Islamists in Power? Inclusion, Moderation, and the Arab Uprisings

Jillian Schwedler

Middle East Development Journal, 2013, vol. 5, issue 1, 1350006-1-1350006-18

Abstract: Political inclusion is a major concern for democratizing states. Among the many groups excluded and repressed by the former regime, which should now be included? Which should be excluded? And who decides? With the extraordinary events of the Arab uprisings that began in 2011, a wider range of political actors than ever before have become directly engaged in debates and processes of political transition. The new political institutions, however, remain unstable and the distribution of power between them unclear. This paper explores the inclusion-moderation hypothesis with special attention to Islamist groups. It examines the literature on Islamist moderation prior to the Arab uprisings and asks whether the central tenets of those arguments hold in the dynamic environments of the post-revolutionary contexts, particularly in Tunisia and Egypt, where Islamists have done well in free and fair elections. I argue that in unstable and changing institutional contexts, the logic of the inclusion-moderation hypothesis is less likely to be present, particularly when more extreme opposition groups challenge Islamists to prove their core commitment to a conservative religious political vision.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1142/S1793812013500065 (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:rmdjxx:v:5:y:2013:i:1:p:1350006-1-1350006-18

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rmdj20

DOI: 10.1142/S1793812013500065

Access Statistics for this article

Middle East Development Journal is currently edited by Raimundo Soto

More articles in Middle East Development Journal from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().