The article explores the contemporary Islamist project - constituted by those that mobilize to restructure public life according to Islamic norms - in the context of the 2011-2013 "Arab spring”. It has two interrelated aims. First, it aims to empirically explore changing interactions between Islamist mobilization in politics and in society, and examine the position state organizations have within these changes. Second, it aims to apply insights of studies on social movements and contentious mobilization in the analysis of these interactions. The articles main contentions are, first, that in their practice Islamist movements face a dilemma how to react to a context that is ever more strictly divided between a social and political arena: either mobilization is aimed at societal change through organizing as social associations, or it is aimed at maximizing political influence through organizing as political parties. Irrespective of what their ideology is, all movements face the dilemma how to reconcile a vision of a complete Islamic system with day-to-day realities. Second, I argue that common strategies addressing the perceived “secularity” of state bureaucracies and public organizations can be the basis of a shared goal for mobilization and thereby ensure the unity of the Islamist project. A specific debate within studies on collective mobilization – relating to the social process of “upward scale shift” – is then used in an analysis of how these state organizations can influence the relation between Islamist mobilization in society and politics. I substantiate these claims through a paired comparison between Syria and Tunisia. The comparison builds on, first, extensive fieldwork over the course of four years in the Arab world (mainly Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and Jordan) in which around 180 individuals have been interviewed. Second, it draws on a content analysis of primary sources from Islamist associations, state organizations, and individual autobiographies of (Islamist) actors; third, it uses secondary sources from local, Arab and international newspapers as empirical basis for the analysis.

Since Maurice Duverger’s (1954) seminal work, a large literature in political science has examined the effects of electoral rules on candidate and voter behavior, establishing a strong empirical relationship between the electoral system and the number of candidates (or parties) entering an election in each district. This literature, however, developed focusing primarily on established (mostly Western) democracies and, as a result, it is unclear whether these same electoral rules have similar consequences in authoritarian elections. Electoral rules are an important set of institutions even in the electoral authoritarian regimes of the Middle East and North Africa affecting electoral outcomes, representation, long-term institutional stability and democratic transitions (Lust-Okar and Jamal 2002; Posusney 2005; Herb 2005). Nevertheless, few systematic empirical studies exist examining the effects of electoral rules on candidate behavior in the Middle East and North Africa. This paper fills an important gap in the literature on the consequences of electoral systems in non-democratic settings. Using district-level data on the number of candidates competing in each election, this paper examines whether electoral rules in Jordan produce the expected reductive effects on the number of candidates competing in each electoral district. Upon first examination, there appears little evidence that elites are learning and entering races strategically. However, when candidates are grouped by tribal affiliation—an important social and political institution in Jordan—there is much more evidence of strategic behavior. Moreover, I find interesting variation across both electoral districts and tribes suggesting the effects of electoral rules in Jordan are conditional. To explain this variation across both districts and tribes, I employ a mixed-method research design. First, I use regression analysis to identify the correlates of the number of candidates running per seat in each district across election years. I find the effect of electoral rules to be conditional on ethnopolitical heterogeneity (measured by the proportion of Palestinians living in the district and the existence of minority quotas) and district size. Second, I use a structured comparison of electoral districts and tribes in Irbid, Kerak, Zarqa and Bedu Wasat. From elite interviews, conducted in June and July of 2012 with tribal leaders and candidates, the size of the tribe, socioeconomic changes and prestige emerge as important determinants of the number of persons from each tribe entering as candidates in a district.

In the present paper I intend to shed light on how Palestinian political factions, such as Fatah or Hamas, are (re)produced in everyday practices despite their unpopularity in Lebanon. Literature on Palestinian political factions in Lebanon revolves around two main themes: the popular dissatisfaction of the refugees in Lebanon towards the current state of Palestinian political structures and the history and evolution of these structures studied through an examination of their ideology as well as, a history of their founders and of their regional and international alliances. Everyday practices of Palestinian refugees, such as joining or leaving a faction, critiquing one, or receiving aid from one, are seldom included in those studies. How do Palestinian refugees in Lebanon differentiate between Palestinian political factions? How do they choose whether to join a faction and then which one to join? Are their decisions based on ideology? Are there financial incentives to join? Do they do so for security considerations, or are other factors at play? My research, based on a year of participant observation and action research in Nahr el-Bared camp in the north of Lebanon where I lived with a family, led me to realize that what binds Palestinian refugees to factions is not the ideology or regional or international alliances of the factions. For example, young Palestinians do not join a faction based on whether it is Islamic, Marxist, or nationalist; rather they do so based on where they have friends or family, and sometimes depending on which faction has the closest youth center to their home. In fact, it is those personal relationships, including those developed with other faction members, that keep Palestinians affiliated to factions. My ethnographic work reveals the importance of social factors, something which is not recognized in the literature. This revelation led me to re-conceptualize the way we look at political factions in Palestinian society and the way we look at so-called “grassroots” and “independent” initiatives within the camp. As such, my research helps us better understand the dynamics that animate Palestinian politics in exile and it has broader implications for understanding why political organizations (political parties or regimes) survive when they lack legitimacy even among their supporters.

For a long time Sweden has had a homogeneous religious landscape. The last thirty years, however, a substantial shift towards heterogeneity has occurred. At the same time, the idea of secularism – not merely a separation of state and religion, but also the idea that people (should) become less religious – has held a strong appeal. If this is a view popularly held in society; how does that affect religious people? My previous fieldwork, including data from a survey carried out among Sweden’s Young Muslims (the largest Muslim youth organization in Sweden) suggest that some Muslim youngsters feel inclined to withdraw from political participation because they see their views differing from the views of their peers in the same age-range. On that basis, this paper puts forth the following question: Do Muslim youth in Sweden feel that framing claims at political participation in religious wording makes such claims illegitimate? Differently put: To what extent is the access to political participation dependent on framing your claims in a “politically acceptable” diction? If religious wording has impact on perceived legitimacy, the follow-up question is what the consequence of this is: Will it translate into forms of political participation such as activism or other engagement in forms of politics that are outside of party politics, or is it possible that they are inclined to withdraw from anything deemed political? The paper will discuss how themes of post secularity, framing, legitimacy and political participation, can be explored further in focus group interviews. Here, comparative data is essential to see how other young Swedes perceive the legitimacy of their claims and their change at participation. The paper will then discuss how such a comparative study of the politico-religious landscape can be analyzed by drawing on concepts of American political philosopher William E. Connolly in order to further the analysis. In his work, Connolly writes broadly about possibilities of re-imagining political culture, and has in that writing put forth the concepts contestability, overlapping minorities, agonistic democracy, resonance-machines, and micropolitics. However, it is the contention of this paper to show that not only can these concepts be used in these broad terms. They can also be utilized as analytical tools to shed light on interview (and potentially other empirical) data about young people’s subjective perception of access to political participation, in party politics or elsewhere.