change could be at the level of ideology and ideas, as movements rethought their premises in the light of new experiences and new situations. It could be at the level of political strate- gies, including alliances, priorities, and repertoires of engagement. It could be at the level of institutional, organization, and internal dynamics, as trends within the movements struggled to steer the organization in one direction or another. Change could also be voluntary, undertaken from within, or imposed from the outside by violence or by electoral failure. And in many cases, change in the broader political context, including but not limited to the state level, fundamentally altered the political context to such an extent that the meaning of Islamist politics also changed. This special issue features several articles de- veloped in that workshop that explore these themes in detail.
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The early round of post-2011 scholarship focused on how the uprisings had changed Islamists, both through participation in cross-ideological protests and in subsequent electoral competitions. Building directly on earlier research on the inclusion-moderation hypothesis,1 a diverse and robust research program explored how the opening of political possibility reshaped the aspirations and organizational forms of Islamist movements across the region.2 Studies de- tailed Islamists’ decisions about where, when, and how to participate in pro- tests and whether to join cross-ideological coalitions. Others explored new tensions between long-standing Islamist political organizations—many of which grew from local branches of the Muslim Brotherhood—and the new Islamist challengers that emerged from previously quiescent salafi move- ments. Unsurprisingly, where the uprisings opened pathways to competitive elections, Islamist movements were quick to field candidates. The most stud- ied cases were Tunisia and Egypt, where newly free elections saw Islamists win significant influence through the polls and then struggle with the responsibili- ties of power. Other critical cases included the Moroccan Party of Justice and Democracy, which won enough seats to form a government. Critically, this research program showed that Islamist parties across the re- gion were affected by the uprisings, even in cases where the regime did not fall. Jordan’s regime leveraged an existing schism within the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Action Front to divide the movement and set a moderate trend against hardliners. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (uae), Turkey, and Qatar chose to side with or against Islamist movements in other states, with the former two opposing the ascent of Muslim Brotherhood groups to political power and the latter two supporting them. Those shifting regional positions concerning Islamist politics played out not only in political competition in
1 Janine Clark, “The Conditions of Islamist Moderation: Unpacking Cross-Ideological Cooper- ation in Jordan,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 38, No. 4 (2006): 539–60; Mona El-Ghobashy, “The Metamorphasis of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood,” International Jour- nal of Middle East Studies 37 (2005): 373–95; Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, “The Path to Modera- tion: Strategy and Learning in the Formation of Egypt’s Wasat Party,” Comparative Politics 36, No. 2 (2004): 205–28; Jillian Schwedler, “Can Islamists Become Moderates? Rethinking the Inclusion-Moderation Hypothesis,” World Politics 63, No. 2 (2011): 347–76; and Jillian Schwedler, Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 2 Sumita Pahwa, “Pathways of Islamist Adaptation: The Egyptian Muslim Brothers’ Lessons for Inclusion Theory,” Democratization 24, No. 6 (2017): 1066–84; Jillian Schwedler, “Islamists in Power? Inclusion, Moderation and the Arab Uprisings,” Middle East Development Journal 5, No. 1 (2013): 1–18; Hendrick Kraetzscmar and Paola Rivetti, eds., Islamists and the Politics of the Arab Uprisings (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019); and Marc Lynch, ed., Adapta- tion Strategies of Islamist Movements, pomeps Studies 26, April 2017.
middle east law and governance 12 (2020) 3-13