January 01, 2010 | 328 Pages | English
Returning to Political Parties? Partisan Logic and Political Transformation in the Arab World

A book addressing several prescient research questions: are Arab parties facing turmoil; are they paying the price of repression and limited pluralism; have they become obsolete in the face of political groups and mobilization modes; and can the recent precarious democratic transitions put political parties in the spotlight again. While some political parties in the Arab world are emerging from underground activity, others (and mainly Islamist parties) are asserting themselves as first hand mobilization structures able to compete with regimes currently in power. Emphasizing new and unpublished data, the book’s diverse contributions tackle holistically party life in six Arab countries which have adopted very different political pathways: Yemen, Bahrain, Lebanon, Morocco, Algeria and Iraq. The book also inquires about how party politics accounts for political transformation in the countries under observation by exploring the possible democratization of each regime, forms of domination, the emergence and breakdown of leaderships and the rationale behind mobilization and collective action.