Islamist Opposition in Authoritarian Regimes: The Party of Justice and Development in Morocco

Preface

xv Preface This study began as a comparative project about the institutional integration of two social movements, the Islamist one in Morocco and the environmentalist one in Germany. In the back of my mind, I had the idea that ideology—religious or environmentalist—ultimately should not matter that much when a social movement organization enters into formal politics. After quite some work in this direction, I had to drop the comparison. It was not because the two movements’ extreme ideological divergence made them an unfruitful comparison. To the contrary, the Moroccan Islamists and the German environmentalists shared many features in their integration process, such as the broadening of support through a pragmatist approach and the betrayal of movement principles. What turned out to be incomparable were not characteristics of the movement organizations or parties, but characteristics of the political environment: democracy in Germany, autocracy in Morocco. As I went on with my field research, it became clear that a large share of Islamist party decisions in Morocco were driven by the latter authoritarian political environment. Accepting or rejecting a law: What’s the king’s position? Choosing the number of electoral districts to cover: Will the political elites feel threatened? Designing the relationship between party and movement organization: What’s the best way of decreasing our vulnerability to repression? And so on. In short, only below a certain threshold did the Islamists feel free to choose their mobilization strategy. Perhaps the leaders of the Moroccan Party of Justice and Development were overly cautious , yet what matters is the fact that they had to consider an actor that is simply not there in a democracy, a veto player that can outlaw them if they cross a “red line” whose coordinates are not even fully known to opposition groups. It is for this reason that this study is not a comparison of environmentalist and Islamist xvi | Preface groups going into politics, but a study about the dilemmas that opposition parties must deal with in authoritarian regimes. I wrote this book in various places where I received both institutional and personal support. I thank my supervisor, Stefano Bartolini, at the European University Institute in Florence. I also thank Michael Willis at Oxford University , who generously shared his knowledge of the Party of Justice and Development and helped me to establish my first contacts with the party. I am grateful to Muriel Asseburg at Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin, where I did my research on Jordan, for her support and her critical readings of my papers. I wrote most of the book at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, where Ellen Lust encouraged me throughout my research, and I made the last corrections at the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit at the University of Cape Town. Finally, I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the German Academic Exchange Council, the Thyssen Foundation, and the European University Institute. At Syracuse University Press, Glenn Wright, Annelise Finegan, Kay Steinmetz, and Marcia Hough generously extended their support. Annie Barva copyedited the manuscript. I thank participants for their comments at the following workshops and panels where I presented my research at various stages: “Dynamics of Stability: Middle Eastern Political Regimes Between Functional Adaptation and Authoritarian Resilience,” at the Fifth Mediterranean Research Meeting, Florence, Italy, March 24–28, 2004; “Post–Cold War Democratization in the Muslim World: Domestic, Regional, and Global Trends,” at the Joint Sessions of the European Consortium for Political Research, Granada, Spain, April 14–19, 2005; “Political Opposition in the Middle East: Between Confrontation and Cooperation,” at the World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies, Amman, Jordan, June 11–16, 2006; “Europe’s Legacy: From Colonialism to Democracy Promotion,” Odense, Denmark, April 20–22, 2007; “Emerging Actors and Changing Societies in the Southern Mediterranean Area,” EuroMeSCo seminar, Torino, Italy, September 21–22, 2007; “The Challenge of Islamists for EU and US Policies: Conflict, Stability, and Reform,” a Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik–United States Institute of Peace Workshop, Berlin, September 27–28, 2007; “Spaces for Change? Decentralization, Participation , and Local Governance in MENA,” at the Tenth Mediterranean Research Meeting, Florence, Italy, March 25–28, 2009. Preface | xvii I thank collectively all the people who have helped me do field research in Morocco and Jordan—from those who provided me with the first telephone numbers I needed to those who made my life there much nicer. I also thank...