Six years since the so called "Arab Spring", this article looks at the two Islamist parties that have since then-although under different circumstances-been key political actors both in Tunisia and Morocco, respectively. It analyses, in a comparative perspective, the economic programs that the PJD in Morocco and Ennahda in Tunisia proposed during their electoral campaigns, along with the policies they implemented. By looking at their platforms and performance, the article investigates the gap between discourses and practices in order to assess to what extent contingent needs and the interplay with other political and social actors impact on Islamists' ideological perspectives and their capacity to meet societal demands.
In the current era of rapid and radical evolution in the institutions of partisan politics, one of the best-documented and most discussed changes in established and more recent democracies has been the decline of membership enrolment, and yet its resilience. By contrast, comparative research on Maghrebi political parties, and on this aspect in particular, has for a long time been rather narrow or non-existent. With the newly democratised Tunisia at the centre stage of the analysis, this contribution aims at partly filling such a gap and explores the ways in which Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes discipline their memberships. In presenting what privileges the parties grant to their members, what they expect from those who join and the differences in what individuals need to do to enrol, this article focuses on findings from personal interviews and the examination of parties' bylaws and statutes. Through the lens of inclusiveness as core dimension, it argues that the two parties vary widely in the extent of their efforts to cultivate membership structures and party-related activities, as well as for the significance they attach to them. Whereas Ennahda more heavily invests in creating and reinforcing strong bonds of identity, and gives its members more voice in internal decision-making, Nidaa is more prone to promote candidates or policies keeping the organisational membership at a minimum, not least in the attempt not to restrain leadership's autonomy.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.