Voting for secular parties in the Middle East

Evidence from the 2014 general elections in post-revolutionary Tunisia

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3979239
AutoresH Ege Ozen (0000-0003-4226-9713, Department of Political Science and Global Affairs, College of Staten Island (CUNY), Staten Island, NY, USA, autor de correspondencia)
Año2020
Volumen25
Número2
Páginas251-279
Fecha de publicación2020-03-03
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Journal of North African Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1362-9387 • E-ISSN: 1743-9345
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13629387.2018.1544072
OpenAlexW2899871432
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas6
Referencias citadas44

Arab uprisings paved the way for democratic elections in the Middle East and North Africa region. Yet countries in this region, except for Tunisia, were not able to maintain further democratisation. Tunisia, regardless of economic turbulence and security problems, managed to hold its second parliamentary elections in October 2014, and Ennahda, the party of the popular Islamist movement, could not keep mass support. A large number of studies have examined the rise of the Islamist parties as their electoral success in the post-Arab Uprisings elections by focusing on their organisational strength as well as their social services. However, the social basis of secular parties in the region has been overlooked in the democratisation literature. In this study, four competing arguments, religious–secularism cleavage, nostalgia for the old regime, negative campaign targeting Islamists, and retrospective voting, are considered as the key determinants of citizens' party choices. By using original election survey data, this study asserts that secular Nidaa Tounes derived its support from secular people, who, at the same time, sympathised with the old regime and disfavoured Islamists

Democracy · Democratization · Development economics · Economics · General election · Middle East · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Secular state · Secularism · Sociology · Survey data collection · Voting · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Middle East Politics and Society · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender