Rethinking Islamist politics in North Africa: a multi-level analysis of domestic, regional and international dynamics

ABSTRACT

Since 2011, considerable upheavals in domestic politics, shifting regional power balances and international shocks have been greatly affecting Islamist movements and parties coming to the forefront of the political arena in Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco. This Special Issue combines a more theoretical reflection upon the underappreciated interaction of domestic, regional and international factors with an empirical focus on the development of Islamists. It also enriches the case history of comparative politics analyses through the investigation of new relevant rational actors in countries whose political trajectories differ considerably. By opting for an inside-out perspective and actor-centered approach, we aim to overcome the ‘compartmentalization' of the three levels of analysis and the ‘obsession’ with moderation for Islamists. Borrowing a set of mechanisms first identified by social movement and policy diffusion literature, this introduction lays out the analytical framework informing all the contributions which is based on adaptation, learning, competition, and collaboration dynamics.

KEYWORDS:

• Political Islam
• learning
• levels of analysis
• adaptation
• Tunisia
• Morocco
• Egypt

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to Irene Fernandez Molina, Miguel Hernando de Larramendi and Bárbara Azaola-Piazza for their suggestions on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Some researchers, particularly since the 2013 military coup in Egypt, have explored how hardened repression increases the propensity for radicalisation and violence of non-violent and moderate groups.

Additional information

Funding

This article was written under the auspices of the R&D Project, ‘Crisis and Regional Change Processes in North Africa: The Implications for Spain’ (CSO2017-84949-C3-3-P), financed by the Ministry of the Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (MINECO), the State Research Agency (AEI) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). This work was also supported by the Universidad Loyola Andalucía Research Fund.

Notes on contributors

Giulia Cimini

Giulia Cimini is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Department of Political and Social Sciences – University of Bologna (Italy) with a Fellowship supported by the Gerda Henkel Foundation. In 2019, she was awarded a POMEPS TRE Grant for her research on marginalised communities and the challenges of decentralisation in Tunisia. She has been Teaching Assistant of Politics at the University of Naples L’Orientale, and Visiting Fellow at the Middle East, Central Asia and Caucasus Studies Institute at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Her research interests include Maghrebi political parties, dynamics of contention and security assistance.

Beatriz Tomé-Alonso

Beatriz Tomé-Alonso is lecturer in the Department of International Studies at Universidad Loyola Andalucía and associate research fellow at the Study Group on Arab and Muslim Societies (GRESAM) at Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. She has been Visiting Fellow at NIMAR, Netherlands Institute in Morocco, Rabat. Her research focuses on islamist movements in the Maghreb, especially Morocco, the interlink between international, regional and domestic arenas, international actors’ foreign policies towards the Middle East and North Africa states and responses to these from domestic actors.