Revisiting the Islamist–Secular divide: Parties and voters in the Arab world
| Author | Francesco Cavatorta,Eva Wegner |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0192512118784225 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512118784225
International Political Science Review
2019, Vol. 40(4) 558 –575
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512118784225
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Revisiting the Islamist–Secular
divide: Parties and voters in the
Arab world
Eva Wegner
University College Dublin, Ireland
Francesco Cavatorta
Laval University, Canada
Abstract
Electoral politics in the Arab world are either portrayed as clientelistic affairs void of content or as highly
ideological clashes between Islamist and Secular Left forces. Although both arguments are intuitively
appealing, the empirical evidence to date is limited. This article seeks to contribute to the debate by
investigating the extent of programmatic voter support for Islamist and Secular Left parties in seven
Arab countries with data from recent surveys by the Arab Barometer, Afrobarometer and World Values
Survey. Ideological congruence between voters and parties exists but is limited to the Islamist–Secular
core divide with regard to the role of religion in politics and gender values. In contrast, there are virtually
no differences in economic attitudes between respondents and there is no evidence of class-based voting,
with Islamist and Secular Left parties sharing the same voter base of better-off, more educated voters.
Core results are robust across surveys.
Keywords
Political Islam, Middle East and North Africa, electoral behaviour, public opinion
Introduction
There are two competing narratives about the role of ideology in Arab politics. According to the
first one, political competition is highly ideological, with the conflict between Islamist and Secular
political and social forces being the decisive socio-political cleavage. Blaydes and Linzer (2012:
4–5) characterize this conflict as ‘akin to the left–right ideological dimension that describes policy
preferences in most Western democracies’. In other words, it is viewed as the most important
Corresponding author:
Eva Wegner, School of Politics & Internatinonal Relations, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
Email: eva.wegner@ucd.ie
784225IPS0010.1177/0192512118784225International Political Science ReviewWegner and Cavatorta
research-article2018
Article
Wegner and Cavatorta 559
cleavage in Arab countries with profound consequences for political opinions and political compe-
tition. This perception is certainly reflected in research on Islamist movements and parties. Indeed,
many studies start from the assumption that cooperation between Islamist and Secular forces is
very difficult. Collaboration is often used as an indicator of Islamist ideological moderation
(Cavatorta, 2009; Clark, 2006; Schwedler, 2006; Shehata, 2009; Wegner and Pellicer, 2011).
The second narrative focuses more directly on electoral politics and contends that electoral sup-
port in Arab countries is largely driven by clientelistic inducements, that is, the promise and hand-
ing out of particularistic benefits to voters, such as gifts, jobs, money or other favours. According
to this narrative, ideology is of little relevance. Voters are thought to have little or no ideological
attachment and mainly hold parties accountable on their ability to deliver particularistic goods
rather than on policy promises (Corstange, 2012; Lust, 2009). Accordingly, political parties in the
Arab world are mostly characterized as being void of programmatic ambitions (Boukhars, 2010;
Ibrahim and Lawson, 2010), operating to a considerable extent as clientelistic networks and trans-
mission belts of ‘bribes’ to voters.
Although both narratives are intuitively compelling and may coexist, they cannot be equally and
universally true. For the time being, there is only limited empirical evidence supporting either one
or the other. The Islamist–Secular divide narrative generally takes irreconcilable divisions between
Islamist and Secular political movements for granted, but scholars have hardly looked at whether
the values held by supporters – activists, sympathizers and voters – do reflect such a divide.
Virtually all extant research on this divide focuses on elites, such as the leaders of Islamist and
Secular Left organizations, and is based on interviews or analyses of the writings of the respective
groups. It is, however, perfectly possible not only that elites overemphasize the divide for strategic
reasons but also that an Islamist–Secular ideological divide might exist at the elite level but might
not inform the attitudes and behaviour of ordinary citizens.1
For the clientelism narrative, the argument is that if elections do not matter much in shaping
policy outcomes, voters try to get at least some tangible return – money, employment, access to
state resources – out of electoral participation (Gandhi and Lust-Okar, 2009). Certainly, observers
of elections in Arab countries would agree that clientelistic inducements and expectations play an
important role but, thus far, there are only three studies that focus explicitly on the extent and
nature of clientelistic linkages, and they are concerned with Lebanon (Corstange, 2012), Yemen
(Corstange, 2016) and Jordan (Lust-Okar, 2006). However, these countries may be exceptional in
that voting behaviour in Lebanon is sectarian and in Yemen largely tribal; furthermore, political
parties in Jordan are particularly meaningless to voters with less than 5% of respondents indicating
a party preference in the 2014 World Values Survey.
More generally, it is surprising how scarce research on voting behaviour in the Middle East and
North Africa still is. Most party studies focus on Islamist ideology and its compatibility with demo-
cratic principles (Schwedler, 2011), not on the parties’ electoral strategies.2 Studies of the elector-
ate have looked at drivers behind turnout (De Miguel et al., 2015) and at Islamist voters. Islamist
voter studies come in three types. The first two types mirror the above narratives and focus on
clientelism and voter values, respectively. Studies considering clientelism propose that the connec-
tion of Islamist parties to large charity organizations places them in a good position to gain elec-
toral support through ‘charitable’ handouts. This type of study focuses on voter characteristics such
as education and poverty (Pellicer and Wegner, 2014). Value studies have looked at whether certain
values, mainly anti-democratic values or religious piety, are correlated with support (Garcia-Rivero
and Kotze, 2007; Robbins, 2010). A third type of study looks at Islamist voters as mainly protest
voters, unhappy with the performance of the regime and other parties and attracted by the anti-
establishment and anti-corruption messages of Islamist parties (Mecham and Chernov Hwang,
2014). As most of these studies focus on individual countries and use different methods and data,
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