The paper examines the moderation process of the Welfare Party between 1983 and 1997. This time span covers the Welfare party as it existed outside of parliament (1983-1991), as it was within the opposition bloc in parliament(1991-1996) and finally examines its coalition experience (1996-1997). In this study, moderation is defined as a change from being rigid, exclusionary and anti-systemic to having a comparatively more inclusive, open, tolerant and status-quo oriented ethos. The questions which will be posed are: Why do groups with closed ideologies change their political agendas, and adopt instead a more inclusive, open and tolerant discourse? What are the group motivations and processes behind the transition from an anti-systemic to pro-systemic position? What incentives and constraints lead Islamists to moderate their politics? On what issues are opposition groups likely and unlikely to moderate? To what extent do groups moderate their policies and why? Regarding the link between political inclusion and moderation, Fuller (2003), Schwedler (2006), and Wickham (2004) argue that during political openings, ideologically-closed groups are most likely to initiate their political moderation via participation in elections, parliamentary politics, and coalition governments. In this view, political inclusion generates moderation by providing the groups with the opportunity to interact and cooperate with ideologically-divergent parties. This in turn increases their mutual tolerance and pluralism, and makes them strategically concerned about their electoral success, thus increasing their pragmatism. While the inclusionary process paves the way for changes within the party discourse, As Schwedler argued, “A given group’s level of moderation can be uneven depending upon the specific issue areas. ” Thus, I will be examining the moderation in different issue areas, i.e., the role of religion in politics, democracy discourse, and foreign policy, in order to unpack the different moderation levels. I utilized the process-tracing model to trace the moderation process prior to and after the critical events (i.e., elections, coalitions) which had a tremendous importance in the overall party moderation.

The role of Islamic movements in the democratization of the Middle East has become important more than ever in the aftermath of the ongoing uprisings in the region. This article examines how Jamaat al-Adl wal Ihsan, or Justice and Spirituality Movement (JSM), the largest oppositional movement in Morocco, combines Islam and politics to mobilize against the monarchy for greater democratization in the country. JSM provides an interesting case study because it is neither a political Islamist movement nor a Sufi order but combines spirituality and justice; piety and politics. This paper focuses on how JSM combines spirituality and politics in practice. I analyze the religious authorization process in JSM with ethnographic and interview based data collected in the summer of 2009 in Morocco. This article argues that JSM is able to do this through its central activity of Majlis al-Nasiha. There are various practices involved in these biweekly informal gatherings of the members and novices such as rituals, informal talks, and also qas ru’ya, sharing of dreams and visions. This paper argues that JSM is able to combine spirituality and politics through such practices in their gatherings. For instance, members interpreted that in 2006 there will be something joyful in Morocco interpreted as the collapse of the monarchy based on their visions. This illustrates the significance of examining the religious authorization process of JSM which combines the mystical form of dreams with politics, which has become open to change in the region more than ever.

A recent trend among moderate Islamist movements is to go transnational, open branches worldwide, and internationalize their disputes. This is a puzzling development because the targets and aims of these movements are not transnational but domestic. Radical Islamist groups, such as the Al Qaeda, go transnational because they aim at and target the “global” hegemonic order. However, many moderate Islamist movements that wish to Islamize their own “domestic” constituencies are also choosing to go transnational, even though their “local” aims and targets remain unchanged. Hence, this paper asks: “Why are moderate Islamist movement going transnational when they aim for domestic change?” This is an important question to ask because it takes questions of Muslim democracy and Islam-West relations heads-on. Popular belief holds that Islamist movements by definition are anti-West, anti-democratic, and anti-liberal. However, transnational Islamist movements under consideration here have Western allies, speak of liberal democracy and human rights, and endorse interfaith dialogue. Therefore, it is crucial to understand this widespread yet unexplored trend taking place in the Muslim World today. To start answering this question, I look at the transnationalization of two moderate Islamist movements in comparative perspective: the Moroccan Justice and Spirituality Movement and the Turkish Gulen Movement. Both movements are domestic movements that have gone transnational, are non-violent and avoid anti-West rhetoric. One important difference, however, is that the Moroccan Justice and Spirituality Movement has been harshly repressed for decades by the Moroccan regime, while the Turkish Gulen Movement has generally enjoyed good relations with the Turkish regime. To unveil the motivations behind the transnationalization of these two movements, I have conducted in-depth fieldwork interviewing leaders and members of both movements in Morocco and Turkey and explored archival materials from the countries’ main Islamist and secular political magazines. My findings, in line with Keck and Sikkink’s (1998) boomerang model, show that these moderate Islamist movements in the absence of domestic political channels to express their demands and grievances at the domestic level are turning to transnational mobilization. In doing this, they aim to pressure closed domestic regimes by making appeals to international institutions and transnational allies. Furthermore, they aim to strengthen their domestic stronghold by extending their influence beyond borders. This paper draws from theories and literatures on international norms and institutions, comparative social movements, and democratization.

Using the ethnographic data collected during the 2009 local elections in Turkey this paper revisits two largely neglected areas in the studies of democratization in general and Turkish politics in specific: (i) party-candidate recruitment and (ii) election campaigns. The analysis uses these two areas to assess Turkey's ruling party, Justice and Development Party’s (JDP) intra-party democracy and finally their implications on Turkey’s efforts to expand its liberal democracy. More specifically the analysis tackles the questions how do popular mass parties like the JDP recruit their candidates? And further, what are the selection mechanisms in place? What form of political culture do these mechanisms cultivate within the party and beyond? How do parties like the JDP balance their desire to institutionalize their organizations and gain the support of broader constituencies? Do parties’ electoral policies advance or hinder their efforts to advance democratic practices and how do they do so? The analysis shows that Turkey's experience yields different conclusions when it is placed under procedural and deliberative approaches to democracy. Among others the findings show devoid of inclusive deliberative mechanisms, the JDP treats its members’ responses as a collection of isolated expressions of intentions and preferences. Turkey's does not offer an exception in many electoral democracies individuals' active roles are trivialized by the prevalence of economic rationality in defining social issues over political as well as by the ruling parties' revulsion from sporadic political engagements in the electoral processes. the conclusions contend that while electoral processes empower citizens the absence of deliberative mechanisms debilitate democracies' deliberative capital.

This paper discusses the development of the Popular Islamic Conference Organization (PICO) in Ba‘thist Iraq. The Iraqi Baath is normally assumed to have been ardently secular, at times even anti-religious. Indeed, it began as a secular party which at best saw Islam as a manifestation of Arabism, and at worst saw it as backwards and regressive. Yet, the Iraqi Ba‘th’s relationship to Islam is largely unstudied. Only now, with the recent release of documents from the Ba‘thist archives in Iraq, has a systematic study such as this even become possible. This paper thus uses those documents to depict the Ba‘thists’ shift away from their secular roots. These documents show this shift to be much more dramatic than previously thought, and thus call for a reexamination of Ba‘thist ideology in Iraq. At the center of this transformation was PICO. PICO began in 1983 as an annual conference sponsored by Iraq and Saudi Arabia to counter Iranian propaganda. The conference soon became a permanent organization which Saddam used to bolster his Islamic credentials. After the Iran-Iraq War, The Ba‘thists used PICO to attack Iraq’s rivals in the Persian Gulf, most notably its former sponsor, Saudi Arabia. The conference met annually or semiannually until the fall of the Ba‘thist regime in 2003. Throughout its existence it played an ever ever-increasing role in Iraq’s domestic and international politics. PICO’s growing prominence was central to a larger shift toward Islam in the Iraqi Ba‘th’s ideology. For example, prior to the First Gulf War, Saddam Hussein famously added the words “God is Great” to the national flag, and in the 1990s, the regime made an effort to distance itself from its secular past. In 1994, for instance, the Presidential Diwan released a memo stating that any request sent to the Diwan would have to be justified in Qura’nic (or biblical, for non-Muslims) terms. Throughout the 1990s, the Ba‘thist regime also began to support various Islamic movements throughout the region. At the same time, Saddam Hussein portrayed himself forcefully as a defender of Muslims and Islam to an extent unprecedented by a Ba‘thist leader.