Book Review: Anika Gauja, Party Reform: The Causes, Challenges, and Consequences of Organizational Change
| Author | Davide Vittori |
| Date | 01 November 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929917717443 |
| Published date | 01 November 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsComparative Politics |
646 Political Studies Review 15(4)
Nationalism, Language, and Muslim
Exceptionalism by Tristan James Mabry.
Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2015. 251pp., £45.50 (h/b), ISBN 9780812246919
Are Muslims exceptionally resistant to ethnic
nationalism? Tristan James Mabry tries to
answer this question in Nationalism, Language,
and Muslim Exceptionalism. Using case stud-
ies from different regions, he rejects the excep-
tionalist proposition based largely on cases
from the Arab world.
He explains how Muslim minority popula-
tions mobilise themselves either as nationalist
or Islamist separatists. The nationalists main-
tain a robust vernacular print culture fostering
a strong ethno-national identity. Since Islamists
don’t exclusively rely on the vernacular print
culture, Islamism becomes a conduit if the
community is not linked by the language and
print culture. The author’s research is based on
field visits and interviews with separatist
Muslim minority organisations.
In chapter 3, Mabry explains the connec-
tions between the politicisation of language
and nationalism. Chapter 4 makes an addition
to the understanding of Muslim societies and
exceptionalism through the socio-linguistic
phenomenon of Diglossia. This means that low
vernaculars of the Arab language are marginal-
ised in the public sphere in favour of high
Arabic, that is, Modern Standard Arabic.
Correspondingly, citizens of Arab states incor-
porate parallel but politically incompatible
varieties of ethno-linguistic identification
which Mabry calls di-nationalism.
Since the fulcrum for Diglossia remains pres-
tige, education becomes a political exercise and
consequently, the exclusivity of Modern Standard
Arabic in the public sphere is often considered a
competitive disadvantage for the development of
ethno-nationalism. The assumption that Islam
singularly suppresses ethno-linguistic national-
ism is often supported with evidence from the
Arab world. This book falsifies this assumption
by using six case studies of Muslim minority
separatists – Kurds of Iraq, Uyghurs of China,
Sindhis of Pakistan, Kashmiris of India, Acehnese
of Indonesia and Moros of the Philippines.
Mabry contends that Islam has a marked
influence on societies which do not have a
strong ethno-national bond. The variation in the
cases is marked by the role of language and the
presence of a print culture in the vernacular lan-
guage. As Muslim separatist movements in
Xinjiang, Sindh and Iraqi Kurdistan are
extremely secular, Mabry asserts that it is the
presence of a strong print culture that fosters
secular ethno-nationalism. In other case studies,
the absence of a strong print culture minimises
the ethno-political dimensions of a conflict.
The author successfully elucidates that
non-Arab Muslims are in no way resistant to
ethnic nationalism. The lucidly written book
makes an important contribution to the study
of nationalism. The ideas presented by the
author can also help in shaping policy guide-
lines to resolve political conflicts involving
Muslim minorities.
Arshi Javaid Narwari
(Jawaharlal Nehru University)
© The Author(s) 2017
Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1478929917712141
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Party Reform: The Causes, Challenges, and
Consequences of Organizational Change by
Anika Gauja. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2017. 214pp., £55.00 (h/b), ISBN 9780198717164
This book by Anika Gauja focuses on parties’
organisational structures and their reforms in a
comparative perspective, taking into consider-
ation three levels of analysis: the political sys-
tem, the party system and the political party
(pp. 8–13). Starting from the (underdeveloped)
literature on party change, the author focuses
on the reforms – defined as ‘intentional and
publicized changes that are made to a party’s
structures and practices in order to improve
them’ (p. 19) – implemented by six political
parties over a 10-year period (2006–2015).
Three of these parties are Australian (the
Australian Labor Party, the Liberal Party of
Australia and the National Party), while the
other three are from the United Kingdom (the
Conservatives, the Labour Party and the Liberal
Democrats). The book uses the historical institu-
tionalism approach as its framework of analysis.
The first and most interesting part (chapters
3–5) deals with the pressures for reform which
parties face at three different levels: internal
pressures (chapter 3), pressures from their peers
either inside or outside the country (chapter 4)
To continue reading
Request your trial