Revisiting the moderation controversy with space and class: the Tunisian Ennahda

Hasret Dikici Bilgin

Third World Quarterly, 2021, vol. 42, issue 7, 1507-1523

Abstract: What shapes political parties’ direction of change on the political spectrum? Under what conditions do Islamist movements moderate or shift towards a more radical stance? Drawing on the case of the Ennahda Party in Tunisia, I argue that transformation of the Islamist parties should be analysed on par with that of the secular parties, by focussing on the parties’ popular base and the target electorate rather than through a moderation–radicalisation framework. I find that Ennahda’s shift to Muslim democracy, self-defined as specialisation, is owed to their need to be backed by the new urban middle class in order to rule while maintaining the support of the rural and urban poor to come to power. Through field interviews conducted with the members of Tunisian political parties as well as union leaders and activists, I show that the secular parties are going through a similar process under the pressure of the spatial and class-related dynamics.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2021.1896360 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:42:y:2021:i:7:p:1507-1523

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ctwq20

DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2021.1896360

Access Statistics for this article

Third World Quarterly is currently edited by Shahid Qadir

More articles in Third World Quarterly from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().