Political Opening & Factional Politics: A Typology of Islamist Party Structures

• In Event: The Future of Political Islam: Behavior and Ideology

Abstract

Since their inception, Islamist parties maintained virtually identical organizational structures. The Brotherhood-inspired organizational model merged politics and preaching in one hybrid party-movement structure. However, the opening and the ensuing variation in the political space across the region since the 1990s contributed to a slow process of organizational divergence among Islamist parties. We ask, why have Islamist parties been increasingly and to varying degrees engaging in organizational changes, and what are the organizational forms they adopt? The key organizational feature we focus on is the relationship between the movement and the party. We draw a typology of Islamist organizational structures and explain how the interaction between the nature of the political opening and the factional politics in Islamist parties leads to each type of Islamist organization. We identify four ideal types of Islamist organization: 1) Movement-dominant (Ikhwan), 2) Separate and equal (PJD), 3) Party without movement (Ennahdha), and 4) Party-dominant (AKP). The nature of the relationship between Islamist parties and the religious movement (from which the party hails) constitutes a major point in understanding the institutional settings within which Islamist parties operate. This relationship reveals itself in four distinct ways: recruitment, personnel, decision-making, and audience. Islamist organizational structures have never been a subject of serious inquiry in the literature. Yet, organizational changes of Islamist groups are a result of serious deliberations. Decisions to reform—or not—are strategic choices. They reflect Islamist movements’ evaluation of their environments and the ways to respond to them in pursuit of policy and political objectives. Moreover, organizational changes of Islamist groups reflect factional conflict between the political and religious wings of Islamist parties. Indeed, despite the appearance of common objectives the faction that wins the conflict over the organizational form of the party—be it religious or political—shapes the future direction of the party. We argue that the gradual opening of political systems in their respective countries pushed Islamist parties to reconsider their longstanding party-movement hybrid structures. But, critically, these changes were negotiated between the political and religious factions: What are their distinctive goals, how do they want to achieve those goals? Who are their respective audiences? The interaction between changes in the socio-political context and the internal dynamics of Islamist parties explains the timing and the variation in Islamist organizational changes. We rely on extensive fieldwork and face-to-face interviews with Islamist party officials from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Moroccan PJD, Tunisian Ennahdha, and Turkish AKP to examine the relationship between the movement and the party in each case and show how factional politics interacts with the nature of political opening to result in distinct organizational outcomes. Each type is accompanied by a brief case study of an Islamist party.

Author

• A.Kadir Yildirim, Rice University