The victory of the An-Nahda party in elections to Tunisia’s Constituent Assembly in October 2011 confirmed not only the domination by the Islamist party of the Tunisian political landscape in the aftermath of the revolution of January that year but also presaged a wave of Islamist victories in elections in states across the North African littoral in the months that followed. This paper aims to place An-Nahda’s political advances in a regional context, examining the extent to which its experience is exceptional when compared to those of other states. Particular attention will be paid to comparison with the case of Morocco where the Islamist Party of Justice and Development (PJD) similarly won a clear plurality of the vote in national elections a matter of weeks after the victory of An-Nahda in Tunisia and, like An-Nahda, assumed senior government ministries as the dominant party in a multiparty coalition government. The paper will look not only at developments since 2011 but will also compare the experiences of An-Nahda with the PJD and other regional Islamist parties in a more long term perspective over recent decades. It will address the issue of the extent to which An-Nahda has influenced or been influenced by the experiences of other Islamist parties over recent years which will help answer the question of whether the party is a trendsetter or merely part of a broader regional movement and trend. It will argue that whilst An-Nahda’s experience is clearly unique in some respects it is not at all isolated from other movements in the region and has both learned from and also influenced the experiences and behaviour of other Islamist movements. The paper will draw on a range of sources including interviews with senior figures in An-Nahda and other Islamist movements in North Africa both before and since the Tunisian revolution, publications by the movements, media sources and existing secondary literature.