Since 1970 Islamist political parties have participated in at least 76 parliamentary elections in 17 Muslim-majority countries. This paper first identifies an empirical pattern in Islamists’ electoral performance over time and then draws lessons from the history of European electoral socialism to predict the effect of electoral participation on the movement for Islamism. The paper also compares two Islamist movements that attempted to broaden their support beyond their initial base. Despite participating in parliamentary elections under a wide variety of electoral systems and political and social contexts, I find that Islamists’ vote shares exhibit a remarkably similar trend over time. With a few notable exceptions (e.g. Palestine, Iraq), Islamists’ vote shares tend to increase from election to election until stabilizing around 11-20%. In countries with the most parliamentary elections since 1970, such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Bangladesh, Islamist vote shares oscillate around this stable level. The pattern of Islamists’ electoral performance resembles European socialists’ votes which increased over time until stabilizing between 30-50%. European socialists initially participated in elections for reasons remarkably similar to Islamists; both socialists and Islamists saw elections as offering a ‘peaceful revolution’ that would reform unjust societies and provide conditions for universal liberation. They sought (or seek) a mandate for legislating society, respectively, into socialism or Islamism. Fitting with this year’s theme of change, ‘old’ European electoral socialism has lessons for today’s electoral Islamism. I argue that Islamists, like electoral socialists before them, are finding that they must choose between a party homogenous in its Islamist appeal but sentenced to perpetual electoral minorities or a party that appeals to other voters but at the cost of diluting its Islamist orientation. I examine the one Islamist movement that significantly expanded its vote share beyond this 11-20% barrier. After a decade of electoral failures, Turkish Islamists grew their vote share rapidly from 15% in 1999 to 34% in 2002 to 44% in 2007 after Islamists split and the AK Parti credibly recast electoral Islamism as a center-right movement. I also examine the Jordanian Islamist Movement to understand how it has attempted to reformulate its message to appeal beyond its limited Islamist base. European socialist parties serve as shadow cases.

Most analyses of Arab elections have focused on the role and performance of the Islamist opposition. In contrast, considerably less attention has been given to how formal and informal institutions have helped elect regime-backed elites and bind parliamentarians to a loyalist agenda during periods of political turbulence. By focusing on the aftermath of recent parliamentary elections in 2007, this study compares the rise of the “new capitalists” in Jordan with the emergence of the “Rally and Modernity” coalition in Morocco. How did the recent elections enable and strengthen these regime-backed forces? And what are the implications of their success for political stability in liberalizing Arab monarchies? This study tests the impact of electoral rules on the cohesion among ruling elites in hopes of developing a mid-range theory about the conditions under which elections reinforce authoritarian regimes. Although this paper is motivated by the surprising success of politicians in both countries who neither had tribal weight nor any kind of previous political base, the study is situated within the broader theoretical debate about why authoritarian regimes hold elections. The conventional wisdom about authoritarian elections has held they are mere “window dressing” to create a democratic façade and add legitimacy to the regime. This study is aligned with an emerging scholarship that views elections more instrumentally as an institutional mechanism for maintaining elite cohesion and structuring elite competition. With regards to the cases of Jordan and Morocco, I argue that recent parliamentary elections have increasingly served to deter potential elite defections and to co-opt potential dissidents with a role in national agenda setting. This paper is based on original research in both countries including key informant interviews conducted this summer with “new capitalist” parliamentarians in Jordan. It also utilizes statistical analysis to estimate the marginal effects of formal electoral rules, particular characteristics of electoral districts and other factors on the probability that Jordanian candidates and Moroccan parties won or lost in the 2007 parliamentary elections.

What factors explain the persistence of monarchical authoritarianism in Morocco? This paper argues that the monarchy’s religious authority and its use of rituals of power limit the ability of Islamist and non-Islamist opposition groups to contest the monarchy’s legitimacy. The study goes beyond most institutionalist accounts of authoritarian persistence by exploring the micro-dynamics of symbolic power and the extent to which the regime uses rituals of power to create a political culture conducive to the monarchy’s supremacy in the socio-political realm, thus promoting regime stability in Morocco. These rituals have been institutionalized in the political system and have become part of the political discourse in Morocco. The paper examines the effects of the ritualization of the political process on political parties in Morocco. Evidence from elite interviews conducted with some 50 political officials and party members suggest that regime’s rituals of power inhibit any mobilizational support for political parties. As a result, political parties are engaged in a war of position to press for governmental accountability and to tackle some of the chronic socio-economic problems facing Morocco. Political parties engage the state in an institutional strategy manifested within the context of limited elections, which provide an opportunity for political parties to challenge monarchical hegemonic supremacy in the political system. The monarchy’s religious authority and its use of rituals of power impede the ability of political parties to mobilize, and to penetrate Moroccan society. The prevalence of this cultural and social hegemony contributes to the stability and resilience of the monarchical authoritarian regime in Morocco.

Deploying a cross-regional comparative method, this paper juxtaposes two Muslim majority countries infrequently studied by political scientists. The Middle Eastern case is the Republic of Yemen: the country resulting from the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990. The other case -- from South Asia -- is the Republic of the Maldives, an archipelago nation off the southwest coast of India, in the Indian Ocean. The purpose of this inquiry is to explore the feasibility of a comparison of these two cases of partial democratization in order to contribute a novel perspective to debates within the Islam and democracy literature. While neither country can be classified fully democratic, each has recently begun a halting transition as evidenced by top-down liberalization, the development of parties, increasing social pluralism and political participation, and the incidence of campaigns and competitive elections. Following the termination of colonial ties with Britain, each state adopted a unitary republican form, and a presidential system with a weak parliament. The incumbent ruler of North Yemen retained the presidency at the time of the Yemens’ unification, and won elections in 1997 and 2006. In the Maldives, opposition parties were not permitted by the governing party, the Dhivehi Raiyyathunge Party (DRP) until 2004. In November 2008, the DRP lost the presidency and a majority in the Majlis to the Maldives Democratic Party in the country’s first competitive election. This inquiry aims to generate hypotheses concerning the causal relationship between a constitutional ideology of Islamic republicanism, and electoral, quasi-democratic practices. To what extent do constitutional republican principles (e.g. the rule of law, separation of powers, judicial independence) conjoined with an allegiance to Islamic values shape state and opposition parties’ behavior; do transfers of power (Maldives, 2008) or increasing electoral competition (Yemen, especially 2007) increase or decrease the political salience of the state’s religious identity? Data sources regarding the Maldives include personal observation and interviews conducted by the author over ten months in Male’ (the nation’s capitol island) from 2007-2008, the English language press (e.g., The Dhivehi Observer, Minivan News) and multi-disciplinary scholarship (Didier and Simpson 2005, Maloney 1980, Phadnis and Luithui, 1985, Suryanarahyan 1998). The documentary sources regarding Yemen will be the Arabic- and English-language press (e.g. al-Thawri, al-Shura, Yemen Times) as well as specialist political science (Rizwan Ahmed 2001, Burrowes 1999, Carapico 1998, Detalle 1997, Hudson 1999, al-Mdaires 2000, Schwedler 2003, ‘Abdu Sharif 2007) and anthropological (Caton 2005, Messick 1996, 1999) literatures.